site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30414 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

One worrying trend I've been seeing in the modern world is the social outlawing of any form of permissible contact between older people and children. It seems that with the obsession modern western society has on children's sexuality, all of the sudden the default position when an adult interacts with a child that isn't related to them by blood, is that the adult is a sexual predator.

Especially on the motte there have been a lot of recent concerns about 'grooming,' which as a thread below mentions is an extremely muddy and useless term. In my opinion it should be tabooed from these discussions.

This issue becomes especially salient when you look at the rise of internet addiction issues, and the mental health/suicide problems that come along with it. Many kids go to internet forums like this because they don't have role models or guides they respect in life. They end up forming parasocial relationships with internet celebrities that are probably more likely to be predatory and harmful to the child, as if the habit of going on the internet all day isn't bad enough.

We as a society are losing vast amounts of illegible knowledge every day as older people die, exit the workforce, or suffer cognitive decline. There are many areas where 'book smarts' can't teach you everything, especially when it comes to emotional issues or social issues. The rise of inceldom, trans, and other social movements primarily focused on social issues of young people are a prime example.

My question is: How are adults supposed to offer guidance to children in the modern world, especially adult men? There are numerous stories of a child's father having the police called on them because people think the father might be a sexual predator, in this environment why would any man risk the reputational and legal risk of mentoring a kid?

Is it worth losing any realistic relationship between the young and old because of vague fears of sexual predation? Does the current hysteria even help sexual predation, or does preventing children from having good role models make them more insecure and vulnerable to bad actors?

Modern western culture values the state of childish innocence, naive happiness and unbounded creativity of the uneducated mind very highly. Prolonging this state as much as possible is the number one duty of good parents and caretakers. Meanwhile it views trauma as something extremely damaging that persists through life and cripples a person.

It follows quite simply from these basic principles that adults should be kept away from children as much as possible and when it is inevitable to have them near each other, the adult should be closely monitored and audited. After all, at best, the adult will spoil the childish state of bliss, and at worst, they will inflict trauma.

This is quite an inhuman and unusual state of affairs of course. Almost every other modern or premodern society has certain implicit expectations or explicit traditions regarding children being introduced to various adult things as early as possible. Children crave this sort of thing (label anything as “adult” and teenagers will go out of their way to check it out) and many adults get real satisfaction from interacting with children and mentoring them.

Because it’s such a basic human need for both adults and kids, they will exploit any openings in the culture to create bonds with each other. Right now the LGBT ideology and feminism present just such an opportunity. While it’s normally considered creepy to talk about sexual topics with children without being exaggeratedly scientific and impersonal, it’s perfectly normal and encouraged to do so in the framework of LGBT youth, or getting into a mentorship arrangement to create new generation girl bosses or minority leaders.

Western conservatives are absolutely failing to satisfy this basic need and all they can do is to point fingers at some exploitative actors of the opposing side and call them names. It’s pathetic.

Western conservatives are absolutely failing to satisfy this basic need and all they can do is to point fingers at some exploitative actors of the opposing side and call them names. It’s pathetic.

Is it any wonder that they are when western progressives actively tore down all the institutions that traditionally satisfied them?

Perhaps. But what you are describing is simply losing and being a loser is pathetic

This attitude has been prevalent for at least 20 years as far as I am aware, being lampooned in several places, e.g., on monkeydust back.in the early 2000s ( https://youtube.com/watch?v=XCywGhHQMEw ).

Any hinting at any contact or interaction with children at all who are not your own, or even your own if you are a man, gives off pedo vibes if you view it through a certain lens.

I think the fear is understandable. It's hard to think of an adult role in close contact with children that hasn't gotten the stain of pedophilia at some point - predators, by their nature, seek out those kinds of roles for precisely that reason. And there are definitely people in the LGBT community who are creepily eager about mentoring or guiding LGBT youth. The problem is the jump from there to 'gay people gotta get back into the closet', when really we should encourage them to direct their energy at other consenting adults.

As for the broader impact on social relationships, it's hard to say. Obviously these kinds of relations are in decline, but so are all social relations.

I don't have any issue with non-family men or women interacting with my children in an appropriate context.

You can smile at them,talk to them, pat them on the head, as long as you're a normal person.

Warning signs: visible tattoos or piercings, danger hair color (aposematism) or hair cuts, obesity, strange dress, unkempt appearance, odd behavior, conspicuous lack of children at an older age...

If you insist on talking about sexuality with children, don't be surprised if people call you a groomer. Children do not need to know that <1% of the population likes certain practices that do not contribute to making children.

If you wear the same clothes around children as you did at your last orgy, don't be surprised if wary parents give you dirty looks.

It's really not rocket science.

Could you explain why obesity is a warning sign?

Obesity is a signal of one or a combination of low impulse control, child neglect/ abuse, ignorance or disregard of divine rules (gluttony is a sin) or in some edge cases health issues. Obviously the North-American food environment is anti-health, but morally conscious and well-meaning people should try their best to adapt to these unfavorable settings.

I'm not an expert in psychology but bar certain extreme medical conditions, I don't see how one would become obese without a certain obsession with food. These people would not set a good example for children if they are not working on stopping to sin.

Parents have a right to keep their children safe from nefarious environments, until their minds are strong enough not to fall prey to the temptations of this world.

Oh, but what about certain practices that do contribute to making children? Surely they’re perfectly safe as long as they don’t have tumblr hair.

Your heuristics are bad. I don’t think QILTBAG evangelists are actually more likely to diddle kids.

Child diddling is only one side of the issue, other prominent issues include drug abuse, domestic violence, anti-religious sentiment...

There are many bad behaviors some people would love to groom children into.

Oh, but what about certain practices that do contribute to making children? Surely they’re perfectly safe as long as they don’t have tumblr hair.

Children have zero need to know about any of that. They'll find out once they need to. It's not like it's any great mystery, and it's not like the Catch-22 joke has any possibility of being real.

I'm dead certain if you raised childen in an environment where they could never observe coitus, had it never explained to them, etc they'd figure it out sure as bears shit in the woods.

This suggests that the resulting proportion of true pedophiles among persons with a homosexual erotic development is greater than that in persons who develop heterosexually.

Anyway I'm not sure how much I'd pay attention to a study from 1992. There wasn't a society wide push to give homosexuals unsupervised access to other people's children at the time. It's like saying that lions are safe around children because in 1992 more kids were hit by cars than eaten by lions, so it's definitely a good idea to release lions in public parks.

Reading the Wikipedia articles of early gay rights activists does not exactly fill me with trust that this movement has only the best intentions for children.

how would the parents know what you were wearing at the orgy?

There are certain attires stereotypically deemed 'fetish-wear'. Obviously if you wear that around families you will raise eyebrows.

It'd be nice not to know what these things are, but unfortunately the 'community' decided that they needed to raise awareness and parade in it, and the media love to celebrate it.

Here's an example of the issue :

People don't like seeing kids associated with bondage gear in advertisement

Why are you blaming talk about grooming for this? It has been ramping up for decades. In the early naughts, when I was leaving school, I had one occupation in mind - I wanted to be a daycare worker. I wanted to play with babies and finger paints and macaroni art all day, that is my dream job. I never met a single person who thought that was a good idea.

Every single person I spoke to about it got nervous and started talking faster trying to convince me to change my mind, because I was just going to get hurt over and over again. I would have an uphill battle getting credentials because men are considered less competent with children, I would be viewed with suspicion by parents and co-workers and I would probably end up in jail because I tickled a kid and a parent thought I was making a move. And it has only gotten worse since then. This shit about groomers is a symptom, not the cause.

Why?

How much money can you make being a daycare worker?

$30 an hour top? You could get a decent, normal manly job, make $60 an hour and spend the rest of your time fingerpainting if that's your thing.

You could even afford a family and do it with your own children.

Normal people are not going to like the idea of a childless man handling their kids all day, and I think it would be a struggle to get children from a woman making $15/h top.

What did you end up doing?

Why are you blaming talk about grooming for this? It has been ramping up for decades.

Yeah this is true - I saw the groomer discussion downthread and had this thought so decided I would push back. Realistically this topic deserves it's own effortpost.

Especially on the motte there have been a lot of recent concerns about 'grooming,' which as a thread below mentions is an extremely muddy and useless term. In my opinion it should be tabooed from these discussions.

I find that "groomer" here is usually used to refer to adult authority figures and sexual situations, which is a lot narrower than you say.

"Taboo your words" is not supposed to be used to deny people the vocabulary to discuss something. If you don't like "groomer", what word should be used instead?

"Recruiter" was suggested in the previous thread, and seems a reasonable alternative.

I’d sign on to this. It makes it clear whether the accusation is about LGBT advocacy or about trying to screw children.

Points taken, but the definition of "groomer" has recently expanded to cover activities that are not sexually grooming children. So I'm going to say a taboo would be valuable.

Is someone claiming that an adult is preparing a child for an illegal sexual relationship or are they claiming that somehow LGBT material is being discussed? These are two very different things.

Sexual material is being discussed or otherwise involved. It's only specifically LGBT because the people who've tried it have usually been LGBT, not because it wouldn't count if they weren't.

Sex education has been controversial for years. Calling it "grooming" is new, and this form of demonization didn't get used before it was specifically the LGBT content that people were angry about. I think it's reasonable to suspect that this tenuous claim of sex/sexuality/gender-related education leading to pedophilia did not just happen to occur when the controversy was about LGBT topics instead of about sex education more generally.

Grooming has also another important context, that teachers were talking with kids with express intent to keep parents in the dark. These are examples like using different pronouns at school but keeping original pronouns when talking about the child in presence of parents. Shit like this should be immediately resolved with teachers sacked in short order precisely so that parents can have reasonable trust in professionalism when teaching topics like sex education. If that cannot happen then I would be perfectly fine nuking the whole sex education from curriculum.

Calling it "grooming" is new, and this form of demonization didn't get used before it was specifically the LGBT content that people were angry about.

Or alternatively, until children were taken to adult venues to watch sexualised adult entertainment. I don't remember any class trips to Hooters going un-objected to in years gone by.

Wait, what? Is this happening now?

Oh, this is Culture War for the week of November 21, 2022? I made a wrong turn. I thought it's for the week of November 21, 2042.

Wait, don’t go! I need your stock tips!

More comments

i think i was exposed to my fair share of sexualized adult entertainment as a kid. lots of cheerleaders, dancers, shit like that, not much different from what you’d see at an establishment like Hooters.

Okay, and that is a very broad definition compared to the "pedophile specifically preps a kid for sex" like the older definition. Anyone who throws around "groomer" should proactively state which of those very different things they mean.

The older definition developed in a prior era when only pedos wanted to talk to elementary school school children about anal sex.

Is there actually a significant contingent of people who want to talk to elementary school children about anal sex? I don't know of any examples, myself. I am inclined to think that this would be very unusual.

In terms of total numbers, no I don't suspect it is significant.

In terms of ardor, I suspect those that are into it are really into it, either for pedo reasons, or DIE reasons.

Numerous or popular or respected would suffice. Any one of those; you don't need all three. "I saw a joke about it one time and will not be giving context or details" is not very helpful to me in understanding what you are talking about, by contrast.

I think GP is asking for a taboo to force all participants to be precise in their writing, not to deny vocabulary.

You're right in that using this word usually applies to adult authority figures and sexual situations. The issue isn't the definition, it's how loosely the word is thrown around.

Even in this thread, any adult that engages in any conversation about sexuality or gender identity = groomer. That's the issue. We need to have a higher standard of proof when throwing that word around in situations where it is incredibly unlikely to happen.

Is there any need to talk about any of it, ever, in a personal context other than an existing relationship?

You could very easily get away with only ever talking anonymously about it.

A bizarre narrowing of language.

Bizarre? It's quite straightforward. General terms get applied to an extreme/taboo/embarrassing/private/insulting specific case, then they get avoided in other cases to avoid confusion, and eventually the vicious cycle causes them to almost exclusively be applied to the specific case, even if their older broader meaning is still recognizable in other contexts or with a little thought.

Loss and distortion of meaning this way is tragically common. It's impossible to fix language in time and only change it productively. I shrink with quiet sadness at each unproductive euphemism's development, but if someday we freed our intercourse from the taint of these boners, I would stand erect and my ejaculations would be gay!

For the more historically-minded, there's also "king grooms prince as heir," a subset of the "CEO" category.

as if the habit of going on the internet all day isn't bad enough.

Is it really a fucking surprise that they do this? It's the only place they're actually free- the difference between "human" and "subhuman" is gated by a mere checkbox (or date slider). And after that, it's all reading comprehension. The only thing that keeps the modern 8 year old out of the strip club is 1. knowing what the parts are called and 2. being able to spell them (voice recognition always censors your input so that won't work). Anything they want to know, anyone they want to talk to, anyone they want to live vicariously through... it's all there (once they realize it).

Why wouldn't they spend all day there, especially considering that the games you can play there are way more immersive than anything the real world could offer even it was legal to go outside? Minecraft is superior to Lego, Civilization is superior to chess, and Call of Duty is superior to Cops and Robbers- and that's just the way it is.

The internet is not "so good its trapping you from reality", this is "reality has conspired to trap you in the Internet". Remember, going half a block away from your home is a criminal offense. The fact that it is the best possible place they could be trapped in is only a (fortunate?) side effect.

To fix it, we need to know what really broke this cultural transmission.

Well, we went from "parents have 7 kids (you can drop off at the orphanage if you can't afford them), and they work alongside adults (in terms of "yes, they actually do something of objective value" in the actual workforce in 1930 (and all time before) to "parents treat kids like they're luxury items (the quality of life you'd like to provide them is difficult the more you have + dual-income trap means it takes a hit anyway), it's illegal to let your kid outside to play, and you need to graduate from Grade 16 to serve coffee or be a secretary" in 2010.

If inflation indeed hits disadvantaged groups the hardest... well, what's more disadvantaged of a group than people who don't even know they're disadvantaged, and worse, actually are inferior (and trivially so; kids tend to be less physically able than their older selves and need additional practice when solving more complicated problems) in the same ways some claim happens by skin color?

At least when it happens across skin colors they have someone to step up and represent their interests, but with kids it's more or less "apartheid, but you slowly turn from black to white, passing the paper-bag test at a pigmentation everyone achieves at age X". Additionally, "just punt on the problem, you're guaranteed to be free someday" is the absolute best way to encourage that good old slave morality- especially since, again, they don't know any better.

So, how do you fix it? Well... I can make a bunch of educated guesses, but I haven't asked the affected so I necessarily cannot know. My assumptions are "make them faster in the real world, so neither Karen nor any older kid can stop them (also solves the "suburbs, atomization, and needing to get driven everywhere" problem), "make sure they have decent affordable third spaces to go to at will", and "make a standard that requires you go as hard as you can at something and ensure that success is rewarding in the same way it is for anyone else", but that's just my interrogation of my younger self's memories and as such might not be relevant.

Though, I suspect it creates vastly more psychological abuse, with the tradeoff of reducing physical abuse.

Yes, it absolutely does.

No wonder they have no role models- they're correctly assessing there's not a soul they know worth the name.

"Modern" here stretching at least back to the 1980s, with the Satanic Panic? Maybe the 60s, with the French philosophers that decided to make this a salient concern?

More accurately I should've said post-modern, as in after the 1970s or so with the breakdown of traditional familial roles.

fathers have been, broadly, treated as a punchline in media for 50 years now. Why respect dear old Dad when "the world" has been telling you he's an outdated, stale buffoon every chance it gets?

This is true and deeply troubling to me, part and parcel of the relentless attack on masculinity and male identity in any form that has been ramping up since the sexual revolution.

why did adults stop being adults? Seriously. To fix it, we need to know what really broke this cultural transmission.

To me the obvious answer is extended adolescence. We started removing consequences for children's actions, and it became addictive. As the wealth of society and amount of people that could vote rose, political parties began to 'bribe' their bases by removing more and more consequences until eventually everyone acts like a child because they don't understand how to have restraint or discipline - they've never needed it.

it creates vastly more psychological abuse, with the tradeoff of reducing physical abuse. On the Cosmic Suffering Scoreboard, probably a worse situation by a significant margin, but I can understand why people might be reluctant to believe that, too.

Interesting point, and something I agree with as well. The modern idea of 'mental illness' being a great example of mass psychological suffering being instigated by the intelligenstia.

It's also getting harder for women to find mentors because it's riskier for men to enter that kind of relationship. I don't have any ideas, I suppose mentors can do their best to vet their mentee candidates for the risky behaviour, and mentees can find ways to signal low-risk.

The traditional way to signal low risk was bending over tolerating the plausibly-deniable harassment. This has some obvious flaws.

What flaws?

The way Camille Paglia explained it, if you tolerated it, it meant you were game, if you slapped his hand or face or just it meant you weren't.

Seems fairly straightforward to me!

It's also getting harder for women to find mentors because it's riskier for men to enter that kind of relationship.

Every damn time, it's always the first type that takes it on the chin for the benefit of the second type.

In this case, it's more difficult for the actually productive people to meet each other simply because the parasites insist on the ability to call rape when a man offends them. All policies have costs.

I don't have any ideas

We're not getting out of this without a massive technological and productivity boom that puts the reality-focused closer to sociopolitical power again.

Maybe a war, maybe AI, I don't know, but it depresses me. It's not an Iron Law for no reason; it always was "powers and principalities".

A productivity boom? Seems like the more productivity has increased the more people who don’t seem to produce anything in particular nor have any real attachment to reality exclude others from sociopolitical power, because they’re less reliant on the group of people who are by necessity part of the real world.

Precisely. The less time society needs them do to productive work ( e.g. farming), the more these types can invest in politicking.

Hence I predict, absent AI overlords, a fully automated society is going to be absolutely hellish because of a zillion manager types politciking and getting into everyone's business to justify their pointless existence.

My question is: How are adults supposed to offer guidance to children in the modern world, especially adult men?

Ideally by cracking down on grooming or grooming-adjacent behaviours so hard that nobody questions that there could be any ulterior motive at play. If we show that we take it extremely seriously, then people will have more confidence that innocent interactions are indeed innocent. If we excuse or refuse to punish or god forbid even encourage, especially with things like attempting to shut parents out of school curriculums and encouraging kids to keep secrets from parents, nobody is going to trust a single thing to be above board. Responsible parents don't take chances with their kids.

Consider the quoted example in this post: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/02/social-censorship-the-first-offender-model/

Simply replace "mugger" with "groomer".

The crux of the matter is that the authorities have lost a massive amount of trust and they need to do things to win it back. The ideal form this would take is stringent vetting, better transparency and swift and obvious punishment when guidelines are transgressed.

Ideally by cracking down on grooming or grooming-adjacent behaviours so hard that nobody questions that there could be any ulterior motive at play.

Correct, and also discouraging divergent sexuality themselves. If 99.99% of coaches of the boys team have no incentive to diddle the boys, all the mentorship, ass slapping, gum chewing, shower monitoring, etc can happen in a safe, healthy, mentorship arena. I am a happily married man with no plans on ever cheating, but if you made me head coach of the women's volleyball team at a local high school and part of my job was going into the locker room and preventing bullying etc, I think that would be an incredibly uncomfortable situation for everyone involved. AS IT SHOULD BE. I might know the girls are 16 and illegal on some intellectual level but my penis certainly doesn't. Being "Coach Boner" would be the best possible outcome. Which is little comfort. Particularly when the actual job of coaching volleyball does require coaches to make physical contact with players from time to time.

Explain...how does “cracking down on divergent sexuality” keep the hypothetical straight male coach in check? It seems like the implied answer would be straight female coaches.

Either way, the number of “straight” men who decide to abuse boys is surprisingly high.

it’d probably be better just to have some sort of eunuch caste that’s responsible for mentoring kids, that way you don’t have to worry about any of this shit in the first place.

grooming or grooming-adjacent behaviours

And who defines what counts as 'grooming-adjacent'? What happens when a homophobe calls it grooming-adjacent to mention the existence of same-sex couples like the Buttigiegs? What happens when an abusive parent calls it grooming-adjacent to teach children "These parts of your body are private and if anyone touches them, you should tell an adult you trust."?

A safe standard should probably be "if notable amounts of parents object, and/or if you try to obscure it from parents to prevent objection, you probably shouldn't be doing it."

It seems to me this problem has only gotten worse since we started cracking down on paedophilia and grooming. Admittedly, paedophilia is much more reported than it was before, but it's not at all clear to me that cracking down on grooming behaviour is going to make it easier for youth to get mentorship, if anything I'd expect it less mentorship. Your strategy may optimize for least harm, but OP was looking for more mentorship.

One worrying trend I've been seeing in the modern world is the social outlawing of any form of permissible contact between older people and children. It seems that with the obsession modern western society has on children's sexuality, all of the sudden the default position when an adult interacts with a child that isn't related to them by blood, is that the adult is a sexual predator.

If it is not acceptable to gatekeep the sort of interaction an adult may have with a child, then to avoid bad interaction, all interaction myst be forbidden. Anyway, this isn't a particularly new phenomenon; it has long been suspect for a man to interact with young children not his own, coaches and such not excepted.

Especially on the motte there have been a lot of recent concerns about 'grooming,' which as a thread below mentions is an extremely muddy and useless term. In my opinion it should be tabooed from these discussions.

Alternate view: Those who support the phenomenon but don't like the term because it's a bit too useful are muddying it up in order to get people to stop using it.

If it is not acceptable to gatekeep the sort of interaction an adult may have with a child, then to avoid bad interaction, all interaction myst be forbidden. Anyway, this isn't a particularly new phenomenon; it has long been suspect for a man to interact with young children not his own, coaches and such not excepted.

True, maybe the real issue is that there are so few community spaces where kids can organically have serious discussions with seasoned/trustworthy adults.

True, maybe the real issue is that there are so few community spaces where kids can organically have serious discussions with seasoned/trustworthy adults.

This used to be sports and scouts for boys, but entryism by pedos and lack of policing of this (largely because of the gay rights movement and their conflation of the two) ruined that.

but entryism by pedos

This seems antagonistic and inflammatory; it seems extremely unlikely that pedos wanted to ban sports and scouts for boys (like, wouldn't they advocate for that instead?) If you're going to use phrasing like this you need to back it up.

edit: Revoked after further discussion!

Based humble mod

@applesauceirishcream has the right of it—entryism doesn’t mean gatekeeping, but strategic infiltration.

Mind you, “the gay rights movement covered for pedophiles” is still pretty inflammatory, and I’d like to see a source.

I don't think I understand your objection. I was under the impression that "entryism" was a strategy based on infiltration and subversion, but not necessarily sabotage.

Here, the claim seems to me that 1) the standard goal of sports and scouting for boys is recreational, 2) pedophilic coaches/scoutmasters joined the organizations to gain access to children for illicit purposes, and 3) these purposes are sufficiently divergent from the standard goal that entryism is a fair description of this infiltration/subversion process.

For example, one of the classic examples of entryism is the long march through the institutions, like academia. I don't think that Marxist entryists into academia wanted to "ban" colleges and universities; they just wanted to use the accumulated prestige to advance their own ideological mission. So long as the universities maintained positions of prestige, the entryists have no reason to undermine their continued operation.

Here, the claim seems to me that 1) the standard goal of sports and scouting for boys is recreational, 2) pedophilic coaches/scoutmasters joined the organizations to gain access to children for illicit purposes, and 3) these purposes are sufficiently divergent from the standard goal that entryism is a fair description of this infiltration/subversion process.

Yes! That is an excellent description of entryism. The quick and dirty version goes: 1. Identify a respected institution. 2. kill it. 3. gut it. 4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.

Ah, I misread a little - I thought it said "there used to be".

I'm still skeptical, I think the perception of pedophiles everywhere is a lot stronger than how many actually exist. But, yeah, fair.

There's a lot of talk in online dissident right about how terrible public schools are, and how they are all gonna home school their children. (Usually tradcath types, too). They talk all the time about how daycare is awful and the wives all talk about how she and her friends love being stay at home moms and how they have way higher happiness levels than single in-debt professional women.

A common theme they point out seems to be the opposite of what you are pointing out, in a way. Whereas you mention that there are few role models for children nowadays, the trad-right-winger always bangs the drum saying that the centralized public schooling pipeline is a faux-family, the government trying to raise your children. That is, he is saying that children are being taught to follow the wrong role models.

This is not a new idea; I've seen people say all sorts of things like, "family is the most important bond, so any authoritarian institution needs to break it, something something communism." The idea of school, for example, brainwashing "educating children to be tolerant in order to function in an inclusive democratic society" is something I've read actual educators write and I cringed a little reading it.

Who benefits from children being deprived of traditional role models, as you mention, as illegible knowledge is being removed from the pool? If children today are primarily learning from school, maybe they do? It's very tinfoil hat, but if "the long march through the institutions" is real, I wouldn't discard the theory that the role model crisis is an intentional plan.

This is not a new idea

True. Taylor Caldwell said this in Devil's Advocate, all the way back in 1952.

if "the long march through the institutions" is real, I wouldn't discard the theory that the role model crisis is an intentional plan.

Destruction of the nuclear family is an explicit goal of Marxism. Also, the self-proclaimed "Marxist trained" activists at the head of BLM caused a stir a few years ago by advocating for the destruction of the nuclear family. So there are some successful activists saying out loud they want to destroy the nuclear family, presumably due to their Marxist philosophy which they presumably learned in academia.

Does "end nuclear family" mean "end family" or "RETVRN to having elder relatives living with you?" I suppose someone could capitalize on the ambiguity if they had an agenda.

I think they were peddling some "it takes village" approach. In any case, I'm down with bringing back extended families, but why the hell would that be the job of BLM?

the centralized public schooling pipeline is a faux-family, the government trying to raise your children. That is, he is saying that children are being taught to follow the wrong role models.

I mean, I absolutely agree with this. Seems like a harder problem to have. At a certain point we bottom out to 'destroying the nuclear family was probably a bad idea.' Not sure where we go from there.

Who benefits from children being deprived of traditional role models, as you mention, as illegible knowledge is being removed from the pool?

I don't know that anyone benefits from it? I highly doubt this is some sort of organized conspiracy from the left to gain power. Seems more like Moloch just taking us out with the benefit of modern tech.

“Seeing like a state,” presumably.

Compulsory public education gives the state a guarantee, in theory, that any given citizen will have certain skills. Literacy, basic science, ability to pay taxes...that’s the goal. Illegible things are more likely to be undervalued by the state.

Ah so that's why my schooling taught me how to do taxes and my peers don't complain at all about that!

Sorry I just had to :)

I don't know that anyone benefits from it?

People become still more reliant on the State/Cathedral for support and guidance when it's the only game in town. "Nobody" benefits in the sense that there's no shadowy cabal that is somehow turning this phenomenon into dollars, but in a very broad sense, the Cathedral and all its members benefit because their serf class has been made yet more pliant and helpless. And it is indeed Molochian in that there are no people (well, very few people) who are actively trying to undermine the family -- it's simply part of a positive feedback loop in the Cathedral's ideology.

This is a trend I have been noticing in my very short life (24). When I was a kid, adults patting kids heads/tussling their hair was a common greeting between adults and children. I rarely see that happen much nowadays at all. I'm not saying this is some kind of dark pattern, but just something that I used to see happen a lot not happen all that much anymore.

I think other than cultural shifts, some of it can just be attributed to atomization and less kids being around. Adults just don't come across kids as frequently; Let that be because people are having less kids, having them later, not socialising as much, not hanging out with extended family as much where they would meet little cousins, nieces and nephews, etc. Unfamiliarity breeds awkwardness (and contempt).

Yet another symptom of the social fabric tearing, for those with their eyes open.

Might some of this be due to your own lifecycle? As a child, you observe a far higher number of child-adult interactions than as a 24 year-old. Regardless of any culture/social changes.

I see this all the time. Is this an American thing?

I'm not American, not even Western.

But the trend of recent parents being much more protective of their kids seems to be almost universally a millennial thing. I've noticed it in the short time I lived in East coast of the US (suburban NJ), and in other affluent places in the world.

But the trend of recent parents being much more protective of their kids seems to be almost universally a millennial thing.

Well, people have a tendency to baby (what have as an emergent property of society become) expensive luxury goods in the general case.

This, in my experience. It took making one myself to finally learn how to interact with children.

That said, there absolutely are neurotic housewives who spend their days imagining every stranger to be robbers, rapists and kidnappers.

Child protection best practices within institutions that facilitate adult-child interactions- such as coaching, scouts, schools, church youth groups, etc- are largely a solved problem. They’re not implemented as consistently as they should be, but there’s a reason that child protection practices that eventually got implemented by the BSA, RCC, school districts, etc are so similar.

Simply keep the old folks of your family around. It is not uncommon around the world to have a young married couple live with their parents. The grandparents provide help with taking care of the children and also benefit from social contact into old age.

There are many issues with corporations entering into competitions with families by providing maternity leave, abortion services, paying in excess single women while keeping married men wages' low...

Moreover corporations have also created a market out of the elderly, with cruises, independent communities, reverse mortgages to make sure that there is no estate to leave to descendants...

We will just have to wait for a few decades for the Amish, Mexicans, Mormons and Chinese to solve the issue in the US.

Simply keep the old folks of your family around. It is not uncommon around the world to have a young married couple live with their parents. The grandparents provide help with taking care of the children and also benefit from social contact into old age.

I'm getting ready to have kids in the next few years, all but one of my grandparents(out of 6, father had two pairs due to divorce and remarry) has passed on. This option doesn't really exist for many. Not to mention I have siblings so who gets my dad to live with them and help them raise kids?

Well there should be 4 sets of grandparents.

Unfortunately few people can be blessed with 1 or 2 grandparents both willing and able to help with child care or household maintenance.

If your siblings have children, you should consider forming some kind of compound where childcare, yard work or even cooking can be collectivized.

I plan to either arrange marriages or at the very least instruct my children to look at the family of a potential suitor, as it can not only reveal potential problems like mental illness or criminal behavior but is also important for the environment my grandchildren will get.

Organized religion makes a lot of sense when you start having kids, as a successful church will basically provide you with older, experienced, trustworthy people to accompany you in the difficult times.

This is the whole WEIRD/Hajnal thing. In western individualistic culture, kids are expected to move out onto their own very early, and the expectation is different in less individualistic cultures. Compare, for example, how often people in their twenties live with their parents in Sweden vs Spain or southern Italy. This goes back centuries, heavy parental involvement in lives of young married couples has simply not been a thing in the West for a long time now.

young married couple

This is the uncommon part, in the west. Not the old parents.

From my experience, mostly from mom groups on social media, American women get very little help after the birth. Some will even attack others for lamenting that their immediate family does not provide much or any help postpartum. 'I didn't need any help I'm a strong independent woman' kind of talk. Meanwhile immigrant women have their mom or other relatives take care of their household for a month while they recover.

There is a lot of emotion before the first child, for the cute baby, a lot of very tiny outfits gifted at the baby shower, fewer outfits for the later ages, and then the attention dies down and people don't want to help.

Yeah this is the reason I never want to have children. I've seen some peers have kids and their social lives, hobbies, etc are essentially over. I try to babysit for my family but have my own priorities, I do feel bad about it at least.

Problem is when you take out the extended family and make hypermobility the norm, you get this vicious cycle where not having enough family around makes people not want to have kids, not having kids reduces the amount of family around. Not sure how we escape.

The Amish, Mormons, Mexicans and Chinese will figure it out as the urbanites go extinct.

Demography is destiny. There are only so many parents willing to sacrifice their kids to LGBTQUP+ gods in public schools.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats