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Some rambling on modern attitudes found generally leftward which I strongly dislike. First, an anecdote:
There was recently a shooting at a gay bar. I share an online space with some friends and some acquaintances for general purpose discussion - no specific focus other than a general lean toward our mutual shared interests, which are unrelated to the shooting or what follows.
One person posted an article about the shooting and then something roughly equivalent to "thoughts and prayers" for the victims, and a follow up note that Bigotry Is Bad. No problem, I'm on board. A second person posted that, as a sexual minority, they are now afraid to go out. They have updated based on this attack to think the world is not safe enough to enjoy. I interjected with something along the lines of "hold on, attacks like this are less likely to get you than car accidents or [insert whatever mundane thing] - yes they're flashy and scary, but you really shouldn't update based on them - they're statistically insignificant AND if you want to view them as terrorism then you living in fear is letting them win - you shouldn't do that"
The response I got was a gentle dogpile (they did start with "I know you're just trying to help, but..." and such), saying that I shouldn't be trying to tell marginalized people how to feel about things and I should let them have space to process their trauma and etc etc, much insistence on "letting the victims speak" (by which they mean indirect victims - people that share a class with the victims, not the firsthand victims) and being a good ally by listening. I pushed back for a bit saying that I'm not making any claims about the general safety of LGBTetc folks (though they are still safe enough to not feel so afraid of the world around them if they live somewhere like the US, this was left unsaid) and that I'm only saying if you previously had the courage to face the world, the shooting shouldn't have changed that and we explicitly had a person saying exactly that they were now afraid based on this event...
But eventually I got the sense they just didn't want to hear me. I gave an apology in the vein of "when people are afraid is exactly the BEST time to reassure them, but clearly I am failing to do that, so I'll back off" and they spent a few seconds talking about how important and good it is to let LGBT voices speak first (of which there were several available in the space, many of which were in the dopile). After those seconds, we have had 24+ hours of silence. Not a word on the topic from any involved or even any spectators, though they all continued talking about unrelated things in other channels of the space.
So. What happened here? I feel like insistence on sitting down and letting marginalized voices be heard is frequently insincere, as it happens even when nobody marginalized (or indeed, anybody at all) has anything to say. It is a "shut up" button, to be deployed whenever somebody says something you don't like that's adjacent to [minority issue]. Even if that isn't how they feel about it, that is functionally what is going on.
Superweapons are bad.
Like others, I don't understand why you think of this as "generally leftward." If anything, an inflated fear of being the victim of crime (esp after a publicized incident) despite its statistical unlikelihood tends to be right-coded. See, eg, the occasional comments on here re NYC in general or the NYC subway in particular.
Well, part of it is that attitudes about certain issues are what defines whether someone is conservative or liberal, including both attitudes toward criminal justice issues and diversity issues. For decades, and probably to some extent still, the statement, "liberals are soft on crime" has almost been a tautology (though, of course, liberals would not frame their attitudes in that way). If you opposed capital punishment or supported the rights of criminal defendants, historically you were, per se, a liberal (though of course there were a smattering of libertarians), which is why in 1984 future AG Meese was referring to the ACLU as "a criminals' lobby."
I would expect that, in fact, conservative women are more fearful of sexual assault than are liberal women, esp controlling for obvious confounders such as age, marital status, location, etc.
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I don't think so. It's endemic from women, for instance, who are less likely to be victims of overwhelmingly most types of crime.
I think you are mistaken. It has been right-coded for decades, and virtually every person I have met in my life who has expressed such sentiments has been conservative leaning. In fact, being overly concerned with crime is one of the attributes of conservatism -- hence, the old saying that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
That isn't usually framed in terms of "oooh it makes me feel less safe" though -- safetyism is absolutely left and female coded. Additionally, only certain sorts of crime are worth consideration -- the aversion to talking about gang shootings and drug crime is notable.
Right wing concern about crime tends to be more of an "it's bad for society and symptomatic of a failing social contract" objection, by comparison. Less personal, most of the time, because conservatives by and large don't live in the (mostly left-controlled) cities where crime is most epidemic. So the specific personal safetyist concerns OP is talking about are absolutely leftist as far as I can tell.
The OP was writing about people who said, "because of this incident, I am afraid of being harmed if I do X." I am talking about the exact same thing: people who say, "I refuse to ride the subway" or "I refuse to go to neighborhood X" or what have you. I am not talking about policy discussions.
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sure it is. how else would you even frame it? the impression i get from right-wingers who support “tough-on-crime” policies is that their desired outcome is to make things safer.
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I've seen those. What I didn't see is an implication you're committing some kind of faux pas by disagreeing, particularly when you bring data. I also don't recall anyone expressing how important it is to have "white voices", or something, after someone expresses disagreement.
Otoh, if I say that Gender Queer might not be a threat to children, I run the risk of being accused of being a pedophile. And certainly ignoring data is not the province of any particular team; again, see lots of people on here.
I had to look up what that was. And then read the Wikipedia article on it.
My opinion?
Eh, if you want twelve year olds to read about strap-ons and oral sex and older guy touching the dick of much younger guy, while I have no objection to Greek red figure pottery, the kids today can do what we did and look for anything about sex on our parents' bookshelves or elsewhere. Heck, they have the Internet today! They don't need to get it in school, are we meant to spoon-feed them everything?
And let's face it, while defending books from being banned might elicit passionate responses from school librarians, when it's "I stand up for the right of schools to ensure every twelve year old can find out about paederasty from the sexual fantasies, with illustrations, as recorded in her memoir by a non-binary woman", that can sound in the general ballpark of "groomer".
i think that “kids should learn about sex from the internet and whatever weird porn their parents have laying around the house” also sounds in the general ballpark of groomer for me
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I think if you read the book, you might change your mind about what it is about. Note that a review committee in Fairfax County, VA composed of parents, teachers, and community members, recommended keeping the book and explicitly found that "The book neither depicts nor describes pedophilia." Similarly, committees in Rockwood MO, West Chester, PA, Billings. MT, and Yorktown, NY recommended keeping the book, and of course that is just a sampling -- google "keep gender queer" for recent examples.
That is not to say that IMHO the book should or should not be on school library shelves; I am sure that local parents, teachers, etc, know better than I what is best for local students, and many districts have decided to remove the book. But to infer that the book is an attempt at grooming is a very dubious inference.
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a) A groomer, not a pedophile. I don't find the insistance on the most strict, and worst possible meaning of the word to be particularly honest, when progressives often use a broader definition of it themselves
b) Yes, the act of smearing someone with an insulting name is something both sides have in common. But that's not what he, or I was pointing out.
What's the point of these passive aggressive jabs? Especially since I didn't say people on the right don't ignore data, I said they don't think it's a faux pas to bring data.
I agree with the OP here. Well, I agree that accusations of pedophilia are as likely as accusations of grooming, and in fact are strategically conflated. I don’t agree that it made sense for him to bring it up in this context, because...
Yeah. It’s rare, here, to take offense at actually providing data. I’m not sure how well that holds in sections of the Internet which embrace the “fake news” meme.
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That is factually incorrect; if you look into it, you will find that the explicit term "pedophile" is used quite often.
I don't want to get into this tiresome argument about how "groomer" is used, but the fact that "grooming" has several meanings, one positive or neutral ("the executive groomed his son to be his successor") and one negative (referring specifically to the tactics of pedophiles) does not mean that we can throw up our hands and pretend we can't know how particular people are using it. Moreover, the term "groomer" is really only used in two ways: 1) to refer to people who shape the fur of animals" and 2) pedophiles. Finally, if you are going to claim that progressives often use a broader definition of it themselves, you should probably not link to yourself.*
Though not identical, I would say they are of the same class. Reasonable minds might differ, of course, but OTOH claims that "my out group is uniquely bad" are generally deserving of great skepticism, for obvious reasons.
You seem to be misusing the term, "passive-aggressive," since "Passive-aggressive behavior is a pattern of indirectly expressing negative feelings instead of openly addressing them"
I am doubtful that the claim that that "think it is a faux pas to bring data" is true in any meaningful way; it is either false, or only true to the extent that it is indistinguishable from ignoring data. In my experience, most people of all political stripes get very upset when presented with data that upsets their hobby horses.
*Especially to a link which is not very honest; you say "It doesn't help that mainstream publications were using "grooming" to describe consensual relations between adults." and link to an article in which the only use of the term is: " “He started grooming me when I was a teenager"
Adding to what thrownaway24e89172 said, you're getting the same reaction to trying to define away all evidence of grooming because it sets off exactly the same alarm bells as "woah there, how dare you, she's 13 so technically it's not paedophilia." Definition dodging is a huge red flag.
It's just that some groups are used to the privilege of being able to change the dictionary to win, so being forced to use a less convenient definition feels like oppression.
I am not trying to "define away all evidence of grooming." I am clarifying the definition of grooming, which has been defined for decades as "a slow courtship or ’grooming’ process to seduce children with gifts,
attention and affection" employed by pedophiles for the purpose of convincing kids to have sex with them. It not "the left" or "LBBTQ activists" who are attempting to change the dictionary; it is people who are assigning that label to people, such as librarians, who as far as they know have no interest in convincing kids to have sex with anyone. Honestly, this place sometimes seems like the Bizarro world.
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I tried to look into it, while the word "pedophile" appears with some frequency, I don't see it in a context that would imply people who don't think "Gender Queer" is dangerous.
That's just not true. You would be correct, if there was only one negative meaning, which would specifically refer to pedophiles. The link I provided has a definition that does not specifically mention children, and another link to a mainstream media article using the word to describe consensual relations between adults.
I might agree depending on what kind of class we're talking about. If you mean that these behaviors similarly bad, sure. If you mean these are similar behaviors in terms of their structure, or the psychology behind them, that seems obviously wrong, and we seem to be discussing the latter kind of class.
Sure? But I missed the part where OP said that...
Like vaguely gesturing at "lots of people on here" instead of addressing them directly?
The example brought up by OP seems to be clearly describing such a case.
Is 18 not a teenager, and an adult?! Who is being dishonest here?
I have no idea what that means; I assume that there is some sort of typo.
Then you need to read more carefully; that is exactly what this discussion is about.
Again, you clearly do not understand what the term means.
I am not talking about specific persons; I am talking about a general phenomenon. I note that you have not claimed that it does not exist, but instead have resorted to a silly ad hominem argument.
And your evidence that she was referring to his actions when she was over 18 is what, exactly?
Possible grammar brainfart. You said that expressing the idea that "Gender Queer" is not dangerous would mark you as a pedophile. I don't see the word "pedophile" being used here, to describe people expressing that belief.
Can you help me out? I see him discussing a specific type of behavior, which seems to be unique to the left. I don't see him saying the left is uniquely bad in general.
These two points are contradictory. If I misunderstood you, believing that you had specific people in mind but are avoiding addressing them directly, then I understand the term, and used it correctly.
You know what it is, because you read the article where this is clearly stated:
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If you are going to moan about improper usage of the term groomer, I think it behooves you to use other terms properly as well. Pedophilia refers to attraction to prepubescent children, which mostly excludes teenagers since it is very rare for a teenager to have not yet started puberty. You want to use it to cover attraction to anyone who's not an adult so you can use that taboo to shame a wider group of people for their attractions? Gee, sounds a lot like your groomer complaint, doesn't it?
Yes, I am aware of the technical definition. Do you think that those who bandy about the term "groomer" know or care? Or is it more likely that they are using it in the popular sense, in which "the word pedophilia is often applied to any sexual interest in children or the act of child sexual abuse, including any sexual interest in minors below the local age of consent, regardless of their level of physical or mental development"?
As for "moaning," are you saying it is OK to make baseless charges of sexual impropriety or base motives? I don't, whether that be the left calling everything "racism" or the right calling everything "grooming."
Of course they don't, which was exactly my point! The popular definition gets expanded to cover a wider group because people want to exploit the taboo for social power. If you are going to argue it is wrong to expand the definition of groomers, then it was wrong to have expanded the definition of pedophile to the point that "groomer" became synonymous with it.
No, I'm just frustrated that progressive arguments, arguments that the "groomer" narrative targets, used to excuse sexual harassment and abuse I endured growing up are being defended. I'm frustrated that I grew up to find out I'm attracted to kids, but not exclusively, and that those experiences make it extremely difficult to have relationships with the adults I am attracted to. I'm frustrated that rather than asking themselves what they can do to prevent abuse like I experienced, people would rather deflect to the boogieman of pedophilia without concern for what impact that would have on people like me. In short, I see your protestations as nothing more than one last "fuck you" from the people who abused me.
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My go-to reference for this is Alexandra Rowland, who was 25.
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Do you really think that that's the case in popular society? I think it's only a problem on spaces that are fairly explicitly non-leftist.
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