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Notes -
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.
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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