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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30444 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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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?

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!

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.

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