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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3312 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 22, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I was recently at a Faire type event and briefly saw a family I've known for a long time. The mother was a part of my college-aged social circle, and the older daughter is my son's age. They live down the street, and we have little contact for reasons that will be made abundantly clear.

The younger child, chronologically 5, biologically a son, was clad in a full Faire style Faerie Princess regalia, complete with wings. His long hair was plaited, and every article of clothing was not even unisex, but just straight up girl's clothing and sandals. Anyone seeing a picture of the lad would have thought him a girl, and anyone seeing him as I did, in the minute before I made hurried excuses and fled, would have suspected he was a boy by the way he reached insistantly for an ornate foam weapon, like the song in his blood knew his hand was made to grip a sword. He was stymied in his efforts by the gentle chiding of his blue-haired pussy cuck "father" (I use the scare quotes because I'd bet 5:1 odds that the kid is literally not his).

In the time I've known them, in all my observations, I've never seen the boy hold a ball. Pick up a stick. Have a single instant of non-supervised or mildly rambunctious fun.

I feel so bad for that boy, and so angry at his Devouring Mother, who homeschools both children because our Blue State curriculum isn't woke enough. That situation seems at least as bad as gay conversion camp, and I would call it flatly worse if and when it progresses to medical interventions.

And yet.

I'm not going to violently free the poor oppressed child. I'm not even going to call out his mother. I might say something to the daughter's father, a close friend. I feel a deep aversion to so overtly criticizing the way other people raise their kids, even when I find it abhorent. I might try to slip the kid some ball games, and maybe leave a few High Quality Sticks in his yard, but I probably wouldn't even risk a socially awkward conversation for the sake of it.

Where do you all draw the line? At what point would you intervene? When should the State intervene?

I have a friend I refer to as ‘the at risk youth I mentor’, even though I met him when he was in his twenties. His family dropped hard off the homeschooling deep end when he was growing up and I taught him how to be an adult(not his parents) when he was 24 years old. He’d been acting like an unusually tall middle schooler before then.

I didn’t intervene in this family’s poor management of their 21 year old who acted 12. It wouldn’t have done anything but burn bridges.

If we're going to allow people to teach their kids there is an invisible man in the sky who judges them, then you're going to have to allow this. You can brainwash your kid into almost any belief set.

Personally I'd take banning this in exchange for banning exposing kids to religion until they are 18, but I don't imagine that would be too popular.

I think part of the reason the sight was so viscerally upsetting to me is that I think early childhood is a critical time to develop core physicality. Beyond the forced feminization, the forced passivity feels more akin to foot-binding or raising a vegan cat than religious beliefs.

But I don't think the comparison is entirely invalid.

the forced passivity feels more akin to foot-binding or raising a vegan cat than religious beliefs.

My grandparents were raised in a super pacifist offshoot of Christianity, you also have Jainism and the like. Passivity is also part of what people get to indoctrinate their kids into. And of course I am sure the other way round, you can put your kid in boxing and martial arts at an early age if you want.

It's possible the US would be more cohesive if public education was centralized and everyone was taught the same value system, and parents were not allowed to go against it. But I'm not sure it would be the US at that stage, quite.

I kinda feel the same way about my sister in law (who is Catholic and has huge problems with Catholic guilt which she incessantly complains about), raising my nieces and nephews in Catholicism. I think she is causing them significant damage. But if my brother is ok with it (he like me is an atheist) then I keep my mouth shut. People get to raise their kids in ways I find stupid and damaging.

The alternative is you giving swords to their kid secretly, me telling my nieces and nephews that God doesn't exist and is made up, and so on and so forth. But that's not likely to be any better I don't think in the long run.

The alternative is you giving swords to their kid secretly, me telling my nieces and nephews that God doesn't exist and is made up, and so on and so forth.

I think some level of stating your opinion is a normal part of social relationships. I dont know if /u/Iconochasm's situation is like that, but handing the kid a foam sword there when youre talking with them, or saying you dont believe in god when it comes up, seems pretty reasonable. Dont do it in secret, dont make a plan for converting them, but expecting your kid to have zero exposure to the beliefs of a dinner guest seems pretty crazy to me. Yes, it will be a point of friction, of course it will be, but some level of friction is also a normal part of social relationships - interpreting any amount as a sign youre doing something wrong is a symptom of nerddom.

It's possible the US would be more cohesive if public education was centralized and everyone was taught the same value system, and parents were not allowed to go against it.

My analysis of this kind of proposal is based on what I call the riddle of the flute children. The ordinary concern is that power is abused. The riddle of the flute children is that power is fought for. The optimum amount of Government power is less than you think, because it is only the survivors of the fighting that live to suffer the abuse.

The idea that you mention takes the lid off a power honey pot of such extraordinary sweetness that opening it will attract more hornets than wasps and lead to fighting on the scale of the Thirty Years War. I think that the Thirty Years War is the appropriate comparison because it too was about which value system, Protestant or Catholic, was to be the sole value system, regardless of parental wishes.

The glibertarian answer to the Riddle of the Flute Children is "Kill the man who asks who gets the flute." But that doesn't change the fact that someone gets the flute and others don't. If nobody is allowed to ask the question, we will get the default answer. And if the default answer is that the flute children fight among themselves then the flute will be broken as surely as it will be broken by the rival Grand High Flute Adjudicators in the Thirty Flutes' War.

Protection from organised predation is absolutely necessary for survival, and social insurance is mostly necessary. And neither can be practically provided by someone who lacks the powers of a Grand High Flute Adjudicator. If the State doesn't provide those things (or fails to do so effectively), other institutions will. And those institutions will coerce their members, and will seek to coerce nonmembers. And that coercive power will be fought over.

Now if we treat the flute metaphor as fact, the question has an easy default answer, that is revealing in the real world. Daddy decides which child gets the flute. "Kill the outsider who questions Daddy's decision" is a peace treaty between lineages. In the cis-Hajnal context where Daddy is the actual married biological father of actual minor children, it is one that works well.

But cis-Hajnal nuclear families are not the default, and "Kill the outsider who questions Daddy's decision" is a bad treaty if the flute children are productive adults with children of their own and Daddy is an increasingly senile paterfamilias who might not even be a blood relative. The human default is to look to extended family for protection against predation and for social insurance, and the normie way of thinking about other institutions that provide those things (including the State, the Mafia etc.) is as fictive extended families - hence Don Corleone's English-language title of "Godfather" and the often-accurate libertarian jibe against the Mummy Party and the Daddy Party. And in practice the people who find themselves inside those kind of extended family institutions are treated like naughty children whose flutes can be taken away if they backtalk Daddy. And so they work (and, more often than not, fight - Western civilisation's record at kicking the asses of fuzzy-wuzzies on the battlefield is even better than our record of delivering unimaginable universal material prosperity) like naughty children. The canonical book on this point is Mark Weiner's Rule of the Clan

The Peace of God predates the Hajnal line, the Hajnal line predates the Treaty of Westphalia, and the Treaty of Westphalia predates SpaceX. This isn't an accident.

Thank you for engaging whole heartedly with the riddle of the flute children. Your excellent comment has given me the push back I need to rethink my position (or to retreat from the bailey to the motte)

The suggestion "kill the person who asked the question" is to be taken seriously but not literally. Think of it as a cry of pain: For fucks sake, notice the fucking problem.

Taking one step upstream, the intellectual default is to treat power honey pots as exogenous. They exist. There is nothing to be done about it. Cope as best you can.

That is at least half true. Consider the maxim "those who do not work, neither shall they eat". Not true individually. Perhaps society is organised as 50% Slaves who grow twice as much food as they eat and 50% Masters who eat but do not farm. Or perhaps society is organised as 50% able-bodied who grow twice as much food as they eat and 50% children, elderly, and sick, who eat but do not farm. The fundamental point is that the collective cannot eat more food than it grows. This is going to create a power honey pot around farm work and the distribution of food, which is intrinsic to the human condition.

Endogenous honey pots are real too. Sometimes it is a matter of degree; we leave the lid off the honey pot, forgetting that it will attract wasps. Sometimes we create a honey pot that needn't actually exist. (Weak example: We need to mandate vaccinations to counter the distrust created by mandating vaccinations. If government had focused on earning trust, rather than demanding it, we wouldn't be in our current mess. Explanation.

A strong historical example flows from the slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". I used to believe that the problems in the USSR in the 1930s were fully explained by incompatible incentives. Implementing the slogan will lead to increasing problems with people hiding their abilities and accumulating needs. But I gradually noticed that death toll from the Terror was too high, and reached too far into the ruling class. There was something worse, down stream from "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

The problem with Utopian ideas that are not incentive compatible is that things go to shit. Then the ruling elite must construct mechanisms of coercion to create artificial incentives. There must be an Ability Finder General. There must be an Adjudicator of Needs. Imagine the surprise among the more idealistic members of the ruling elite when the battle for these position leads to them being sent to the Gulag.

Endogenous! The power honey pot exists because it is created by the unfolding logic of that particular system. It didn't have to exist. People could have looked ahead and decided on a different path. It would have saved their lives.

A weaker example, (but from 2025, so more relevant) is UK Prime Minister Starmer putting VAT (the UK's fancy sales tax) on "School fees". The UK has a "pay twice" system of secondary education. Government run schools are free at the point of use. You have already paid for them through your taxes. If you are unhappy with the education that your child is receiving, you can send them to a private school (traditionally called a "public" school, meaning open to any child whose parents were rich enough to pay the fees, and contrasting with the practice among the nobility of engaging a private tutor to teach their children exclusively.)

Sending your child to a private school saves the government money. They don't have to provide a place for your child in the government school. However, you get no refund of taxes. You have already paid taxes to provide that place and must pay a second time to fund the private school.

Starmer had two motivations. Tacitly, levelling. He wants to destroy private education so that every child has the same education, even if it is not very good. Explicitly (fig-leafly? cloakatively?), money. The money has run out and the government is thrashing about, desperately seeking new sources of money. This has somewhat backfired. Many of the parents who send their children to private schools struggle to afford the fees (the pay twice structure makes this hard). Some are admitting defeat. The addition of VAT makes the price too high and they send their child to the government run school. Providing the place costs the government money. (Hence the sense that though the government says it is trying to raise money, this is a fig leaf over levelling.)

For fucks sake, notice the fucking problem. If we want to remake society according to our own Utopian design, our best bet is to capture the education system. Then we can design the curriculum and ensure that every-one's children are taught right-think, regardless of their parents wrong-think. Starmer hasn't noticed this. He wants money. He wants equality (but doesn't much care what is in the curriculum, provided it is the same in every school). But he is squeezing private schools. Every child moved from a private school to a government school is a drop of honey in the pot. VAT is only a small matter; he is leaving the lid of the honey pot ajar.

Nobody else in the UK is noticing that the lid of the curriculum honey is left ajar. This is what I am trying to point to when I say "the intellectual default is to treat power honey pots as exogenous."

This example might not resonate in the USA, because the right has noticed that the public school curriculum is a power honey pot and maybe the left noticed first and its wasps have already arrived; the fight is starting.

I think that the Thirty Years War is the appropriate comparison because it too was about which value system, Protestant or Catholic, was to be the sole value system, regardless of parental wishes.

Absolutely, which is why the time to do that would have been at the founding. Trying to do it now would be a huge mess to say the least.

The only thing I would disagree with is that power honey pots are inherently bad, they do attract wasps, but to do anything requires power, so wasps must be planned for and tolerated. The optimum amount of government power is more than you think, because otherwise the honey pot will still exist and will be exploited by wasps anyway. At least if the hive is in charge you might get something useful done while the wasps are grifting.

Anabaptists are the future.

Mine brother, we shalt party like it’s 1699!

At the point where the father prevents the boy from picking up a sword. That's where you should have stepped in, enthusiasticaly pressed the foam weapon into his little hands, and distracted or even confronted the "father".

Of course I'm heavily biased here. I'm doing what I can to teach fencing and grappling to my 3-year-old daughter, who at least humors me even if she has no drive to fight. Kid wants to pick up weapons? Great! What parent wouldn't want their child to develop a healthy enthusiasm for self-defence, or maybe even the capacity to defend others? Boys may be boys and girls not as given to physical fighting, but even then, kids of either gender benefit from learning how to handle themselves.

I have a habit of alienating my wife's friends and family members by telling them straight-up what I think on controversial issues. My own family members know better than to start, by now, and my own friends either have no opinion on childrearing or are conservative enough themselves. So I don't think I'm playing internet tough guy when I say that I would have no problem telling the parents in your tale that what they're doing is straight-up horrifying and that I hope the child grows up to escape their influence ASAP. If they want to virtue signal to provoke the squares, fine, consider this square provoked, but they won't get off uncontested.

Now, as for the state...eh. In an ideal world, the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-competent yet all-benevolent state will have prevented that scenario from occuring in the first place. In our current world, with our current states, I think it's better for the state to stay out of it.

Brother, you do not interfere in the affairs of a neighboring tribe unless you want to start a blood feud. It's a shame for the boy, but the world is full of such evils, and there is no state powerful enough to root them all out. That tribe has their customs, we have ours. They have their rituals, we have ours. They have their god, and we have ours. The best course of action is to interact with them as little as possible, only to trade goods and reach agreements about territory. With the passage of time, we will see whose tribe flourishes and whose tribe withers.

That situation seems at least as bad as gay conversion camp

If it makes you feel any better (and it is literally the same thing, I'll add), my outgroup claims those don't work. Of course, they would say that, wouldn't they?

Where do you all draw the line? At what point would you intervene?

Depends on the kid, depends on the family. And really, you just do what you can within your strategic and tactical realities/liabilities; you can't influence if you're dead (either to them or more literally).

There does come a point where you just kind of have to trust the kid'll figure it out. Parents stop being the prime authority figures around physical adulthood sexual maturity (for blatantly obvious evolutionary reasons) anyway; this is why, when I hear "the teenage years were hell", I think "yeah, that's 'cause you were bad at parenting/were still under the pretense that the biological age of adulthood is 18, expecting the tricks that worked when they were 5 to work when they're 15, and taking it personally when they do not".

I once met one who was like this- 12 years old, standard fundie-type Christian family, tracked out the ass. Had a bedtime on vacation (wtf?). We watched Dirty Harry and he didn't object over the scenes I would have expected him to get upset over were he a party-liner.

Observably, he's going to be fine. Likely, so will this one.

His long hair was plaited, and every article of clothing was not even unisex, but just straight up girl's clothing and sandals.

Remember, the specific reason those who worship LGBTesus are destructive is that they impose an adult (sexual) outlook on a child not strongly caring about which gender clothes they wear (his behavior is still male, after all). I suspect that it would have been a fight to get him into those clothes if he actually cared; merely failing to care at this age is not really a sign of malfunction.

Actively adopting the other gender's clothes for the sexual reasons that the other gender wears them at a post-sexual-awareness age... that's different. (It's also only a reliable signal of malfunction in men, since there are no male gendered clothes except maybe boxers.)

When should the State intervene?

Given how hard it has been abused against me in favor of specifically this kind of child abuser? So long as the State is unable or unwilling to punish abuse from women in the same degree it does men my answer is "never".

It's also only a reliable signal of malfunction in men, since there are no male gendered clothes except maybe boxers

While it’s not controversial anymore for women to wear pants in broader society, men’s and women’s pants are definitely a thing.

The zipper and button closures on men's and women's jackets and shirts are traditionally reversed from each other, too.

Because it's easier for a right-handed man to button his own shirt, and easier for a woman's right-handed maid to button hers, is the story I heard.

(It's also only a reliable signal of malfunction in men, since there are no male gendered clothes except maybe boxers.)

Not true above a certain level of formality - women's trouser suits look very different to men's suits, starting with the acceptable colour palette. And as the level of formality increases the expectation that women wear dresses gets stronger. This is why tomboys hate formal events - they are used to being able to be performatively androgynous without looking like they are cross-dressing.

This is why tomboys hate formal events - they are used to being able to be performatively androgynous without looking like they are cross-dressing.

And, in reverse, this is how you can trivially differentiate autogynephiles from everyone else (AGPs dress as formally as possible all the time).

I agree that autoandrophiles can exhibit this, but they often don't because the pull effect from "guy clothes" isn't as strong considering there's no article of clothing (except ones you can't see) that aren't trivially available for women; you'd have to go out of your way to be transgressive and most people wouldn't understand it being "designated guy clothes", they'd just see as "woman with unusually poorly fitting clothes".

Do you mean that "normal" tomboys are autoandrophiles?

Normal tomboys want to date straight men. Autoandrophiles (such as exist) want to date gay men.

Not unless they dress for a black-tie event in a badly fitted tuxedo, or are wearing a male sleeveless shirt and shorts with no bra (or binder) and a packer.

I don't think normal tomboys are autoandrophiles any more than men working an email job are autogynephiles.

Are autoandrophiles even a thing? Blanchard was sceptical.

Heck, now the option of identifying as non-binary is more salient, FtMs are barely a thing for autoandrophiles to be a sub-thing of.

Are autoandrophiles even a thing?

They undoubtedly exist, although they’re quite rare, partially because paraphilias in general are rare in women.

Personal intervention? Not unless I was literal family to the kid, or similarly close due to other events. Adults trying to slyly undermine a parent’s agenda is a nasty thing even when well-intentioned. The kind of bond needed to trust that from the kid’s perspective is significant. Otherwise, it’s either not going to stick, or you’re gonna have erratic results because the child has no training or instinct to defend against grooming. From what you say, the parents do seem to be abusing the poor boy, but being quite frank, child abuse is a fairly common thing in various gradations and breaking out of the abuse is usually going to happen in or after puberty if it’s going to happen at all. Trying to break a five-year-old’s trust of his parents sounds like it could lead to some much darker places.

As for the state. Essentially never, outside of truly bright lines, like permanent mutilation or death. The state is so ponderous and ignorant that bringing its power to bear on something as delicate as personal relationships is incredibly unwise and guaranteed to yield destruction. So forbidding hormone poisoning and surgical mutilation of a minor who cannot consent to such things (which adult consent would lower them to merely, in my eyes, deeply unwise self-experimentation) well within the state’s purview, with little possibility of overreach.

Of course, this is from the perspective of one who would rather other moral busybodies and the cruel state stay out of the serious business of how he does good for his children and is willing to yield some theoretical power over the families of others for political consistency on that point.

Where do you all draw the line? At what point would you intervene? When should the State intervene?

I'm sufficiently white trash that the cultural norm of my people is to call out bullshit, but not so white trash I'm willing to cavalierly go to prison. I'd take a foam sword for myself, offer one to the kid, and ask if he wanted to play. If the parents seemed reluctant to let him, I wouldn't force it -- legally I couldn't -- but I would obnoxiously question why they're doing this to their son.

I'd willingly burn down every bridge I had with that family to force a social confrontation. If I ended up convinced the situation's abusive, I'd call CPS.

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