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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   32093 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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Child support payments are part of modernity, not social conservatism. Anyway, if people are discussing them they are discussing obligations owed to (in practice) women; the usual complaint here seems to be the obligation is one sided. (Which it is; the child support payments are owed even if the money is not used for the child or if visitation and/or joint custody rights are denied)

Child support payments are part of modernity, not social conservatism

Those two are not antonyms. Contemporary American Social conservatism perceives itself as being "timeless" "common sense morality," but it's very modern. Imagine trying to convince your 1800s great great grandmother that a fertilized egg that's barely visible to the naked eye is a "baby" or "person." It's something social conservatives believe they've logicked themselves into, much like leftists believe they've logicked themselves into "trans women are women!" I'm skeptical either "really" believes it, deep down.

  • -14

I remain impressed by how you manage to drag abortion in to any discussion whatsoever. Nobody was talking about 19th century attitudes to the personhood of the foetus, but there you went!

While I agree that Turok is a one trick pony, attitudes towards abortion are germane to the topic. I did grow up with the attitude that a woman seeking an abortion was not just a murderer but also a shirker(just like a boyfriend who didn't marry her when he found her with child). I don't think fetal personhood is, though.

I talk about other subjects too like white nationalism and conservatism coding as low class.

I think maybe a good smell test would be: am I discussing the culture war, or waging it? No one is ever not guilty of breaking this from time to time but the ratio of “waging” posts to “discussing” posts is outta whack

You are not exactly talking about the class valence of the attitudes in my post(c'mon, 'shotgun weddings are trashy' is the lowest hanging fruit ever) or interrogating the implied racial attitudes.

c'mon, 'shotgun weddings are trashy' is the lowest hanging fruit ever

Fantasizing about them is, it's not something that happens anymore.

Social conservatives in America decided to make that the centerpiece of their political project and then get mad when I bring it up in response to a thread about social conservatism in America.

The majority decision in Dobbs pretty well lays out the development of abortion law in the U.S., and it got stricter across the nineteenth century as the quickening standard was left behind. I don’t think it would have been as hard to make that case as you say.

Imagine trying to convince my 1800s great great grandmother that my great grandmother, who just kicked her from the inside, was not a baby.

Not to re-litigate a worn out topic, but "kicked from the inside" -- aka quickening was historically (as in Colonial America) the point after which abortion was a crime.

Your great great grandmother probably had the same intuition embedded in Common Law.

Imagine trying to convince my 1800s great great grandmother that my great grandmother, who just kicked her from the inside, was not a baby.

Would be difficult. Fortunately nobody not made of straw would need to. All pro-choicers say is that if she wants an abortion she can get one.

  • -13

A lot of pro choicers also call it a “clump of cells,” not a baby.

If you want to bite the bullet and say that abortion is ending the life of a baby, go ahead, otherwise this is false on the face of it.

A lot of pro choicers also call it a “clump of cells,” not a baby.

A "clump of cells" can't kick its mother.

otherwise this false on the face of it.

Then give me an example of a pro-choicer telling a woman the late-term baby she wants to give birth to is a clump of cells, not a baby. Shouldn't be difficult if this is something they really say.

Perhaps I misunderstood - what I read from your initial comment was that “nobody not made of straw” would deny that it was a baby. But that they supported abortion anyways. If I am misunderstanding, my apologies.

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