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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 2025

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Some what shocked there has not been a top level post about the Annunciation School Shooting yet given the obvious culture war angles and parallels to the Covenant School shooting of a few years back (religious school, trans shooter - though FtM vs MtF).

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/annunciation-catholic-school-minneapolis-shooting-08-27-25

I had missed that the Covenant shooter was determined to have not acted out due to any real culture war stuff, but just due to your generic mass shooter mental illness + desire to be remembered cocktail.

I would guess that throwing in the Culture War angle makes it a lot more likely that the shooter's name and face get passed around, though in this case seems like he was just crazy more so than any particular niche of the political compass.

Presumably gun control will be in the news again a bit.

That both of the recent transgender terrorists targeted their own childhood school could mean something. Does their mental illness spring from a form of arrested development occurring at the puberty age? Could it have to do with a failure on behalf of those around them to reinforcement and affirm the biological changes that happened at this age? Could transgenderism — for the ones not seeking sexual gratification — be caused by the mind being “stuck” in the age where one learns about their body, due to some obscure early life trauma or a lack of social affirmation, and their mind tries to rekindle the feelings of that age through the artificial rediscovery of their body via “coming out” and hormones? This is something to dwell on, because there does seem to be a sub-expression of transgenderism which is obsessed with nostalgic things but which is not sexualized, and this is a distinct from the other subexpression which craves its own sexual humiliation (eg that Canadian teacher with the enormous boobs who sent her one sextape to her HR lady; the Matrix-dominatrix brothers…)

From my perspective, it seems pretty obvious that a lot of FtM types in particular are far less interested in becoming men than they are afraid of becoming women, and so their "dysphoria" is driven more by a desire to prevent adulthood. It's less about what they transition to ("boys"), than what they don't transition to (adults). This makes sense when you assume they've been infected by a highly virulent memeplex that is essentially uses their bodies to reproduce itself and spread laterally (using modern communications technology) rather than generationally. Arresting their development is a good strategy, because it prevents them from wasting time and energy on such irrelevant things as their own reproductive success. I perceive this pattern less among MtF types, but I guess it exists.

Older highly successful memeplexes tended to be much more symbiotic with their hosts, since being pro-natal was a good way of spreading itself. Making children was one of the most effective ways the memeplex's host could make more hosts, but modern communications and transport technology changes everything. This is probably the fundamental reason for collapsing birthrates, and transgenderism is an extreme manifestation of that.

I think that objectively, female puberty can be a rather unwelcome change.

Getting your period (and knowing that this will continue through the next few decades) seems much less desirable than getting the odd nocturnal ejaculation.

If you are a sporty 10yo who was so far playing soccer with 10yo boys, knowing that they will get more muscles while you will grow tits, and that your character sheet has just gotten a new core stat "hotness" which will strongly influence most social interactions in your adult life might very well feel unfair.

And the very idea of pregnancy might thrill some girls but invoke Alien-level body horrors in others.

Of course it's understandable, and also why it's no coincidence that the demographic now most likely to come out as "trans men" is the same demographic which a generation ago would have been most likely to be diagnosed with anorexia. In many regards, the practical end result is identical.