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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18497 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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I would have thought that an obvious "common factor" in both identifying as a CSA survivor and identifying as non-cis would be "being left-wing".

Becoming left or right wing is downstream of other life experiences. It's more plausible that whatever common factor causes the other two things also causes the left-wing-ness.

I remember someone once describing the birth of an ideology as something that begins as a “pre-analytic cognitive act.” What that means in the political realm is that the former acts as the mental architecture and framework of understanding that emotionally colors and interprets particular experiences, which is independent of how experiences act back on us to form our views. Experiences no doubt shape other opinions and attitudes we have, but whether we’re left or right is rooted in something more fundamental, or perhaps the earliest life experiences we have as children. That’s certainly been true in my case.

My emotional disposition towards things and my political beliefs were formed far before I ever had a political awakening or became more learned as an adult. Everything since has been just backing into it after the fact with evidence and logical arguments to support my conclusions. There’s things I’ve ’learned’ over the years. Not things I’ve ‘changed’ though. Even when I really think I am earnest trying to understand others and am willing to be persuaded by their opinions, I’m mostly just not. That’s how I interpret the findings in cognitive psychology.

I don't think you're disagreeing with me, but just in case you are I wanted to clarify that this "pre-analytic congnitive framework" that comes prior to politics, being a way to experience life, is one of those things I'd lump under "other-life-experiences." I'll moot discussing whether it's the specific life experience that determines reporting rates and non-cisgender-ness though. The phrase is general enough that I think we would get into a dictionary definition argument. A broad enough definition of the term would compel me to agree that it's the prior factor I'm talking about, but likely result in me complaining that it's so broad a definition as to be practically useless-- and a narrow enough definition to be useful would probably have me dithering about a lack of hard data to conclude if it's central.

I can personally attest that my values/principles have been largely unchanged. What has changed has been my understanding of situations and how applying (or misapplying, given leftist theory!) those principles work. It's no secret the reason that leftist ideology sells/fails to be snuffed out so well is that the basic ideas seem so basically right. Looking at the way they were applied, however, completely changed my positions on many things. Some small examples of principle:

  1. People should be allowed to live how they want (gay marriage good or at least acceptable!)
  2. Keeping people down is bad (let's implement programs to raise people who have the potential to be good candidates a chance!)
  3. People dying to violent crime is bad (let's keep guns out of the hands of the violently criminal!)

And how they were implemented:

  1. People should be allowed to live how they want (you will not question or criticize me living in a poly relationship while taking life altering hormones, and not even question me advocating it to others)
  2. Keeping people down is bad (let's explicitly fudge hiring numbers to fill quotas despite the qualification of the candidate)
  3. People dying to violent crime is bad (let's not punish violent criminals in any way, and punish lawful gun owners, violating the constitution the whole time)

These are simple examples, but they're good examples of how the world has changed around my principles.

I can personally attest that my values/principles have been largely unchanged. What has changed has been my understanding of situations and how applying (or misapplying, given leftist theory!) those principles work.

Which is entirely the above thesis. It’s what we all do.

People should be allowed to live how they want…

The root of the disagreement people have when statements like this are made depends entirely on what you think human beings are. When you hear things like “people should be free to do what they want,” an average person may here things like:

  1. Same-sex marriage

  2. Live wherever I want to

  3. Drink alcohol

  4. Smoke weed

Etc. When ‘I’ hear something like that, here’s what I think of:

  1. Commit theft

  2. Murder people

  3. Sexually assault others

  4. Vandalize property

Etc. Civilization isn’t a spontaneous creation that emerges naturally out of simple and uncoerced economic exchanges. Socioeconomic libertarianism isn’t enough to get you there. Constrained liberty is the best you can hope it. Small governments that only enforces contracts have a very short half life. In Basketball the ref’s have to be more powerful than the players otherwise what incentive is there for them to listen to them? Same applies with market participants and governments. Civil society requires enormous amounts of collective investment to build and uphold it. Leftism in theory nor in practice (which I’ll give them considerable ground in certain ways, I’m not a priori opposed to it) just has never worked to me, no matter how I examine it.

Which is entirely the above thesis. It’s what we all do.

That's why I posted; I agree with you!

I'll clarify "in their personal lives with the consent of others". I'll stand by that as far as support for gay marriage.

I agree with your agreement!

Excellent. Drinks on me

Becoming left or right wing is downstream of other life experiences

I think being a CSA survivor is itself a pretty major reason someone might grow up as strongly leftist, though (and, separately but compoundingly, that someone identifying as "a CSA survivor" in a survey is more likely to be left-wing than right-wing even assuming equal rates of actual experience of CSA between blue and left respondents). The therapists are woke, the books about coping with trauma are woke - if dealing with trauma is a huge part of your life then you'll grow up marinating in a generally left-wing worldview. And if you don't absorb that worldview you're less likely to continue identifying as "a CSA survivor" in adulthood - as opposed to compartmentalizing it away as just some shit in the past you don't need to think about, unlike all those fragile left-wing snowflakes who bootstrap themselves into chronic anxiety by fixating on their bad experiences.

So that gets us "CSA survivors are more likely to be left-wing"; and surely I don't need to justify the "left-wingers are more likely to question their gender" part of the chain of reasoning?

I don't think this explanation works.

  1. The ratios between cis vs. non-cis people reporting sexual abuse in the 0-12 range remains similar for household vs non-household penetrative assaults.
  2. (My prior is that) people who are abused by non-family-members are more likely to receive therapy (because they're less likely to be abused by the people who would otherwise be responsible for getting them that therapy)
  3. However, your explanation predicts that likelyhood that a child recieved therapy should increase CSA reporting rates relative to baseline.

2 and 3 contradict.

I admit that there probably is some relationship with therapy->liberalism->non-cisgenderism, but I don't think it's central.

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