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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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An update to a post I made after Christmas lamenting the state of children's books, and all their on the nose, "current year" agenda pushing nonsense. Specifically an update in reply to this comment.

This is why we only have classic little golden books and some innocuous stuff from the 80s and 90s on our bookshelf. Also Roald Dahl, he's great. As others have said, there's no reason to buy modern propaganda children's books. Not only are they proselytizing, but they're mostly objectively ugly.

Roald Dahl goes PC in a world where no one is 'fat' and the Oompa-Loompas are gender neutral

archive link

The publisher, Puffin, has made hundreds of changes to the original text, removing many of Dahl’s colourful descriptions and making his characters less grotesque.

The review of Dahl’s language was undertaken to ensure that the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all today”, Puffin said.

You can read the litany of changes for yourself. I guess I missed the boat on stocking up on Roald Dahl children's books. As is feeling increasingly typical these days, there can be no escape from current year. Fuck me I guess.

Here is a list of the changes. Roald Dahl could have written a whole book of short essays about each individual change and how it's retarded:

https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1154tr5/the_hundreds_of_changes_made_to_roald_dahls_books/

Ironically, they didn't race swap Charlie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_and_the_Chocolate_Factory#Race_and_editing

Anyway, I can accept that new cultural products will tend to be terrible, for reasons including wokeness, but when it comes to the glories of the past, I think of us in the position of Irish monks in the Dark Ages: unable to produce, but duty-bound to preserve. So pushing back hard against this sort of thing (or indeed Puffin's past decision to put a sexualised image of a child on a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory cover, on the grounds of giving it "adult" appeal, about which they have never repented, as far as I know) makes sense.

Time for sensitivity readers to modify problematic parts of Orwell?

By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. (Syme, explaining Newspeak to Winston in "Nineteen-Eighty Four".)

sexualised image of a child

I was curious about this (as I'm always up for looking at a sexualized image of a child) having not heard of it before, looked it up, and must say that even by the standards of 2014 (which in my view quite frankly weren't that modest), calling such an image "sexualized" seems to me to be a major stretch. There's literally not a single part of the child's skin exposed but that on her face and a small amorphous portion of her leg near her knee and most of her clothed body is essentially entirely obscured by long hair and a giant boa. If it's sexualized, then so is my grandma going to bingo.

There's been more sexualized stuff on Nick Jr. (Stephanie is a legendary pedo fap icon, even making an appearance in the pedo visual novel that is in my username. They wiped a good portion of the clips of her in her classic outfit, which was later changed for obvious upskirt reasons, off of YouTube though, so that's the best example I could find at a glance. It's actually not strictly from Nick Jr. either as it is apparently a clip from Icelandic TV before the Western adaptation of the show, but she wears the same outfit in at least one season of that and in many cases exposes herself more (along with doing the same song and dance featured in the clip).)

Trying to say this in the least accusatory/inflammatory way possible, but I find it interesting how the posters here who are at least somewhat anti-woke and presumably anti-pedo (at least in explicit communication) can rant all day about how woke types are supposedly so silly for being on such a hair trigger about anything that might be right-coded, trying to get some truck driver or whoever fired for using the "OK" hand sign, and yet not look at what they so often decry as "sexualized" in regards to children and think that they're maybe doing basically the same thing, overreacting to every minor possible-but-probably-not-even-and-if-even-still-barely-anything instance of their chosen "worst thing imaginable" (or perhaps "bitch eating crackers"), which maybe explains the oversensitivity) issue (which for the woke left is equivalently racism). For example, this is another commercial from Korea that was also criticized as inappropriately sexualizing the young girl in it and it also just seems like not much at all to me.

Of course, I'm basing my opinions off of actual empirical evidence of what might actually trigger a sexual response in the types of people who might sexually respond to media of children were it sexualized (like me), which I suppose is not necessarily the standard your average "normie" is going to use, and yet it does seem to me to be a better one. After all, if "sexualization" doesn't have anything to do with actually being sexy or at least trying, then what is it?

Conversely, to me certain segments from this network television program did in fact depict some quite sexualized/sexy children (that is, I watched them more than once, occasionally at certain times) and yet I didn't seem to hear a peep of protest about them (except on /pol/, where the complaints were about the interracial pairings of some of the kids). (There is a search engine suggestion for "dancing with the stars juniors controversy" but it seems to be about people disagreeing with the final winner of "Disney Night".)

It very much often strikes me as similar to left-wing outrage: frequently random, illogical, and disproportionate with the offense even from their point of view, in my perspective. (Yet, much like on woke venues in regards to anything right-wing, due to how much even suggesting "This isn't even that [X]." tends to get you accused of actually being a crypto [X]ist (which in my case doesn't apply as I am an open [X]ist here), I am essentially the first person that I know of to bring this issue up in neutral company at all.)

Edit: Sorry for the sloppy proofreading. Two links have been fixed if you couldn't figure out they were just YouTube videos.

calling such an image "sexualized" seems to me to be a major stretch.

It's the designated stereotype 1930s-boudoir-dancer-prostitute outfit; you can more easily accept that label if you make that association (I don't find that outfit attractive even when it's actively intended to be, and have no idea why people like it aside from maybe 'it leaves so much to the imagination' and connotations of 'those clothes will definitely be coming off soon').

The Korean commercial is... yeah, it's absolutely bait, but it's restrained and aesthetically pleasing enough that the people complaining about it can be mocked for what being mad about it says about them (weird how "no u" can work as a counter to claims of murderism).

overreacting

Don't traditionalists and progressives also agree that sex in general is bad with the relatively small distinction that progressives are more tolerant of the corner cases that don't involve a straight biological woman (using their blanket of "sex positivity" to deny a distaste for it)? I've yet to see one example in their propaganda literature that even portrays a woman at all much less a girl; it's exclusively boys and men interacting in ways that would only be appealing if you're reading it for the articles oppression narrative.

And clearly they're worried about nothing; we put more (admittedly, non-straight) sexual material in front of the average child's eyes and the rate at which they're getting laid is in massive decline. Maybe the trads doth complain too much; teaching that straight sex is morally wrong and that women are right to lord it over men because men have a duty to women is exactly what's being taught. Narcissism of small differences, after all.

After all, if "sexualization" doesn't have anything to do with actually being sexy or at least trying, then what is it?

"Sexualization" is the spear counterpart to "his advances made me feel unsafe".

Both have definitions of "what the viewer sees" embedded in it, and the "Hello, Human Resources?" implicit call to action is the same- it's a way to abuse the fact that people will/want to go white-knighting for the "victim", and men have figured out that invoking the social power [that having daughters give them an excuse to use] is as effective and just as abusable as women invoking the social power [that the capital class give them an excuse to use].

I don't think it's any more complicated than that; the only time anyone appears to use the word is when speaking critically (one would just say 'sexual' otherwise).

Conversely, to me certain segments from this network television program did in fact depict some quite sexualized/sexy children (that is, I watched them more than once, occasionally at certain times) and yet I didn't seem to hear a peep of protest about them

The protest space from the traditionalists is already closed over "all dancing is sexualization", so neither they nor their opposition can back off their positions even if they wanted to. Of course, neither side can consistently spot it which... suggests to me that the outrage is fake.

Don't traditionalists and progressives also agree that sex in general is bad

I feel like that depends on which traditionalists. Abrahamic traditionalists? Probably in most cases. Those informed more by pre-Abrahamic traditions? Powerful and dangerous especially in the wrong form or hands maybe, but I don't think automatically bad.

"Sexualization" is the spear counterpart to "his advances made me feel unsafe".

This is definitely an interesting comparison to make and I do largely agree.

The protest space from the traditionalists is already closed over "all dancing is sexualization"

Most modern dancing anyway. I don't think anyone fully believes that all dancing including many traditional, intentionally chaste forms of dancing is sexualized.

Yeah, the disproportionate, bizzare outrage for pedophilia is fairly universal in modern culture, and odd. It's particularly funny - and obvious something's not right - when rdrama does it. People who are more than happy to joke about mayocide or gay rape or whatever suddenly start seeing pedo conspiracies when someone makes the exact same jokes, almost word for word, that's tangentially related to something pedoish. (unless it's "homosexuals reproduce by r[a]ping kids", then it's okay).

It's so disproportionate it ends up completely mistargeted, too, and thus doesn't really prevent any child grooming (which incidentally is rarely literal pedophilia, 14yos get groomed wayyy more than 8yos do, the 'ITS EPHEBOPHILIA NOT PEDOPHILIA' thing is, in practice, crimestop preventing one from even trying to understand the risks involved). There are at least tens of thousands of parents who are incredibly angry about LGBT childrens books, tv shows, or teachers 'grooming' their children while their child is literally groomed into dming about nsfw things on discord or tiktok. Yet it can't be any other way - kids spend thousands of hours talking to random people on the internet, but much less time discussing lgbt stuff with teachers or reading books from school libraries.

14yos get groomed wayyy more than 8yos do, the 'ITS EPHEBOPHILIA NOT PEDOPHILIA' thing is, in practice, crimestop preventing one from even trying to understand the risks involved).

What kind of people do you hang out with, that "ackshully it's ephebophilia" doesn't immediately out someone as a pedo?

There are at least tens of thousands of parents who are incredibly angry about LGBT childrens books, tv shows, or teachers 'grooming' their children while their child is literally groomed into dming about nsfw things on discord or tiktok.

Aren't a lot of the places where this happens LGBT-themed as well? I mean, think, they breach the boundary of talking about sexuality with kids by design, it's pedo paradise.

Yet it can't be any other way - kids spend thousands of hours talking to random people on the internet, but much less time discussing lgbt stuff with teachers or reading books from school libraries.

Last I checked kids spent half their day at school, also what's taught there can contribute to kids having lower boundaries around sexuality in other contexts.

What kind of people do you hang out with, that "ackshully it's ephebophilia" doesn't immediately out someone as a pedo?

That's what I meant. That's the "crimestop". Wanting to groom a 14yo girl ie "ephebophilia", and wanting to groom an 8yo girl ie "pedophilia", are just not the same thing. And even if you're not endorsing either, just drawing the distinction, it does, yes, "immediately out one as a pedo". As most men are biologically attracted to anyone post-puberty*, most men have the ability to want to groom a 14yo girl, and if you're a social outcast / lonely / spend a lot of time on the internet, the lack of other options + lack of moral/shame-based reasons not to plus easy opportunity makes it very common. And those people aren't pedophiles, it's an entirely different thing from wanting to fuck 8yos.

Aren't a lot of the places where this happens LGBT-themed as well? I mean, think, they breach the boundary of talking about sexuality with kids by design, it's pedo paradise.

90%+ of them are not. They're just places for discussing television shows, video games, memes, etc. LGBT places are overrepresented for various reasons, but it's a 2%->5% overrepresentation rather than a 2%->80% overrepresentation.

Last I checked kids spent half their day at school, also what's taught there can contribute to kids having lower boundaries around sexuality in other contexts.

Yeah, but school is a regulated and regimented many-to-one environment. Teachers don't have one on one time with kids, teachers are teaching the material rather than having personal interactions with the kids, etc. Opportunities for having emotionally or sexually charged teacher/kid discussions are much rarer in 8 hours of school than 2 hours of after-school social media use.

*although because desires are 'on the same level' as social norms, most men suppress it (good, one would think), so they don't "notice" it. This is the same thing as "my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world to me" or "i'm not attracted to anyone under 25", but much stronger since it's a universally held taboo. Some people who say this are straight lying or telling white lies, but others genuinely believe and feel/experience it, because desires are commensurate with social norms or personal beliefs. But even among the most pious the 'natural' desire to fuck anything that's somewhat attractive is still there, and resurfaces quickly if e.g. they divorce.

also, it's pretty funny to be discussing this in the child comments of the self-proclaimed pedofascist, but witches or something idk

And those people aren't pedophiles, it's an entirely different thing from wanting to fuck 8yos.

You know (and not that I'm disputing your words in general, since hebephilia and pedophilia are indeed different), since you seem to be of the opinion that most men are naturally attracted to pubescent but not prepubescent girls, you might be interested in this study in which only 9 out of 80 subjects showed no arousal (via penile plethysmography) to nude photographs of prepubescent female children (compared to 4 for no arousal to nude photographs of adult females). Further, 21 out of 80 (26.25%) exhibited arousal to the prepubescent females equaling or exceeding their arousal to the adult females. (Keep in mind this was apparently just basic slides of nude girls standing there too, not the erotic hyperstimuli little girls are putting of themselves on social media nowadays, so I bet it would be much higher with that.)

(Yes it's definitely an aging study and just one (though it cites multiple prior studies itself that found similar results using the same methods) but despite its shocking results and it being cited 105 times according to Google Scholar there are barely any newer studies that have replicated its methods that I can find, with the newest phallometric studies in this meta analysis (which is authorially biased and pro-pedo, but the studies it cites are legit) being from 2000. I guess that shows you how little society is interested in confirming it.)

Perhaps I'll make a post about it sometimes, but it seems to me like "Legal, moral, and social concerns aside, most men are attracted to (on some level even if suppressed) and would bang an attractive 14 year old if they could." is the semi-approved "everyone knows" limited hangout uncomfortable (for modern men) truth meant to obscure the additional but equally valid truth that if you replace "14 year old" with "8 year old" the numbers don't go down much at all and still constitute probably a majority and at least a significant portion of men (which is not to say most of them would necessarily pick the 8 year old over the 14 year old (though a significant minority, possibly up to 25% of men though likely smaller, apparently would), but they'd probably still pick her seems like).

You linked twice to the domain namzso.eu, which I don't believe is registered. Is this a typo, or some weird local domain resolution?

Whoops, sorry. That's terrible proofreading of mine in this case. It's supposed to be namazso (which is a public mirror) as it is in one link. (I actually had it as another one but that one is more obscure and linked to me so I changed but I guess got the one I changed it to wrong twice as I don't use it very often legitimately, I had to run off a bit after making the post, and the word isn't in my standard mental dictionary to correct.) The links have been fixed.

Judging by the URL structure, I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a more private YouTube mirror (clearly it's so private it doesn't even exist).

Sorry, that's terrible proofreading of mine in this case. It's supposed to be namazso (which is a public mirror) as it is in one link. (I actually had it as another one but that one is in fact more obscure and linked to me so I changed but I guess got the one I changed it to wrong twice as I don't use it very often legitimately, I had to run off a bit after making the post, and the word isn't in my standard mental dictionary to correct.) The links have been fixed.

So apparently the words "black" and "white" are now banned in every context. A "black figure" in the night becomes a "dark figure" and instead of a woman's face going "white" it goes "pale".

"She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling."

This passage is modified to:

"She went to nineteenth century estates with Jane Austen. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and California with John Steinbeck."

The sorts of thinkers that a child should be reading - in the revised editions, at least, where Elizabeth Bennet is an engineer ("Better than Brunel, they say!") Jane Bennet is a badass lawyer, and Georgiana Darcy is Black. Jane is rewritten to have more sass, while Elizabeth is rewritten to stop being so mean. Mr. Darcy is rewritten to be a better role model for men: modest, empathetic, and socially competent. The story is about how Elizabeth and Jane can have Pride, while Mr. Darcy enjoys lessons from them about the importance of not having Prejudice.

The Oakleys are a queer collective of artists who are travelling to California to escape the prejudice of dumb rednecks. Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea will be the Wise Latinx Woman and the Sea and of course she successfully brings the fish back in the end, because women can be just as good fisher-persons as men and other genders.

That "correction" is not even consistent. How the hell are Conrad and Kipling Problematic, but Hemingway is fine?

I can't work out the logic here - "can't have three males in a row, must include female". Okay, but why dump Conrad?

"India and Kipling racist attitudes". I do see that, but why is Africa and Hemingway okay then, what with hunting big game?

Because Hemingway fought for the communists in the Spanish Civil War.

why is Africa and Hemingway okay then, what with hunting big game?

You may be overestimating the knowledge of professional "sensitivity readers".

But there has long been criticism of Hemingway for "toxic masculinity" (even if the term wasn't used then); the bullfighting, the drinking, the guns, the womanising. If a dweller-under-a-rock like me is aware of that, then surely the publishers are too?

I mean, this is just total ignorance on display. People who have no memory extending past ten minutes ago. It's not just the censorship that is bad, it's the stupidity and lack of knowledge of anything past their own nose that is dreadful. They know nothing except how to squawk out the Right Thought Right Speech. Even bloody ChatGPT would be better than this.

Most Americans haven't read Hemingway, many haven't read Kipling, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find in most environments someone who would be able to tell you the title of more than one of Conrad's books (I only know two off the top of my head but the second is due to my naughty sense of humor, not because I'm well read). Your degree of familiarity with these subjects is likely unusual even if you want to roll in the highly educated. Most modern westerners (Americans specifically, speaking anecdotally and with a fuzzy understanding of the numerous studies done on literacy here) simply don't read and when they do they pick YA lit or the latest in ex-SOG power fantasies. I genuinely believe you might be typical-minding the motives of your outgroup. Even if I'm completely wrong about that I would remind you of the admonition of TLP, "If you're watching it, it's for you" as well as Scott's addendum "It's bad on purpose to make you click".

Engagement with minor egregor-level organizations or corporations makes you legible to them and opens you up as a source of sustenance to these entities. Don't feed the (metaphysical) trolls, they live on the psychic plane and should be forced to come out and visit you in the waking nightmare of life if they want to eat your joy for breakfast.

A witch working the tills in a supermarket is now a "top scientist". A good inconspicuous cover.

It's also very damn condescending to women who work in positions like on the tills or being cleaners or shop assistants or any job that is paid an hourly wage and is not some middle-class college degree salaried position. What are children whose mothers aren't "top scientists" supposed to think about that patronising classism?

This has been a problem for feminists since Hilary Clinton remarked that she decided not to stay home, bake cookies, and have teas. How do you encourage women into making the choices feminists want, without making them feel coerced or insulted?

It's writing off working class women in pink collar/manual labour jobs. The 'heroine' in the first Knives Out movie was a nurse; no wonder in the second movie it had to be a black woman scientist (or her twin sister imitating her). It's just not good enough to be ordinary, only the kind of college-educated type counts. Maybe there's an article waiting to be written on that, how political theory feminism has abandoned ordinary women for the sociology department adherents.

Maybe there's an article waiting to be written on that, how political theory feminism has abandoned ordinary women for the sociology department adherents.

Sure, but I don't think I'd have anything more to add about class struggle than the 19th century political writers who put that name on the concept.

Well, except for the gender angle.

God might have initially made the classes "male" and "female", but he also made Stanton Allen, Lynde Bradly, Simon Ingersoll, John Deere, Henry Ford, [the programmer who will be responsible for the neural network that forces as many women out of the workforce as the list of men above did] and, perhaps as impactful as all of those men combined, [the man who will go on to invent the first viable artificial wombs].

So now, we have to go a little deeper... and what we find is that one of those genders is "the one that for all of history is easily replaceable and so is biologically geared to do most of the hard work" and "the one that the former works for because it is not so easily replaced". Or in other words, "labor" and "capital".

And I agree- I think there's an article waiting to be written about the two genders actually being "capital" and "labor", and transgenderism is best defined by what happens when you cross those lines. So if you're a man, you're trying to become the capital-associated valued-for-your-existence gender, and if you're a woman, you're trying to become the labor-associated valued-for-your-actions gender. (Weird how the popular concepts of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' have always pointed at this across every culture, even the matriarchies.)

The upshot is that the labor-to-capital transitioners are useful to capital against labor in ways capital-to-labor transitioners are not (under typical socioeconomic conditions- post-disaster golden ages are an exception to this), which is why it's trans-capital (biological men) getting elevated and why trans-labor (biological women) more often find themselves treated the same way as 'normal' labor is. Sure, trans-labor women don't actively set out to do that, but capital women see it as not only a choice, but a betrayal- after all, they're supposed to be the gender that loots labor, not joins them, and with all the [unfair] advantages they've provided them how could they refuse their offer?

And to top it all off, there's the TERF faction that ignores this dynamic on purpose (they're doomed partially because they did that, and partially because that 'RF' part means they can't get the quantity of labor they need to build capital of their own).

It's also the kind of thing nobody dares write (or research) because it's the kind of thing that makes everyone who reads it get "misgendered" to a degree (I'm pretty sure most women think Ayn Rand is a gender-traitor already... and, well, I rest my case) and also probably doesn't cover all the cases. But then again, this effect is at the population-level so maybe I don't have to.

What are children whose mothers aren't "top scientists" supposed to think about that patronising classism?

Eh, those cheapskates are probably using hand-me-down books or buying from thrift shops, no need to cater to them.

Indeed, I forgot: lower class people don't read. Of course the children reading these books aren't going to identify with "Mommy works as an office cleaner" type jobs 🙄 That's me and my kind all wiped off the map of relevance, but who cares about the poor save as a chance to do the Lady Bountiful bit?

Well feminism is more or less a class interest group for a certain kind of disproportionately female professional person, so it makes sense.