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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9420 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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Is this culture war? I'm not entirely sure anymore. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, and I'm not, not really, just wearied of it all.

So... list of recommendations of new SF/Fantasy popped up on a social media site (okay, it's Tumblr) and it's a mix of some continuing series (that I've never read but have at least heard of, e.g. Murderbot and the Ann Leckie Radch universe) and new novels. Much what you'd expect, except this one stuck in my attention like a splinter:

We Dance Upon Demons, Vaishnavi Patel (12 May). A reproductive health care worker fights both human attacks on her clinic and supernatural attacks after she develops mysterious powers.

My immediate reaction was "that means abortion provider". And whaddya know?

In We Dance Upon Demons, depressed twenty-something Nisha is the volunteer coordinator at an understaffed and beleaguered abortion clinic. After a strange encounter with an Indian statue in the museum, Nisha is plunged into a strange world of demons and monsters–but in the end, the supernatural may not be as dangerous as the very human threats to her clinic…

So where's the culture war? Well, apart from the pro-life protestors being portrayed as screaming bigots and (of course!) the obligatory raped twelve year old*, it's just that I'm tired. There's not even the honesty of calling this what it is: abortion. No, it's "reproductive health care". That is the new shibboleth, I understand that, it's just... okay, the battle has been lost. Abortion is now enshrined as a fundamental human right, like food and water. We've long moved on from "sadly necessary, safe legal and rare" to "of course you're going to kill the baby, but it's not a baby, it's not a life well technically okay but not a real life, it's not a person, what do you mean murder, now please sign my petition about shrimp and AI are conscious entities that we should give legal rights so they can't be enslaved".

Yeah. I'm tired and I don't know where we're going from here on in, but if AI does turn us all into paperclips, we have no bloody leg to stand on in opposition.

*You think I'm joking?

While the individual scenes are brutal, like a raped twelve-year -old being called a murderer by protesters as she tries to get into the clinic, it’s the sheer relentlessness of it all that stood out to me. Every day, Nisha’s job is to escort patients trying to access basic health care through a mob screaming abuse, and it never stops.

People say abortion, and I perk up. Great! Let's talk Eugenics! Can we abort adults, too? But no, no, it's actually just about letting people screw around and pretend it's free of consequences. I wish we were steely-eyed Übermenschen coldly exercising our power of life and death in order to maximize our competitive edge, but no, in truth we're just a horde of hedonist degenerates who kill babies because foresight, commitment and responsibility get in the way of maximizing our dopamine release. But hey, no problem - just elevate the baby-killing business to a sacred cow of the civil religion and focus on the raped 12-year-old, because that's the modal abortion case, or at least we can pretend as much.

FWIW, I recently read Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima, and in there an Abortion scene just went...oddly uncommented. Hard to tell what the author thinks of abortion. Of whether it's a philosophical or political issue for him at all, or just a question of practicalities.

I wish we were steely-eyed Übermenschen coldly exercising our power of life and death in order to maximize our competitive edge

I think the world doesn't have enough high decouplers in charge to let your country in particular voice this opinion again. I can see some African country adopt a Yakub-like ethos and start doing eugenics with little to no outcry if they somehow get rich enough.

I think the world doesn't have enough high decouplers in charge to let your country in particular voice this opinion again.

Well then someone else better step up, because it will need to be voiced sooner or later.

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