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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37972 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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Prelude: The Nashville school shooting is definitely peak toxoplasma, a day later: people cheering everyone who entered that school with a gun, both the shooter and the police. Aidan/Audrey’s acts are a near-perfect scissor statement.

The statement on the shooting by the Trans Resistance Network is particularly toxically tribal. It hearkens back to the days of trying to sympathize with the Columbine shooters, where the narrative is shaped solely by early reporting and people were asking “What made them do it?”

Tangent: drag shows. But the use of the word “genocide” in the TRN’s statement made me stop and ponder: the modern term “genocide” includes not only the actual killing of group X, but also the halting of cultural practices as a lead-in to the eventual rounding up and killing.

Here’s an odd little dynamic: halting drag activities in children's spaces is trans genocide for both sides, but in different ways!

  • For pro-trans activists, halting them is halting a ritual cultural activity, and hints at a wider cultural desire for eventual trans elimination through murders of the outed and the suicides of the closeted. It also removes an avenue for trans youths to discover their true gender and thus leaves them in a spiral of depression heading toward suicide.

  • For social-contagion theorists, halting the drag activities in children’s spaces is useful for preventing cis children from being memetically contaminated, and thus memetically sterilizing the trans community. Reasoning: since full transition includes sterilization (thus committing traditional genocide upon themselves rather effectively), trans people don’t breed genetically, but memetically.

halting drag activities in children's spaces is trans genocide for both sides

Drag =/= transgender. Not even close.

To steelman, a lot of the trans community's objections to 'drag show' bans is that they seldom can cleanly distinguish between non-drag trans stuff (and seldom recognize non-prurient drag as a thing period). And, to be fair, the complexities of legal cases, pressures toward plea bargaining, and threats of prosecution without intent to follow through are all serious issues even if a statute was perfectly well-drafted, and most of them aren't.

In most cases, I don't think the statutes are that unclear : contrast here vs here, where like some of the Florida bare bookshelf stuff a lot of this is pretty clearly intentional showboating rather than just drawing a thick line around the law. But in turn there's been a number of bills that had to be revised pretty late in their readings (eg Texas) to keep to actual obscenity-or-harmful-to-minors stuff, and others that are poorly worded and depending on the courts to handle.

I agree that the statutes passed thus far are not unclear. The TN law, for example, only bars performances on public property or in a venue where minors could be present by "male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest." I have never been to a drag show, but as I understand it, classic drag shows are guys dressed as Marilyn Monroe singing show tunes. Maybe nowadays it is guys dressed as Beyonce singing pop songs. Neither appeals to the prurient interest, which is generally defined as "an appeal to a morbid, degrading, and unhealthy interest in sex, not just an ordinary interest." US v. McCoy, 937 F. Supp. 2d 1374 (Dist. Court, MD Georgia 2013); United States v. Isaacs, 565 F. App'x 637 (9th Cir. 2014). I suppose there might be grey areas, such as twerking, but the idea that the laws "ban" drag shows seems pretty dubious to me.

I have never been to a drag show, but as I understand it, classic drag shows are guys dressed as Marilyn Monroe singing show tunes.

Only time I was at a drag show was when I was getting shitfaced with my mates at DNA Lounge during a bachelor party, and suddenly, a bunch of drags went on stage and started squirting the crowd with milk from their huge-ass fake breasts.

Now, a night club like DNA Lounge is obviously not going to have children present, but drug shows appealing to prurient interest is very much not something of an exception: if you follow right wing Twitter accounts, you'll see sexually explicit clips of drag shows with children in audience on a regular basis.

drug shows appealing to prurient interest is very much not something of an exception

How do you know? But how representative of drag shows do you suppose are a set of clips curated by right wing Twitter accounts? I am sure that there are left wing accounts showing people opposing gender assignment surgery for kids while spewing homophobic invective, but I am 100% sure that they are the exception among those who worried about such surgery.

It seems pretty obvious that even the authors of the bills in question do not think that drag shows are typically prurient; if they did, they would ban kids from attending all of them.

Regardless, the point is that the bills that have been enacted don't ban drag shows, as is commonly claimed.

(But then, with maybe one exception, the "anti-CRT" laws that have been enacted don't ban the teaching of CRT or anything else, but activists and politicians on both sides have an interest in continuing to claim that they do. So perhaps it is a losing battle).

Yeah, they're definitely making a slippery slope argument, but elements of the conservative movement loudly proclaim how much they'd love to slide down that slope.

It'd be nice to have a term for this sort of recurring phenomenon where maybe you agree with your opponents about the first step in a certain direction, but elements of their movement keep proclaiming they want to take thirty, so then you refuse to take even one because you don't trust that you can stop the momentum once it starts.

You may find the concept of "yut" useful:

I’m simplifying, but I think there are meaningful distinctions between

  1. dismissing some phenomenon or event as having no moral significance,
  1. acknowledging the significance but keeping it contained to this particular case, and
  1. making that significance generalize to a much larger narrative.

Let us, then, take into account the actual facts of life, and not be misled into following any proposal for achieving the millennium, for recreating the golden age, until we have subjected it to hardheaded examination. On the other hand, it is foolish to reject a proposal merely because it is advanced by visionaries. If a given scheme is proposed, look at it on its merits, and, in considering it, disregard formulas. It does not matter in the least who proposes it, or why. If it seems good, try it. If it proves good, accept it; otherwise reject it. There are plenty of good men calling themselves Socialists with whom, up to a certain point, it is quite possible to work. If the next step is one which both we and they wish to take, why of course take it, without any regard to the fact that our views as to the tenth step may differ. But, on the other hand, keep clearly in mind that, though it has been worth while to take one step, this does not in the least mean that it may not be highly disadvantageous to take the next. It is just as foolish to refuse all progress because people demanding it desire at some points to go to absurd extremes, as it would be to go to these absurd extremes simply because some of the measures advocated by the extremists were wise.

Kind of the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt's thoughts on he matter, then.

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