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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37969 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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If conservatives are merely concerned about sexualized performances near/involving children, one might wonder why they don't have similar issues with, e.g. child beauty pageants, dance recitals, or cheerleading?

Uhhh dance recitals? what are you even talking about

Probably competition dancing that can include styles like this.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=82WwqXyyWXg

Child beauty pageants are Red Tribe but not particular conservative, and they're generally associated with those with no class ("trash").

If conservatives are merely concerned about sexualized performances near/involving children, one might wonder why they don't have similar issues with, e.g. child beauty pageants

Do schools sign up kids for beauty pageants behind their parents back? Do they invite kids from other schools to perform?

dance recitals, or cheerleading?

These aren't necessarily sexualized. And last I checked (and from what I remember growing up) conservatives do care about kids not dressing/acting sexually.

Because the people making the arguments are different.

The conservative (as in, liberal/labor) argument is "I'm trying to have you believe that dressing in a way suggestive of forcing everyone else around me to make accommodations for me and my special brand of ugliness, and that ugliness shall not be questioned ever", or to be a bit plainer, "in the Prisoner's Dilemma, I come with the Defect button already pushed and am of the faction that wants to force you at gunpoint to hit Co-operate". (That doesn't roll off the tongue as well as "we're coming for your children" does, though.)

The conservative (as in, traditionalist/capital) argument is just to complain at the object-level, but they do that about cheerleading and dancing already anyway. The current progressives complain about cheerleaders too, for roughly the same reasons- you're just more likely to see progressive complaining than (yesterday's progressive) complaining because the latter already lost the culture war over them.

Every political stripe complains about child beauty pageants being sexual. None of their arguments are convincing.

Cheerleading also has a safetyist attack given it's injury rate and lack of protective equipment.

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