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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   40655 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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If this was true, then you’d have legions of trans people aligning themselves with everybody else who is pointing out that drag shows for children is completely inappropriate.

But of course you don’t see that. Again with the revealed preference (I hate that I use this term twice, but IIWII). Trans people see drag performers and see themselves, which is why they can’t oppose them.

And further on this, my priors are very much that trans people- or gay people, or very socially progressive people in general- just don’t think of the children that often. ‘Inappropriate for children’ doesn’t occur for them as a concept space because they’re not used to thinking of children as distinct from adults, so ‘you can’t have gay porn in school libraries’ comes off to them as a gay propaganda ban.

Yes this is a failure mode and they should in fact listen to people who are not them. But it’s minorities of these people and in some cases very small minorities who are parents and their social circles aren’t exactly full of parents either.

but they do treat kids a bit like little adults

No, that's just how they treat the girls. (And they're correct, biologically speaking, to consider 13 "adult" for all practical purposes like every one of their ancestors save the last 3-4 generations did.)

The boys, of course, have to settle for the Untitled treatment unless they're willing to pretend they're women (as in, repudiating their sexual challenge to them- gayness is sufficient, so is becoming a eunuch). They can go back to their video games; keeping them sedated in the basement is a mercy for the harm they'd otherwise inflict on the women and the environment. After all, they're incapable of distinguishing sexual cosplay- the need to know that I could have any one of them that I wanted- from genuine interest (as in, fuck no, lmao).

When an ideology reifies "woman good, man bad", how could any of this be otherwise? Even the "rebellious teen" phase consists specifically of girls becoming what their mothers hate more than anything else in the world.

Of course, traditionalists are exactly the same, with the same reasons, just with the genders swapped (contrast sexual maturity with disposability, resisting any attempt by women to be anything more than a sex object, and inherent inability to accept a lesser men making a pass).

Note that it's not quite as black and white as that might make it sound- there are varying degrees of this in all societies and subsocieties- but starting from this standpoint and what economics of the time permit is, I find, shockingly accurate about what any given social environment will look like.

If I'm the person in the shoes you are describing, I'm going to do everything in my power to demonstrate the following:

  • I am not coming for your children

  • I do not want to give experimental sex drugs to your children

  • I vehemently oppose illegal "bathtub HRT" like the following: https://diyhrt.wiki/

You believe yourself to have a certain woman-essence - a sexed soul of some kind - and you are trying to bring your outward presentation in line with it.

If I'm the person you are describing, I'm going to be the loudest person opposing trans-ideology in schools, DQSH, etc because I just want to live my life and I can see there are people who want to be sexually inappropriate with children.

And yet: we see the opposite. Perhaps the people you are describing just want to live their lives and this isn't just a fetish, but it seems like the trans-activists act in the exact opposite way to that.

The question is not whether trans people support the right of people to perform drag shows, for children or not for children. That was not what OP said. Rather, OP equated drag performers with transgender persons, and that is empirically false.

@07mk (in the other reply to this post, and the thread following) indeed approximately caught my meaning. I’m starting from what I’ve seen on reddit, from leftists who take the time and effort to comment there. I’ve seen them saying that laws stopping “drag queen story hour”, the exemplar drag activity in children's spaces, would constitute genocide against trans people.

Now, I am pretty clear on the separation between trans and drag. The former is about living one’s felt identity and societal role. The latter is about performing/playing about identity/role, which makes it a form of clowning, like pro wrestling kayfabe, pulp SF, cosplay, fursuiting, and even religious ceremonies and televangelist preaching. (Osteen, looking at you.) I am familiar with this split from seeing it in my years in the furry fandom and two adjacent fandoms. I was even in theater growing up, and the similar-but-different onstage/backstage split behavior dynamic is always on my mind as a customer service rep at work and as an A/V tech at church.

Leftwards reddit has given me the impression they believe that children experiencing drag activities in public, and especially in children’s spaces, gives children awareness of gender realities they’ve been sheltered from by repressive churches, conservative schools, and uptight parents. I will take them at their word. I then connect that idea with their description of halting such activities as genocide.

That was not what OP said. Rather, OP equated drag performers with transgender persons, and that is empirically false.

I don't think that's what OP did. I think the relevant parts of the OP are (correct me if I missed something):

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.

I bolded the parts that I think are particularly relevant. The claim seems to be that "drag activities in children's spaces" is a form of "ritual cultural activity" for trans people. This could be taken to mean that "trans people have a ritual cultural activity of doing drag in children's spaces," but I don't think this necessarily means that. Rather, it could be taken to mean that having drag performers performing in children's spaces is a type of cultural activity for trans people. This is, in itself, suspect, and the most charitable way I could interpret it is that it's claiming that trans people value such subversion of traditional gender stereotypes for helping to enlighten potential trans kids of their innate trans-ness. Which I still find very suspect, to say the least. But it doesn't require an equality between drag performers and trans people.

I think it implicitly equates them, because drag performances are indeed a type of cultural activity for drag performers or perhaps for some gay men. So by saying that they are a type of cultural activity for trans people, isn't OP conflating them?

So by saying that they are a type of cultural activity for trans people, isn't OP conflating them?

I don't think the OP was saying that drag performances in general are a type of cultural activity for trans people; taken literally, the statement seems to be that drag performances for kids are a type of cultural activity for pro-trans activists (which, notably, is a different set of people from trans people, something I myself missed in my previous comment). Drag performances for kids (or, to use the OP's exact terms, drag activities in children's spaces) is a sufficiently specific and niche thing even among drag performances in general that it wouldn't even occur to most people to characterize it as a type of cultural activity for drag performers. I think the interpretation that the claim is "having drag activities in children's spaces is a type of cultural activity for pro-trans activists" makes at least as much sense as the interpretation that the claim is "performing drag activities in children's spaces is a type of cultural activity for trans people."

Which is itself a pretty suspect claim. Maybe it is a form of cultural activity for the activists who encourage and organize these performances - I haven't asked - but I feel like it's more of a "fuck you" to what they see as the conservative establishment and its oppressive gender norms. Which, to be fair, might be a form of cultural activity in itself, but then that gets into a more philosophical/definitional question of what is a "cultural activity" anyway?

I see your point, but it seems to me that OP's reference to genocide doesn't make sense under that interpretation.

Which one is the one cross dressing for sexual gratification?

Neither, as it happens.

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