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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36422 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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I've been surprised at how much people subscribe to the "the Left is full of pedophiles" narrative around here

Why?

I'm not exactly saying every leftist is a paedophile, but I'm pretty sure that most paedophiles would vote for the left, given they're currently going all in on expanding the capacity of children to consent to major things and normalising children keeping major secrets from their parents (and adults helping them do so). Maybe it's not explicitly paedo-advocacy, but it's a hell of a windfall for paedos and a step in the direction they would be delighted to go. And nobody major on the left seems too concerned about that, either...

(Replying here, but @anti_dan's sibling reply makes some similar points, so tagging them, too.)

I pretty often see low-effort comments on /r/politics and similar spaces accusing the Republican Party of being the party of pedophiles, providing evidence like their support for child marriage (which, in current law, is actually pretty mixed between red and blue states, more common in blue states, if anything), inspecting children's genitals to maintain sex segregation in sports (that link is Politifact calling BS on that claim), and politicians convicted of child molestation (obviously, that was an older case, actual comments often include more recent cases that haven't actually made their way through the legal system, so it's less clear they're even actually true).

In case I haven't made it clear in my tone, I think claiming the Republicans are pro-pedophile is absurd. As far as I can tell, everyone is anti-pedophile (and, similarly, anti-rape) right up until someone in their in-group (for some scope of in-group) is accused and then they don't want to do anything about it. I doubt there's a meaningful difference there between the left and right on that, and trying to cherry-pick examples is just culture warring.

I think there are obviously the bad guys like NAMBLA and the like. My point is actually that there is no Schelling point when you subscribe to consent sexuality + underage people can make permanent sexual life decisions.

How is that a windfall for us? As far as I'm concerned, the "left's" behavior you cite is just making my life all that much harder with no upside for me. They are normalizing sexual and sexualized behavior in kids, rubbing my attractions in my face while making interacting with society feel even more like navigating a minefield than it already does all the while dumping the blame for problems it causes at my feet because they supposedly don't have sexual motivations. And I'm supposed to be delighted by this?

I mean they're also the rehabilitation instead of punishment camp, as well as the general defund the police and soft on crime camp.

What about that is an upside for someone who hasn't committed a crime and doesn't intend to?

I suppose the theory at work here is that those who want guardrails to be lowered will vote for the people whose policy objectives optimize for lowered guardrails (political mesa-optimization, perhaps). Your contention is whether or not those who want guardrails to be lowered exist--to which, I have no idea what the answer is. I personally suspect that a pedophile without the self-restraint/closeting you mention doesn't have the sort of political acuity/consciousness to optimally vote in their benefit in this way.

We have a handful of actual pedophiles on here. Why don’t we ask them?

You sound like someone on the Left saying that even if the average conservative isn't racist, it's creating a haven for racists to normalize their racism, which is bad because we need to stop any and all racists at all costs. Therefore, we need to throw all support behind the left to stop the proliferation of racism. Just replace racist with pedophile and right with left.

And I think that argument is just sheer projection coming from them, the ones who tell us it's not only alright, but imperative to put racial concerns first and foremost when dealing with people.

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