This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Last week, right-wing gadfly David Cole wrote a banger exploring the parallels between the childhood transgender craze and the “childhood sexual abuse”/“ritual satanic abuse” panics of the 1970s and 80s. Cole points out the irony of the “say groomer” obsession on the right, and the larger moral panic in right-wing spaces about how the “trans kids” phenomenon is primarily about “sexualizing children”, given that the first wave of moral panic about the molestation of children was driven primarily by leftist women, which is the same demographic now primarily driving the movement that is in turn being accused of molesting children. I think Cole makes a very convincing case that the “groomer” thing is a red herring, a distraction which has blown up into a full-blown purity-spiraling moral panic in the hothouse ecosystem of the Extremely Online right. If you think that the people teaching kids that they’re trans are primarily doing so because they’re interested in molesting kids, why are they so overwhelmingly women?
His observations ring true for me; from the constant sharing of the Auron MacIntyre sign-tapping meme and the Sam Hyde quote, to Pizzagate and the obsession with Epstein, the right wing is proving that it’s every bit as susceptible to purity spirals and moral panics as the left wing. And as Cole points out, it’s especially odd because the “groomer” panic on the right is itself a response to the “trans kids will all kill themselves unless we affirm them” panic on the left. The “groomer” panic also features the same obnoxious and cancerous motte-and-bailey strategic-equivocation tactics that rat-adjacent rightists despise so much when it’s used against them; figures like James Lindsay, Rod Dreher, and even Marjorie Taylor Greene, are all involved in a linguistic shell game, wherein they use a word which they know for a fact is supposed to refer to grooming children for direct sexual abuse, and when pressed they retreat into “well, they’re saying that children have a sexual identity, which is kind of like sexualizing them, which is the same thing that child molesters do.”
There are certain topics that I won’t publicly touch even in a space like this; I’ve thought about one day trying my hand at starting a Substack and joining the right-wing online commentary/content-creation ecosystem, and there are certain subjects where I fear that if I deviate too much from the party line, I will be cast out into the outer depths before I even begin. The whole issue of child sexuality, how it relates to teen sexuality, whether or not queer theorists want to rape kids, etc., seems like the most high-voltage of any of those third rails. Being seen as an apologist for child molestation is a hell of an accusation to face, no matter how specious and lacking in credibility, and it’s nice to see a writer with some level of clout in right-wing commentary stick his neck out there and identify this moral panic for what it is.
I’m even hesitant to offer too much more of my own larger commentary on the issue, but I wanted to put this piece out there for commentary, particularly for those who do take the “groomer” thing more seriously than I do.
Seems to me like in this post and your replies to people, you did publicly touch it in a space like this.
But I appreciate you doing so. I think the Motte is usually pretty rational, but I've been surprised at how much people subscribe to the "the Left is full of pedophiles" narrative around here, which to me really does seem to be a purity spiral. And I think your identification of the motte and baily strategic equivocation is pretty spot on. I don't really understand how people come to these conclusions. It just seems so much like people on the Right/Center trying desperately to find a weapon to strike their enemies with, and it seems too close to essentially what the Left has been doing for over a decade. Except replace "racist" with "pedophile", because both are equally hateable by society.
I understand the Right's desire to do this. Since all forthright arguments seem doomed to fail against the Left, why don't we fight fire with fire? Except that for people like me, that just makes me dislike the Right/Center more. I hate the use of fire, not the Left.
Why? The Left's sexual morality is compatible with pedophiles, even though there are some very prudish elements in other valences such as California having one of the highest age of consents, and left wing universities having sexual kangaroo courts. Fundamentally, this comes down to their emphasis on a broken sexual system that revolves around a concept of "consent". Now, the standard redoubt to this critique of consent would be something like, "children cannot consent." Alas, this is broken by their transgender pivot (and frankly practically broken by the homosexuality pivot before that), because it has a heavy emphasis on the feelings of kids, and allowing them to make choices that are, frankly, much more impactful than your average sexual encounter.
You're entirely putting words and thoughts into their mouths when you say this. You seem obsessed with the notion that pedophilia is wrong specifically because it's very impactful on the child's future, and you always talk about that. That could make sense. But maybe other people think pedophilia is wrong for other reasons. Leftists think pedophilia is wrong because it's an unfair power dynamic, and takes advantage of children, who are weak and need our protection. That reason could make sense too. But it's not okay for you to wave that away and say "sure, they say they're against pedophilia, but what they really mean is something else, because of <roundabout justification regarding how underage sex is impactful just like trans surgeries>".
No value system is bulletproof, and all are subject to people finding edge cases and random gotchas. But when you do that, you're not really listening to them, you're just attacking them because you want to attack them. Your values aren't theirs. That doesn't mean they are okay with pedophilia any more than you are. This all just comes off as you trying to find any random justification to believe that your outgroup is a bunch of monsters. You're specifically focusing on pedophilia being wrong because it has impacts on the child's future because it allows you to attack the left for not seeing it quite that way.
No. My point is that their consent system is broken with regards to this question (and others), and that they will probably be easy to exploit along those line as the progressive consent system has proven easily exploited in other areas like homosexuality (it wasn't happening until it was), Title IX kangaroo courts, transing the kids, etc.
Any my claim is not that my sexual morality has no tough cases and no flaws, simply that from what I can tell, the consent system can't deal with any of the hard cases at all, and in fact generates a whole slew of other issues that the older religious and nonreligious systems didn't have. I prefer an objective conduct standard.
I fail to see how their system deals with pedophilia any worse than a traditional system. You say elsewhere that "there is no Schelling point", but there is a clear Schelling point to Leftists, which is where basically everyone on the Left found it, which is that you shouldn't have sex with young children, because young children can't consent, because there are power dynamics in play and children will be taken advantage of, which is wrong. Just like @token_progressive says, people on the Left will say the converse thing, that people on the Right are more likely to engage in pedophilia, and they'll point to all kinds of things like Catholic sex scandals and the like.
Consider as well, something that Jonathan Haidt writes about in The Righteous Mind, that people's moral judgements are not reasoned out, but are instead driven by intuitions and post-hoc rationalizations. From Haidt:
You'll likely find that most people are against pedophilia (along with necrophilia, incest, and anything else that people have strong moral disgust reactions to) and will be against it for many different reasons. Their intuitions and disgust of pedophilia are there first, and then they come up with the reasons afterward as for why pedophilia is actually bad.
All of that should apply to transgender activists being in classrooms and MDs and etc.
Yes, which they intentionally miscategorize, or do so because they were misinformed by other people on the left who intentionally miscagtegorized it as something other than homosexual pederasty and grooming. Which they further warped because guess what is an even bigger pedophilia and pederasty organization that the media mostly ignores to this day? Public schools!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link