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 -
Remember "creeping Sharia Law" that far-right hysterics were warning about 10-15 years ago? Of course it was always ridiculous, but now something pretty amusing has happened.
‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags
What stood out to me was the support of right-wing activists from nearby towns. So this isn't just a moslem issue, even white Republicans are joined up. Here in Europe, populists like Geert Wilders were often warning about how too many moslem immigrants would threaten liberal values but they've been supplanted by a newer generation of populists that appear to increasingly take a page out of America's right-wing playbook by uniting with moslems against the LGBT crowd.
For liberals it also creates a bizarre spectacle. They've been obsessed with white Christian "fascists" and often turned a blind eye towards immigrants. Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.
Another ironic twist is that the supposed "Great Replacement myth" is largely what facilitated this change. Moslems are now a clear supermajority in the city and the change happened relatively quickly. Liberals were demographically replaced by the people they brought in and now feel like they've been hosed. Can't feel much sympathy for those who use immigration as a political weapon against their domestic political enemies.
They actually didn't "ban Pride flags"; they banned flags of any race, religion, sexual orientation or political affiliation being flown on government property. If anything, the conservative Muslims of Hamtramck are taking a stand for classical liberalism by only allowing the stars-and-stripes on government buildings (and presumably the flags of the city and state). I don't think this would have been controversial even 10 years, and certainly not 20 years ago. The only totalizing religion at work here is homosexuality - the old refrain of "but how does it affect you?" rings very hollow when the faithful are demanding public displays of obeisance.
Not only is it public obedience, but it’s public obedience that is inherently interesting for children, as they have a natural interest in colorful things and unique identity marks that give social reinforcement. It is certainly making some percentage points of the children gay, the only question is what percent.
To what degree it is currently de rigueur to accept as self-evident that homosexuality is innate is unclear to me, but if we believe Lady Gaga (and why wouldn't we?) it is. On the other side we have voices suggesting gayness, like sexual paraphilia (and I sometimes wonder if this term is even used any more or is seen as 'intolerant,') is a product of formative experiences in childhood (I've read for example Camille Paglia making this claim.) I am so far not compelled by the arguments of either side, particularly as often neither side makes arguments beyond that that their conclusions are obvious and to question them is at best silly (see the wry cartoons of a person beibg asked "When did you realize you were straight?") and at worst evidence of some serious character flaw/maliciousness in the questioner.
In my thinking here both views are now hopelessly mired (at least in the US) in politics, and while I am not as dogmatic as some in insisiting that social science is all garbage, I also have eyes to see, and yes, much of it (and much of psychology) to me seems to intellectually bear rotten fruit.
Having thumbed all that out, I think personally that even if we are to passively accept that a fetish might indeed be born of and from childhood circumstances, one would have to assume such circumstances were at least in some may imaginatively sensual--insert any evocative image from your own childhood as illustration. Even then, though, we are assuming, playing with self-report and reconstruction of motive, without the kind of empirical verification one might demand in other circumstances. But let'w say we accept it anyway. It still seems a jump, as ＠Gdanning suggests, that pride flags and a general ethos of gayness will produce spontaneously in boys a desire to fellate members of their peeergroup. It might make these same boys less traditionally masculine, sure (though I have my doubts how much influence Miss Bardwell pinning Pride flags on bulletin boards or organizing Pride summits or whatever will have on the realities of the locker room). It might make them more accepting of gayness as a norm, which is arguably very much a good thing.
There seems, in your post, to be a kind of knee-jerk reaction happening--I mean my knee jerks as much as the next person and it's true I am not really exposed to this kind of Pridemania where I am. But suggesting that it all is going to cause an uptick in gayness I believe requires a bit more rigor than you seem to be applying.
Ancient Greek and Rome had perhaps 90% of men engaging in sex with young men. This seems high to me, but I must accept that there have been substantial genetic changes in humanity since that time or 90% of men would engage in homosexual acts if society told them it was normal.
There were extensive incursions of Germanic tribes that did not routinely engage in homosexual sodomy, but gene analysis does not support enough of a change to suggest that the behavioral difference is genetic. At least, that is my understanding.
Ovid was out of step with Roman society, and Juvenal, Martial, Stabo, and Lucian, in suggesting that sex with women was superior. It seems that most Roman men, perhaps almost all, preferred to have sex with teen boys rather than women.
It seems that Roman homosexuality came from Greek influence in the second century BC. I think this strongly suggests that homosexuality can be culturally nurtured. I wonder what the upper limit it. In Ancient Rome and Greece it seemed remarkably high. I wonder if there is a more modern society where more than 50% of men engage in gay sex? Perhaps Arab societies?
I find this weird, but I suppose it is just as strange as realizing that I would be a pious Muslim or enjoy eating fermented herring should I have been born in different circumstances.
X
More specifically, keeping an adolescent femboy slave was a high status aristocratic thing, but the Roman elite seemed to think it a little strange to actually prefer screwing him over women. The emperor Hadrian, among others, faced mockery for actually preferring his young male lover.
Now in Greece things are more complicated, but the broader picture is still one where this was an elite pursuit- specifically a standard elite induction ritual was to enter into a relationship with an older man as a teen. This is documented from both Athens and Sparta, and the elite male practitioners generally deny that the purpose was sexual gratification and claim that penetrative sex with them was taboo- although they engage in a suspiciously large amount of aesthetic appreciation for nude adolescent males. Athens is better documented than Sparta(which in turn is better documented than other city states), and denial of having engaged in sexual acts with one’s mentor as a youth happens with a frequency there that suggests it happened but wasn’t universal.
Additionally, the gender ratios of infanticide victims outside of ancient brothels skews very male(whereas infanticide in the ancient world more generally skewed female due to preference for sons), indicating that the brothel visiting public(which would have been a very large percentage of the population; visiting brothels was the standard unmarried male sexual behavior and not stigmatized) preferred women, not adolescent boys.
In conclusion, the ancient femboy thing looks and probably was an elite signaling game and not rooted in widespread homosexual inclinations. Instead the Greek and Roman elite mostly had sex with women while showing their urbanity and sophistication by talking about wanting to sleep with teenaged boys, who in turn mostly had sex with female prostitutes and not adult men.
It seems that it was common in the top 10% of society. That is a lot of people. If the top 10% of society can be convinced to engage in gay sex then I think we are all rather malleable in this regard.
This is not the case, according to Wikipedia. In fact, the opposite is true, and it was weird to prefer women.
Perhaps poets were more gay than other people?
If most people in the elite are willing to have sex with boys, then that is surprising and suggests that modern-day signaling could achieve as much.
How do we have accurate records of infanticide? That seems a rather weird place to start when we have lots of literature on the practice of concubines. Sources agree that female prostitution was more common. Perhaps this was because there were fewer other jobs for women. Perhaps the common man was less easily swayed. Who knows.
More options
Context Copy link
What’s the argument here? That prostitutes disproportionately killed their male children because they knew that at least the girls could grow up to become prostitutes? Seems spurious to me.
That the owners of prostitutes disproportionately killed the male children of their enslaved workers because they expected to put the female children to work in just over a decade, but anticipated lower demand for males
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This brings up the question of whether the homosexual acts of any given man make that man 'gay' or are just men sticking it in holes, in particular if he is having sexy times with his wife/wives/concubines in addition to his catamite or whoever. One of Paglia's points is that the decadence signalled by a societal preoccupation with non-heterosexual sex (in particular transgenderism) heralds that same society's imminent collapse. All very interesting but Paglia, brilliant as she is in my mind, is still outside her wheelhouse on such matters. Still this speaks to your point about an upper limit.
Perhaps I am guilty of having a missing mood, or other people are, but my understanding is that most men in Western society would not enjoy having anal sex with a teen boy. I think gay men are sometimes confused by this, and presume that every one would actually enjoy that, but just have hangups that make them feel guilty about doing it.
I think (some) gay men could better understand this if they compared it to having sex with mature women. I know lots of gay men who would shudder at the thought of that, but might be able to screw a sufficiently thin young girl. Some straight men are not lying about not being turned on, and actually being turned off, by male bodies. That said, the Roman numbers might suggest that this group of straight men is a very small sexual minority.
If you can afford a sex slave, and choose a male one, you might just be a little gay.
Oh I agree. But recall that scene in Portnoy's Complaint about thr kid so horny (for lack of a better term) that he gratified himself with the raw liver he had been sent to collect for the dinner. And I would suggest innumerable couch cushions, discarded socks, and, to use the vulgar term, pocket pussies (I will spare you the oddly mainstream acceptance these have in Japan...and you are free to not click that link) to say nothing of unsuspecting sheep and calves in more farming cultures could all, had they but a voice to cry out with, attest to the lack of self-discipline when it comes to the male sex drive. We won't even discuss smaller, more delicate-looking incarcerated males.
Don't get me wrong. I have never, in memory, had a gay inclination. But it's a crazy world.
I suspect part of homosexual behaviour among men are simply power plays - speaking to your oblique prison rape reference. Is that necessarily an urge born of lust for someone's body... or the desire to degrade them in a show of social domination? The same argument could conceivably be made in terms of the "mentor-youth" relationships in the ancient world. Perhaps it was a way for older men to assert dominance over younger and unruly pupils, or for eager pupils to submit in totality to their masters. Disentangling sex from psychology isn't always straightforward.
Nevertheless, we have more permissive attitudes than ever towards homosexuals in the West and it doesn't appear that most men find it gratifying, given how the overwhelming majority still pursue and bed women. This makes me question claims that homosexuality was widespread in ancient Greece and Rome. Perhaps homosexuals have a tendency to wildly inflate the amount of men who have such inclinations, whether in the past or in the contemporary age.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link