site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I agree, but I think the rape affect is appropriate, at least with regard to trans issues. Medical transitions are a form of genital mutilation which cause massive harm similar in kind but greater in magnitude to rape. I would rather a child be groomed into sex with a pedo than groomed into undergoing medical transition, because the former would leave fewer long term irreversible trauma and could hopefully eventually be healed and recovered from.

With regards to LGB, grooming is only an appropriate accusation if the ideologues are trying to convince the children to be more sexually explicit, promiscuous, and/or think sex with adults is okay (things which would be a prelude to pedophilia). Almost nobody is accusing normal LGB people of being "groomers", and I disavow the ones who do. The efficacy of "groomer" comes from the rape affect, and in order to preserve that as a useful tool we need to use the word only in cases where that implication is accurate.

Medical transitions are a form of genital mutilation which cause massive harm similar in kind but greater in magnitude to rape. I would rather a child be groomed into sex with a pedo than groomed into undergoing medical transition, because the former would leave fewer long term irreversible trauma and could hopefully eventually be healed and recovered from.

  1. Medical transition involves HRT and not just surgery. There are trans people who choose to only get HRT and to never have genital surgery.

  2. There are many trans people who voluntarily have genital surgery and are happier afterwards. There are no (or negligibly few) children who voluntarily have sex with adults and are happier afterwards.

There are no (or negligibly few) children who voluntarily have sex with adults and are happier afterwards.

I don't think this is as true as you think. It brings to mind an interview with a woman who recounted how she lost her virginity at the age of 14 to David Bowie. She sure seemed to enjoy it, and revel in the memory. Of course, the taboo means you don't hear about it, but not hearing about it is not the same as not existing.

Part of the problem is that the American age of consent is a bit ludicrous - by the time you're 18 you've already spent a third of your life sexually aware, and most people lose their virginity long before then. So it's very important to clarify whether one is talking about a) actual rape of prepubescent children, or b) mutually consensual sexual encounters that are biologically normal, legal in most of the world, and just happen to be called "statutory rape" in America.

I find it particularly concerning that progressives hold the position that teens are capable of deciding they're trans (complete with devastatingly life-altering physical interventions) when they're young but not capable of deciding they want sex (which is a hell of a lot safer, done responsibly). This just seems incoherent.

This just seems incoherent.

The Junior Anti-Sex League's position is fundamentally "straight men having sex bad"; I feel to see how their pro-eunuch stance (intentionally uglifying men and women alike isn't increasing the above, that's for sure) or their other attempts to problematize straight sex is inconsistent with that outlook. The first clear modern example of this bloc gaining power is the imposition of an "age of consent" concept in the first place.

consensual

Newspeak; it's an attempt to conflate "non-coercive" with "doesn't offend the sensibilities/interests of the above group".

To be clear, you are saying that wokeism is why an age of consent exists in the first place? This is the exact opposite of the claim others are making in this thread, that wokeists are secretly paedos who want to abolish the age of consent.

I think it would be more accurate to say that wokeists are responsible for the age of consent increasing over time but simultaneously want activities traditionally seen as sexual that they believe shouldn't be considered sexual to be free from that restriction.

In a vacuum, woke is responsible for the AoC increasing over time when it's a hetero pairing and the younger of the two is a woman (they aren't, for instance, particularly concerned with the definition of rape being a crime women cannot commit in the polities where this is true). This tracks given what we know about the demographics of progressives (a majority female movement concerns itself with imposing female sexual dynamics- what a shock), and

want activities traditionally seen as sexual that they believe shouldn't be considered sexual

if restated as "want activities traditionally seen as sexual to enjoy the plausible deniability of being sexual when it suits them", is an accurate description for how that demographic functions in the sexual marketplace.

I don't think progressives care that strongly about what the AoC should be when the younger of the two is a man aside from adding an extra layer of defense on top of the above special privilege/needing to pretend they care. Which was why NAMLBA was even tolerated in the first place back in the '70s (you really think one focused on girls would have gotten that far?) and why all the sexual "experiments" (like that German 'let's place kids with rapists and see what happens' one) never involved girls.

I would characterize 'wokeists' as a recent evolution of progressives that is distinct from those who tolerated NAMBLA in the '70s and other groups that did in fact argue against the AoC including for hetero pairings featuring older men and younger women (famously Foucault et al in France). I think they do care about the AoC when the younger of the two is a man, but this is counter-acted by their (charitably) unrecognized biases in recognizing behaviors toward men as being sexual.

EDIT:

if restated as "want activities traditionally seen as sexual to enjoy the plausible deniability of being sexual when it suits them", is an accurate description for how that demographic functions in the sexual marketplace.

I think that's a fair restatement. To build on that, I'd say a key difference between 'wokeists' and other branches of progressives is how they approach the intersection of power and sex. The woke from my perspective see sex as a tool for power, and their policies reflect a desire to control and wield that power while denying it to their opponents whereas other progressive groups have been more focused on freeing sex from such power plays.