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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29147 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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And even if they find out eventually, buying 6 months or a year or three years of time can be very important for a kid trying to build a secondary support network.

Doesn't that sound suspiciously like grooming?

No?

This feels like you are verging into 'Hitler was a vegetarian so all vegetarians hate Jews' territory here.

It seems closer to "scientologists secretly setting up a 'secondary support network' for children of 'suppressive persons' is deeply suspicious" territory.

Not to me.

If you have an argument, you'll have to make it. I don't share enough of your cultural signifiers for innuendo alone to carry the message.

I don't think it's about cultural signifiers, the analogy is pretty 1:1. Both scientologists, and gender affirming teachers are secretly making an end run around the parents. This behavior is wrong, both inherently, and because it puts children at risk.

It only sounds suspicious because you chose a group that you expect everyone here to be suspicious of, scientologists. This is what I was talking about with the 'Hitler was a vegetarian' thing. You are carrying the suspicion based on the person you chose to include in the example, not the actual structure of the situation which the analogy is to.

For instance, if I said 'a student whose parents are LDS is questioning the existence of god, and the LDS church would require the parents to kick them out of the house and stop all contact with them if they came out as atheist, and when the student talks to a teacher about this for support the teacher decides to not immediately tell the parents but instead help the student find other resources they could make use of if they do end up kicked out of the house', then the atheist portion of our audience here would probably think that is not a hugely suspicious and monstrous thing for the teacher to do.

Again, you are choosing objectionable examples for you analogies to make it seem bad, I can use sympathetic analogies to make it seem good. Both of these tactics are misleading and prey on cognitive biases around affect.

It only sounds suspicious because you chose a group that you expect everyone here to be suspicious of, scientologists.

Quite the opposite. I don't find their actions suspicious because they're committed by scientologists, I find scientologists suspicious because of their actions.

Again, you are choosing objectionable examples for you analogies to make it seem bad, I can use sympathetic analogies to make it seem good.

It might work if you stayed within the parameters of the original hypothetical. Not immediately telling the parents might be defensible in certain situations, but we were talking about "6 months or a year or three years".

Do you think the teacher should tell the LDS parents their kid is an atheist after 6 months if it is still the case that they would excommunicate and disown them?

If so, why?

It was absolutely my intention that this analogy applied for the full timeframe. The teacher should never override the student's judgement and tell the parents in that situation.

If so, why?

  • 6 months is more than enough to gather any resources necessary in case the parents to flip out
  • Parents have a right to know what's going on with their kid
  • There's a good chance the kid is simply wrong about their parent's reaction
  • Undermining the parents in the eyes of the children might in some cases be justified, but when it's done by a public institution, it needs to be done openly, have a paper trail explaining why, how, and when it was done, and parents must be allowed to sue in case the institution is proven to be wrong

It was absolutely my intention that this analogy applied for the full timeframe.

I think you should have said so explicitly, because "not immediately" sounds a lot more reasonable. Especially since the full time frame includes "potentially never".

The teacher should never override the student's judgement and tell the parents in that situation.

I completely disagree with that, especially in the current political climate, there's a lot of unsubstantiated memes going around about how your parents are going to kick you out if they find out you're trans. And even outside of the current culture war, taking someone seriously, but not uncritically is a much better approach than what you suggest.

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