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Hungary is a country known for its eclectic-styled Parliament building, classical composers, Jewish STEM people, and, more recently, Viktor Orban. The last enjoying a less uniformly good reputation in the US, than the preceding three.
The American conservatives has collaborated with him, and even held a con in Budapest, but the American progressives (and their ideological allies in Europe) have criticized his policies and rule in general. The main issues they have with are alleged corruption and authoritarianism, alleged anti-LGBTQIA2S+ policies, and most recently, alleged pro-Russia stance.
The recent electoral defeat of the closest thing he has to an ally in the EU, Polish PiS party, probably has him worried. Before he could count on Poland to prevent the sternest EU punishments being meted out, but the victory of Donald T. throws a wrench in Viktors continued plans for Hungary. On the other hand, recent triumph of Fico in the formerly magyarizated country of Slovakia may provide a replacement friend in the EU. In 2022 Hungary net received from the EU 4.444x10^9 EUR, which is 2.5% of the Hungarian 2022 GDP or 13% of the Hungarian 2022 fiscus. It is possible he avoids sanctions by mere surface level changes, while staying the course, but unlike the founding member, New Europe doesn't have the favour of EU leadership, so its violations of EU laws aren't going to be overlooked and forgotten.
The latest news from the landlocked country, formerly ruled by an admiral, is that a photograph exhibition held in Budapest was forced to deny admission to minors. The reason being that some photos depicted members of an "LGBTQ+" community, photos which were described by the director of the exhbition as being "positive and inclusive". The word "censorship" was also used to describe this move to prevent children from being exposed to content which the state deems to be inappropriate for them.
The parallel to the American parents opposed to minors being allowed to view content considered by them to promote or normalize LGBTQIA2S+ lifestyles and thus arguing that school libraries shouldn't stock materials considered controversial, to me appears obvious. I assume that Orbans focus on cutting off children from LGBTQIA2S+ materials is partially motivated by his knowledge of American right wing tactics, gained by their co-operation with him, and partially it being less controversial than cutting off willing adults. Children are still considered to be innocent of sexual knowledge, and attempts to render them not so, are in some cases already illegal.
Disclaimer: @some has blocked me, and won’t be responding to anything I say here.
Can someone remind me what the “2S” is supposed to stand for? I’ve seen LGBTQ+, and I’ve seen QILTBAG, so those are no mystery. Likewise with the occasional culture warrior trying to sneak in an M or P.
I agree that the analogy to various American policies is obvious. At least some of those had the fig leaf—no pun intended—of banning sexually explicit material, while these photographs only appear to reference drag. Presumably the unnamed “far-right Hungarian lawmaker” who filed this complaint is merely picking low-hanging fruit.
Two-spirit. I think it's mostly used by Canadian LGBT++++ types, and the term may be problematic due to cultural appropriation and all that jazz.
Never mind that I think traditional "two spirit" formulation has little to nothing to do with modern gay/lesbian categories, much less non-binary or genderfluid or what have you. Just more of "I need to be an extra special snowflake so just saying I'm gay or lesbian isn't cool enough" for these people.
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Two spirit. Which, being Indian, ought rightfully to have nothing to do with Hungary.
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Me too
Me too. Now I feel sad that I am not unique.
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2S is two-spirit. It is one of those words like BAME and BIPOC that wokists use to lump together disparate groups based on an imagined political alliance, much to the irritation of the people affected. In this case it lumps together all gender roles recognised in a Native American tribal religion that are vaguely related to the white-people concept of transgenderism.
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I believe they are referring to 'two-spirit', an idea that I haven't seen any actual members of the LGBT community bring up unprompted in at least 10 years (outside of adversarially-chosen social media screencaps), and something that I've never seen added to the LGBT+ acronym by anyone other than opponents.
The Canadian government does it all the time.
Fair enough, I'm not qualified to comment on anything outside the US and could have caveated as much. This is definitely an update on my knowledge about how this is handled more globally.
This action by the government does seem silly to me but maybe the cultural context in Canada is different.
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I’ve never been a fan of completely banning people. To me, the question is whether or not the children are accompanied by their parents. Provided that the hosts of the event are upfront about the content, there’s no reason the state should be deciding for the parents. The parents should be involved and if you want to talk sex/sexuality in chess I think it’s something the school needs to get you to opt into.
What limits do you put on parents on raising their kids? For example, should John be able to bring Johnny to a strip club? What if John is 16? 12?
We can iterate but that’s the basic question.
None, short of murder, violence that causes permanent or long-term physical harm, or selling them into slavery.
The breadth of parenting options should basically range from "take them to the drag show" to "don't even let them look at a person of the other gender"
This is a case where I actually genuinely believe that "Everyone gets to follow their own values" is actually legitimately superior to "everyone adheres to my values." I have parenting methods that I think are best. But those are methods for parenting MY children, made of MY genes. If everyone did them it would probably be a disaster.
I mean, there would in fact be men bringing their twelve year old son to the strip club(or brothel in a place that’s legal). And conversely there would be twelve year olds seeking employment at the strip club. You can bite the bullet on that, but uh, I don’t think it will ever be the majority position.
To the former, so be it. To the latter: There is probably a non-zero number of parents who would push their children to do so I suppose, but any employer that allowed it would probably be being watched by the FBI pretty closely. And of course, so would be anyone who attended such a strip-club. I'm also 99% sure that the parents who would make their children work as strippers probably aren't raising their children very effectively in the counterfactual world where that's illegal, they're just doing other things that are in the privacy of their own homes. All rights will inevitably be abused. That does not make the rights bad or mean we shouldn't have them.
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To be clear, this implies things like truancy laws are illegitimate. Not saying that’s a checkmate but making sure I understand your position.
Yes, I would absolutely consider them illegitimate.
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I generally agree from an American perspective. No idea what the Hungarian precedent is for moral paternalism, but I’m guessing it’s a bit stronger than ours. Likewise for speech restrictions.
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The 2S stands for two-spirit, a claimed historical version of being nonbinary / a third gender. The acronym "LGBTQIA2S+" was created by pro-lgbt people, as opposed to M/P, but in this case it's presumably used sarcastically.
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2S is for Two-Spirit. I don't know exactly what it is, but I think I heard it's some sort of double-gender thing that some indigenous people of somewhere, I think, have or had.
Specifically it's supposed to be used by Native American/First Nations people, some of whose tribes were reportedly accepting of transgender people before the term was invented.
Obviously, X to doubt. It seems like most examples of ‘gender bending in other cultures’ were harshly stigmatized.
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It's got an interesting history actually because it's a completely made up neologism made in the 1990s that's pretending to be some ancestral traditional thing.
It's about similar to people who claim various historical figures to be "nonbinary", "trans" or "gay" even as none of those words existed then or would have any relation to people's conceptualization of themselves then.
It's a classic radical tactic really: reframing history in political terms to generate historiography for a novel political movement. Cultural Marxists, or whatever they are called now, inherited this from their communist, and therefore historicist, forefathers.
What it does is play on the idea that all indigenous Americans were living in perfect harmony in a single cohesive society, noble savages that loved everyone until disrupted by the colonizers.
Of course, they were no such thing. Consider the Aztecs:
Interesting. It seems they never came upon an atrocity they didn’t like.
In mexica culture, this is how one shows great respect and clemency.
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I see what they did there.
Lesbians get short shrift yet again though - couldn't they choke them on their own tongues or cut them in half with giant scissors or something?
My guess is that the concept of scissoring predated actual real scissors, so this particular ironic execution might have been beyond the ken of these people.
Yeah yeah, men always have an excuse.
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