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That seems kinda like consensus-building, to me. That's clearly what ZHPL is trying to say, but it's a very controversial statement. Very many people around here are trying to connect both present-day and past leftism to pedophilia, and even though I can't stand the left, I can't stand when people try to make that connection even more. I find it insulting that ZHPL justs waves his hand in that general direction and is like "people got into leftism in 1968, and than all of a sudden 9 years later: BAM! age of consent was revoked (in France)". It's almost comical.
There are pedophiles everywhere. You know the arguments: The plural of "anecdote" isn't data. Chinese Robber Fallacy, etc.
I hate when people try to say the Right is full of pedophiles because some priests molest kids and some backwoods rednecks are inbred, so I also hate it when people gesture at the left for similar things.
I have no argument with you on most of this paragraph, especially with regards to the strange bifurcation existing in leftist thought.
Though I may slightly disagree with you about whether most leftists are okay with "demonstrations" of sexuality for minors. They definitely are okay with "discussions" with minors, and I think they go too far there, but I don't know if they're really mostly down with "demonstrations". Other than the aforementioned pedophiles, who as I mentioned before are everywhere and on all sides.
It's not about the pedophilia. It's about the acceptance of pedophilia. Obviously, actual practice of pedophilia is not tied to any particular political orientation.
Furthermore, I am not talking about the modern-left which (drag queen story hour aside) is strongly anti-pedophilia.
I am talking about the confused atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s where there was sort of an anything goes atmosphere. Hip people thought it was sort of okay for a 13 year old girl to explore her sexuality with Roman Polanski. Alan Ginsburg was a non-ironic member of NAMBLA and a celebrated member of leftist society. At the time, the left was pushing the sexual frontier in all areas, and children weren't off limits.
Where you see any "acceptance" of pedophilia?
Yes, and these people lost as decisively you can lose.
Laws about age of consent, underage sex and child porn are tightened every day, pedophiles are the most hated people in the world, anyone accused of being "pedo" is considered to be devil in human form and treated likewise.
The future is not free love hippy commune where anything goes. The future is "age gap" enshrined in laws and total internet and AI censorship/ban to protect children. If it saves one (pixelated) child, it is worth it!
Well out of the intellectuals of the 20th century, I believe American college students are a lot less exposed to Hitler's ideas on men, women and children than on those of Foucault, Deleuze, Sartre, Beauvoir, etc.
Why all the outrage about the so-called 'don't say gay' Florida bill then? Why do teachers feel entitled to talk about sex with children? Why are kids getting brought to drag shows?
Why are kids made to make decisions about their genitals and whether they should undergo normal puberty or not?
Why such concern about books banned from school libraries ? No, they are not talking about Henry Ford's or Charles Murray's writings, but here is an example :
Why do school libraries need explicit sexual material?
The current year is 2023. 20th century is over, and ideas of French intellectuals (at least concerning sexual liberation) are as popular and influential as Hitler's ideas.
The teachers do not want children to have sex, they want them to explore their "gender identity", possibly all the way to gender transition, which is the most thorough desexualization since the Skoptsy were a thing.
David Cole (of impeccable alt-right credentials) puts it here much better.
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To own the cons. Hard to imagine something less sexually arousing and stimulating than "drag queen hours."
Because it is, in our digital age, completely pointless political football on both sides. 90% of children are not going to read any books, and the 10% who want, can have any book in the world at their fingertips.
BTW, in the good old times in the fifties, after hunting Soviet spies, libraries were one of McCarthy's concerns. Looking for unamerican books in libraries was one of his pastimes.
"CITIZENS! Do you know there are COMMUNIST books in AMERICAN libraries? What are you going to do about this menace?"
This is forgotten now, but this was the major thing he was known for in his time and what elicited such strong reaction among the public.
Well, the reaction was less "I am American, I will never read any unamerican books!", and more "I am American, no Irish drunken swine is going to dictate to me what books I can read!"
Fascinating; I thought eunuchs and castrati were the pinnacle of that movement, but then again the two are not that similar either to each other or to the Skoptsyists.
I suggest "Junior Anti-Sex League" as a working title for how progressives operate with respect to sex (tradcons do this too, but while the end result is currently the same, they started with entirely different reasoning, so it's more a 'happy' accident they currently behave the same).
Especially since 99-100% of the participants are straight, drag queens are [intentionally] aesthetically unpleasing, and children are generally smart enough to prefer beautiful things to ugly ones. Of course, there is already a significant amount of documentation about what is sexually arousing to straight tween/teenagers- it usually begins with the words "Dear Penthouse," or, more recently, a 6-digit code to a particular website. None of them involve drag queens, or so I'm told.
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Some don't, some do. The teachers harping over gender theory certainly got their ideas from people who at least studied under people who were either kiddy-diddlers of the kind of Gabriel Matzneff or very close friends of them. The fact that these ideas come from these people is not unrelated to the fact that adults are reaching out to children to sensitize them to these behaviors.
Yes, totally normal behavior. If you see a group of Nazi war criminals dressed up in Nazi garb playing war with plastic guns and the neighborhood's children, should that concern the average Jewish pacifist?
The history channel seems to think it should. Idk about the gender theory academia and the people in charge of the 'LGBT youth' groups.
It appears to me that McCarthy was right. Where else but libraries did the teachers get their ideas of transidentity?
Amazon and other platforms are definitely removing different books depending on who is in charge.
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There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of books in every single school library with graphic descriptions of physical violence, blood, gore, and destruction. Yet, somehow, reading about two gay people having sex is more explicit? As long as kids can check out a book and read about the aftermath of World War II in Europe, the world won't end if they get some masturbation instructions as well.
I don't condone the type of atrocity porn that the holocaust memorial enthusiasts like to propagate either.
My understanding is that the books that parents are actually upset about are more like instructions on how to get your genitals cut or how to get the latest fancy sexually-transmitted disease in the least reproductively productive way possible.
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Sex and violence are very different things, and we protect children from them in very different ways. Primarily in that depicting violence isn't violent, whereas depicting sex is sexual.
There are plenty of leftists who would happily claim that depictions of violence are the same as violence.
Sure, but they know there's a difference, they know that if you leave a boy in a room with a bunch of books full of images of violence, he isn't going to emerge covered in cuts and bruises. Whereas if you leave a boy in a room of pornography he will emerge either sexually aroused or looking sweaty and nervous.
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I’d bet against that first one. World history is required for most (all?) majors, while continental philosophy is not. Hitler was a shitty excuse for an intellectual, but he sure drew an audience.
As for modern legislation, are you sure you’ve got the right bill? The “don’t say gay one” made some rather sweeping statements about things which I would not classify as “talking about sex.”
Edit: including things other than sex. Mea culpa.
I don't think American college professors ever bring up Hitler's ideas about family and fertility as possible inspirations while addressing contemporary issues like the drop in birth rates. I'm pretty confident that at least some college professors quote the various continental philosophers as support for one or the other of their arguments.
Right there in #3 clearly has the "sexual" keyword.
Taking a random article quoting opponents of the bills:
Title: 'Don't Say Gay' bill would limit discussion of sexuality
Now, what are LGBT kids?
Perhaps we need to dig further to understand what exactly that means for kids.
Wikipedia asserts:
Now the first quote from a regular dictionary does not have the word girl in it. I was able to peruse the 3rd quote and it does not cover the 'girl' portion. Now we have to rely on some book published by a Bonnie Zimmerman, on which Wikipedia relies to assert that girls can be lesbians just like women.
Interestingly there is still some debate in the talk page on this subject:
...
This is all very confused but from what I can gather, the word 'attraction' seems to play a major role in all of this, as I assume they are not expecting these so-called LGBT kids to be engaging in homosexual, genital-engaging practices to prove their membership?
Now, why have a specific term for a child that is supposedly 'attracted to the same gender' (or sex depending on who's talking)? Children can be obsessed with things such as robots, dinosaurs, cars, princesses, unicorns, mermaids... Should we automatically sign them up to for example for the unicorn lovers, the 'cloppers community'? Should we let adults come up to these specifically designated children and allow them to explain how cloppers identify themselves, which codes they use to communicate, how cloppers manage to pleasure themselves with the object of their desire...? Or does this seem absurd, weird, perhaps disgusting to an unenlightened audience?
I imagine it would take serious amounts of propaganda for such an audience to see it as completely natural for the adults they placed in charge of looking after their children to be okay with this ordeal.
How many of these kids just 'kinda liked unicorns' because one of their friends has a cool hat with unicorns on them?
How many of these kids won't even dare bring their cool unicorn hat to school anymore, because they're afraid of getting cornered by the middle-aged woman with problem glasses and froth at the mouth who just can't wait to tell them how 'cloppers' express love?
I think you’ve constructed a rather vicious strawman.
The Florida bill bans lots of things, including talking about sex. Assuming that opponents are only “outraged” because they’re frustrated pedophiles is…uncharitable.
If I follow your argument, you meander through some sneering at Wikipedia on your way to claim that this “specific term” shouldn’t be applied to kids. Why? Because they could be obsessed with monster trucks or unicorns?
Your caricatures are unrealistic. There is a motte to LGBT advocacy; I would like to see you attack that rather than fishing for disgust reactions.
No, I'm showing that opponents are specifically outraged because their ability to talk about sexuality with schoolchildren is curtailed.
Yes, or they could love guns and playing war. Does that mean teachers should take them aside without notifying the parents and sign them up for General's Buttnaked child soldier army?
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"The motte" is a position that's true, but trivial in it's implications. The reason no one engages with them is that it says nothing interesting, and because half the time they're only there as a place to retreat to when your more interesting claims are under attack. You might have meant a "steelman". But is there a steelman to "LGBT advocacy"? The term is so vague it can include anything from promoting tolerance to abolishing cisheteronormative patriarchy or sexual liberation of everyone including children. Which one should he focus on? The first one? Why? We've left tolerance behind long ago, and whatever it is people are fighting for now definitely is not tolerance.
It's a bit weird for you to complain about strawmen, and then say something like this in the same post. The claim, the way I understand it, is that it doesn't make sense to apply a term defining sexuality to a pre-sexual child.
The problem here is that even if you think something valuable can be taught by teachers explaining sex to children, the fact that a significant portion of parents supports these laws means they no longer trust the teachers. Anyone effectively saying "you shouldn't be allowed to not trust us" rather than trying to win back trust is going to be suspect.
Maybe you’re right. It was late and not my best work.
I chose “motte” because I do believe opponents are playing a motte/bailey game. The uncontroversial claim is that the bill is a CW salvo against gay people. That’s enough reason for most bill-opponents to be upset, but I wouldn’t call it a steelman, because it’s not actually a defense, merely a justification.
There is definitely a bailey where bill-opponents want to do specific things blocked by the bill. Especially counseling and advocacy. These are controversial, and bill-supporters are right to home in on them, even as bill-opponents retreat to the motte.
But the last chunk of the OP goes much further! In the analogy, “froth at the mouth” advocates are cornering children for sexually explicit conversations. This is obviously terrible. It’s more extreme than Drag Queen Story Hour or whatever else the OP could actually find. It assumes the conclusion, and makes up a gross example when reality doesn’t provide.
Notice that the analogy starts from the premise that same-sex attraction is like obsession with monster trucks or unicorns. Is this something a bill-opponent would recognize as their own position?
If that’s not a strawman, I don’t know what is.
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The argument around CP reminds me a bit of the one about guns.
People who want more government action to restrict the thing in question often use a motte-and-bailey argument. The bailey is "we must do whatever it takes to save people from being shot / sexually abused, even if it means getting rid of the second amendment / imposing drastic censorship". The motte is "don't be crazy, we're reasonable people of course, we just want common-sense regulations".
Also, some of the people who want more government action are, whether they consciously realize this or not, probably not primarily motivated by a desire to save people. They want the gun restrictions or the censorship mainly because the gun rights / the free Internet is something that their political rivals enjoy and something that helps those political rivals.
Meanwhile what many people who want less government action actually believe, whether they consciously realize this or not, is "I think that some kids being molested and some people being shot is an unfortunate but acceptable price to pay for being able to resist the oppressive government and defend oneself / for having free speech / etc".
But to say that openly is generally not socially acceptable, so people pretend that it is possible to have the thing they want (the right to own guns, freedom from Internet censorship, etc.) without the downsides (people being shot, child abuse, etc.).
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Here is a quick rundown of some infamous 20th century French philosophers
Queer-theory jeopardy
Some videos of French intellectuals going on TV to celebrate having sex with children/teenagers.
An undergraduate paper on the subject
One excerpt of interest p35:
Is any of this supposed to contradict what I said in my last post?
There are a lot fewer proud pedophiles selling diaries of their titillating pedophile adventures on French TV (or any other TV as far as I know) today than in the 70s.
Who do you see on this list of 'mixed-age sex' supporters ?
Perhaps you were trying to get with a philosophy/sociology major and you've heard of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Louis Aragon, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre?
Who I do not see are people like Alain de Benoist, considered influential with the alt-right movement in the United States. Or his buddies Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Yvan Blot, and Henry de Lesquen.
I was on the fence on the question of whether you're some alt-right alt, but I think you managed to convince me in a single line, thanks!
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Oh, I believe some are, the opposite would be surprising. But as you say, antisemites are stupid, their opinions tired and not worth discussing. But there's always some guy trying to bring them up.
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I don't think I could really say much better than what @Goodguy has said in response to you. Go talk to him.
But I'll say one more thing, less directed to you than to all of the Mottezians who just loooove to spend all their time all day thinking about how much the left is full of pedophiles who can't wait to start molesting kids:
Do you know how irritating it is to have to defend a group of people whom you despise, against people who also despise those people but despise them for stupid reasons? People who want to think the left is full of pedophiles and therefore should be hated for that reason are watering down actual arguments against leftists. There's plenty of reasons to be against the left. Your efforts are better spent on those causes, and will do more to hinder leftism than this pedophilia bent.
Thank you for saying it.
The part that frustrates me is that “watering down” isn’t necessarily true. Weak men are superweapons, and all that. They just…don’t belong here.
You’re doing God’s work.
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I don't know man. It seems like you aren't responding to what people are actually posting.
I tried to steelman HP0 talking about how the left of the 1970s did sometimes celebrate pedophilia. But I explicitly said that the modern left does not.
You ignored the modern part, and tried to defend the 1970s left with a "few bad apples" and "both sides" argument that as @PierreMenard has pointed out doesn't bear weight.
Why not just admit that, yeah, some 1970s leftist intellectuals believed it was sophisticated and cool to have sex with teenagers? Unlike Catholic priests or whatever, they weren't flawed sinners who slipped up. They thought what they were doing was a Good Thing. This is a legit difference between the left and the right at the time.
None of this makes HP0 less vile, it doesn't make him right about anything, and it doesn't really have much of an impact on the modern culture war except by insinuation. But the limited point still stands.
I'm not really interested in arguing about the 1970s left without connection to the modern left, tbh, I simply have little interest in the subject. But look at the timestamps and you'll see that your caveat of
Came after the post you just replied to.
Just to add another perspective (also I usually align closer with jeroboam than you, but I hope I have displayed enough neutrality in prior conversation with you that you won't consider this solely motivated reasoning): It seemed obvious to me that jeroboam was only saying that the left of yesteryear had some fascination with pedophiles. So your defensive replies looked like denial at best and gaslighting at worst. I understand what you meant now, but that was my initial impression.
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This is not my argument.
My argument was that :
1- major leftist intellectuals of the 70s, during which the infamous Sexual Revolution was proclaimed, were either pedophiles or very close friends with open pedophiles (kid-diddling diary-publishing kind of open pedophiles)
2- these people and their students are still quoted, studied in humanities departments all over the West producing the rank-and-file of the regime, among which some of the people you will (have to) trust your children to
If a guy was showing you his vacation pictures in bed with children in Thailand and then persuasively told you to essentially blow up all existing rules in your society because 'dude Christianity is so oppressive and man parents can't tell you what to do'.
Would you do it?
This is apparently more or less what happened to several Western countries in the 70s.
Shows bad the pre-Sexual Revolution society was to many people they'd put up with the weirdos.
But, do you think Led Zeppelin, Rick Springfield, and the dozens of other popular mainstream artists, actors, and such who engaged in what were the time, consensual relationships with teenage girls should have their records banned, and so forth, like you want to do with these intellectuals? Like, Robert Plant being a bit of scumbag doesn't make him a worse singer and many of these intellectuals have good arguments despite their preference for young teenage girls.
Luckily the whole thing is going down the drain. Thanks to the Sexual Revolution, the whole mistake of a Western civilization is just going away.
The legacy of the 70s is Oblivion. BUH-BYE
Their records banned? Try all records. Only the calls of the muezzins should remain
In fairness, some of those nasheeds legitimately slap.
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A bunch of ancient Greeks liked having sex with boys. Does that mean that all ancient Greek social/political/economic views are suspect?
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson held people captive and forced them to work by threat of violence. Does that mean that all of their social/political/economic views are suspect?
I agree with you broadly but:
I have absolutely encountered people making basically this argument.
Sure, but I think that they are wrong. And I think that the same argument, but used against leftists, is also wrong.
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No, not necessarily, unless we're talking specifically about social/political/economical views regarding sexual mores. ie you can make a reasonable argument that somebody supports importing enslaved young boys because they have a history of pursuing having sex with young boys
In the case of these French leftists, we have a combination of people who advocated changing French laws regarding the age of consent/sexuality in general and people who were going on vacation to Tunisia or other foreign countries to have sex with young boys (and girls).
In some cases, some of these people explicitly argued that they wanted an existing oppressive social and legal system changed in order to make it more convenient and less risky to fulfill their sexual desires. This ended up being called the Sexual Revolution.
My point is that it makes no sense to say that leftism as a whole is suspect because some leftists are pedophiles.
As for the Sexual Revolution specifically, I am sure that you could have removed every single leftist pedophile who existed back then and the Sexual Revolution would still have happened almost entirely the same as it actually happened historically.
Well you've successfully defeated the argument that I was not making, thank you for correcting the record.
Of course if you only remove the pedophiles you're not resolving 100% of the issue. If American universities started purging pro-pedophile thinkers from their programs like European institutions Russian-related material after 2022, there would be a lot less progressive propaganda going around.
As the meme goes, 'first they came for the pedophiles, and I did not speak out, because I was not a pedophile...'
'(...) then they stopped coming because every problem had basically been resolved'.
Yes, but my comment was addressing the arguments being debated in this thread as a whole, not just your particular comment.
Regarding your particular comment, I thought that you were implying that pedophile leftists were the main driving force behind the Sexual Revolution. If I misunderstood that, then my apologies.
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