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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27207 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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Where you see any "acceptance" of pedophilia?

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.

Yes, and these people lost as decisively you can lose.

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 :

Some people have called the book sexually explicit, while other parents said they want to see their kids exposed to people from all walks of life.

Why do school libraries need explicit sexual material?

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.

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.

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?

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.

This debate doesn’t need your strategizing. Stopping trans propaganda in schools sells itself; your catchy slogans aren’t needed, Don Draper.

Last week I described the educators who labor quietly and single-mindedly to further the tranny agenda as “worker bees.” They’re successful because like all worker bees, they’re banal. Yes, we all love to mock those “libs of TikTok” videos of freakish tattooed teachers with pierced septums. But they’re the minority. Think of every pro-CRT, pro-tranny school-board member you’ve seen. They’re ordinary people you wouldn’t notice at the grocery store.

They’re invisible, doing their work out-of-sight. They’re predominantly women, and they’re not trying to have sex with kids. They’re working with quiet, fanatical dedication to remake how children see gender and themselves, in service of an ideology, not their own personal sexual desires.

...

Why are kids getting brought to drag shows?

To own the cons. Hard to imagine something less sexually arousing and stimulating than "drag queen hours."

Why such concern about books banned from school libraries ?

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!"

which is the most thorough desexualization since the Skoptsy were a thing.

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).

Hard to imagine something less sexually arousing and stimulating than "drag queen hours."

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.

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.

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.

Hard to imagine something less sexually arousing and stimulating than "drag queen hours."

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.

How the Hitler Youth Turned a Generation of Kids Into Nazis

libraries were one of McCarthy's concerns.

It appears to me that McCarthy was right. Where else but libraries did the teachers get their ideas of transidentity?

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.

Amazon and other platforms are definitely removing different books depending on who is in charge.

Why do school libraries need explicit sexual material?

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.

the world won't end if they get some masturbation instructions as well.

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.

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.

Sex and violence are very different things

Yes, violence is much safer to indulge in and more easily controlled

That reminds me, I should probably write something about what constitutes an effective adaptation

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.

The “don’t say gay one” made some rather sweeping statements about things which I would not classify as “talking about sex.”

Right there in #3 clearly has the "sexual" keyword.

Prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in K-3 or if not developmentally appropriate. This is a central example of erasure.

Taking a random article quoting opponents of the bills:

Title: 'Don't Say Gay' bill would limit discussion of sexuality

Proposed legislation in Florida would restrict how teachers can discuss sexuality

critics — who've dubbed the proposal the "Don't Say Gay" bill — argue that it will strip protections from LGBTQ kids

The group Equality Florida

"This legislation is meant to stigmatize LGBTQ people, isolate LGBTQ kids, and make teachers fearful of providing a safe, inclusive classroom," the group said in a statement. "The existence of LGBTQ students and parents is not a taboo topic

Now, what are LGBT kids?

LGBT is an initialism that stands for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender".

Perhaps we need to dig further to understand what exactly that means for kids.

Wikipedia asserts:

A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl.[3][4][5]

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:

Wrong definition

A lesbian is a non man who loves non men, not only a woman who loves women, non binary and other non men identifying people can be lesbians.

We should stick to what the WP:BESTSOURCES say on the matter. As of writing this comment we are using the definition from Oxford Reference's Dictionary of Psychology, and Zimmerman's encyclopedia on lesbian histories and cultures. The sources you are referencing here include an opinion piece in a student magazine and a blog post in a "peer led support and advocacy organisation".

Are we seriously trying to suggest someone biologically male who does not ID as a woman in any capacity can be a “lesbian” just because they ID as non-binary?? Is this for real??!! I thought this crap only existed on Tumblr!

...

Changing the definition The article defines lesbian as a homosexual woman or girl, but that isn't really reflective of how the term is used widely since lesbian also encompasses homoromantic women and girls, and the article acknowledges as much a bit later.

A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexuality or same-sex attraction.

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.

Assuming that opponents are only “outraged” because they’re frustrated pedophiles is…uncharitable.

No, I'm showing that opponents are specifically outraged because their ability to talk about sexuality with schoolchildren is curtailed.

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?

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?

"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.

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?

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 Florida bill bans lots of things, including talking about sex. Assuming that opponents are only “outraged” because they’re frustrated pedophiles is…uncharitable.

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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