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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25653 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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Major NYT opinion piece dropped this week. At the time of my clicking on it, it was under the headline "Born This Way? Born Which Way?" It is a tour de force of Current Thinking on all things sex and gender, covering trans issues as well as sexuality. Given that the title is so evocative concering the topic of my recent AAQC, I feel like I can't help but comment on the current state of affairs. Let's start with the history of thinking on sexuality, since that's the closest link.

For gays and lesbians, social acceptance and legal protection came as Americans learned to see sexual orientation as an innate and immutable characteristic. When Gallup first polled on the topic in 1977, just 13 percent of Americans thought gay and lesbian people were born that way. Now roughly half do, and in many ways it hardly seems to matter anymore. The frenzied search for a “gay gene,” a very 1990s preoccupation, has petered out. Believing gay people had no choice but to be gay was a critical way station on the road to accepting homosexuality as just another way of being in the world, and no one talks much about it anymore.

And later:

...like many queer people, I had many different romantic entanglements in my youth, and had I not met my wife in college it is not impossible to imagine that I might have ended up on another path. I certainly did not experience myself as being born any particular way.

Among people of my generation and younger, it isn’t all that uncommon for women who were once married to men to later in life end up in partnerships with women, and I certainly have known men in gay relationships who wound up in straight ones and vice versa. These people seldom describe themselves as having “lived a lie” in their previous relationships. I think most of us know intuitively that sexual orientation is not binary, and is subject to change over the course of our lives.

Finally:

We ended up with the born-this-way model because of the tension between the seeking of rights for an embattled minority and the broader search for liberation. But this tension is ultimately dialectical — it contains the seeds of its own destruction.

She words it differently, but the conclusion is basically the same as what I had said - it was importantcritical to force people to believe in Dogmatic Position so that political victories could be won, but in the Year of Our Lord 2023, basically no one even bothers defending it anymore; they don't have to! The political victories have already been enshrined.

Unfortunately, that's about all that the article really says about the "born this way" narrative and the political history around it. Fortunately, it hits on quite a few other notes that are highly related to things I've thought about and said for a while. The article opens:

When I was in sixth grade, I made a decision that changed the course of my life. I decided not to try out for the middle school swim team. I know that might not sound like a big deal, but it was. As a grade schooler I was a standout swimmer — strong shoulders and back, and well-muscled legs that powered me through the water with ease and speed. I was disciplined, obsessive. My form was excellent. My coach saw potential.

Had I stuck with it, my life might have turned out pretty different. I might have been a popular jock rather than a lonely weirdo. I might have become a varsity athlete who won admission to a top college rather than a barely graduated teenager who had to take remedial math at a community college to scrape my way into a not-very-competitive school.

And soon after hits the high note:

We allow children to make irreversible decisions about their lives all the time, ideally with the guidance and support of the communities that care for them. Sometimes they regret those decisions. The stakes vary, but they are real. So what are we saying, really, when we worry that a child will regret this particular decision, the decision to transition? And how is it different, really, from the decision I made to quit competitive swimming? To many people — I am guessing most — this question is absurd. How could you possibly compare something as fundamental and consequential to one’s life as gender to something that seems comparatively trivial, competitive sport?

Man, I can't even blockquote it without thinking about how many domains this thinking touches on. I'm sure it's been remarked on here, and I feel like there was an SSC/ACT post or some other significant post here where people ruminated on life choices, regret, and the human condition of our walk through a garden of forking paths, where every choice we make closes off an infinity of alternate possible realities. Like, this is so core to the the human condition that it's hard to imagine subjects that it doesn't touch on. Nevertheless, I can't help but think about the hot button ones - abortion, consent, child sex, and economics.

Abortion

Commonly, in discussions of abortion, a divide appears concerning what sex is about, how important it is, whether it's sacred or whatever, etc. I feel like a common perspective that is expressed by pro-choice folks is that it is wayyy less important/sacred than they think their opponents think it is. This opinion piece talks of competitive swimming, but I recall people saying that sex is like a tennis game. It's just a fun recreational activity that a couple of people show up to do together; they both consent to playing tennis; they just have some amount of fun; then nothing particularly interesting happens. In the era of ubiquitous birth control, they think that sex is totally just like this.

This is used to argue that abortion should be totally fine, and the only people who disagree are some crazy folks who still think sex has some meaning or implies some responsibilities/consequences and apparently want to punish women for basically playing a game of tennis.

Consent to sexual relations

We start to see some cracks in the full-on sex-is-tennis position already when it comes to consent to sexual relations. Imagine your boss really loves tennis and decides that he wants to have some team-building out on the court. There's plenty of perceived pressure to play. Maybe you don't particularly like it, but you feel like you should just suck it up and play. It's not that bad. Maybe you could even learn to kinda like it. Besides, you likely have other parts of you job that you like even less (friggin' TPS reports are the worst). Lots of people might think this is kind of a stupid thing to be part of a job, perhaps somewhat unprofessional. Who knows? I hear that some people feel like they have to play golf to make that sale, and they don't seem to think it's terribly unprofessional.

Regardless of how annoying/stupid/unprofessional you think it is, basically no one would argue that it should be criminal. But we absolutely would if it was sex! It seems to be significantly different.

Child sex

When it comes to the question of whether children can consent to sexual relations, the dominant position is that it is just trivial that they cannot. I mean, sure, they can consent to playing tennis just fine, but sex is completely and totally different. Why? I've steeped myself in the academic philosophy literature on this topic, and while it's a thousand times better than the responses you'll get from regular Joe, it still comes in seriously lacking in my mind.

Westen doesn't take a super strong position on the topic, but likely grounds it in what he calls the 'knowledge prong' of what counts as valid consent. A person needs to have sufficient knowledge of... something... related to what sex is, what it means, what the consequences could be, the cultural context... I'm not exactly sure what. I don't think he did the best job of really digging in to details here. This is perhaps the most fruitful line of inquiry for future academic work for those who want to salvage a consent-only sexual ethic, but right now it's seriously lacking. Any work will definitely need to distinguish from tennis, because I see kids out learning tennis at our local courts somewhat regularly, and they can hardly be said to understand the risks/cultural context/etc. of tennis any more than could be said for sex.

Wertheimer, on the other hand, doesn't even attempt a theoretical explanation for why children cannot consent. Instead, he views it as simply an empirical question of whether, in a particular society, children tend to be, on net, harmed by sex. The opinion piece writes:

[A]s categories, we experience [race and gender identity] in large part through the perceptions that others have of us, based largely on our outward appearances.

A disciple of Wertheimer might say that a large part of how children perceive sex, and whether they perceive it as harmful or not, may depend on the perceptions others have of it.

Of course, either of these approaches opens up all sorts of cultural engineering possibilities. If we team up the "sex is like tennis" folks with the "comprehensive sex education as early as possible" folks, it's easy to imagine how society could change to one where children learn the requisite knowledge and are not, on net, harmed by the sex that they do consent to. Some folks might cheer on this result, saying that society would be immeasurably improved to the point that it unlocks this new world of possible good things... but the "it is trivially true that children cannot possibly consent to sex" crowd would certainly disagree.

Economics

I don't have a better subtitle for this section, but my thoughts here are background shaded by the free market, Marginal Revolution style economics, which emphasizes that it's important to let people make choices, even ones that they end up deeply regretting. "Capitalism is not a profit system; it's a profit and loss system," they say. You have to let people choose to try things that may succeed and make them a boatload of money... but which may also fail and lose them a boadload of money. This is often justified by placing a possible governing agent in a position of ignorance - you just don't know ahead of time which choices are going to be spectacular failures and which are going to be spectacular successes. Pushing in an even more libertarian direction, many folks want to say that we should just let people do the most harmful of drugs, even though we can be 99.99% sure that it is destined to end in pain and hardship. The article wants to have a sense of this for individual gender choices. 'You know what? Even if they regret it, we need to let them choose, because we're in a position of ignorance.' The article begins concluding with:

I understand the impulse to protect children from regret. The fantasy of limitless possibility is alluring — who wouldn’t want that for their child? To forestall, for as long as possible, throwing the switches that will determine your destination in life, is tempting. But a life without choosing is not a human life.

Hits a bit different after a section on child sex, though.

Closing Thoughts

I don't have a nice tidy bow to put on this package. I have my personal beliefs1, but I don't have a nice clean way to just directly put together a story connecting these things in a way that will please any particular reader with their own inclinations on the various questions involved. Mostly, it just really stands out to me that lots of people have completely contradictory opinions, at their conceptual core, when we try to apply them to all of the above problem domains. I don't think it's "just the outgroup", either. I think we need careful work and reflection across problem sets to help people understand where their positions are sounding hypocritical and why there are serious, huge problems here that are fundamental to the human condition. Reductive slogans aren't going to work. "Shut up and mouth these politically-acceptable words or you're an X-ophobe," isn't going to work.

1 - If you must know, I think the transgender ideology is near incoherent philosophically and anti-science biologically; I think abortion is wrong regardless of whether sex is like tennis; I don't subscribe to a consent-only sexual ethic and therefore don't think the question is of all that much import for whether children should be able to have sex; I generally lean pro-profit-and-loss capitalism and less drugs.

I am in the 'born this way' camp. I cannot recall any bios of people in which bi or homosexuality manifests after the age of 20 or so. It's always early in life, suggesting innateness. Maybe, in time, the left will come around to other attributes of humanity also being innate, like IQ. I think society would be better and people would be happier if we all accepted that individuals are wired differently, whether it's physical or mental attributes or other things. Although I am opposed to this, as this is tiny relative to overall population so the stakes are not that big anyway, stop trying to prevent other kids from algebra algebra in the name of promoting equality. This has way higher stakes as poor math education hurts US competitiveness.

I think one fundamental core issue at the heart of the trans debate is who or whom ought to have the authority to define key cultural concepts such as gender and sex. Is it the experts who have taken the time to clearly delineate the particular issues or the visceral/emotional reactions of the people who have to live in and with the consequences of the expert's decisions?

Apologies, a bit late to the thread, but I think this is missing an important aspect of the liberal POV.

I have multiple times seen essays* by people advocating for consent-based frameworks of acceptable behavior explicitly highlighting that consent and bodily autonomy isn't limited to just sex and that thinking that it is is missing the point. The examples given are using things like kids getting hugged or kissed by relatives should be allowed to say no to that physical contact and that kids should be able to opt-out of play-fighting at any time (I've seen multiple explicitly mention safe words for this purpose).

I think there's a very real chance that your ideological opponents when presented with your tennis hypothetical would think it was obvious that being forced into a non-work-essential tennis game with your boss would be unacceptable.

*Sorry, it's physically impossible to locate old Tumblr posts. I tried.

Mostly, it just really stands out to me that lots of people have completely contradictory opinions, at their conceptual core, when we try to apply them to all of the above problem domains.

It shouldn’t. People are not philosophers, and for much of history, people have not liked philosophers. While Aristophanes is much less famous than the ancient Greek criminal he sought to discredit, his most enduring criticism of philosophy remains woefully irrefutable by the modern secular intelligentsia: if you, O wise philosopher, are so far above the unenlightened masses and their uneducated taboos, then why don’t you simply fuck your mother when you’re horny (or your daughter, if you’d prefer someone younger, O wise philosopher).

People will tolerate challenging taboos to a point, but spend too long questioning why men shouldn’t just rape their daughters for pleasure, and you eventually drink hemlock. The Christians realized this and developed a philosophy with a mythology that catered to the sacred bonds of family, friendship, and romance. Thus they created a dominant culture that is, while surprisingly tolerant, ultimately incapable of challenging the primordial taboos: don’t be a hypocrite, and don’t betray the trust of those that care about you.

To put it more succinctly, you will never get a satisfying, rational justification for why you can’t have sex with your teenage daughter because one doesn’t exist. It is simply ingrained in us to be wrong, probably for the better, and we immediately cast aspersions on anyone that challenges these taboos too eagerly.

you will never get a satisfying, rational justification for why you can’t have sex with your teenage daughter because one doesn’t exist.

I disagree. But I agree that the problem of morals in general, including this one in particular, is an extremely steep challenge for rationalist atheists. Don't let them hear you say that too loud, though; they get super defensive 'round these parts.

I'm not 100% sure I know what set of beliefs you're referring to when you talk about rationalist atheists, but it seems completely plausible that the view that certain moral sensibilities are ingrained in (most) people as some sort of pro-social or pro-fitness evolutionary adaption would be under that umbrella. It seems rational to say that morality is based on vibes much more than logic, and the many attempts at applying logic to it can only be justified if you subscribe to the intellectual equivalent of the labor theory of value.

If you mean someone who believes morality should be a logical system that only presumes doing harm or causing suffering or whatever is evil, then I can see your point. I think the "in our society it's harmful" argument fits that framework, although of course that leaves open the possibility of it being ok in other societies.

Both the evolutionary and the milieu arguments are rational (as I understand the term) justifications for the daughter rape prohibition, they just don't rely on a from-first-principles approach to morality, which IMO is a good thing since such approaches are very stupid.

Sorry if this came off as a defensive rationalist atheist screed, I don't identify as a rationalist and have many issues with the movement. I just don't think it's fair to say that they can't defend a position that they largely don't hold. The rationalist position as I understand it is that there is no problem of morals, morality is subjective and it's largely pointless to debate it or point out inconsistencies in what the public feels icky about. That's also my position, so maybe I'm just projecting and your criticisms are valid.

The traditional philosophical inquiry is to simply ask whether what you're proposing actually satisfies what we mean when we use words like "morality" or "normativity". I don't think they do. Was slavery, owning other people as property, free to rape and do all sorts of other things to them, wrong? One usually wants to say, "Yes," and then must answer the question, "Why?" If we are restricted to saying, "Well, there could totally be other societies with different vibes where slavery is totally okay," it seems to not be very satisfying (besides still having to answer questions like, "How would we even determine the answer to such a question? Are we just looking at the state of affairs in the ruling class? Are we somehow constructing a measure that incorporates the opinions of the slaves? How would this project even work?"). Repeat with all sorts of slavery-adjacent things, torture, pedophilia, etc. If you want to say any of those things are wrong, rather than simply say that you personally feel like they give you bad vibes (due to whatever personal inclinations or formative experiences you might have had, which could easily be radically different in what others might describe as morally-abhorrent societies), then you need to at least attempt to answer, "Why?"

You seem to want to say these things are wrong in some objective sense, I don’t. The way you’re arguing this supports my view. You want to say some things are wrong, so you feel the need for an intellectual framework for saying so. Constructing an intellectual edifice so you feel justified in saying what you already believe is just the vibes approach with unnecessary casuistry.

I think we're in agreement. You don't think that one can say that slavery, torture, pedophilia, etc. is wrong with any normative effect.1 Most other people disagree, which is why they then go on to explain why they think that one can indeed say that these things are wrong, in a normative sense, rather than simply resting on their personal vibes.

1 - This leaves you in the unfortunate position that when you want to say that a pedophile shouldn't be allowed to diddle kids, you can pretty much only say, "I don't like it," without any rejoinder available to their response of, "So what? I do."

Yes, I’d just add that when other people try to give non-vibes reasoning, I see it as vibes with extra steps.

We start to see some cracks in the full-on sex-is-tennis position already when it comes to consent to sexual relations. Imagine your boss really loves tennis and decides that he wants to have some team-building out on the court.

Painting someone's house is unmistakably a normal job, but if your boss demanded that you paint his house, that would be inappropriate.

The actual criterion is how much the boss personally benefits. It's true that the boss probably enjoys playing golf, so his benefit isn't precisely zero, but it's probably not that hard to find a golf partner and the main benefit is the socialization, not the fact that the boss really, really values golf.

Painting someone's house is unmistakably a normal job, but if your boss demanded that you paint his house, that would be inappropriate.

Counterpoint: my maintenance man dad has done quite a bit of (paid) work on his boss's house. And, contra ControlsFreak's point about

Your boss is often also an employee of the company that is employing you. You're being paid to do work for the company, not for your boss.

my dad's boss is a small landlord — a guy who owns several buildings — and it's a "sole proprietorship"-type thing. His boss is the company. (Is there really that much of a difference, in this particular case, between "fix what needs fixing on this apartment building your boss owns," "fix what needs fixing on this house your boss owns and intends to 'flip' after it's fixed up," and "fix what needs fixing on this house your boss owns and happens to live in"?)

I think this is only partially relevant. It explains that your boss making you paint their house or offering career advancement in exchange for being a tennis partner is bad, but not why the same situation but with sex would be even worse.

I think the usual argument against such arrangements is not anything to do with the seriousness of sex or anything. Instead, it's about theft. Your boss is often also an employee of the company that is employing you. You're being paid to do work for the company, not for your boss. If he's getting you to do personal benefits purely for him, then some of your compensation (or hypothetical compensation that would need to go to your replacement in order to attract an employee into that position) would be misappropriated to his benefit rather than the corporation. Of course, principle-agent problems are everywhere, we can't always root out every de minimis misappropriation of benefits.

That said, we can widen the scope and even remove the personal benefit aspect without difficulty. Suppose the boss really wants to improve team cohesion for the team underneath him. He doesn't even think he needs to participate; maybe it would be better for the employees to build some camaraderie without any supervisory presence. So, he contracts a company to provide equipment and set up a little tennis "experience" that his team goes to, without him. There is still a lot of pressure for all the individual team members to go. Here, there's no misappropriation going to his personal benefit. I would again think that people might find this annoying or off-putting, but I can't imagine the response would be anything remotely like the outcry if he set up an event where the team (without him) went to a strip club... or an "orgy experience".

It is my impression that taking employees to a strip club was, if not common, not unknown either, before the women's movement complained.

I think there are two ways to proceed. Either we can tell the women's movement that their complaint is dumb, that sex is like tennis, and that we're going to reject their complaint and roll back to the world where sending employees to strip clubs is A-OK (and make this cohere conceptually with the rest of the project we're engaging in)... or we can accept the women's movement complaint, and, uh, figure out how to make it cohere conceptually with the rest of the project we're engaging in.

Regardless, I think you skipped right over the "orgy experience" hypo, and I don't think you're going to be able to minimize that hypo to the point of throwing it away completely by just casually saying that it's a dumb women's movement complaint.

Continuing the tennis analogy, I remember reading the story of some Dutch gymnast that ended up homeless after ending her career after an injury. She ended up doing survival sex work and she claims it was still miles better than the abuse she suffered in the gymnastics classes.

So I would argue that tennis (and other sports) with children, if you force them to play at the adult level is also bad. Yes, there's all kinds of ways you can stretch the analogy further (what is the child is really good at tennis and really enjoys it and thus isn't satisfied with playing with other children?) to make all kinds of inconvenient comparisons, but my point is that the original analogy kinda works, but it works in the opposite direction. We should be shielding children from more things, not less, because parents are either blind or willfully ignorant. My wife, even though she was and is built for it, was smart enough as a child to just sit down and refuse to go to the ballet school one day because she couldn't stand how the old hag would abuse other girls who just weren't as flexible.

Continuing the gymnastics analogy, Aella had recently an interview on trigonometry where she said she vastly prefers escorting and prostitution compared to factory work she used to do when very young, which made her drink too much. Where does the shielding end?

I agree with the OP that this is question of conceptual core beliefs and morality. I think that what we are going through a phase where we will see what are the real consequences of of shredding the old moral principles and replacing them with what we have now. What I find interesting is that between people like Rationalists, Sam Harris and even New Left the common theme seems to be pedestalization of maximizing utils, which means something like "minimizing suffering" as the new ultimate value. The methods may be different - rationalists prefer to think about themselves as professional surgeons who know how to not get emotions in their way. They know what is moral and they will do what is necessary to minimize suffering and maximize flourishing. The new left on the woke side pedestalizes compassion above everything else. They also want to maximize minimize suffering by means of compassionate justice.

I think this morality and aesthetics will bring us ruin, I do not think it is workable as a society-wide system. I agree with the OP that the whole theology is absolutely wrong, the focus on utils and compassion as the highest aim is not only wrong, but I think it is unstable as it was the result of the previous moral system.

Continuing the gymnastics analogy, Aella had recently an interview on trigonometry where she said she vastly prefers escorting and prostitution compared to factory work she used to do when very young, which made her drink too much. Where does the shielding end?

She seems like a very unusual person, and also I don't fully trust her. She seems exaggerate a lot for the sake of building up her rep.

This is something that will obviously vary a lot from person to person. But for what it's worth, I actually sorta got involved in a relationship with a prostitute last year. It didn't last long, but we're still friends, and I got to see how it affected her. Her normal sex drive was completely gone, she was good at faking it but she felt nothing. She was very happy to get away from anything like a "party" and just do normal stuff with me. She's since left that work and seems happier now just doing a low-wage regular job, even though it pays less.

They also want to maximize suffering by means of compassionate justice.

Care to explain?

I don’t think you could find a “new left”ist who would say compassionate justice is intended to make anyone suffer. You can surely find ones who’d say any increased suffering (by the outgroup) would be justified by reduced suffering among the ingroup—but then you’re back to an offshoot of normal moral reasoning.

Typo, I wanted to say they want to minimize suffering of course. Thanks.

Aella had recently an interview on trigonometry where she said she vastly prefers escorting and prostitution compared to factory work she used to do when very young, which made her drink too much. Where does the shielding end?

If 'shielding our children from future harm' is the excuse we need to bring back a strong labor movement and make factory work less stressful and soul-crushing, then it's a weird attack vector but I'm all for it.

Also: When you seriously write the words 'My opponents want to maximize suffering' is approximately the point where you should take step back from teh keyboard, look at yourself in the mirror, and ask whether you might possibly be stuck in a filter bubble that's giving you wildly uncharitable beliefs about other human beings.

I do think that my opponent's policies and behaviors cause more suffering than my side's policies and behaviors on average, but I would never say they want to maximize suffering! That's not even cartoon supervillain, it's literally cartoon Satan (because even the 'real' Satan is more nuanced than that!).

make factory work less stressful and soul-crushing

How exactly would you do this? To make it even more difficult, what steps would you take that don't just distill down to "work less"?

I dunno, I've never worked in a factory! Probably look at the website of any union of factory workers and they'll have a list of demands that make up a good start.

'Work less' is a perfectly fine answer, the division of profit between workers and capitalists is a variable ratio that's unusually high right now, every historical reason to expect that we could lower it by paying more money for less work without causing any problems.

But if you're rejecting that, there's still huge variance in how terrible a job is along other axes, things like how much autonomy and flexibility workers have, how they are treated by management, are they allowed to go to the bathroom, etc.

Again, see any factory worker's union demands, not my area.

Not that person, but below are several steps that immediately come to mind. "Work less" is also a valid answer to avoid damaging people's bodies and minds.

Allowing chairs for all positions it is safe to do so in. There's a lingering boomer right stigma against letting people sit down while doing their jobs even when it is unnecessary for them to stand. Making folks stand for no reason other than elite aesthetic sensibilities is just a petty humiliation for being working class, wears people out quicker, is harder on older folks and those with flat feet and so on.

More rotation of roles, re-skilling rather than de-skilling, so you're not stuck performing the exact same repetitive motion all day every day for life, or so hyper specialized that if the factory closes you have no transferable skills. Maybe Monday it's machine x, Tuesday machine y and so on.

Letting people listen to music, podcasts, etc using work issued headsets that are interrupted by safety alarms and the like. Cuban cigar factories also had (have?) highly popular lectors that would read books and newspapers aloud to the workers so they weren't bored to death. You had completely illiterate people enjoying and discussing literary classics.

Having workers clock-in on arrival before performing long security checks, gearing up and so on rather than wasting time at work unpaid during preparations.

Good points! I was pushing back a little since there are limits to how fun and creative you can make factory work, but I've always loved watching videos of how they function.

There's obviously some low-hanging fruit at many of them. Even adequate/pleasant lighting is something it seems like many miss.

Nobody wants to literally maximize everyone's suffering, but plenty of people want to drastically increase the suffering of specific groups.

Looks like OP just made a typo and has edited it.

This hits close to this widely downvoted comment I made on the topic.

I want to see people in the camp of 'sex is just like tennis' and even actually 'sex is just like tennis and tennis is a game you can play with a ball or not, and perhaps a racket but maybe not' explain it.

Why is 'groomer' a bad word to them? If open nudity, open fornication, children performing alongside adults in sexualized situations are all to be celebrated... then why not just admit 'yes actually we want to screw your kids' or at the very least 'if somebody else did we're okay with it'?

What is the contemporary justification that this is not okay?

If a father can be shamed for opposing their child dating somebody who is too dark, too male/female, or for deciding that they were the other sex all along... If a child rejecting the father's strict heterosexual, ethnocentric norms is to be celebrated...

Then why should progressives not shame a father for opposing their child dating an older adult who opened their mind about the beauty of inter-generational sexual relationships etc?

Then why should progressives not shame a father for opposing their child dating an older adult who opened their mind about the beauty of inter-generational sexual relationships etc?

They tried that already in the 70s, and you should never let them live it down.

Yeah, but OP managed to have a polite discussion without setting up a caricature first.

Why don’t progressives, believing X, endorse Y? The obvious answer is because X doesn’t imply Y. Consider some reasons age might be categorically different from race:

  • Children grow from young to old, but not from white to black. Judging based on the latter is less moral.
  • We already restrict the rights of children to engage in commerce and move freely. Imposing on another adult right is therefore acceptable.
  • Moral law, if one subscribes to any of the systems which proscribe pedophilia.
  • Without exception, adults were once children, but the reverse is not true, so there cannot be equality between adults and children.
  • The ever-popular power differential, which violates a consent-based ethics very popular among liberals.
  • It’s gross. You may not believe it, but your enemies are also capable of a disgust reflex.

Take your pick.

Consider some reasons age might be categorically different from race:

Race is not the elephant in the room, it's sex.

Children grow from young to old, but not from white to black. Judging based on the latter is less moral.

My point is that if schools, judges and the public can collectively go against parents for decisions their children take, why not regarding dating pedophiles. If boys can become women I don't see why white boys couldn't become black men if they so desired, or if Michael Jackson suddenly decided to identify as 'white', what the issue would be?

We already restrict the rights of children to engage in commerce and move freely. Imposing on another adult right is therefore acceptable.

Less and less in the area of sex change. There are progressives right now arguing that it's not parents' business if the kids want to see doctors and therapists, buy and take hormones, live in a safespace LGBT shelter etc...

Moral law, if one subscribes to any of the systems which proscribe pedophilia.

Which is my question, on which moral basis would a progressive proscribe the sexualization of children and pedophilia?

Without exception, adults were once children, but the reverse is not true, so there cannot be equality between adults and children.

What is the relevance in this case? Also progressives want us to believe that FTM transpeople are just as women as women that were ever only girls and women.

The ever-popular power differential, which violates a consent-based ethics very popular among liberals.

Then why is it okay for teachers and school administrators to tell kids that they can become girls/boys if they so wish? Isn't there a power differential there?

It’s gross. You may not believe it, but your enemies are also capable of a disgust reflex.

That was not a valid argument to prevent the legalization and acceptance of LGBT issues.

You asked why your enemies don’t do something. I provided a list of reasons. It only takes one for a progressive parent to stick with the status quo and say “fuck no, the kid diddlers won’t get my child.”

You might as well ask a Muslim how he can abstain from alcohol. Good Christians don’t drink to excess, of course, but how could a Godless heathen justify such restraint? He doesn’t even count 1 Corinthians as scripture!

Obviously, there is more than one way of coming to a similar answer. A Muslim has a long-standing, complicated tradition too, and it says no drinking. So, too, with progressives—and socialists, and fascists, and most modern Westerners—who have settled on one or another reason not to have sex with children. Removing your reason doesn’t leave us swinging in the wind.

I don't need somebody pretending to be ChatGPT to give me an hypothetical answer to a question when we have people here with the existing position to give us their actual answer.

You might as well ask a Muslim how he can abstain from alcohol. Good Christians don’t drink to excess, of course, but how could a Godless heathen justify such restraint? He doesn’t even count 1 Corinthians as scripture!

I understand that Muslims have rules similar to Christians and they follow these rules. They don't have to be identical to Christian rules' for me to understand where the Muslims are coming from. I can read a novel or watch a movie and disagree with a character's motivations and logic but still understand why they would undertake certain actions based on that character and motivations.

If we're discussing progressives, then we need to explain why they feel justified in saying certain type of gross behavior should be illegal when they've spent the last few decades telling us that people behaving in a gross manner should not be jailed or discriminated against.

So, too, with progressives—and socialists, and fascists, and most modern Westerners—who have settled on one or another reason not to have sex with children.

Well I'm curious to what that answer is, and if some kind of logic can be built upon if we want to understand the progressive's mind and where this ideology is taking us.

If we're discussing progressives, then we need to explain why they feel justified in saying certain type of gross behavior should be illegal when they've spent the last few decades telling us that people behaving in a gross manner should not be jailed or discriminated against.

Because in this case they see a reason other than grossness to make it illegal. It is certainly a progressive tenet, although one that many people who call themselves progressives often forgo, that one should not be punished only for behaving in a way that others find gross or distasteful. It does not follow that no behavior that others find gross or distasteful should ever be punished. AIUI (might be mistaken), the Bible forbids murder on the grounds that it offends God to destroy something that is created in His image. This rationale makes no sense if one does not believe in the divine creation of humans. Nevertheless, people who don't believe that still have reasons for wanting murder to be forbidden and prosecuted. It does little good to say "But you're fine with sinning against God's creation in this case [eating blood pudding], so why are you not fine with sinning against God's creation in this other one [mass shooting]?"

"Groomer" implies that the person is doing it for base selfish motivation (of future sexual gratification), when the people you call that believe they are doing it for the sake of the children and society at large. This is bound to be insulting to activists who come from a (sub)culture that denigrates selfishness and have built their internal narrative of purpose around doing what they are doing.

"Groomer" implies that the person is doing it for base selfish motivation (of future sexual gratification), when the people you call that believe they are doing it for the sake of the children and society at large.

"Groomer" has never been limited to sexual motives, and has always been used to describe manipulation/social engineering of the vulnerable for one's personal benefit.

Warm fuzzy virtue feelings are a personal benefit.

This is sort of true, but in the context of 'trans kids teacher lgbt disney grooming' stuff it's a haze of nonspecific meanings that mostly means the 'base sexual gratification' thing as opposed to the other meaning.

The accusation is neither hazy nor nonspecific, nor novel to this case. It is the common name for a pattern of behavior used to compromise the vulnerable, whether for recruitment to gangs or cults, or to enable emotional or physical abuse, or for sexual abuse. In all of these cases, the objectionability of the "grooming" action itself is distinct from the bad things it facilitates. Numerous examples of such usage abound, and have never been limited specifically to grooming for pedophilia.

Forming a special, secret relationship with a vulnerable individual and encouraging them to lie to others about the details and nature of that relationship is a profound violation of trust regardless of the motives. To do this from a position of formal power, as an agent of the state, is a profound abuse of power as well.

Forming a special, secret relationship with a vulnerable individual and encouraging them to lie to others about the details and nature of that relationship is a profound violation of trust regardless of the motives

You are conflating two things here. One is: a student goes to a teacher and tells them they are trans, wants to use the female name in class, and doesn't want to tell their parents. The teacher says 'awww sure of course sweetie'. Maybe they talk for three minutes at the end of class every other week. I think this happens for <10% of trans kids, but still does happen sometimes. The teacher plays ~no role, either in terms of direct causation or in terms of being a 'prime mover', in causing the kid to be trans.

Two: A teacher spends an hour plus every week or two talking to the kid about trans issues, sex, or porn. The teacher, causally and/or by intent, plays a significant role in the child realizing they're trans or deciding to transition. The teacher tells the child to not tell their parents. Maybe they themselves are trans, and like the idea of having more kids be trans, or maybe they just believe it because it's the wholesome LGBTQ+ thing to believe. Maybe the teacher also does sexual acts with the child.

I think two happens with <1% of the frequency of one.

Forming a special, secret relationship with a vulnerable individual and encouraging them to lie to others about the details and nature of that relationship is a profound violation of trust regardless of the motives. To do this from a position of formal power, as an agent of the state, is a profound abuse of power as well.

You are imagining that most cases of one carry some of the characteristics of the second, enabled by your engagement with the topic being very 'alienated' from the details of the actual people and causation involved. You're also imagining that cases of one are more common among trans kids than they are. Neither are true! To whatever extent children transitioning is bad, this paints a false picture that just makes it impossible to prevent anything bad from happening.

Maybe the teacher also does sexual acts with the child.

Why include this? I have explicitly excluded actual pedophilia from my statements so far, as it is irrelevant to the subject at hand.

You are imagining that most cases of one carry some of the characteristics of the second, enabled by your engagement with the topic being very 'alienated' from the details of the actual people and causation involved.

I observe that Blue teachers and administrators have put large amounts of effort into policies that specifically protect and enable your scenario 2, excepting the last sentence. I observe that scenario 1 would require no policy at all, but simply teachers keeping their mouths shut about something they've been told. Instead, these teachers have explicitly demanded lessons on gender identity, have specifically demanded a policy of actively facilitating queer expression at school while lying to parents about their kids actions, and their interactions with those kids.

I do not think such efforts would be necessary for <1% of <10% of interactions with a small minority of students, but they are absolutely necessary for the grooming behavior many teachers have publicly announced that they engage in, and that many more teachers and administrators publicly support and are taking specific steps to facilitate. I suppose it's possible that all these teachers and administrators are simply lying about the things they do, the things they intend to do, and the actions they support, when all they actually want to do is completely innocent and unobjectionable things. If so, they are too foolish to be allowed to keep their jobs.

I observe that Blue teachers and administrators have put large amounts of effort into policies that specifically protect and enable your scenario 2, excepting the last sentence

Can you name something Blue teachers have done that enables 2 but not 1? Ignoring the sex part.

Instead, these teachers have explicitly demanded lessons on gender identity

As far as I know, this is, like, one or two lessons per year in a group setting. Which is at most 1.

have specifically demanded a policy of actively facilitating queer expression at school while lying to parents about their kids actions, and their interactions with those kids

Again, this seems to be 1 to me. "Maybe they talk for three minutes at the end of class every other week" as opposed to, like, half an hour once a week or so. I think you need the latter for any grooming (in the usual sense) to happen.

I suppose it's possible that all these teachers and administrators are simply lying about the things they do, the things they intend to do, and the actions they support, when all they actually want to do is completely innocent and unobjectionable things. If so, they are too foolish to be allowed to keep their jobs.

I don't think they're doing that.

Warm fuzzy virtue feelings are a personal benefit.

That I think proves too much.

It's certainly possible for someone to do X so they feel good about it but I think that is stretching the personal benefit clause to breaking point. Otherwise any teacher at a Christian school who genuinely feels good about bringing kids into the flock of believers is also a groomer by your definition. It can't be anything to do with the fact they also actually believe the child will be better off as a Christian, or that they want the child's soul to be saved through Christ AND also feel good about it? In fact any teacher teaching anything who feels good about imparting knowledge is now a groomer? A patriotic teacher who feels good about teaching kids the national anthem and the history of standing up to colonial overlords?

At which point once more we have stretched the definition of grooming to nigh uselessness because feeling good about doing things you think are good is a pro-social human adaption. Most people feel good about doing (what they perceive to be) good even if they have other reasons for doing so (moral intuition, commandments from God, legal instructions to follow etc.)

It also suggests as long as we employ teachers who don't feel good about it, but do so because they are instructed to do so, would be A-OK? That seems a counter-intuitive take on the whole situation. "It's ok, we picked a bunch of teachers to teach the Gay/Trans/Sex Ed curriculum who really don't care about it at all, and in fact would rather teach something else, and thus will get no personal benefit whatsoever and therefore definitionally cannot be groomers" doesn't seem like it would be accepted as a counter-argument.

You seem to object to the technicality of 'grooming'.

But what if teachers did want to have sex with kids and did try to influence them to have sex with them?

They would proceed in the same manner that teachers are currently doing with the trans questions. They're finding the 'trans' kids and helping them come out to their actual identity that was hidden all along.

Except in this case they're finding the kids that just happen to really want to have sex with adults.

Not forcing any kids, just helping them find 'who they truly are' inside.

Would you be opposed to it, and on what ground?

But what if teachers did want to have sex with kids and did try to influence them to have sex with them?

Then that would be bad and then be grooming yes. Adults should not have sex with children, so I would oppose it on those grounds.

Adults should not have sex with children

Why not? What's your moral justification against it (and how does it not apply to puberty blockers)?

What about children with children? If the teachers were to have practical sex-ed organizing orgies between pupils? Perhaps filming for educational purposes as well.

Because I intuit that is wrong. If puberty blockers are a medical treatment for a medical condition then they are probably ok. But it would probably depend on the age of the child, the situation they were in and the opinion of medical professionals. I imagine sometimes they would be ok and sometimes not.

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At which point once more we have stretched the definition of grooming to nigh uselessness

No, we have seen people mutilate definitions and concepts to deflect criticism of teachers "hatching little eggs," because it's a bridge too far to justify grooming kids on the merits. You can tell that's the strategy being used because the response to "why is this teacher showing my kid porn and telling him he'd look sexy in a dress" is "woah, how is that any different than promoting patriotism, tu quoque!"

The only conclusion I can see is that it's a tactical argument to hide actual support for the grooming.

No, we have seen people mutilate definitions and concepts to deflect criticism of teachers "hatching little eggs

This mostly doesn't happen. There hundreds of millions of people so i'm sure it's happened, but >95% of 'trans kids' realize they're trans on the internet.

why is this teacher showing my kid porn and telling him he'd look sexy in a dress" is "woah, how is that any different than promoting patriotism, tu quoque

This is like saying Catholicism is a fundamentally Pedophilic religion because look how they cover it up!! Except actual generic pedophilia is 1000x more common (among both catholic priests and teachers) than teachers showing kids porn with intent to trans them.

According to a list compiled by the conservative group Parents Defending Education, there are thousands of schools in the US where teachers hide social transition from parents.

Most people probably only know the policies of a couple schools so it's hard to tell but this seems to be a pretty general movement across the US.

This mostly doesn't happen.

Are you against it? Or is the Law of Merited Impossibility striking again?

Would you be against teachers putting in the same kind of effort but to help their students hatch the egg of 'I really want to have sex with grown-ups asap'?

If yes, why?

see here https://www.themotte.org/post/780/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/166814?context=8#context

As I have said multiple times over the past so many years, I do not think there is a single trans person who should, from their perspective, socially transition or medically transition. I think the entire thing is dumb. I don't see why that means I must support whatever decentralized oppression mirage conservatives claim that's directionally similar to my position!

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Every time this issue comes up you excuse the teachers by saying it's mostly creepy discord moderators and tumblr influencers doing most of the grooming, but you don't ever talk about them except to dismiss criticism of the teachers.

And my criticism of SSCreader is that he is using the catholic priest coverup tactics while claiming to just be "(trying to) pull back the curtain on the culture war and discuss it, rather than wage it."
Why is he doing that?

Every time this issue comes up you excuse the teachers by saying it's mostly creepy discord moderators and tumblr influencers doing most of the grooming, but you don't ever talk about them except to dismiss criticism of the teachers.

This is assuming 'arguments are soldiers'. Am I wrong, at all?

Because I like arguing on the internet, and I think the position I am arguing against is incorrect, and here is one of the places we can argue very different things civilly. If I wanted to actually influence the world I wouldn't have quit politics.

You can tell that's the strategy being used because the response to "why is this teacher showing my kids porn and telling him he'd look sexy in a dress" is "woah, how is that any different than promoting patriotism, tu quoque!"

Yes, and that is why using groomer as an attack is effective and I have no issue with it. If I still worked in politics and worked for the Republican party I would certainly be encouraging its use. It is rhetorically impactful.

However here, we are supposed to try and pull back the curtain on the culture war and discuss it, rather than wage it. I am certain some people are defending actions that are wrong, just due to ingroup bias and tribal thinking. But that doesn't mean the vast majority of teachers who are trying to (as they see it) protect vulnerable kids from abusive parents are groomers.

No, I'm saying that you are using the tactic of confusing definitions into uselessness, in order to deflect criticism of indefensible behavior by teachers who get off on "hatching little eggs."

And I disagree, and say that the other side is confusing definitions into uselessness by using it as an attack against teachers with perfectly defensible behaviours.

Now what?

Otherwise any teacher at a Christian school who genuinely feels good about bringing kids into the flock of believers is also a groomer by your definition.

Any teacher at a Christian school who genuinely feels good about bringing kids to the flock of believers does not fit my definition. Neither does a teacher at a secular school who's real enthusiastic about teaching evolution. Enthusiastic teaching does not fit my understanding of "manipulation/social engineering of the vulnerable". It does not involve personal relationships outside the scope of the teacher's actual job, or encouraging the vulnerable party to keep elements of that relationship secret from those who care for and about them. Grooming for gangs, cults, and emotional abuse all center on such behavior.

Grooming is about establishing oneself as a secret authority figure over vulnerable individuals, outside the channels of one's official duties, thus guiding the vulnerable individual into forming and maintaining a double life insulated from normal mechanisms of accountability, about compromising the normal protections and safeguards we put in place to protect the vulnerable from abusive behavior. There is no excuse for such behavior on the part of public school teachers, no possible circumstance where such an action is reasonable or acceptable. Arguably, this holds true for all public servants. That is why so much of the controversy has centered around schools making it a policy to lie to parents.

At which point once more we have stretched the definition of grooming to nigh uselessness because feeling good about doing things you think are good is a pro-social human adaption.

Certainly it is true that when we ignore significant parts of the definition, what remains is less than useful.

It also suggests as long as we employ teachers who don't feel good about it, but do so because they are instructed to do so, would be A-OK?

Professionalizing fundamentally abusive behavior does not make it less objectionable. Personal benefit is attached to the definition because that is generally the only reason one would ever engage in such behavior, not because encouraging children to lie to their parents stops being objectionable when one does not enjoy it. The closest analogue would probably be a "handler", in the espionage sense, which goes to show how far afield one must go to find comparisons to this incredibly bizarre and objectionable behavior. I do concede that this would be a different behavior, requiring a different solution; in such a case, the problem is not the teachers, but the people giving them orders.

"Personal Benefit" is objectionable for the same reason a math teacher ditching their lesson and reading kids' fortunes for five bucks a pop would be objectionable: They're being paid to do a job, they're not doing the job, and instead they're doing their own thing to acquire additional value. They're double-dipping, in short, and the fact that the activity they're double-dipping into is egregiously objectionable just makes it worse. Deriving great satisfaction from doing your job is not objectionable. Deriving great satisfaction from not doing your job is extremely objectionable, and should result in the immediate loss of your job, and when one is a public servant, probably prosecution.

In any case, that is clearly not the situation we are presently faced with, since these policies appear to be a grass-roots effort by the teachers themselves, not any sort of carefully-planned or -deliberated policy promulgated through the usual legislative channels.

Do you think teachers should form personal relationships with their students, lie to their parents about the existence and details of these relationships, and encourage the children to likewise lie to their parents about such details?

A Christian teacher of an atheist child whose parents refuse to let them learn about religion, and who honestly believes both that the child would be better off being taught and that it would save their immortal soul has a good argument they should instruct the child secretly.

And even I as an atheist can accept that if they are doing so out of honest belief and faith, they aren't grooming the child. If they did so, instead so they could convert the child to some Opus Dei (?) style flagellation cult so they could derive pleasure from beating the child themselves, this would be another matter. But I wouldn't consider them a groomer, if they did the former but also got fuzzy warm feelings about helping save their immortal soul. And even if their conversion caused them to go to Church and be put in contact with an abusive priest, that is so far from what was intended that it can't logically be held against them.

I do also want to point out just because something isn't grooming doesn't mean it can't be harmful. If the Christian instructing the child is right, they have saved their soul (potentially), if they are wrong they will potentially have the child making choices that are not in its best interest and may have harmed the child's future prospects and damaged their relationship with their parents for nothing, but whether it is grooming is seperate from whether it is a good idea or not. I'm not saying what you are opposed to is necessarily directionally good, I am just saying it isn't grooming without specific direct nefarious intention of the teacher in question.

A teacher who honestly believes a particular child is trans and that their parents would be abusive if they found out, and so hides this and supports the child secretly, can in fact cause great harm if they turn out to be wrong, but I wouldn't call it grooming. Whether they are correct to do so or not entirely depends on the facts of the case. If the kid was trans, and their parents WOULD have beaten them and the kid would have commited suicide, then the teacher was quite correct to put the needs of the child over the parents right to knowledge. It's not always right and it's not always wrong.

Your point also leaves open that someone teaching your child within the scope of the school and not creating a relationship outside of the school one, if it is endorsed by the school, and is part of their official duties to keep it secret from parents, then it does not meet much of your criteria. If a school makes it a policy to lie to parents (as by your own example), then it is by definition part of the teachers official duties to do so. They are NOT operating outside their defined role in a personal context, they are operating within the accountability matrix of their school. You can certainly argue there should be some oversight process to this, where it is documented and perhaps the principal has to sign off on it, but they aren't operating personally. Now, can that be taken advantage of by the nefarious? Absolutely and that should be accounted for, but the idea that all of them are groomers is just a rhetorical weapon (albeit a good one!).

To put it bluntly, our kids are not only our own. Societal indoctrination and engineering is part of the purpose of schooling, whether that is into civic nationalism, Christian nationalism, Progressive ethics or whatever else. And that means teachers have a relationship with kids where they may be teaching them things we do not agree with, and must consider the impact of what that information being disclosed to parents will mean. Whether they are correct in any given case, depends on the facts in those cases, not some blanket rule. Sometimes the right thing to do will be to disclose, sometimes the right thing to do will not. If a group of hardcore Muslim parents are complaining that their kids are being taught that it's ok to be gay in a secular school, then I consider it completely appropriate for them to be told to keep their noses out, and if necessary outright misled, if that is the civic secular position. That's how you work on their kids assimilating towards the taught culture for the next generation.

Public servants are not servants of any particular member of the public, but to society as a whole, that means they can (and arguably should) lie to and mislead some members of the public in furtherance of the needs of overall society. Police can lie to members of the public, politicians can lie, spies can lie, all in furtherance to the public good. Teachers are no exception. Whether they SHOULD lie or not is dependant on the situation. But the fact there will be some situations where they should is I think definite.

To be clear, I am not saying they should always lie either, I think hiding things from parents should be thought through carefully, and there should be specific mechanisms for that decision to be checked at the very least at a school level and it may well be true that the dangers in this scenario are overblown. But I also think the criticisms of it are also overblown. Supporting a child that you think is trans or gay, and hiding it from the parents if you think it will be harmful, particularly as part of your official school policy is not grooming. Which doesn't, to repeat myself, mean that it is good. If the teacher is wrong, their decision may well be harmful itself.

A Christian teacher of an atheist child whose parents refuse to let them learn about religion, and who honestly believes both that the child would be better off being taught and that it would save their immortal soul has a good argument they should instruct the child secretly.

No, they don't. Saving souls doesn't work that way. Further, I defy you to show me an example of a Christian doing this, and our society accepting and enabling it as official policy, and then attacking anyone who objects. I do not believe for a single moment that you or any of the other progressive posters here would ever accept a public school teacher organizing secret bible studies for their students during their working hours, explaining to the kids that they will go to hell unless they repent and are baptized and become Christians, and that they should lie to their parents about all this, and justifying their actions as saving children from hell. Were such a thing ever done, the response would be immediate firing and quite possibly prosecution. If actual, serious harm befell children roped into such a scheme, the response would be apocalyptic.

And even I as an atheist can accept that if they are doing so out of honest belief and faith, they aren't grooming the child.

And even I as a Christian accept that they are, in fact, grooming the child.

I can show that my definition is commonly used for a wide variety of end-goals, including explicitly ideological ones, not merely for enabling pedophilia. I have described how the specifics of the act itself is innately and deeply objectionable, regardless of motives. The Progressive insistence that "grooming" is only used for sexual abuse is entirely specious, and it has reached its current level of fixation because Progressives would find it very convinient were it were true, have a sufficient megaphone to drown out objections, and have little compunction about lying early and often. I am not compelled to play along with the charade here, and so I decline to do so.

I'm not saying what you are opposed to is necessarily directionally good, I am just saying it isn't grooming without specific direct nefarious intention of the teacher in question.

Cult leaders can genuinely believe that their cult is in their followers best interests. We still call it grooming. Emotional and physical (as distinct from sexual, but them as well) abusers can genuinely believe that their abuse is in their victims' best interests. We still call it grooming. That the groomer's moral compass no longer functions does not make what they're doing not grooming. It doesn't stop being grooming if you think it's a really, really good idea: forming secret relationships with the vulnerable, secretly inculcating dependency, insulating the victim from others who care about and have a responsibility to them, these actions are part of a well-known and well-studied pattern, and they are unacceptable in all cases. The act is done with intention, and the act itself is nefarious.

Your point also leaves open that someone teaching your child within the scope of the school and not creating a relationship outside of the school one, if it is endorsed by the school, and is part of their official duties to keep it secret from parents, then it does not meet much of your criteria.

To the extent that this is made official policy through official channels, with all the legal procedures followed, the problem simply kicks up a step. The school system exists to serve parents. If the school system decides to treat the parents as adversaries, it should be promptly destroyed and all participants punished to the maximum extent of the law. To the extent that the law cannot accomplish this, then the law has failed, and it is time for more stringent measures.

You can certainly argue there should be some oversight process to this, where it is documented and perhaps the principal has to sign off on it, but they aren't operating personally.

It should not be legal for school employees to lie to parents about their children. To the extent that this is not actually legal, I would imagine it would be because no one ever dreamed that such a law would be necessary. Obviously we underestimated the nature of Blues, and should remember this lesson in the future as we work to patch up the walls of civilization.

To put it bluntly, our kids are not only our own. Societal indoctrination and engineering is part of the purpose of schooling, whether that is into civic nationalism, Christian nationalism, Progressive ethics or whatever else.

Indeed. To the extent that they are not my own, they are my family's, and beyond that my Tribe's. They are not the school's, and they are in no way yours.

We created the school system on the assumption that we shared a common understanding of the values to be indoctrinated and engineered. Clearly that was a terrible mistake, and it must be corrected immediately. Since indoctrination and engineering are a core part of the mission, and since the idea of strict neutrality in our purportedly shared institutions is clearly a pipe dream, either it must be my tribe's values being inculcated, or the indoctrination machine must be destroyed. Blues cannot be trusted with control of shared institutions; those institutions must be either captured or destroyed. Certainly it is not reasonable for my tribe to finance with our taxes an institution that treats us as an enemy to be defeated.

If a group of hardcore Muslim parents are complaining that their kids are being taught that it's ok to be gay in a secular school, then I consider it completely appropriate for them to be told to keep their noses out, and if necessary outright misled, if that is the civic secular position.

No, it isn't. The School exists to serve the parents. It has no interests beyond those of the parents. To the extent that parents' interests cannot be reconciled, the school should limit itself to those interests all parents, or at least the vast majority of parents, have in common. If this requirement cannot be satisfied, if the school cannot be prevented from picking favorites in deeply contested controversies, it should not exist.

If the school thinks the parents are doing something illegal, it should call the cops. If the parents are not doing something illegal, the school has no valid role beyond assisting in their parenting, according to their values. The school has no valid perspective, no room for values of its own, no principles, no point of view.

And again, if I am wrong, then the school's perspective, values, principles and point of view should obviously be mine, not yours.

And again, if I am wrong, then the school's perspective, values, principles and point of view should obviously be mine, not yours.

Absolutely! You'll notice I am not arguing that you shouldn't be voting for, or otherwise trying to influence what is taught, and why I point out you absolutely should use "groomer" because it does have rhetorical traction, even if i don't think its really accurate. Were I still a political consultant and working fir the Republican party, I would be hammering that hard in many places (while downplaying abortion probably). That's entirely normal! I am talking about the tactics here which can be used in service to whatever ideology. Indeed I think one of the reasons the US has a fracture in culture is because it hasn't been effectively mandating the same thing in every school in every state. Your whole set up is basically designed to not create a single shared culture/tribe, because Texas gets to mandate different things to New England or Oregon and vice versa. Your ideas about only teaching what all parents agree on would be even worse in that regard. You need cohesion.

I will disagree that schools are for parents though. They are for the whole of society. Thats the whole point. What I want from a selfish parents point of view is for my kids to get the most attention, to get the most resources, to go to the best schools regardless of anything else.

Society is the answer to a distributed coordination problem, that if we all attempt to horde the most resources, to ensure our values are the ones taught, that means you cannot have a cohesive polity. Its a hedge against our (entirely understandable!) selfishness.

And the deal is we are on average better off with the coordination even if some individuals and blocs do not get their preferences met. Instead our selfishness is channeled into a struggle for the control of the culture and institutions.

Your preferences are currently losing. But they won't always be. It's the nature of movements to push too far and then lose support. Thats how the more conservative bloc lost control to the current more progressive one in the first place. But they too will push too far and lose support, quite possibly over the very issue we are discussing.

The answer is not to flip the board (so to speak), it's to realise these mechanisms evolved for a reason and that in the long run we are all better off on average. My kids are adults now, and they were educated in many ways with values I think are incorrect. And that's ok! I still got my chance to put forward my values as well. They were still better off with a stable system, even if it wasn't my preference of stable system.

Biden has historically low ratings and it is quite possible (perhaps even likely at this point), you'll have a Republican president, probably Trump. If they back off some of the abortion stuff you have a good shot at holding the Presidency, Senate, House and Supreme Court all at once.

At State level places like Texas and Florida are pushing back against what you dislike in education, alobgside with electoral success. The feedback mechanisms exist to change the things you dislike and there is evidence, they are being used AND support for your positions (or at least some of them) is growing.

If you burn down the things doing what you dislike rather than fighting to control them, then your kids grow up in flames. I think you are absolutely entitled to fight for what you want (figuratively speaking) but if you aim to burn down everything, you harm everyone. To the extent your opponents are trying to do the same, they are also wrong. But mostly they are and have been trying to control the culture and institutions not destroy them. And that is business as normal.

Sorry, I've not addressed all your points, I've focussed on those I find most interesting, which has moved us away from the groomer thing. Though I'm not sure there is much more there to learn about our respective positions there in any case!

Surely some of these activists are acting on selfish motivations 'I shouldn't get arrested for selling hormones online to teenagers'.

'Huge moneymaker' gushed one doctor involved in sex-reassignment surgeries at Vanderbilt in 2018.

Is that doctor representative/typical of, or even represented among, those who loudly protest being called groomers? The vast majority of progressive activists do not operate clinics or hormone-selling businesses.

Why is 'groomer' a bad word to them?

It's historically been an effective weapon against advocacy for gay people. Activist PTSD?

Well this made me try and find out why exactly the LGB(T) organizations decided to distance themselves from NAMBLA & co, and from this single source, I don't really see a reason.

If anybody knows why in the 80s-90s, suddenly LGBT activists decided that kiddie-diddlers were not part of the coalition anymore, please let me know.

Here are 2 quotes from it:

In San Francisco in 1987, the Eureka Theatre Company—the institution that would later premiere Tony Kushner's play Angels in America—was positioned to march directly in front of NAMBLA. One bullhorn-toting Eurekan took the opportunity to periodically yell "We're not proud of you!" and "You're disgusting!" at the chicken-hawk contingent behind them. In New York, according to the Seattle Stranger, a sadomasochist group issued a press release condemning NAMBLA's "disgusting, illegal sex which brings shame to our community."

Both of these are pretty bewildering to me.

One argument that this article makes is that in some cases LGBT activists ended up on the same side as the diddlers because anti-LGBT laws were based on age of consent, ie age of consent for homosexual acts were higher than heterosexual age of consent, so lowering the age of consent was a way to bring about 'equality'.

Another argument is that making homosexual lifestyle illegal / disapproved of encourages adults to take advantage of teenagers in poor situations, and is less likely in a more tolerant society, so supporting people engaged in that lifestyle is not as important to the community.

it wasn't extremely unusual for a gay man's personal story back then to include a part like this: When I was 15, my parents kicked me out for being homosexual, so I hitched a ride to Castro Street, found a more welcoming community—and had sex with some of them. Precisely because gay relationships are more accepted now, that sort of background is much rarer; queer kids are more likely to stay home and happily, openly date people their own age.

In California, specifically, the law did (and still does) have a strict age of consent at 18, with the close-in-age exception only reducing the offense to a misdemeanor, dating back to the 1913. It was even gender-neutral, by text! But in practice, police and prosecutors overlooked the typical teenagers boinking; prosecutors focused on late-20s or 30-year-olds knocking up 14-year-olds, particularly severe embarassments of the upper class, and places where other sexual offenses would be complicated to demonstrate or taboo to discuss. Some of the limited tolerance for diddler-adjacent arguments in the 60s and 70s reflected the ability to deflect onto those less-controversial matters -- two sixteen year-olds giving handies may or may not be moral, but it was nowhere near the same class of bad behavior as the Breendoggle.

And a lot of the early US LGBT movement was from or downstream of California, so it had an outsized impact.

((There's a small remnant of this disagreement when people bring up underaged sexting, same-age relationships, and sometimes the libertarian ephibophilia paradox. But for wildly obvious reasons all but the dumbest of these groups now very clearly demarcate their positions.))

That said, the bigger cause was just that a lot of the modern understanding of child sexual abuse as damaging in itself, not 'just' gross or immoral or something done along with conventional physical harm, is a result of surprisingly recent research. Abuse before the 1970s could sometimes be further demonstrated by physical harm, usually in around a stereotype of a violent stranger kidnapping and dumping a victim, but especially outside of such extreme (and extremely rare) versions most of the focus remained on reputational harm or moral standards, because that was enough. Even in those cases, the victims were expected to not understand or even remember what was done to them. Corruption of a minor was at most understood as making these immoral acts tempting to the victims(!).

(This wasn't helped by the most visible groups for academic being the then-newly contacted non-Western cultures with ‘ritual’ abuse, which charitably investigators weren't always familiar enough with the language and close enough to the victims to hear about dislike, and less charitably associated a lot of less-immediate harm with other cultural practices/race.)

It wasn't until the 1960s that gathering serious information about the prevalence of child abuse really happened at an academic level (yes, arguably, Kinsey did it in the late-1950s, but he wasn't very believed and his methods and reporting were garbage), and the 1970s for a national standard to be set. This made studies of sexual abuse victims possible: rather than searching for extremely rare survivors of stranger rape, psychologists could argue that one-in-four women were subject to such abuse, and they could use standard study recruitment methodology.

When they did, they discovered what Reason euphemistically quotes a once-NAMBLA-supporter as calling "developmental issues" in tremendous quantities. This seems obvious in retrospect -- they were being attacked in some of the worst possible ways by trusted figures, early in their emotional and social development, often for lengthy periods of time! -- but it absolutely flipped the board. This is why you see even opponents of Breen during the Breendoggle focusing on character or mental health of the perpetrator with occasional mentions of physical risks, in a sense that is absolutely alien and repulsive to look at today.

From a more... cynical perspective, the growth of divorce in the 1970s also presented a very large number of extremely uncontroversial targets: perpetrators (almost all men) whose ex-spouses could now report crimes after having legally separated and achieved a level of independence, while those perpetrators could have potentially been awarded some level of custody during divorce hearings.

Thank you for the explanation. I suppose the issue with pedophiles is that they constantly need to get new recruits.

I feel like some of the 'harm' arguments could be leveled against MSM as well, but that's a different problem I suppose.

So it’s got a bad denotation, worse connotations, a history of being deployed as a smear, and everyone currently using it is open about their disgust and their philosophical opposition to the targets.

Rounding that off to lingering bitterness feels a bit disingenuous.

then why not just admit 'yes actually we want to screw your kids' or at the very least 'if somebody else did we're okay with it'?

Loaded question, they don't.

Anti-progressives keep acting as if "adults having sex with children is okay" must follow from "adults providing children with info about sex is okay" even as all trends point to high-and-increasing discomfort with the former idea among the modal progressive. It's motivated thinking. Meanwhile the most conservative societies on Earth generally appear to be very comfortable with adults fucking minors (child marriage in the open, child prostitution on the down low).

they don't.

Why not?

What is the difference between

  • A - a middle-school teacher giving a few lectures 'perhaps you look like a boy/girl but you're actually a girl/boy' and then asking every pupil if they want the class to start referring to them as the new sex (opposite to the one their parents put down on their enrollment form)...
  • B - a middle-school teacher giving a few lectures 'sex feels great, maybe we should all have some' and then asking every pupil if they want to sign up for an orgy instead of PE this afternoon...

It's all consensual, if a pupil feels uncomfortable about A or B, then they don't have to sign up. Parents don't have to know because they could be transphobic or anti-sex-liberated-kids.

If you have an objection with B because orgies are totally different in degree than the soft 'social transition' that progressive schools are facilitating all over the country, how about dirty talk?

If you sign up for B' then adults at the school are going to tell you how cute your butt looks or some other sexualized comments, and encourage (or even force) other kids to do so as well.

If you have no issue with option A, do you have any issue with option B (or B'), and if so, why?

Anti-progressives keep acting as if "adults having sex with children is okay" must follow from "adults providing children with info about sex is okay" even as all trends point to high-and-increasing discomfort with the former idea among the modal progressive.

It's more "adults who feel entitled to provide kids with information about sex that their parents would be opposed to them having (and, even worse, feel entitled to hide it from parents)" is a good description of how actual groomers work.

The insistence on doing this despite vociferous opposition from parents also doesn't help. Also a groomer thing - it's actually more understandable that they'd take the risk, frankly.

Conservatives know that most of these people aren't going to actually fuck their kids but they've decided to behave like zebras; through their complicity they weaken child safeguarding norms and allow actual sexual groomers to hide in their midst. While also basically admitting they want to push kids towards a certain political orientation that suits them.

Combine it all and you get "groomers". Probably not kosher in any sort of formal debate but it's not one and I'm not particularly sympathetic.

Loaded question, they don't.

You're missing the point, which is: why? If "sex is just like tennis" what exactly is the issue? If I accuse you of liking to play tennis with children, even if you don't, are you going to get outraged, and ask me how dare I make the insinuation?

Anti-progressives keep acting as if "adults having sex with children is okay" must follow from "adults providing children with info about sex is okay"

It's not that it must follow, but surely you can understand people's suspicions when the "info about sex" includes all sorts of kinks and fetishes.

even as all trends point to high-and-increasing discomfort with the former idea among the modal progressive. It's motivated thinking. Meanwhile the most conservative societies on Earth generally appear to be very comfortable with adults fucking minors (child marriage in the open, child prostitution on the down low).

Oh please, and this isn't motivated reasoning? I can also cherry-pick things like the Taliban's reaction to Bacha Bazi and contrast it with various child sexualization initiatives of the progressives.

You're missing the point, which is: why? If "sex is just like tennis" what exactly is the issue? If I accuse you of liking to play tennis with children, even if you don't, are you going to get outraged, and ask me how dare I make the insinuation?

This is a bad-faith gotcha.

To use the tennis analogy, you would probably find something at the very least off if Serena Williams casually challenged a middle-school aged boy who was curious about tennis but had no real awareness of it beyond theoreticals of how to play, then proceeded to destroy him because she's that much more experienced. Something about that would strike most people as fundamentally different and possibly bullying, since the absolute destruction he faces might turn him off from the idea altogether and leave him upset. But if the same boy played someone only slightly more experienced, that would not necessarily come off as problematic.

Likewise, sex between children amongst themselves might not be a pro-social thing, but it's not wrong because it's unlikely either is that much more cognizant of what they are doing than the other. Ditto on predation, both are probably just fumbling and curious without any intent to exploit the other.

On the other hand, if Serena Williams taught a middle-school aged boy how to play tennis by playing with him, I would find that wholesome. I would think the same if whoever hell is the male best player did the same with a girl. By contrast I can't concoct a scenario when anyone would teach a child about sex, by having sex with them, without the whole thing being predatory.

It is not a gotcha, it is not bad faith. It is a valid analogy/question.

Why can't there be a teacher, acting in good faith, showing a child/teenager how to use a condom or what a birth control pill looks like? Maybe even outright demonstrating sex to show how this looks in practice.

Put another way, the suspicion on any adult talking sex to a child seems like a practical line drawn to make the best of an imperfect reality. I think if we had a surefire way of knowing a person's intent, we would absolutely not have a problem with some people getting to depict graphic sex to children on the basis of teaching them what it's actually like.

Why can't there be a teacher, acting in good faith, showing a child/teenager how to use a condom or what a birth control pill looks like?

Because it violates the terms of the analogy. That's like teaching tennis by explaining the theory, demonstrating proper forms with videos and mannekins, or whatever. It can be a lot of things, but what it is not, is teaching tennis by playing with them.

Sure. What is fundamentally predatory about adult-child or adult-teenager sex which couldn't be negated if neither party is sexually interested in the other?

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If "sex is just like tennis"

That's an uncharitable summary that OP made of one section of one article taken out of context, not a universally agreed-upon progressive maxim.

To defend my level of charitability, I didn't actually present it as a summary of any section of the article. I said that I had commonly heard other people use an argument that treated sex like tennis in other arguments and that this setup reminded me of those arguments. The author of this article seems to think that transitioning is a very significant decision, often irreversible, and generally much more grave of a choice than deciding to quit competitive swimming. However, she does liken the two in one feature - both choices forever close off vast swaths of alternate possible worlds. And on that ground, she argues that we should let people make the choice.

I'm remarking separately that how seriously we consider things like sex are is often highly variable and unfortunately seems to vary within particular individuals depending on what type of argument they're wanting to make. We have no indication from this article concerning how serious the author thinks sex is in any of the settings I discussed. Nevertheless, all those areas still have in common the feature of making choices which shut out a variety of alternate possible worlds. I think the point I was kind of trying to grasp at is that we do need to think long and hard about the seriousness of the choice in question and a variety of other theoretical characteristics to come up with any sort of consistent rules for how far we can get just by observing that making choices shuts off alternate possible worlds.

However, she does liken the two in one feature - both choices forever close off vast swaths of alternate possible worlds. And on that ground, she argues that we should let people make the choice.

Well, perhaps I should have added a meta-layer where people are recharacterizing you characterization.

People are using you characterization of the belief to make arguments of the form 'if you would play tennis with your sister, why wouldn't you have sex with your sister?!?!' which does not logically follow from the limited formulation you offer here about them being 'alike in one way, but seems to be where most of the conversation has gone now.

Again, I would just point out that 'closing off possible worlds' isn't the only factor used in moral reasoning, there are lots of other reasons to oppose something.

And it's not charitable to say (which I'm not quite accusing you of, but it's where the overall conversation is trending) that if someone wrote an article about a single moral consideration and didn't talk about any other ones, and that singular moral consideration on its own has nothing to say about pedophilia, that the author must be in favor of pedophilia/is being hypocritical if they denounce pedophilia.

That's just a weird place to go to, and the movement seems more related to culture war rhetoric than anything it would be normal to conclude form the article itself.

If someone said that tax evasion was bad because it violates Social Contract theory, responding with 'Well, Social Construct Theory on it's own doesn't tell us why pedophilia is bad, so why don't you just admit that you approve of pedophilia?' I think we would all recognize that as an improper argument.

If someone said that tax evasion was bad because it violates Social Contract theory, responding with 'Well, Social Construct Theory on it's own doesn't tell us why pedophilia is bad, so why don't you just admit that you approve of pedophilia?' I think we would all recognize that as an improper argument.

Yeah, I didn't do that sort of thing, and I don't think anyone here is doing that, either. (I haven't thoroughly followed all of the discussion that has followed.) In your example, there seems to hardly be any conceptual link whatsoever between the two items. I attempted to construct a core conceptual link between several topics of discussion, which is ruminating on how seriously we take various activities/identities in different contexts and how that affects our willingness to simply let others make choices on those issues. I think it is that link that is sorely missing from your attempted analogy to Social Contract Theory/pedophilia. (Though if someone could come up with an interesting conceptual link between the two, I would be interested to hear it, not knowing yet whether I would ultimately view the link as compelling.)

You're missing the point, which is: why? If "sex is just like tennis" what exactly is the issue? If I accuse you of liking to play tennis with children, even if you don't, are you going to get outraged, and ask me how dare I make the insinuation?

Again, you may not have boiled it down to such a simplistic analogy, but the people I'm responding to did.

But:

Wertheimer, on the other hand, doesn't even attempt a theoretical explanation for why children cannot consent. Instead, he views it as simply an empirical question of whether, in a particular society, children tend to be, on net, harmed by sex.

You are acknowledging that, while Wertheimer isn't putting forward a coherent narrative on why children can't consent to sex, they are still strictly against pedophilia based on harm-reduction principles.

Other people ran with your statement to say 'since progressives don't have a coherent account of why pedophilia violates consent, they must be in favor of pedophilia and should just admit it'.

This latter stance is akin to my analogy, where they are looking at the lack of a consent-based (Contract-Theory based) reason to reject pedophilia and failing to find it, but not bothering to look at all the other reasons against it (harm).

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There are people who believe that, some of them are even in the thread. If you disagree with the idea just say it, rather than accusing him off loading the question.

We have been answering your question.

Your question for several iterations has been 'If progressives believe what OP says they believe, then they should also be fine with pedophilia, so why don't they just say they're fine with pedophilia?'

And the answer is, they don't believe what OP says they believe, so nothing following from that premise is material.

That's not dodging your question ,that's directly answering it.

I think what Arjin is getting at is that a lot of people believe something like "if two people want to have sex, they should. it's fun, they'll enjoy it, get some powerful emotional experience and deep human connection, that's what life's about, it's not your place to judge them". A conservative might believe something like "sex is sacred, it serves an important role in building families and having children, treating it casually undermines that and harms the people involved and society". The former is "like tennis", it's fun, you do it whenever you want. The latter isn't. My guess is you support the former and not the latter view, and maybe could continue the conversation by defending that view? I think people often get stuck arguing by throwing clever quips / weak-men / reductio ad absurdums / unexplained references to internally held beliefs at each other and never make contact with their actual disagreements.

You're the only person that answered me that doesn't seem to believe that sex is like a game if tennis. Cool, we agree. I'm interested in talking with people who don't.

Why is 'groomer' a bad word to them?

Because it's opposition to the concept that they have the legitimate right to change how your kid thinks about gender relations, just like how they freak out when you cut off the transition pipeline for children of non-progressive parents simply because it limits their political power (whether that will work as well as non-progressives think it will is, of course, an open question).

Then why should progressives not shame a father for opposing their child dating an older adult who opened their mind about the beauty of inter-generational sexual relationships etc?

Well, progressives already intentionally conflate men having sex with 5 year old girls with men having sex with 25 year old women, so provided that child is female they already act functionally identically to conservatives in this regard. If the child is male, that's a different story entirely; any negative effects are going to fall on the gender they already actively discriminate against so revealed preferences are that they're perfectly fine with advocating for this (the highest-profile cases of "children celebrated for doing sexually-provocative things" are male).

And... that's kind of the thing, isn't it? People tend to trot out "but that German academic experiment in the '60s proves progressives are pro-pedophilia" but that's a dishonest view of that; what that actually was, if you read the reports, were a bunch of evil women handing over boys (that nobody would miss) with the explicit intention they be raped by other men so they "didn't grow up to be Nazis". Same gender dynamics at play today, same justifications (with the occasional case of this expanding into underclass girls when the rapists pass a paper-bag test i.e. Rotherham).

The liberal counter to this is something seemingly-obvious but nobody ever brings it up for some reason: sexual attraction's a two-way street. "When demands for sex are unilaterally imposed in some way that takes moderate to severe effort to escape, that hurts kids?" That hurts everyone subjected to it, regardless of age or gender for reasons I really shouldn't have to explain. It's worse in this age category, since the number of group-unaffiliated people a kid will ever know is actually really limited, so the overwhelming majority of cases have the degrading "you should sleep with me because if you don't this will make things awkward with your folks/they aren't going to stop me from trying so I'll just constantly badger you about it until you give in" character that women rightfully complain about when it happens to them at work or other social gatherings.

The scenario where little Dan Savage successfully propositions his crossing guard crush, where tweenage self_made_human gets his milf, or any other scenario meaningfully-prefaceable by the words "Dear Penthouse," is arguably not on balance harmful specifically because disengaging from that if things go sideways is costless (which is the underlying assertion classical liberals are making when they claim casual sex is not actually bad, the room temperature for '70s sexual mores, why that view depends on birth control and no incurable STDs, why the double-standard exists between early male and female sexual activity, and why critics of this generally have nothing better than "but casual sex exposes society to dangerous [se]X-rays" as a rebuttal).

This is, as one other poster puts it, "tennis at a kid level", sex as a toy. Most people who manage it at that age, provided they're not lying on the Internet, seem to explain it similarly. No major cost-benefit analyses required, just yes or no. Sex-positive people, most of whom are men, tend to operate this way by default; their goal is to drive the price of sex so low as to inherently make all sex the kind of sex kids already manage with each other. Newlywed couples that are going to be long-term successful generally have this outlook on sex for at least the first couple of years, too.

What I am concerned about is that same kid whose parents intentionally deliver them into the hands of people who will sexually harass them (which was the justification for the original '80s panic about daycare workers, and part of why some people avoid public schools today), tell them they have a duty to give into the [revealed] sexual demands of their caregivers/family friends/family members (including and up to outright rape- usually associated with "Mom's boyfriends" and older stepbrothers), or whose parent tells them it's "stunning and brave" to be doing sexual things with people they'd rather not be in the first place, because that gets right back to the progressive genesis of "you should accept being fucked by people you don't want to be fucked by because man bad muh Nazis".

This is "tennis at an adult level", SaaS sex as a service. This is primarily cost-benefit (if the sex is pleasant is less relevant), be that for money, social status, social justice, retaining a significant other, friend, or other relationship, not being beaten, sleeping out in the rain tonight, or killed; or all of the above at the same time. Sex-negative people, most of whom are women, tend to operate this way by default; because they believe all sex is adult sex, their goal is to drive the price of sex so high that selling it once to a single man will set them up for life (this also squares with their assertions that women sleeping around doesn't devalue the sex they eventually plan to sell in this way, but most women aren't taking this to its logical conclusion).

(Which also properly explains how the feminist claim of "all sex is rape" is motte-and-bailey: the motte is that all sex is inherently of this type, and the bailey is that it's abusive that tops men don't just give bottoms women whatever resources they want for free. The claim of "sex work is real work" is the mirror image of this.)

But the modes of thought about this are important if any non-progressive actually wants to coherently unpack why what progressives are doing- which is the crime of imposing adult outlooks and an undue importance on sex onto people that genuinely shouldn't have to deal with that- is abuse. For the liberals, yes, you do have to accept the entire argument about sexual liberation; the traditionalists should probably keep in mind that this is why Biblical gender dynamics are the way that they are in the first place and re-emphasize that the entire point of getting married in the first place is that that is the best chance of having a relationship for which these dynamics no longer apply (even though they still do, it's a slower burn, at least).

Well, progressives already intentionally conflate men having sex with 5 year old girls with men having sex with 25 year old women

Sorry, what? If you’re talking about people demonizing age gaps among consenting adults, I think 1) that receives orders of magnitude less opprobrium than child molestation, and 2) it’s not particularly progressive-coded. High confidence on 1), but I’m not so sure about 2). I tried to look for sources, but quickly ran into a minefield of creepy subreddits.

If you’re not talking about age gaps, then I have no idea what you mean.

Anyway, I think you’re on to something regarding the unilateral demands. Adult-adult relationships usually come with exit rights that are missing from adult-child relationships. Given that we actively close off some of those exits by keeping kids with their parents, etc., we have an obligation to close off some of the avenues of abuse.

I wonder if there’s ever been a study comparing marital protections societies with and without divorce. That’s the elephant in the room for adult exit rights. I think marital rape laws have become less prevalent over time, which doesn’t really fit my theory…

Why do you think pedophilia is bad?

Their honest answer is probably pretty close to your honest answer, if neither of you are trying to play rhetorical games at the time you give it.

I think pedophilia is bad because kids are not adults and adults should shield children from sin by showing them what is right and what is wrong and by keeping them away from situations in which they would not be able to make good decisions.

Adults are to gradually give more responsibility to children to teach them how to behave as good Christians.

Even if a progressive leader (teacher or other) was persuasive enough to convince one of my children that they want to use their body with an adult, I would try and get them away from that situation as that is not what God intends for us to teach our children. Depending on how quick the progressive gets to them, they may not even have been taught about the importance of chastity yet.

I would not necessarily put a hard limit at 18 years old, perhaps 16 years old if my daughter is mature enough and the prospective marriage partner is an amazing deal... I doubt my son could get married at 16 unless he already has his own business running or some other proof of being able to support a family that would secure a wife that I would approve of.

I will not approve of fornication even after 18, because I don't think sex is tennis.

I think pedophilia is bad because kids are not adults and adults should shield children from sin by showing them what is right and what is wrong and by keeping them away from situations in which they would not be able to make good decisions.

If God said that sex isn't actually sinful, that was a misunderstanding, or was obviated by the new covenant: Would you no longer have any objections to pedophilia, or would you still think it was bad for other reasons?

My guess is you would still have objections, those remaining objections are your real reason for being against it, and you share those reasons with the people you're interrogating.

But maybe I'm wrong, let me know.

(note, this goes back to Penn Jillette's line about atheism and morality - religious people ask him why, if he doesn't believe in God, he doesn't go around raping and murdering anyone he wants. His response is 'I've already raped and murdered as much as I want to, which is zero, and if the only thing holding you back from that is your belief in God then please stay away from my family.'

I don't think that is the only thing stopping religious people from doing horrible things, I think their rhetorical reason is God but their actual proximal reasons are more about preventing harm and respecting autonomy and being a good person and so forth, same as everyone else)

If God said that sex isn't actually sinful, that was a misunderstanding

God doesn't say sex is sinful, as long as it's in the right context.

Would you no longer have any objections to pedophilia, or would you still think it was bad for other reasons?

I think that there are people who argue that God says things like that, and I do not listen to these people. The scriptures and tradition I choose to believe in are the ones that are congruent with my vision of what is true and right.

His response is 'I've already raped and murdered as much as I want to, which is zero, and if the only thing holding you back from that is your belief in God then please stay away from my family.'

Does he count abortion as murder? Does murder by proxy count? Would voting for abortion (or say, bombing Gaza) count?

Would any woman be able to #MeToo him (does he follow the Pence rule?) or is he the only judge of what counts as rape or what doesn't?

What about sterilizing people? Is that something wrong in the eyes of Jillette? Progressives get a lot of people sterilized these days, and they claim that it's all consensual and good, but it seems debatable to some.

I think their rhetorical reason is God but their actual proximal reasons are more about preventing harm and respecting autonomy and being a good person and so forth, same as everyone else)

Well there are wild disagreements on whether killing an unborn baby is murder or not, or whether sterilizing teenagers or MAID are a good idea, etc. One could also argue that Christians also believe that spiritual life is more important than the world, so avoiding offending God is more important than avoiding physical harm (ie hypothetically dying of hunger is better than taking the only available job at the abortion clinic, or more commonly, refusing to engage in sinful urges is better than enthusiastically embracing your 'LGBT identity').

The tennis people were honest about their view on child sex in 1977 and in 1979. This has only hurt them since.

To assent to this demand for honesty would be a mistake, politically speaking.

We start to see some cracks in the full-on sex-is-tennis position already when it comes to consent to sexual relations. Imagine your boss really loves tennis and decides that he wants to have some team-building out on the court. There's plenty of perceived pressure to play. Maybe you don't particularly like it, but you feel like you should just suck it up and play. It's not that bad. Maybe you could even learn to kinda like it. Besides, you likely have other parts of you job that you like even less (friggin' TPS reports are the worst). Lots of people might think this is kind of a stupid thing to be part of a job, perhaps somewhat unprofessional. Who knows? I hear that some people feel like they have to play golf to make that sale, and they don't seem to think it's terribly unprofessional.

I think the resolution here is that sex simply has a greater range of possible 'significance' than most activities - which is to say that I don't think there a reason one could not argue that some consensual 'transactional' sex is not vastly different to a game of tennis, where in other contexts (be that positive or negative) it can carry greater meaning. A potential analogy here is alcohol consumption - my going to the pub carries almost no significance, but if an employer forced a Muslim employee to drink that would clearly be unacceptable in a manner far more serious than compulsory tennis - we all accept that in different contexts the activity can carry different weight.

You smuggled in the argument that "sex is sacred" and therefore not at all like tennis. But then tennis people should just say it: sex absolutely is like tennis and it should be okay for children to have sex with adults was it not for all those pesky people who wrongly think that sex is sacred. But don't worry, as soon as we work a little bit on that opposition we will gladly accept child sex as new normal and embrace groomer as proud moniker.

Maybe the argument is that they will obviously not do that for political and strategic reasons. Something the NYT article gloats about: haha, we lied about gays being born that way to fool conservatives into accepting new laws. Now when we have majority and conservatives are eating dust, we can finally say what we wanted all along. And by the way trust us, the sexual liberation will definitely stop before full acceptance of Minor Attracted Persons (wink, wink hahaha).

I keep meaning to make a post about the dichotomy between what I think of as "private reasons" (the reasons that convince some individual of some position) and "public reasons" (the reasons that might convince some group of some position) but this post will have to do for now.

For my part: I am probably about as SJW/Woke/whatever as they come in regards to LGBT issues in both a public policy and cultural norm sense. Separately I think it is exceedingly unlikely that either gender identity or sexual orientation are fixed from birth and have no connection to cultural factors. For clarity's sake I don't believe LGBT people can will themselves otherwise any more than I think non-LGBT people can will themselves LGBT but I do think there are cultural factors that influence where on that spectrum one ends up. I suspect where I depart from many people who believe the prior statements is that I don't think of people being trans or gay as being strictly worse than cis or straight such that society or government ought to be oriented around the minimization of such people. That is, my "private reasons" for supporting LGBT people legally and socially aren't conditional on the immutability of the traits in question, from a cultural context perspective.

I suspect the reason immutability features so heavily in modern discourse is because it was a rhetorical convenience in the United States. At the time the gay rights movement was gaining steam the United States was in the midst of several other civil rights movements more closely tied to immutable characteristics (black americans and feminism). I believe there was a widespread perception (probably correct) that those traits apparent immutability was key to the eventual success of their movements. Tying LGBT rights to a similar notion of immutability was, therefore, a convenient rhetorical move (a compelling "public reason") to get people on board with LGBT rights in a similar way.

I think this dichotomy between "public" and "private" reasons explains a great deal of perceived motte-and-bailey/hypocrisy in our political discourse.

I suspect where I depart from many people who believe the prior statements is that I don't think of people being trans or gay as being strictly worse than cis or straight such that society or government ought to be oriented around the minimization of such people.

All things being equal, I don't think of being gay as strictly worse than being straight. According to some definitions of what "trans" is, it absolutely is worse than being cis, according to the very terms insisted upon by trans activists.

If one assumes that a prerequisite for being "trans" is suffering from gender dysphoria, it just seems obvious that not having gender dysphoria is preferable to having it. All other things being equal, I think pretty much everyone would rather feel happy with their bodies as they are, not experience a sense of profound distress when looking at their reflection in the mirror, and not feel any urge to hack bits of healthy tissue off their bodies.

Analogies with anorexia are no accident. Anorexia is a mental illness in which one experiences profound distress at the sight of one's body. It seems extremely susceptible to social contagion (particularly in female adolescents) and culture-bound (almost exclusively diagnosed in WEIRD countries). I want anorexic people to be treated with respect and compassion, and to get the best treatment available. I also think that being anorexic is obviously worse than not being anorexic in essentially every way, and it's irresponsible to promote or glamorise it.

You may be working off a definition of "trans" in which a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is not a prerequisite. This is long past the point at which the concept has completely collapsed into incoherence for me, so I can't really comment as to whether it's better, worse or indifferent to be trans (according to that definition) or cis. The "trans without gender dysphoria" cohort does seem to contain a disproportionate amount of vocal bad-faith actors, which is bound to colour my perspective.

I do agree that not having gender dysphoria is better than having gender dysphoria but I don't think having gender dysphoria is a prerequisite for being trans. Gender dysphoria is a common reason people are trans but probably not the only one.

And as I said, if "being trans" is wholly uncoupled from "experiencing gender dysphoria", then I'm not sure I even understand what it means to be trans. Maybe you're referring to "gender euphoria", which from context I can only infer is a euphemism for the sexual arousal that autogynephiliac males experience when performing femininity. All else being equal, I would likewise rather not be an autogynephiliac than be one.

I think of someone as being trans insofar as they have the requisite desire to change their sex. I'm agnostic on the ultimate source of that desire.

So in your view, is a person who "identifies as a member of the opposite sex/gender" but has no interest in medically transitioning a trans person?

I might need some more specification on what "identifies as" means but probably yes. I do not conceive of changing ones sex in the relevant way in purely physiological terms, maybe it would have been clearer if I had said gender.

I agree that everyone would rather not have gender dysphoria.

That's why we treat gender dysphoria with medical and social transition, so that it goes away.

There's pretty much no other treatment for any other major psychological condition that's anywhere near as effective.

I don't have time for the back and forth research game, but why the conviction?

How did major international reviews find the evidence to be inconclusive and low quality but you state the opposite as fact?

Some studies that have been held up as gold standard such as the early Dutch puberty blockers studies have been shown to have major methodological flaws such as not accounting for the fact that people would transition in the pre/post survey instrument, thus rendering some of the items equivocal/unreliable. Recent studies have shown that even on its own merits it is inconclusive on showing improvement.

I agree that everyone would rather not have gender dysphoria.

From which it logically follows that not having gender dysphoria (and by extension not being trans) is strictly preferable to having gender dysphoria, and that if social influences play any significant role in developing gender dysphoria, it's irresponsible to raise awareness of or glamorise it.

and that if social influences play any significant role in developing gender dysphoria, it's irresponsible to raise awareness of or glamorise it.

Not necessarily. If raising awareness and making it acceptable increases prevalence by Y% but also means that social stigma is decreased by X% (meaning people are treated better) and the chances of treatment are increased by Z% (as it seen as worthy of investment in treatment) then it could still be responsible to do so.

That entirely depends on the numbers for X, Y and Z of course (if X were very high it could still be irresponsible for example), but you do have to factor in the positive impacts as well as the negative in that scenario.

Right. I don't have comparable figures to hand for X and Z, but the Tavistock Centre (the UK and Ireland's only dedicated medical centre for treating gender dysphoria in children) saw a 5,337% increase in referrals for female children in less than ten years, which I'm largely attributing to social contagion/awareness-raising campaigns/glamorisation.

I'd be quite surprised if X and Z are 5,000% combined. "Social stigma against trans people fell by 2,500%" essentially amounts to every trans person in the UK being treated like some combination of royalty and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which doesn't seem remotely realistic.

which I'm largely attributing to social contagion/awareness-raising campaigns/glamorisation.

That of course would have to be part of the calculation, how much of that is social contagion vs people being willing to come forward with issues they would already have had but wouldn't have been able to get help with because stigma levels were too high.

For example with sexuality, I would suggest that skyrocketing numbers of people coming out, was down to a lot of people being more comfortable in admitting they were sometimes attracted to the same sex, rather than social contagion making people bi. I think it's likely with trans issues, because as you pointed out, they aren't treated as royalty still. The exact magnitude of each effect is difficult if not impossible to determine.

I don't think of people being trans or gay as being strictly worse than cis or straight such that society or government ought to be oriented around the minimization of such people.

To me, this is nearly a complete non sequitur. Why the sudden spike of people identifying as trans? Society is more accepting now for sure, but gay people have always been with us. Trans is something new, and certainly in these numbers. I personally believe there is a strong biological cause. I’ll place my bet on ingesting microwaved plastic daily. Actually looking for the reason would imply that there is something wrong with trans people and that they can be fixed or even prevented so I’m not holding my breath.

I think being trans is about as morally wrong as being deaf. I’d expect the federal government to do something in the case of an unparalleled epidemic of deafness.

I agree with most of what you say, though I doubt that you could have a genetic cause for a trait and have it increase at the rates we’re talking about. Absent a bottleneck, the rates of most genetic traits stay fairly constant throughout time and across populations.

I suspect we might be dealing with both social contagioun and environmental chemicals.

We have a lot of chemicals from industrial processes that end up in our food, in our water, and in the air. To the degree that these chemicals disrupt natural hormones and thus thus would change the development of a fetus, that’s going to likely affect gender and sexuality. At some point during fetal development, a male challis brain is flooded with hormones to make the brain masculine. But if you have something that either prevents this from happening or blocks the hormones, or blocks them in certain regions of the brain, it’s entirely plausible to have a male body and a female, or partially female brain. Exposure to chemicals that mimic this process might well create a female with a masculine brain (or partially masculine). Thus you’d have a baby with a brain-body mismatch that isn’t genetic, but is inborn.

On the social side, we have managed to give gayness the veneer of “cool”. Being gay is celebrated in liberal circles as brave, being true to yourself, and often celebrated in media and in public places. They’re given special status and what kids crave — attention and a feeling of special importance. If I’m a nerd, I get shoved into lockers. Low status. If I’m gay, I get protected from that, enforced by the teachers.

Why the sudden spike of people identifying as trans?

Why the sudden spike in people identifying as something that wasn't an identity in the past? Because it's an identity now.

There were very few authors before the invention of written language. There were very few basketball players before we started playing basketball.

It's not 'more' people identifying as trans, it's 'any', as it was not a thing you could identify as until very recently.

There have been various analogues in different cultures at different times, and we have zero accurate records on how common any of those were in their own times and places.

The comparison with the deaf community is interesting because my impression is there are absolutely members who would object to government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people, depending on the means. Maybe I ought to caveat my statement similarly.

there are absolutely members who would object to government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people

And they would be wrong to do so.

And they would be wrong to do so.

Doesn't that depend on the method of reduction?

It would be obviously wrong to murder deaf people to reduce their numbers, but would it be obviously wrong to reduce the deaf population by curing them?

I would agree that it would be wrong to cure deaf people against their will, but what if 30% wanted curing? Would it be wrong to reduce deafness by 30% in that scenario? What if more wanted curing but were pressured by the deaf community to reject the cure?

What if, in a world where deafness was reduced to an even smaller fraction of its current presence, librarians and teachers started encouraging hearing children to explore deafness as a potential identity so that it does not go extinct? Would that be noble and something parents needn't worry about?

I think you misunderstood me- deaf activists who object to curing deafness are wrong to do so.

I think you misunderstood me- deaf activists who object to curing deafness are wrong to do so.

Yes, I did. I read it as "government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people..." "...would be wrong to so"

I can see the scenario where hard-of-hearing children were previously beaten down on, presumed to be slow and inattentive while they're actually just worse at perceiving speech than others. Indeed, that appears to be the experience of at least 1 person I've read about. In that world, I think it would be better if teachers tried to identify children who might be hard of hearing and encourage them to explore "deafness identity" such as sign language, hearing aids and potential cochlear implants in the future. Not to "prevent deafness from going extinct", but to help those children live in society. If parents started to block this and insist their child is perfectly normal without any medical examination to confirm it, I would assume it's the common instinct of trying to look normal which is harmful when you're actually not normal.

I trust you have quotes, at least, from teachers who claim they encourage children to explore transness for the sake of it not going extinct?

I trust you have quotes, at least, from teachers who claim they encourage children to explore transness for the sake of it not going extinct?

No. It was a hypothetical starting with "What if..."

Don't you think that the liberal fetishization of minorities as ideals who are somehow superior to the normies is a real phenomenon?

That is my understanding as well. I really enjoyed learning sign language but I wouldn’t think twice about curing deafness in all newborns.

Thank you for your honesty. I have to ask, though, do you worry at all about any future backlash? That if people realize that the whole thing was a lie, an intentional one, purely for convenience sake to win a political battle, and that they were the dupes who fell for it... they might get angry and start not believing the other things you say in the public discourse?

Nah, lying in politics rarely creates backlash, it's too common and the public's attention span is too short.

Remember when we had those websites with rolling tickers of every lie Trump was telling with citations, and everyone just rolled their eyes and ignored them until constantly lying became part of his 'charm'? You could have made a ticker like that for most people and groups in politics, people care about results a lot more than they care about strict honesty.

If anything, it's telling the truth that most commonly leads to backlash, because it leaves you vulnerable and under-optimized.

Not the person you're asking, but, I don't think normal people think that way in general, and especially not when the facts are so nebulous to begin with. Leaked tapes and memos about lying to the American people about casus belli are one thing, but here, who's to say that people weren't just sincerely mistaken? After all, that will be the fallback position for those who bought what they were selling, and it's much psychologically easier to write the whole thing off as an honest mistake, since for the followers it was, rather than admitting that anyone was fleeced. No one wants to believe that about themselves and we will go to great lengths to invent and propagate narratives which do not paint ourselves as dupes.

Surely there is a potential for burning credibility depending on how directly one tells a lie.

The best kinds of public reasons are ones where you don't lie about factual information but rather construct an argument that follows from your interlocutors or audiences ethical premises to the conclusions you prefer. I think the potential for backlash in this kind of situation is low. You (hopefully) really did convince them their beliefs entailed your preferred outcome, even if it's not the argument that convinces you personally.

Being deceptive about facts is trickier. On the one hand you can blatantly and obviously lie and then you probably do not even succeed at getting them to endorse your preferred conclusion. On the other hand maybe you overstate certainty in some facts you are less certain about. The potential for backlash on credibility depends on how conclusively the falseness of the factual premise can be demonstrated. If I wanted to salvage the argument above, for example, I might argue that one's inability to change one's orientation or gender identity by will is sufficiently similar to race or sex that they ought be treated similarly, even if they are not as literally biologically unchangeable.

Being deceptive about facts is trickier.

This was pretty clearly presented as a factual question with a claimed factual answer. You were anti-science if you even thought that maybe it wasn't an obviously true brute fact about the world. This is why I think the potential for backlash is much higher and potentially more damaging to the already-abysmal state of our discourse. It's a meme at this point that when the left wants a political victory, they are not opposed to just making up facts, stamping them with the label PravdaScience (TM), and anyone who disagrees is just too stupid to read a book. It poisons society's truth-seeking mechanisms and does, in fact, lead people to just throwing up their hands and thinking that if Science (TM) is this bloody wrong all the time, they might as well just never listen to it. The even more recent, tangible example was the "masks don't work" noble lie. It took almost no time at all for everyone to realize that it was a straight factual lie, and the discourse never recovered. People simply turned their back on the whole concept that we could make factual conclusions based on solid evidence and that they could guide our decisions. Once you realize you've been duped, rational or not (depending on your definition of rationality), an extremely common game-theoretic response is to simply raise a middle finger to anything and everything the lying liars ever say again and simply reject the validity of their claimed methods outright.

If I wanted to salvage the argument above, for example, I might argue that one's inability to change one's orientation or gender identity by will

This wasn't really the argument, though, because it probably wouldn't have led them to the same political victory. Everyone knew that this was never the standard and wasn't going to be the standard going forward, because there are all sorts of desires/beliefs/what-have-you that people have that they can't seem to just change by will that we don't sacredly protect via pseudo-Constitutional magic. They had to enough of the bald factual lie out there in people's minds... this was "critical", the article says... in order to force through what they had so desired.

This is why I think the potential for backlash is much higher and potentially more damaging to the already-abysmal state of our discourse.

Does any of this expected backlash ever happen? The reason we have these bold backlash-tempting movements given prominent placement is that since the left controls culture and counter-culture and the media and basically all of the artificial incentive systems, there can be no backlash except directly from reality. And we're rich enough that we're well-insulated from that at least in the short and medium terms.

Child vaccination rates are falling since the rollout of the Covid vaccines. Here are a few sources: CNN SciAm NYT

Funnily enough in the SciAm piece they mention that polio was nearly eradicated except for Pakistan and Afghanistan. What they don't mention is that in those places confidence in public health was harmed by the CIA using vaccination sites to try to track down bin Laden via family DNA. Public health types are happy to point the finger in this instance though. Public health institutions aren't implicated, after all.

The NYT piece mentions a stunning 43% child vaccination rate in the Philippines, and partially attributes it to a dengue vaccine that turned out to cause more harm than benefit.

None of those pieces even hint at pushing the Covid vaccine for kids as a source of general mistrust of all vaccination. I can't find any mainstream media source that even tries to compare costs and benefits of this vaccine for kids, not even one that stacks the deck in favor.

Virus, or to be more precise, the response to the virus, really did a number on many areas in which human well being was improving. Today PISA, a standardized test organized by OECD, scores for 2022 were released. In reeding and maths they show a general decline in achievement of fifteen year olds. Finnish government says this is "unprecedented".

I don't know, but I don't think @Gillitrut's response will be, "I'm not worried about it, because my team controls everything."

I'm not sure Polgreen should be taken any more seriously than David Brooks or other op-ed authors, even in the limited sense of being a finger on the pulse off the LGBT movements/taxi drivers. I realize that there's a tendency for that sorta claim to be a No True Scotsman, but I'll point to this, not just that it's a weird focus (though it is) or that it's badly written (ditto), but just that it's more about Polgreen's psychology that anyone else's, even and I'd argue especially when those broader focuses would be more persuasive. People on her side aren't going to particularly dunk on those asides just because a) soccons already did, and b) the original subhead was so much more dunkable, but very much framed in the sort of way she could choose to retreat to vagueries about nonbinaries and bisexuals if/when challenged.

The flip side to 'she said her movement was lying for political power then' is that this only tells us that she was lying at least once. There's a hard question about how much movements in general are or even can be guided by principles rather than will-to-power, but there are at least some individuals where they're pretty clearly just-in-time rationalization.

That said, the deeper underlying questions are significant and important. The broader question of what, if anything, it is reasonable to prohibit, is actually a hard question in libertarian thought! It's easy for matters like third-party harm or the knowledge problem to turn on rationalization rather than impact, or for clearly coercive behaviors to be kept carefully out-of-frame for discussions. And while it can be tempting to exclude such temptations when discussing matters at positions of theory, the resulting policy combinations near-universally come out philosophically incoherent and politically impossible.

((That said, you can go even further that direction. There's an even-more-cynical position than Wertheimer's, where before considering the theoretical question of free choice, or even before the empirical question of harm, you just look at the pragmatic question of physical requirements. Mainstream liberalism isn't going to result in a lot of children having unsupervised time and privacy.))

When it comes to the question of whether children can consent to sexual relations, the dominant position is that it is just trivial that they cannot. I mean, sure, they can consent to playing tennis just fine, but sex is completely and totally different. Why? I've steeped myself in the academic philosophy literature on this topic, and while it's a thousand times better than the responses you'll get from regular Joe, it still comes in seriously lacking in my mind.

You can’t explain why they can’t consent to sex without reference to natural law, but even a tiny bit of natural law renders it trivial.

Go find a pair of eight year olds of the appropriate genders and explain sex to them in graphic detail(please do not actually do this), then ask if they want to have some. The reaction will be shock and disgust. And it should be disgust, an eight year old who wants to have sex is mostly because there’s something wrong with him to begin with. It’s simply contrary to the nature of a little kid. The logic of the German cannibalism case would seem to apply if you take even a tiny bit of natural law into account.

I think the intersection between the set of people who adopt natural law and the set of people who adopt a consent-only sexual ethic is possibly the empty set.

As I've said before, consent-only sexual ethics are so wholly inadequate that in practice nearly everyone who tries to adopt one winds up inventing a convoluted justification for why some aspect or other of natural law is actually about consent.

++ Wherever consent based sexual questions get hard, the consent paradigm breaks down.

I had my first boner at the ripe old age of 5 after watching a Bollywood dance number on TV. It certainly confused the fuck out of me, but soon enough I was humping my pillow because it felt good. I found out what sex was and fervently desired it well before I was at the legal age to have it.

At any rate, appeals to "natural law" would also rule out homosexuality, since the only thing worse than kissing girls to most young boys at that age would be kissing boys. Some might consider this a feature, not a bug, but I'm not one of them.

At any rate, appeals to "natural law" would also rule out homosexuality

This is increasingly looking like a feature, not a bug. Homosexuality's very low heritability has disturbing implications.

Why the hell would anyone expect homosexuality to be particularly inheritable???

I'm hard-pressed to think of anything that could be less inheritable, maybe a spontaneous point mutation or chromosomal abnormality that kills embryos when they're a week old, or at least something that makes you sterile.

I expect, historically, that most gay men (and almost all lesbian women) sucked it up and coupled with the opposite gender and spat out a few kids, assuming their imagination could override their penises. Even then, it's almost certainly going to have a negative impact on fertility, especially for the men.

The "gay uncle" hypothesis is rather dubious, and not particularly supported last time I checked.

Bisexuality could potentially be adaptive, in terms of reducing intra-sexual tensions and bonding. But overwhelming preferences for the same sex? Very unlikely.

You can call this post-hoc if it pleases you, but I wasn't even around in the early 90s when people were fervently looking for (and failing to find) a "gay gene".

I'm too tired to do a proper crawl, and this is a topic where Wiki can be less reliable than you'd like but:

The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and National Association of Social Workers stated in 2006:

Currently, there is no scientific consensus about the specific factors that cause an individual to become heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual—including possible biological, psychological, or social effects of the parents' sexual orientation. However, the available evidence indicates that the vast majority of lesbian and gay adults were raised by heterosexual parents and the vast majority of children raised by lesbian and gay parents eventually grow up to be heterosexual.

The last portion makes me dismiss what I assume are the terrible implications you're hinting at.

Not that I particularly care why people are gay, I find "Natural Law" to be a worthless concoction of mistaking commonality for objectivity (or at least "objectively good"), "applicable only when convenient to me" and the naturalistic fallacy.

I recall finding erections very annoying and wondering how to prevent them when changing out of my pullup into cartoon print undies at a young enough age to not really be aware of what 'age' was. I'm well aware that that system works at very young ages and that eliciting a sexual response is possible well before puberty. And I'm also well aware that boys start having sexual urges well before adulthood, but desiring sex before puberty is generally a sign of sexual abuse/grooming.

Yes, natural law rules out little boys having sex with males as well as with females. I'm not sure how that's a strike against it. You can make a natural law argument against adult homosexuality, and that is the one that's generally made, but I haven't made it in this case.

but desiring sex before puberty is generally a sign of sexual abuse/grooming.

Since my head is crammed full of minutiae for upcoming exams, I happen to know that the average age of puberty for boys in the UK is 12, but the threshold for which puberty is "normal" is 9 years there.

I doubt you had that latter value in mind, but it's still true.

For what it's worth, I think giving much credence to "natural law" for its own sake is incredibly stupid, and even those who appeal to it when convenient shy away from endorsing all that it implies, generalizing to the principle that the conditions and norms which were nigh universal throughout human history are thus inherently desirable. You don't see them advocating for 50% infant mortality rates.

at the ripe old age of 5

Show off!

I found out what sex was and fervently desired it well before I was at the legal age to have it.

Did you, though? In America, we have this weird legal duality wherein sex isn't illegal so long as you and the partner are both below the age of majority or both above. Normal caveats about state by state variation and allowances for 17/18 or 365 days age difference limits.

I'm not sure I can think of another activity like this. What is something else that's legal to do with other minors, but not when crossing the minor-age of majority threshold?

To be CRYSTAL clear: I am totally in favor of maintaining these age of majority laws and am zero percent consent-only in sexual ethics. The Trans movement, beyond its anti-scientific stance, has insane flirtations with the "minor attracted persons" predators.

Show off!

I did show it off to my parents, as I was gravely concerned by the new turpidity of an organ I'd only ever used for pissing. Sadly I can't recall their reaction, heh.

Did you, though?

In India? Absolutely:

According to the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO Act), any sexual activity with or without the consent of a person below 18 years of age is considered as rape and punishable by law1. The POCSO Act does not have a close-in-age exemption, which means that even if both the partners are below 18 years of age and consent to the sexual activity, they can still be prosecuted for statutory rape2. The POCSO Act is gender-neutral, which means that it applies to both boys and girls who are below 18 years of age2

This isn't really enforced all that often, usually, it's a threat applied by the parents of two horny teens to stop them from engaging in such non-sanskari* activities when they should be studying for the all important NEET exams 🙏. If the cops do get involved, unless one of the parties has some serious political pull, the degree of enforcement involves raking the boy over the coals for a bit, maybe a bit of slapping. I've never heard of a girl be prosecuted for this, regardless of what the law says. In more rural areas, getting married before the age of 18 is common enough, and nobody gives a shit.

But, according to the letter of the law, my pining for the hot MILFs I saw outside my school when I was what, 12? constitutes an urge to commit rape. Wouldn't have been me dragging them to court, if they'd been so kind as to oblige.

*roughly translatable to something that offends social sensibilities or cultural orthodoxy.

I did show it off to my parents, as I was gravely concerned by the new turpidity of an organ I'd only ever used for pissing. Sadly I can't recall their reaction, heh.

Oh God, that reminds me of the first time I got an inconvenient erection. I was 8 or 9 and my brother was 11 or 12 and I was getting dressed because our family was hosting a barbecue. I'd just finished putting my shoes on when my brother came into my room sporting a pants teepee and a look of confusion. It was something he'd just learned about in school - "a totally natural thing called an erection, and your penis does it so you can have sex with a lady." Since I read encyclopaedias for fun, he figured I would know what to do about it. He was mistaken.

"Is there a lady you are going to have sex with?" I asked, although I already knew the answer. I started thinking more intently about it, when suddenly our problems multiplied - now my pants were tenting too! Like all good farce it didn't stop there though - my mum's voice sang out down the hallway, our guests had arrived! We both froze for a second before I realised what to do - the teacher said it was totally natural right? So it's only a big deal to us because we've never seen it before!

We did absolutely nothing, and walked out into the crowd of guests both sporting massive erections, and didn't even notice how everyone gawped at us with eyes like dinner plates and desperately leaned away from us when we tried to hug them. Our dad, for reasons known only to him, waited until we'd made everyone present uncomfortable before taking us aside and explaining a few things.

That's some grade A Wagyu levels of cringe! If it's any consolation, I'm sure it hurt the onlookers far more than it did you haha.

Our dad, for reasons known only to him, waited until we'd made everyone present uncomfortable before taking us aside and explaining a few things.

I'd attribute this to the still insufficiently explored neurological process seen after paternity that makes dads suddenly far more fond of groan-inducing jokes, bad puns*, and gives them a keen sense of schadenfreude where they can reasonably expect the momentary discomfort won't actually harm their offspring.

*I can only pray that I haven't ever knocked up an ex who then hid it from me, because the former two are already well established.

I did not know that about Indian law.

Continue fighting for freedom boners, brother.

Don't take Indian law too seriously, we Indians certainly don't!

Continue fighting for freedom boners, brother.

I'll fly the flag at full mast, in every sense of the term ;)

Commonly, in discussions of abortion, a divide appears concerning what sex is about, how important it is, whether it's sacred or whatever, etc. I feel like a common perspective that is expressed by pro-choice folks is that it is wayyy less important/sacred than they think their opponents think it is. This opinion piece talks of competitive swimming, but I recall people saying that sex is like a tennis game. It's just a fun recreational activity that a couple of people show up to do together; they both consent to playing tennis; they just have some amount of fun; then nothing particularly interesting happens. In the era of ubiquitous birth control, they think that sex is totally just like this.

I don't know how many people agree with me on this but I do believe that Sexual Revolution didn't go far enough, sex is just a physical activity similar to tennis and the only reason it is not treated the same way is because prudes still have their way. More over puritan factions won in both the right and the left in spite of proclaimed commitment to the principle of sexual freedom in the latter one. Technology did solve issues that come with unrestricted love-making, we just need to wait for the culture to catch up(just in time for some other tech to disrupt it again). Some niche cultures are already there and make polyamory work quite well.

I don't believe this at all, and I don't believe you believe this, either. To illustrate, I'll simply take my favorite argument against sex-work-is-work: suppose you have a close family member of the opposite sex who starts a business. I would want to support my family, and so I would make a point to patronize the business, at least once if not regularly. However, if the business was prostitution or sexual photography, I wouldn't think that my patronage would be welcome, and I wouldn't dream of trying.

So I ask you, if you had a family member who started a business, would you support them? If it was a bakery would you buy a cake or loaf of bread? If it was a vineyard would you buy a case of wine? If it was a landscape business, would you get your weeds pulled? And if that business was prostitution, would you become a client?

It very quickly becomes clear to me that sex work is not work, and that sex is not like tennis.

What if your mom/sibling/dad was a therapist? Is therapy not work?

I suppose you could go in the other direction and say it is not. It's a paid friendship or something of the sort.

Therapy also has more emotional significance than tennis or any other physical activity.

And if that business was prostitution, would you become a client?

I wouldn't buy weed from a relative either but it seems pretty clear being a drug dealer is work of some sort. They aren't selling sex, they are selling sex with them. And if you don't want sex with them (for incest reasons or because you don't find them attractive/they are the wrong sex), but others do and pay for it, then it pretty reasonably has to be considered work.

Now I don't think it's like tennis, but exchanging sexual services for money does I think fall under work.

I was thinking more, and came to an uncomfortable conclusion that if my brother were a pimp, it's much more likely that I'd patronize his business than if he were a prostitute, and there's orders of magnitude of difference between pimp and drug dealer, too.

I'll admit that I don't have the most fully explained rubric, but my example reveals the difference I care about. Sex isn't tennis for the same reason we have a word for incest in the first place.

If my sister were an assassin, I wouldn't employ her because I think killing people for money is wrong, but if she is getting paid by the Mob to give snitches concrete overcoats it is pretty clear she is working for them. Some work can be immoral or illegal. Sex work is clearly work, even if you think it would be wrong for you to have sex with your sister paid or otherwise.

I'm perfectly happy to include obviously illicit "work" such as assassination or extortion as similarly not work just like prostitution.

It's still work though. Just because we don't like it, doesn't mean it isn't. Even the Nazis running Death camps were working. There isn't a moral valence to the word. If we need to specify we can say illegal work or immoral work. Or indeed as we currently do the more specific sex-work in this specific instance, then people can impute their own moral intuitions onto it as they see fit.

But trying to say it's not work is just flat incorrect I think. You can work as a prostitute, as a porn star, as an assassin, as a CIA agent, as a pirate, or a privateer.

Ok, let's isolate some variables here then, to remove the "incest" aspect. Imagine you are a father (sorry if you are, what follows might be upsetting to imagine), and your daughter just started a prostitution business; one day one of your coworkers says something like "whew, I've been horny these days, I wish I could get a little action tonight", do you enthusiastically direct him to your daughter, the same way you would if he said he was hungry and she was selling cupcakes?

Nope, but that doesn't mean it isn't work. If my daughter were an assassin and my co-worker wanted to hire someone to kill his wife, I also wouldn't give him my daughter's card. because I think murdering people for money is wrong. But if you are exchanging money for a service, whether that service is murder, sex, or making eggrolls, then it is work. It is just that some work can be illegal and/or immoral.

The reason I would be against my daughter being a sex worker is not because it isn't work, it's because I think it is a bad idea.

Is being a gynecologist not work because a mother would refuse to let their daughter do a pelvic exam on them? Or if you require opposite sex if a father refuses to let their daughter do a physical/prostate exam/colonoscopy?

That’s nepotism. If she’s driven to succeed in her chosen industry, any self-respecting mother would wish to stand on her own four limbs without having to rely on her son’s patronage.

This seems like picking the criterion to suit the conclusion. Was there some prior general rule that "work" was something you'd support if your family did it? So if a family member sold medical equipment or industrial mining equipment, you'd buy it?

My favorite argument is similar, but it focuses on the government instead of the family and therefore avoids your criticism: If sex work is Real Work™, then the government can use all of its regular powers to compel you to do it.

Prisoners can be compelled to do work; some clean up ditches, some fight wildfires, some stamp licence plates, and some perform Real Work™. Maintaining your unemployment benefits requires a reasonably active job search and accepting good offers of employment, which obviously includes Real Work™ for a significant subset of the population. Appearance/ethnicity is a bona fide occupational qualification for Real Work™, so obviously foreign workers will be qualified to fill the niches that locals can't.

If you want to go wild, they could even restrict who gets to do Real Work™ (even as an unpaid hobby) much like they restrict the practice of medicine, engineering, or law.

There are countless other ways that something would be changed by becoming "work", but those are the most obvious and objectionable IMO.

Prisoners can be compelled to do work;

Yes, we call that slavery and are also very actively against it.

The Venn diagram of sex-worker rights advocates and prison abolitionists is not quite a circle, but it's pretty close.

If you want to go wild, they could even restrict who gets to do Real Work™ (even as an unpaid hobby) much like they restrict the practice of medicine, engineering, or law.

Ok, sure? Prostitution licensing seems unnecessary, but maybe it would help get everyone in the system enough to fight pimping/disease/violence/etc. And maybe people could audit the classes at the trade school and pick up some useful skills.

Yes, we call that slavery and are also very actively against it.

As I said downthread, it matters what order you do your goals in. If you succeed in prostitution-is-work before you succeed in prison abolition (etc.) then the scenario I outlined becomes possible.

Also, knocking off one example still leaves my other two, as well as the countless others I skipped over.

Ok, sure? Prostitution licensing seems unnecessary...

That's not wild. What would be wild is defining a Scope of Practice that excludes non-licensed people from undertaking the listed actions, regardless of whether they are paid or not.

If you succeed in prostitution-is-work before you succeed in prison abolition (etc.) then the scenario I outlined becomes possible.

Perhaps, but that's just tactics.

My understanding of your original comment was that it was arguing that sex work is not work through the argument of 'We're ok with making prisoners do work, we are not ok with making prisoners have sex, QED sex is not work.'

If that was the point of the comment, my response of 'we not ok making prisoners do work' does dissolve the argument.

I agree there's tactics involved in avoiding the bad outcome you hint at as a practical matter, although realistically I don't expect it to ever some up no matter how we go about things because politics is ultimately governed by vibes more than logical formulations, and you whole point is about how those vibes are atrocious and unacceptable.

That's a whole different issue, though.

What would be wild is defining a Scope of Practice that excludes non-licensed people from undertaking the listed actions, regardless of whether they are paid or not.

Yup, it sure would be wild if we did that for chefs! Or writers! Or drivers! Or dishwashers! Or babysitters!

It would definitely be crazy if Scope of Practice laws were used to do crazy things for no reason. But that has nothing to do with sex work. Scope of Practice laws aren't used that way because, again, voters wouldn't like it.

My understanding of your original comment was that it was arguing...

I was trying to make an argument about policy, not fact. e.g. "A whale is a fish because you can catch it with a boat".

From a fact-based position, prostitution is a job, gang membership is employment, and hitmen are contract workers. From a policy-based perspective, that's irrelevant.

I don't expect it to ever some up no matter how we go about things because politics is ultimately governed by vibes...those vibes are atrocious and unacceptable.

For now. Aren't you trying to change the vibes?

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If sex work is Real Work™, then the government can use all of its regular powers to compel you to do it.

What if I reject the premise that government can compel people to work? I think both military conscription and prison slavery are morally unjustifiable.

Maybe that should be your first priority, then. The fact of the matter is that the government can compel you to work, morals be damned.

I think you are reaching here. In general governments can't compel you to do any work, save for a few exceptions. The european declaration of human rights for example carves out 4 exceptions: prison labour, military service, emergency service and normal civic obligations.

For prison labour you would have to make the argument that prostitution is a necessary part of the rehabilitation process, which seems far fetched. Also most countries already ban prison labour for non-violent offenders (the US is basically the only western exception) and prostitution with a murderer seems a dicey proposition (I would want a prison guard supervising it, at least).

For military service I think the prostitution would have to be limited to other members of the military to count. You couldn't make the argument that prostitution to the general public is military activity, for example. However you could make prostitution one of the civil service options for conscentious objectors. I'm not sure if you could make it the only option. Also most countries have already abolished the draft so most governments could only do this during war.

An interesting case is emergency services, actually. In Iverson v. Norway it was determined that Norway could compel dentists to perform dentistry (for appropriate remuneration). You could use this to redistribute prostitutes (which tend to cluster in big cities) across your nation's entire territory. You could also make the argument that incels represent a national emergency that needs to be solved. But what principle would you use to compel incels to have sex with prostitutes? Probably something about involuntary treatments.

Normal civic obligations is probably your best bet. The case law on this is pretty nebulous, it's unclear what counts and you could make it like jury duty. I suspect it would get shot down, though.

Fortunately I can care about, and make progress on, multiple political issues at the same time.

Unfortunately, making uneven progress on multiple political issues can create perverse situations like the one I've outlined above. Going from the status quo -> the government can't compel work -> can't compel + prostitution-is-work is fine. Going from the status quo -> prostitution-is-work -> can't compel + prostitution-is-work has a bit of a rough patch in the middle, to put it mildly.

I was being literal when I said it should be your first priority, and didn't mean to imply that it should be your only priority or your ultimate goal.

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It simply comes from asking myself what I would consider work, and how I would make the distinction.

And yes, I'd buy mining equipment from my family member, if I needed it. There's a bit of a difference between machinery that costs tens of not hundreds of thousands of dollars and a $5/month onlyfans subscription or $10 or bread from a bakery. But given I'm willing to buy the product from anyone, I'd prefer to buy from a family member.

"If you wouldn't have sex with a family member you don't think sex work is work" is one hell of a take.

Make it indirect.

"Hey, my sister just hung out her shingle as a prostitute. If you go sleep with her and use my name, you get a 10% discount"

Sure, on the internet it's very easy to say "Well, if my sister made that choice, I would happily support her!" But it's a little different when your friend Dave "the Keg" is asking for coupons for family member fellatio.

My mom is a psychologist and I would not want her to take any of my friends as patients (and I believe professional ethics would preclude it).

Lots of jobs are like this.

I have it on very good authority that people in Kazakhstan feel pretty much that way about family prostitution. See time 2:49 in this video for the proof: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YG7SHcVEJqI

This relies on an assumption of legitimacy of my intuitions which, in this context, I may reject. Might I intuit that it is gross that someone I know is hiring a family member as a sex worker? Should I feel that way? I may feel a "yes" to the first question and a "no" to the second. There are many things in life I have intuited as bad that I have later changed my mind about due to reason and reflection. Maybe this should be such a case!

If your intuition is wrong then it's wrong in the same way as the vast majority of the human race past and present. It seems unlikely to me that so many people in so many times and places would be wrong in the same way.

Frankly, I don't put a lot of stock in historical people's moral intuitions given the conclusions those intuitions led to.

This isn't meant to be argumentative. Because of the constant use of hypothetical statements, conditionals, and equivocation, I'm not sure what your point or position is.

I think sex work is work but would not have sex with a family member just because they were in the sex work business.

There's no starker way that I know of to show the differences between work and sex work. Yes, if you wouldn't subscribe to your daughters onlyfans, then it's because you too understand the distinction I'm making.

Care to engage with it at all?

You seem to be arguing against the position 'sew work isn't sex', which isn't an argument anyone is making.

Yes, sex work is still sex, with all the attendant facts and context about sex. All your attempts to point out how sex work is like sex are kind of pointless; yes, it sex work is sex, hence the name.

The claim being made here is that it's work. Not that it isn't sex.

Yes, if you wouldn't subscribe to your daughters onlyfans

Okay, first example that comes to mind, a middle-aged couple grappling with secondary infertility in the woman who already has an 18 year old daughter who is an ovum donor.

Do you think their refusal to buy her egg for the purposes of IVF makes that illegitimate? Or if she's offering to donate for free.

It's a ridiculous criteria, so no surprise nobody cares to accept it. The obvious answer is that most people are against incest, or at the very least have no interest in it barring maybe looking appreciatively at the tits of a cousin.

In what part of your scenario is anyone going to work? I wouldn't call selling eggs work any more than I would selling a kidney.

And I don't think, "being willing to take your father or mother, sister or brother, on as a client," is a bad first pass at what I'm getting at. Sure it lacks nuance, but it hits the gut check squarely.

I think there are many industries my family members might engage in where I would not become a client. I don't subscribe to anyone's OnlyFans currently, for example. Am I obliged to subscribe to a family member's OnlyFans so I think it's "real work"? More generally, what if they start a company in an industry I don't ordinarily patronize? We all use bakeries, but we may not all use whatever industry our family members start their own business in.

There's a line that judges sometimes use in oral arguments where they admonish counsel for "fighting the hypothetical". That is, the judge is interested in knowing whether a distinction applies in a certain situation, and they dislike it when the response is to avoid answering and to argue that that's not the situation we're dealing with.

It's a hypothetical. Fighting the hypothetical is a dodge.

Ok, so you don't normally hire prostitutes. Great. But let's say you did for some reason - after all, sex is just like tennis, right? I'm sure you don't normally pay people to play tennis with you either, but let's say you had a reason to do so on this occasion. Maybe you're training for a big match and you want to get some training in so you can perform well. Or whatever circumstance you need to make the hypothetical work.

Do you hire your sister the tennis pro to show you some moves?

It's also not a fair hypothetical unless you think there's no difference between incest and sex. There's not a different name for playing tennis when you do it with your family.

The indirect hypothetical has more to it but I also wouldn't hire any of my family as a doctor, a contractor, to clean my house, be my personal trainer, but I also think this also works from the other way around. A lot of people who are of certain professions wouldn't want to have to do it for a family member either and wouldn't want their family to participate in helping them financially, and it's probably very much related to shame but mixing personal life and work is just innately uncomfortable for some people.

It's a wide net though to catch shame and discomfort or government compulsion. If the idea is that it's fake in the sense that being a model, actor, streamer, artist, athlete, is fake either because it's something that people would do for fun or it's not particularly hard, then I get that angle a lot more but then I'm not sure what the validity is for. I'm sure a lot of people are ashamed of their relatives for playing videogames on twitch and wouldn't tell anyone about it or watch them do it, but a lot of people wouldn't read their novel written by a family member if they thought it was too prurient or violent or was just something they were culturally opposed to. I'm sure there are many people ashamed of family members being janitors. garbage men, house cleaners and wouldn't hire them or recommend them to friends.

Anyway, I think if the original hypothetical is as ridiculous as saying tennis and sex are the same it's not really helpful to just up the hypothetical up a notch and say that incest and sex are the same.

I mean, that's the point though, isn't it? The reason why it's fine to play tennis with your sister and not fine to have sex with your sister is the same reason why "sex work" is not just like any other job - Sex is Different.

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I do not think anyone engaging in adult consensual incest does anything ethically objectionable, if that's what you're asking.

sex is just a physical activity similar to tennis and the only reason it is not treated the same way is because prudes still have their way

If you lose a tennis match, you don't end up with a life-threatening disease.

This comment has me imagining a situation where every sex act has a winner and a loser, and the loser gets the STD.

Isn't that how it works in reality? Like the websites where women having affairs with married men are all crying over "so the guy who was lying to his wife and cheating on her and deceiving his entire family is now cheating on me/doesn't want to get married/is not, in fact, getting a divorce like he promised me for five years he was getting".

Well, duh, girl, what did you expect from a proven liar, cheater, and deceiver? Fire burns, water is wet, and he just wanted some fun on the side.

Hmm.

Hits a bit different after a section on child sex, though.

I’d be much more alarmed if such a section was actually in the opinion, rather than in the commentary. And I don’t get the impression Polgreen is dancing around the topic, or that she’s blocking out the obvious cognitive dissonance. This tension disappears if one doesn’t believe that sex and sexuality are like tennis.

Notice that Polgreen emphasizes the probable safety or reversibility of treatments. She has to insist that this regret won’t cross the line to sterility, because that’s intuitively no longer tennis. Once reproduction is implicated, the sexuality taboo applies, and she can’t endorse it for children. But so long as it remains on the “gender” side of the line, it’s fair game.

I believe this is downstream of an older strain of feminist, and more broadly liberal, egalitarianism. One is supposed to treat people the same, via rational assessment, after ignoring those petty intuitions which scream “other!” Sex-blindness fit right in to the same milieu that endorsed race- and class-blindness. Note that age-blindness never made it to the mainstream, and for good reason! Utopians assumed away illness, poverty and inequity, but the disparity of experience will remain.

Today’s lines of post-egalitarian argument shy away from blindness. I do find it interesting that Polgreen says “Maybe we should all learn to wear our genders, indeed, all of our identities, a bit more lightly.” A old-school sentiment, and one which runs counter to the modern partisan’s beliefs. Perhaps this is privilege speaking, but I’d have expected more caution from someone who makes her living off taking gender seriously.

I don't see a lot of emphasis on safety/reversibility. Like, there's one line in a parenthetical toward that end on one particular, but there's also:

The possibility that children might make irreversible decisions on this particular question that they later regret is, for many people, simply intolerable. Transition, to borrow a phrase, should be safe, legal and rare.

We allow children to make irreversible decisions about their lives all the time, ideally with the guidance and support of the communities that care for them. Sometimes they regret those decisions. The stakes vary, but they are real. So what are we saying, really, when we worry that a child will regret this particular decision, the decision to transition? And how is it different, really, from the decision I made to quit competitive swimming? To many people — I am guessing most — this question is absurd. How could you possibly compare something as fundamental and consequential to one’s life as gender to something that seems comparatively trivial, competitive sport?

and

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, in 2020, more than 44,000 people between the ages of 13 and 19 got a rhinoplasty, the most common surgical cosmetic procedure performed on teenagers. Thousands of kids went under the knife for chest surgery — 3,200 girls got breast augmentations and 1,800 girls got breast reductions, while 2,800 boys had surgery to remove breast tissue from their chests, presumably to help them conform better to their gender identities. Indeed, many if not most of these often irreversible interventions on children’s bodies are designed, in one way or another, to help children feel better about their appearances in a way that is inescapably bound up with gender.

Maybe not so much in this piece, but generally the "puberty blockers are safe and reversible" belief fills the same role as "gays are born that way" did - it's the factual belief that needs to be true for the social change to be accepted. So there's a huge amount of effort poured into insisting that it is true regardless of how strongly the evidence supports it.

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