domain:cafeamericainmag.com
anti_dan
2hr ago
I mean, I would bite this bullet. Sex should result in children. People who disagree are discordant.
CrispyFriedBarnacles
3hr ago
I don't know; I think this is not responding to the actual argument.
I think most traditionalist Christians would say, you want a culture that treats sex like it's sacred and important. Abstinence only sex education might be part of that, but it pales in comparison for norm shaping to other forces. And the norm shaping in the 90s and 2000s, via Hollywood, and network TV, MTV, and the radio, was absolutely drenched in liberal notions about "sexuality" and "sexual liberation". (I'm honestly not sure where to put internet porn in this discussion, because although it shaped certain norms about behavior, I'm less clear about its role in normalizing public social roles about sexuality, and I suspect it played an important role in the #MeToo sex negative backlash towards male sexual assertiveness). I mean, I grew up in the religious South in the 90s. And all the Southern Baptist families around me still had to deal with the fact that their kids were marinating in a sexual culture being promulgated by a million vectors of national broadcast media, all heavily liberalizing, whether they liked it or not. Fights over abstinence based education were rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I think, given that broader media context, that sure, abstinence based education probably couldn't have worked. And it may well have been that kids from more traditional or religious households were less likely to be on birth control or have condoms and then, after amorous circumstances intervened, ended up getting teen pregnant. I don't know (although the other comment about the usual racial cofounder can never be ignored when it comes to the South).
If traditionalists say "tell them not to have premarital sex", they generally mean something much, much bigger and deeper than the contents of a stray sex ed class. They mean something like, a healthy culture in one where all the various sense-making institutions treat sex like it is sacred, and important, and something set aside, and not to be treated likely or traded like a product - and then people will respond to that and treat it thusly, rather than treating it like a trip to the amusement park with a new friend. Progressives deeply disagree with this, but they understand the impulse, because this is precisely how they feel about "racism" and "sexism" and "xenophobia" and "homophobia" - they get very, very upset if people treat those topics lightly, and they insist that all the various sense-making institutions that they control treat these topics as sacralized, and important, and set aside, and that everyone participate in their universal morality story.
Lots of cultures historically have had much more consensus on treating sex the way that traditionalists would prefer it were treated, including America in earlier eras (the fact of the pill coming into existing in the mid 20th century complicates this discussion, of course). And claiming that that never worked is probably a tall order, and disingenuous to boot, because the actual crux of the argument for most progressives, really, is not, "Did it factually work?" It's "I don't want to live in a world where sex is that culturally locked down and hidden away". Which is fine, but accepting that means abandoning the fig leaf of scientism and accepting that different groups just fundamentally have incommensurable worldviews and values.
anti_dan
3hr ago
Sympathy is just another word for bad public policy. People who are sympathetic are mostly just weights to be borne by the people. The less sympathetic a state is, the more functional it will be, holding all other things equal.
anti_dan
3hr ago
Below 100 IQ is improbable. Below the IQ of your average white male county judge is very plausible.
anti_dan
3hr ago
It's worth noting that Kagan, though she agreed on heightened scrutiny, declined to join the Court's low-IQ wing to assert that also the law failed under heightened scrutiny. Once again she shows herself to be, by a wide margin, the most competent jurist on the Court's left wing.
I will just chime in to agree with this 100%. Kagan is the smart left of center justice and it is not close. I think she might actually be the smartest justice right now. Gorsuch being younger has an argument and Alito being more concise also does. It is certainly those 3 though.
anti_dan
3hr ago
Gorsuch signed onto it, so I guess he must agree? Or maybe he didn't want a bunch of circuit court misreadings if this case ended up in a 4/1/1-3 mixed-majority. But the reasoning here's vague enough that red circuits can draw every other transgender case that isn't specifically a CRA thing (and maybe even some that are) as about Skrmmeti-like distinctions, and blue circuits can draw every other transgender case as more like Bostock.
People often forget SCOTUS justices are politicians. Gorsuch wrote Bostock when he was in a DC swamp that was overwhelmingly trans-triumphalist. He almost certainly thought he was HELPING by making it less of an issue. A few years later and its now basically mainstream thought that trans treatments for teens is the modern day lobotomy. He would not write Bostock again.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3hr ago
But I’m not sure this was the American occupation
They did rewrite the constitution to give women equal rights to men...
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3hr ago
The far-right (which includes most people on this website) views single mothers negatively, while the mainstream conservative view is very different.
This is wrong. The far right (especially the areligious far right) is much more negative about single mothers, but mainstream conservatives have never approved of single motherhood. They just consider it better than abortion.
Mainstream conservatives and the far-right agree that the welfare state serves to subsidize single motherhood, but only the latter thinks it's a bad thing.
This is wrong. Mainstream conservatives also think the welfare state subsidizing single motherhood is a bad thing.
I think in general you have an extremely reductionist view of rightists, such that you cannot actually distinguish between "mainstream conservatives" and "the far right." The fault line there is not how much they disapprove of abortion or single mothers.
anti_dan
3hr ago
Follow up question, does abstinence only sex education show any efficacy in preventing pregnancies?
Certainly not in the current welfare-state environment. It seemed like a stable norm, when combined with shotgun weddings, in previous environments.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
I'm ... skeptical about the Milgram theory in general, and for this behavior in specific, but even presuming that they're correct and generally believing the Beware Trivial Inconveniences theory
I personally know a parent that it happened to, and I met them by chance rather than activism. On the activist side as well "my kid said they're trans, so I took them to a psychologist hoping they'll talk through their feelings. Instead, I got a referral to an endocrinologist, and was told the kid will kill themselves if I don't give them hormones" is by far the most common origin story.
As others pointed out, it's not about trivial inconveniences, it's about preventing authority figures from pulling parents into something that goes against their better judgment. If they are willing to go to another state for the trans care, they were probably ok with it to begin with.
anti_dan
3hr ago
Pretty sure abstinence only sex ed resulted in the highest rates of teenage pregnancy
We'd have to fisk both sides of the claim, and I'm tired, but doesn't this sound to you like a classic case of where black population clusters also correspond with conservative Christian clusters (aka southern states)?
anti_dan
3hr ago
This strikes me as an odd theory based on the fact that married folks with kids remain the core of the Republican coalition.
The reality is position 2 is a compromise position because you go to the war with the army you have. And the army of married folks are very nice people who are uncomfortable letting toddlers and homeless people die in the streets to save 5% of GDP or whatever the numbers bear out to be. The married people also have been paying social security and medicare all their adult lives at this point and want that security they were "promised". Thus, entitlement reform is a losing issue. Not with me, presumably me and you could win tens of thousands of votes nationwide campaigning on a platform of eliminating Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, LINK, and all the other poverty-reduction programs. But that doesn't work for a party that wants to have presidents and congressional majorities.
So what do you do? You target the unsympathetic leeches like single guys age 29 playing lots of COD, because those are the cuts you CAN make. The alternative is you lose handily, the cuts you made are reversed, more foreigners are added to the roster, and they lop off a lot of penises and breasts of confused 15 year olds.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
3hr ago
I don't think you are actually distinguishing between them
I provided an example of how they differ, which you ignored.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
3hr ago
Where do you live that programmers are earning $50k?
Start job searching for an actual industry job. Again, really unappealing to me. The thought of presenting such a false image of myself as someone competent is quite repulsive, and I don't know that I have enough actual accomplishments on my resume to get any chances. I almost feel worse off than when I graduated, but I actually can't say I regret my decisionmaking.
A good industry position is quite cushy, although obviously not without the usual downsides that come with working for a big company. Who knows what will happen in 10 years.
What do you mean by "presenting a false image" of competence? If you write stuff you did on your resume, why is that presenting a false image?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3hr ago
given this place has always been more disaffected liberals than anything else
I think I probably fall into that bucket but it's funny because I've been turbo posting here for a week due to an injury keeping me indoors and I absolutely feel like my political/etc views are a minority
Maybe this is a recent development, but this place strikes me as profoundly right wing with a strong pro-natalist/Christian lean
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
3hr ago
Do you already have a bachelor's degree in CS?
I have not found that the CS bachelor's degree syllabus is particularly useful for becoming a good programmer, much less becoming a good software engineer.
I think the best way to become a better engineer is to find a good engineer and work with them and learn from them. At least, that is what I have always been able to do, and that is what I have found helped me the most. If you are the best engineer around, it's time to find a new role.
The job market right now is not good, and while I don't think it's a permanent downturn, it's not easy to move around. If you have connections, leverage them.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3hr ago
Putting everything else aside, flexing your upvote count on someone is profoundly cringe
Especially as this site has a pretty strong ideological bias, and like literally every website with voting, voting is 100% indicative of in-group/out-group agreement/disagreement and is largely unrelated to comment quality
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4hr ago
But your entire premise is wrong. The "far right" and mainstream conservatives both prefer people not to have premarital sex. (Okay, non-religious rightists only disapprove of women having premarital sex.) I don't think you are actually distinguishing between them, as evidenced by the fact that you label "most people on this website" far right. I realize to leftists, "far right" is anyone who votes Republican, but it's still a nonsense categorization.
They're stupid by the standard of Supreme Court justices. The late RGB, although I ideologically disagreed with her, could actually argue the case for a living, prescriptive constitution. Sotomayor and Ketanji are unashamed diversity-hires whose dissents are so embarrassing that I'd credit them to their clerks to save face.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4hr ago
I've participated in some dynamic, interesting stories while dreaming. I've threatened imagined entities with destruction if I choose to wake.
Nevertheless I agree with your main point that cognitive ability at any given point in time is not the sole criteria for judging right to life. Many are capable but evil and should be killed.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4hr ago
A significant portion of MAGA agrees that the issue with enforcing immigration restrictions are business attempting to cut costs. It's not a direct contradiction if his argument, there are several factions in the GOP, but the tension between them does make it a bit awkward for the theory that "the heart of the GOP" has zero interest in immigration enforcement. Vivek found out the hard way that it's not so simple.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
4hr ago
Can I just register my annoyance with this kind of boo-light? Yes, I am just as annoyed by "radical feminists" and "extreme leftists," which 9 times out of 10 is used to refer to normie feminists and center-libs.
If you read my comment more carefully, you'd know the whole point was to contrast mainstream conservatives with the far-right, who I recognize as distinct groupings.
Framing things in terms of "pro-single-mother" vs "anti-single-mother" makes about as much sense as being "pro-orphan" or "anti-orphan". You can believe that a situation is bad to be in and therefore want to help people who happen to be in that situation AND try to prevent people from falling into that situation AND not Goodhart the numbers by killing them.
DO: Help kids with no parents with money and support structures (without actively incentivizing the status)
DO: Try to prevent people from becoming orphans.
DON'T: Reduce the number of orphans by killing them
Really, a child of a single parent is just a half-orphan. Therefore
DO: Help single parent families with money and support structures (without actively incentivizing the status)
DO: Try to prevent people from becoming single-parents.
DON'T: Reduce the number of single-parents by killing them (or the children)
All of this follows trivially from the quality of life the child can expect, on average, in each state:
Full family > Single Parent Family > Orphan > Death
Whether you want more or fewer single parent families then depends on which direction you're coming from. Trying to pin people down into "pro" or "anti" single parents only makes sense if these were terminal ends rather than proxies for quality of life.
More options
Context Copy link