site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32849 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I've been doing a bit of digging and am having some trouble figuring out exactly what is going on. It seems as though the basic story is:

Bill amends definition as previously discussed. A bit of a stink gets kicked up about it.

A republican legislator (Niska) responds to that stink by proposing the amendment you link to, which passes easily. But it seems that the bill he was amending was a different one to the actual Take Pride Act (H.F. 447 vs H.F. 1655) I think? And as far as I can tell the Niska amendment language is not included in the current law: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/364.09

Not sure if the Niska amendment has just not taken effect yet or if HF 447 didn't pass or what.

I don't think you have the right law, you want https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/363A.03.

But it also doesn't have the pedophilia clause, and has additional wording that isn't in either revision:

A person may be attracted to men, women, both, neither, or to people who are genderqueer, androgynous, or have other gender identities.

If you look in the revisions you can see that there's only been one revision to that section in 2023, but it doesn't use the new language.

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/bill.php?b=house&f=hf447&ssn=0&y=2023 is the bill, and if you look at the current bill text, that text is not in it: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF447&type=bill&version=3&session=ls93&session_year=2023&session_number=0 . In fact, very little of the text is in it.

it looks like it was removed after the second version: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF447&version=2&session=ls93&session_year=2023&session_number=0

As best I can tell, once it got to the Senate they just completely rewrote the bill? https://www.senate.mn/journals/2023-2024/20230522077.pdf#page=824, if I'm understanding this correctly they just amended the bill to delete everything past "this will take effect" and wrote their own bill, which seems unbelievable, but... the bill passed, the text isn't changed, and the latest revision of the bill has the text they changed it to.

they just amended the bill to delete everything past "this will take effect" and wrote their own bill, which seems unbelievable

It isn't out of the ordinary. If you run a search for "Strike all after the enacting clause" in Congress, you will see more than a hundred such amendments proposed in the current session, and if you filter by "status of amendment" you will see that many of them succeeded.

Well, that's depressing.

So @PmMeClassicMemes, it looks like the text you linked to didn't actually go anywhere: the House passed it unanimously, then the Senate overwrote the bill with something completely different. I checked a couple of the legislators and it looks like Democrats voted to overwrite it and Republicans voted against it: it would not surprise me if the House Democrats who voted for the bill initially were aware this was going to happen.

We're left with the law essentially the same as what we were originally discussing, and the next amendment to that section, rather than clearing up the confusion, makes sure we're aware that someone can be attracted to genderqueer or androgynous people.

I'll continue to stand behind my original points.

Which is kind of more alarming if so - not only did they strip out the original anti-paedophilia language, but they also resisted efforts to put anti-paedophilia language back in. Just... why?

I don't understand it either- because the people who are behind that language also think pedophilia means "a relationship in which a woman is younger than a man", it makes no sense to explicitly protect that which they want to destroy.

As with straight male sexuality more generally, they have no wish to destroy pedophilia. Their desire is to exploit it to coerce pedophiles into supporting them in various ways.

Yep. You see this in all the sexology pedophilia discussion: the goal of "destigmatization" is to make pedophiles into a dependent ally accomplice class.

"Come out of the closet, it's fine! Oh, but if you ever stop supporting us you'll be thrown in a woodchipper by the other side, so you'd better stay a valuable party member ;)"
It's possibly the ultimate form of bioleninism.

I've checked the various pedophile forums, and there's active debate over whether it's possible for them to use the leftist destigmatism campaign without being used themselves.
They are a refreshingly paranoid and cynical group of people for the most part, much more fun to hang out with than normies.

Their desire is to exploit it to coerce pedophiles into supporting them in various ways.

They have nothing to offer [straight] pedophiles, though, because the method they currently use to exploit straight male sexuality is incompatible with offering them the chance to have sex with women so desirable that the entire history of feminism has been angry old women trying to prohibit it out of misandrist jealousy.

That said, if you're using 'exploit' in the 'legally establishing that our favored groups get to fuck [native] tweenage girls as a treat', then yes, I agree this is how it's going to be used because this is already de facto law in the UK and other countries.

[Non-straight] pedophiles are probably a different story, but they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel for that one (and gay men are a favored group anyway so the above exception already applies in sufficiently progressive areas).

First, it is possible to offer things other than the opportunity for sex, particularly in the case of pedophilia where the social stigma is extreme. For instance, I would very likely lose my job were I to be doxxed and my employer made aware of my being attracted to kids despite my work not involving any interactions with children. I would not particularly like to lose my job, so making it illegal to fire me just because of that attraction is a nice carrot. Various other forms of de-stigmatization are similarly effective.

Second, some of the methods they currently use to exploit straight male sexuality are very compatible with pedophiles, perhaps even more effectively than with straight men generally. Back on reddit /u/FPHthrowawayB noted

3. This is just my theory, but in addition to pedos being sexually attracted to children, I do think their sexuality is also more child-like. I'm sure you can remember a time when you would have been more interested in seeing up a girl's skirt than seeing her have sex, if you even knew what that was. I think many pedos are still partially stuck in that developmental phase sexually.

I base this on the notion that pedos' interest in NN content is still more than you'd expect even given the complications in acquiring the alternative. Compare it to, for example, zoophiles, who also face similar complications but almost always still share exclusively sexually explicit content as opposed to simply softcore (since animals are rarely pictured "non-nude" of course).

Why crack down on sexualized imagery in media, but not on women and girls behaving that way IRL? Because the former serves men and the latter exploits them.

EDIT: Grammar.

Let me know if you want my info dump on pedophile activism in sexology departments, which is the bleeding edge of leftist activism.

This is a good start: https://wiki.yesmap.net/wiki/B4U-ACT
They've got people embedded at Johns Hopkins now, pushing it into the therapy sphere.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats