site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Ive never met someone like Walz. Every person who served I know underplays their service. Every teacher I know doesn't start pedophile adjacent clubs for kids (except the one who was arrested for giving 16 year olds booze and we all knew was a creep). Walz is an outlier in my life in that he simply lies about everything in very important ways. Much more important than Trump saying he had the biggest crowd somewhere. If Walz was in Vance's position he'd already have dropped out, that is how bad he is and how extreme the Democrat media advantage is.

What? I dont even understand this comment. Are you saying Walz is a pedo because he appears to be an actual good person?

How does this comment have 9 upvotes?

What makes you feel like he is an "actual good person?" Hes a hardcore LGBT ideologue that started a social club at his school that could easily be used as a vehicle for grooming.

A more common place for abuse has always been church youth groups. Every town I have lived in has had a scandal with one, and those are just the abusers that get caught.

More teachers than religious groups engage in sex acts with their subordinates. Even per capita it is very close.

hardcore LGBT ideologue

Not an evil act.

started a social club at his school

Not an evil act.

that could easily be used as a vehicle for grooming

A description that includes so many social groups as to be meaningless, certainly not an evil act by itself. Of course all social clubs of our enemies are creepy weird grooming vehicles and our social clubs are necessary wholesome chungus.

This seems like a standard misunderstanding that may or may not be intentional by people sympathetic to LGBT causes. They think well these kids who are confused/different need a space to talk to adults. And then they need to keep it secret obviously because dad prolly isn't an "ally". But talking about sexuality and maintaining secrecy is exactly the first set of steps of the groomer playbook. So it doesn't matter what is in your heart of hearts, you are engaging in the same objective acts as a groomer, and by defending your own activities, you are providing them cover.

This is different than a soccer coach, who, I admit, many probably want to pork their players. But if the soccer coach starts talking to Johnny about tops vs. bottoms and Johnny says something to someone no one reflexively defends the soccer coach as having done the right thing. Which is why LGBT advocacy in youth populations is inherently dangerous, and I would say an evil act.

I do not believe the LGBT spaces must maintain secrecy. Without the secrecy being inherent, I again do not believe LGBT groups are inherently dangerous.

Well mainstream LGBT activists disagree with you.

Have you never met a politician. Overplaying their story & creating myths is in the job description. People in the wild are humble because they don't have to sell themselves to a full country.

I work at a tech company. The humble engineer is never picked to do public demos, because public demos are the place to be shamelessly self promoting.

Politics is this phenomenon at its peak.

pedophile adjacent clubs for kids

This is a really bad mental model of what GSA clubs look like.

How so? The purpose, ostensibly, is to get kids talking about their sexuality around adults. The few who will be interested in hearing such banalities are likely to have other motivations. Its like a guy who enthusiastically volunteers to run the cheer-leading team for his 14 y/o daughter and her friends. Is it necessarily true he's getting something sexual out of it? No. But a higher % of such people than a randomly selected dad will be.

Maybe it's changed since mumblemumble years ago, but back in my day it wasn't like each meeting started off with everyone sitting in a circle and exchanging distaff American Pie jokes, or spin the bottle, or gay sex ed. When there's a new student you'd go around for introductions and have the option of disclosing your orientation, and then mostly a sit-around-and-bullshit social club. There were teenagers that were hooking up who'd met at the GSA, but even the people who'd brag about it weren't going to do that in front of as varied a crowd as you'd get at a club meeting proper (there were girls there!).

(uh, second-hand from my brother, band camp was closer to the actual gay relationship or 'relationship' space. I'd expect that was somewhat specific to the cliches at the school we went to, though.)

@SteveKirk's "oh boy relationship drama" is closer to my experience, though I tended to run into where it was most an annoyingly creepy teacher wanting a bunch of disposable and impressionable activists. Which is a problem, but a different sort.

(probably not universal, but pretty damned common).

Is it? My only experience with one was a creepy groomer art teacher who reaaaally got off on being surrounded by gay boys having relationship drama.

Then perhaps it wasn't a good idea to name that kind of club something that suggests it encourages the sexual development and expression of children.

Yes, these clubs are basically just hangouts that staple the occasional rainbow around the school and exist as a space to eat lunch and not be called a fag every 5 seconds (and is indirectly an interest club for the things that type of person coalesces around), and while it's truthy (and perhaps somewhat obvious) that the kinds of teachers interested in encouraging the non-standard sexual development of students in ways that cross the line for some people are likely to be interested in encouraging the non-standard sexual development of students in ways that cross the line for most people I doubt that rate of [criminal] line-crossing is appreciably higher than the base.

While it is true that students come last on the list when it comes to what a school should do and calling it [what people will hear as] "gay kid's club" wasn't the best of moves, those things weren't quite as true in the '80s and early '90s as it is today, and sexual mistake theorists wouldn't be fully purged from the general sex movement until the mid-'90s (naturally, people who wouldn't have a problem with "straight kids' sex club" won't even look to see if their efforts can be read as "gay kids' club about sex").

Sexual conflict theorists would probably have just called it "tolerance club". And yes, Boomercons (and people who parrot Boomercon talking points) have a really bad mental model of what the general sex movement looks like because they never updated their mental models of it past the '90s; they don't even know the general sex movement has pivoted to being about angry old women ensuring young people have as little [straight] sex as possible now (and of the ones that potentially could, they're too distracted by the concessions the angry old women give to the non-straights to notice).

It's more a real bad mental model of how the public perceives a teacher advising the GSA club. Which is the important part of an election prediction.

Of course one must see media interference in public opinion, if one operates from the base assumption that the GSA in the 90s was a pedophile club. How else could one explain that the rest of the country doesn't see it?

Of course one must see media interference in public opinion, if one operates from the base assumption that the GSA in the 90s was a pedophile club. How else could one explain that the rest of the country doesn't see it?

Well covering up the link between pederasty and homosexuality is a long running media interference operation. That doesn't mean people still dont get a bit skeezed when they notice a guy jumping up and down to run the boy scout camp.

Fellas, is it pedophilic for a man to run a Boy Scout camp?

Its BORING to run a boy scout camp. Why you are dealing with that boredom is probably because you love your son. But that guy who doesn't have a son at camp? Weirdo.

When the boy scouts were a designated party enemy, yes, it was. We both lived through 00s late night television.

Now they aren't enemies because the party took them over, being a boy scout leader isn't creepy any more.