site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Haven’t found hundreds of thousands yet but 20,000 official reported cases in 2018-2019 alone.

Assume at least that many cases again unreported, and account for increased migration and some number of new victims a year, and I think you could get to 100,000 pretty easily.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grooming-child-sex-abuse-exploitation-rotherham-rochdale-police-a9215261.html

Concerning, but I don't think that it's quite the same as OP's claim. Presumably not every girl that gets groomed (I couldn't find the definition they are using here) actually gets raped. There's also this line which makes me think that I don't understand what they are measuring:

In high-profile cases such as Rotherham and Rochdale, perpetrators have been much older than their victims, but police say peer-on-peer abuse by teenagers from the same school or area is more common in some areas.

In what sense can a child "groom" a peer? Or is that just a vanishingly small number of cases? I guess we'll have to wait for some kind of official report.

Your 16 year old Pakistani 'boyfriend' can groom you into child prostitution as easily as his 'much older' uncle or father.

The terminology of "grooming" is confusing here. It implies they were getting too friendly with these girls on discord and maybe sharing explicit links with them. Reading wikipedia all the accounts given are just straight up rape. I can only read this as deliberate obfuscation

No they would groom them using the standard methods. Offer them food, alcohol, drugs and attention. Posing as "boyfriends" at first before coercing them into more and more extreme behaviors. Blackmailing them with those previous acts and threats to them and family. It's a tried and tested method across the world for those grooming vulnerable young people into prostitution (which is what most of these gangs were doing).

Grooming is the term we would use in social care at the time. Remember this started in the 80's and onward. The grooming term used in the online era is derived from the terms we used at the time for the more "old school" methods. But the initial context for almost all these girls was luring them in to what they thought was a relationship before then taking advantage of that. That's why grooming is the correct term. A gang which simply outright kidnapped girls off the street would be picked up much more quickly.

We usually call it date rape, but the actual difference between being taken advantage of by an age peer and being taken advantage of by a grown man is not really one of the behavior in use.

Look at the Wikipedia page for the Rotherham scandal, though. Even on Wikipedia, you can see how much under-reporting and mis-reporting still occurs. You’re never going to get a good source saying X many girls were tortured and raped by Pakistani gangs. They will use euphemisms like ‘grooming’, they will misdescribe the perpetrators or hide the number in some other category wherever possible, they will refuse to count anything without definitive proof that can’t be explained away.

1 in 3 or 1 in 6 is obviously wrong but 100,000 in a country of 60,000,000 seems entirely plausible to me.

In what sense can a child "groom" a peer?

It’s entirely possible for an 18 year old teenager to recruit a 14 year old girl, either for himself or older relatives.

Look at the Wikipedia page for the Rotherham scandal, though. Even on Wikipedia, you can see how much under-reporting and mis-reporting still occurs.

This is actually an extreme improvement from the state of the page a few months ago, when they attempted to cobble together a narrative that the whole thing was a racist hoax (the page got renamed "grooming gang moral panic in the United Kingdom" and rewritten to match). It stood that way for several months before people started to take notice and they quietly changed it back without admitting fault.

In what sense can a child "groom" a peer? Or is that just a vanishingly small number of cases? I guess we'll have to wait for some kind of official report.

If "grooming" is the authorities' way of saying "raping", it makes perfect sense

No matter how you slice it, this is clearly measuring something beyond the central case of Pakistani men rapping teenage girls en masse.