site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22597 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If I were queen, my hard rule would be no sexuality in school for any kid under 12. At 13 or so, obviously you need to explain sex and how babies are made. But why teach that in preschool, or even grade school when kids are not mature enough to handle it? And what make this sort of thing so important that it cannot wait for that maturity to develop.?

If I were queen, my hard rule would be no sexuality in school for any kid under 12. At 13 or so, obviously you need to explain sex and how babies are made

Bit late, isn't it? By that time, most of the girls will be menstruating and a few of them might be sexually active already.

And sure, you can argue that the parents should have prepared them for all of that, but realistically, some haven't. I'd prefer it if the schools make sure they have some idea what's going on, at the very least the biological reality of their situation.

I have to say that I've been reading your posts with the voice of Maiq the Liar and the feminine pronoun has destroyed the very foundation of my reality.

At 13 or so, obviously you need to explain sex and how babies are made.

Thirteen strikes me as kind of silly, having grown up in the country. Anyone over six will have seen some pair of animals doing something, believe me.

(This doesn't mean children will know, or need to know, the ins and outs of sex. I can't remember a time when I didn't know that pregnancy happens when the male puts its thingie in the female's thingie; but it took me until puberty to realize that thrusting is a necessary part of the process. The basics of "where babies come from", though - come on. In no pre-19th century society were children ever spared the basic knowledge that it has something to do with touching naughty bits together.)

I don't think conservative city and suburbian parents care about little Timmy learning that the sheep and the cats are getting it on. They care about the sort of mind poison like, ** here are my preferred pronouns, here are some handout sheets with the top 40k genders you can catch em all, your home assignment is to tell nothing about this to your parents. **

Depends on exactly what you mean by "no sexuality". Age-appropriate sex ed is important for children to know how to report sexual abuse (and to know that they should). Here's one organization's "Sexuality Concepts for Children (Ages 4-8)" (just what I found on a quick web search, the group's Wikipedia page doesn't even have a "controversies" section; exactly what should be on that list is not something I'm an expert on).

Age-appropriate sex ed is important for children to know how to report sexual abuse (and to know that they should)

A good point. It's probably not necessary for schools to educate kids on the existence intersex genitals to do the sexual abuse bit. Proofs: My Body is Nobody's Body but Mine!

I had sex education in fourth grade, around ten or eleven. I think my parents had told me about the basic process before that.

I would argue that a child deserves to know how puberty works (which entails the biological end-game, which is sex and pregnancy) before that child enters puberty herself or himself.

Today, the other thing to keep in mind is that at least some children will have unfettered smartphone access. Now, kids sharing random porn videos in the school yard is going to be damaging no matter what, but kids first encountering the very concept of sex when their classmate shows them a gross video is likely much worse.

I think it's the name that is to blame. "Sex education" sounds like teaching children about sex, with lab work and home projects.

I agree that children should be taught about puberty so they don't come into the classroom reeking like billy goats, for example.

But why piss off parents by calling this "sex ed for primary school"? Call it "human body education", segregate it from "sex ed", shift the latter to the age when it's not as controversial.

This is just the euphemism treadmill. IMO the way you make it mostly uncontroversial is by:

  • making the curriculum absolutely transparent
  • making every individual lesson opt-in

Why not make every individual school lesson opt-in, then?

There are lots of parents who explain the birds and the bees at conventional elementary school ages, because a not-insubstantial percentage of girls are showing the first signs of puberty at nine or ten. And public school's real goal is to undermine the parent-child relationship by rendering it as unnecessary as can be portrayed, so they have to beat parents to the punch.

To borrow words from feminist organiser, writer, mother and Marxist feminist Madeline Lane-McKinley, “‘innocent’ is code for powerless – a way to fetishize the child as both dependent and sub-human”...
To conquer this fear, it may be necessary for leftists in the 21st century to first give up apologising for the production (and self-fashioning) of non-innocent young people, and practice vindicating it. Only then are we likely to move beyond the “defence” of trans childhoods, towards their celebration. In the final lines of her 2018 study Histories of the Transgender Child, scholar Jules Gill-Peterson writes: “If we adults really desire to learn to care for the many transgender children in our midst, we need to learn what it means to wish that there be trans children.” Let us, as a matter of urgency, set to training ourselves and each other in this wish.

Leftists like Sophie Lewis explain the "why" pretty explicitly, but as usual there's the ultimate defense of "that's only a crazy fringe that all the moderate liberals are only slowly being trained to support, so stop noticing it"

Copying an old comment of mine from the old place.

I think a very strong case can be made that the New Left, and its subsequent and related movements in the academic left particularly queer theory, is pro-pedophilia (eventually filtering down to the 'woke' public in watered down form). To be more charitable, it's not that they are pro-pedophile per se, but rather that they have adopted a world view that doesn't make a distinction between pedophilia and non-pedophilia. The aim to is "deconstruct" sex, gender, sexuality, race and so on. Why would one expect them to stop there and not deconstruct adult and child? In many cases, this is what they explicitly want to do. Some might say this is a 'slippery slope' fallacy, but I think Newton's First Law is an appropriate analogy. One might argue it is the logical conclusion of left academic theory (that is, the critical theories prominent in academia).

It's probably best to use some examples.

John Money, a psychologist and sexologist, with a background in pediatrics, active in the 50s and 60s. John Money is notable for being one of, if not the first person to theorize a distinction between sex and gender, and was the academic who introduced the term 'gender identity' and has been highly influential in the development of sex and gender theory. What is less well know about Money is some of his extremely unethical practices, including the infamous case of David Reimer. When Reimer was born, he was subjected to a botched circumcision that destroyed his penis. On the advice of Money, Reimer's parents subjected Reimer to sex change (as a baby) and raised him as a girl. As part of the therapy, he would make Reimer and his twin brother engage in mock sexual activity, including making them strip for 'inspections' and taking photos. Money claimed that these activities were essential for the development of a healthy adult gender and sexual identity. The case of Reimer was long held up as evidence in support of Money's and later ideas of gender identity and the distinction of sex and gender. David Reimer would "de-transition" later in his teens. Both David and his twin brother Brian would commit suicide in their thirties.

In the 1960s to 1990s, influential German psychologist, sexologist and sex educator Hemlut Kentler ran an experiment with government support where he would put young children as foster children with known pedophiles and encourage sexual activity. Kentler had strong tied to left-wing intellectual circles and believed that 'sexual repression' was the key driver of fascist ideology.

Shulamith Firestone, radical feminist and author of The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. In the book, she makes four demands for an authentic feminist revolution. Number three is for 'the total integration of women and children into all aspects of larger society' (by this she means the removal of any cultural distinction between men/women and adult/child). Number four is for 'the freedom of all women and children to do whatever they wish to do sexually'.

In 1977, a group of French left or left associated intellectuals signed a petition to the French government asking them abolish the age of consent in France. The signatories include some extremely significant and influential names, including Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean-François Lyotard. I should point out that there is strong evidence is that Michel Foucault was a pedophile, and regularly made trips to Tunisia to abuse young boys there. One has to wonder how this relates to his work in postmodernism.

There's Gayle Rubin's 1984 essay Thinking Sex, considered a foundational text for gay and lesbian studies, gender studies and queer theory. In Thinking Sex, Rubin defends pedophilia (and incest as it happens). It's hard to get a direct quote (you can read the essay yourself) as the language is expectedly obtuse, but it is the logical conclusion of what she is arguing. For example:

It is harder for most people to sympathize with actual boy-lovers. Like communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, boylovers are so stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders for their civil liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation. Consequently, the police have feasted on them. Local police, the FBI, and watchdog postal inspectors have joined to build a huge apparatus whose sole aim is to wipe out the community of men who love underaged youth. In twenty years or so, when some of the smoke has cleared, it will be much easier to show that these men have been the victims of a savage and undeserved witch hunt.

Rubin, and many academic leftists like and since her, want to deconstruct the concept of childhood innocence, seeing it yet another part of the oppressive system we find ourself in. I should point out, the Motte and Bailey is particularly strong here.

There's of course, Judith Butler, the queer theorist who needs no introduction. What Judith Butler means can be hard to actually decern, but here's a choice quote from her 2004 book 'Undoing Gender':

It is not necessary to figure parent-child incest as a unilateral impingement on the child by the parent, since whatever impingement takes place will also be registered within the sphere of fantasy. In fact, to understand the violation that incest can be—and also to distinguish between those occasions of incest that are violation and those that are not—it is unnecessary to figure the body of the child exclusively as a surface imposed upon from the outside. The fear, of course, is that if it emerges that the child’s desire has been exploited or incited by incest, this will somehow detract from our understanding of parent-child incest as a violation. The reification of the child’s body as passive surface would thus constitute, at a theoretical level, a further deprivation of the child: the deprivation of psychic life.

Which fits into my initial description - it's not that the 'academic left' (or critical left or whatever term you want to use) are pro-pedophile per se, but rather they believe in deconstructing sexual norms in such a way that pedophile becomes a meaningless concept (and one might say, intentionally or unintentionally giving pedophiles free license to operate). These are just examples, but you can find many other academics arguing the same or similar. A large part of it goes back to Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization, which basically argues through a Freudian-Marxist synthesis that our natural desires and impulses are suppressed by the capitalist system in order to funnel them into productive work (which no one actually wants to do), and therefore liberation from capitalism but necessarily include the liberation and expression of these desires, with of course, an emphasis on sexual desire.

But surely these are just kooky academics with insane theories that would never actually have any real-world consequences (regardless of how crazy influential they are), right? That normal people (that is, leftists) would never actually implement these kinds of things in a practical manner, right? Well these theories do seem to have effect, least of all in (critical) pedagogy. In particular, sex education does seem to have been affected by these theories, at least in the US. One example is the book 'Gender Queer: A Memoir', the subject of recent controversy, becoming standard in curriculum and libraries for many schools, and is aimed at pre-teens. The book contains extremely graphic (drawn) images, including a blowjob and sex scenes. You can search for the images yourself.

I think a very strong case can be made that the New Left, and its subsequent and related movements in the academic left particularly queer theory, is pro-pedophilia (eventually filtering down to the 'woke' public in watered down form). To be more charitable, it's not that they are pro-pedophile per se, but rather that they have adopted a world view that doesn't make a distinction between pedophilia and non-pedophilia.

Regardless of what you think follows from other things they believe, find me a pro-pedophilia social media post from anyone visibly on the left. I'll wait. I predict I'll be waiting a very long time. Not "well if you squint just right and also read these tea leaves over here...", but anything at all that is unambiguously supportive of boinking kids. You'll find a hundred, probably a thousand, wood-chipper memes before you find anything even close. It just doesn't exist, no matter how badly certain elements of the right want it to.

Most of these people have never heard of figures like Firestone, and even if they had, look at what happened to Germaine Greer. They feel deep loyalty to their movement but not a single shred of loyalty to any of the individuals that make it up, no matter how paradoxical that sounds to people like me or what debts of gratitude it might seem that they owe. And even Firestone never seems to have gone as far as openly supporting sexualizing kids, in any sense of the word.

Vaush says hello.

I don't use social media that much and don't intend to go dumpster diving just to fulfil your demand. That being said, I know there's at least a handful of "Breadtube" type 'influencers' who have made various comments about age of consent and the like. Any 'serious' leftist intellectual is not going to put their thoughts on social media, where they will and can be eviscerated by normies, they're going to put it in academic text hidden behind jargon which I have already shown.

20 years ago, open public support for gay 'marriage' was unthinkable. 10 years ago, transgenderism was a tiny, tiny fringe and mostly a joke.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230425233814/https://twitter.com/ZeebDemon/status/1650784866680832004

From "The transfeminine genderfluid Demon-Divine⛧

Luciferian⛧BLM⛧ACAB⛧YouthLib⛧Proudly Paraphiliac ☂ Radically Queer⛧Fandom Outcast⛧36⛧Your own personal Anti-Christ Washington, USA"

Boyfriend of this guy, "Black queer Zebra. Musician, Artist, Producer, Sound Engineer. He/Him". They both run a bunch of "kid friendly, queer centered" fandom discords for kids shows. That used to be my little pony, but all the kids are into hazbin hotel now, so that's where the "they/them kink friendly" discord mods are.

I can link you a ton of MAP stuff if you like. I collect this stuff as a hobby. Some of them work for Johns Hopkins doing destigmatization through intersectional praxis. It's all thoroughly leftist in theory and practice, hence all the pride flags.

"Just ignore it it's fringe" stops reassuring people after the 50th time the fringe took over the normielib collective consciousness. The same people are often involved in "systems" (multiple personality roleplay), and that's been rapidly normalized in leftist spaces.

Well, if we're just lazily copy-pasting, might as well. I figure I'm entitled to do that, since your argument has indeed been copy-pasted by every other traditionalist when complaining about the Left for the last 40 years and as such it's been 30 years removed from any relevancy.

If the Left is trying to advance pedophilia, they're clearly doing an absolutely terrible job of it, considering the average age of virginity loss and general age of consent has done nothing but rise (making these ages gender-neutral is not really a liberalization of the law) and the newer generations are more sensitive to this, perhaps as a reaction to constantly having gross sex stuff they hate forced into them every waking hour. Considering the cultural power they have to change these things, this failure is out of character.

They aren't following the gay rights playbook of "fix the perception that X is a complete and utter rejection of social norms so that the average Joe thinks you're sufficiently like him that he no longer sees fit to stop you"; instead preferring only to ride the wave of gunboat diplomacy that is the trans rights movement (which, in fairness, doesn't exactly follow that playbook either).

It should be extremely telling that there's basically zero "groomer literature" that features a relationship the average boy or man would ever be interested in (given all the pairings are gay men, gay boys, or gay men with gay boys; if a woman is ever featured it's lesbians- my evidence is that the spiciest stuff the Right can dig up only includes [young-ish] boys, because if it were [young] girls they'd trumpet that instead). One would assume that if the movement was purposefully pro-sex-with-kids thing their literature would feature a lot more girls or straight women for what should be obvious reasons, but since that's not the case that claim is obviously false.

Now sure, that's still damning with faint praise given that we already know the Left is perfectly fine portraying boys like that (and will not hesitate to call them bigots for complaining about/resisting the same kind of unwanted sexual attention from men that women have been trying to banish for decades now), but I think the trads doth complain too much; their brand of Junior Anti-Sex League has the same end result, they just doesn't like the concessions the progressives leave for man-on-man (or the bullying potential progressives leverage from the narcissism of this small difference, as viewed from a liberal perspective).

The thing about [what you call the modern Left, and what I simply call 'progressives'] is that it's all about destroying sex altogether, 1984-style. It makes complete sense why they fail to see a difference between pedophilia and non-pedophilia because their end goal is that nobody has sex ever; indeed, that's why progressives seek to push the age at which women are considered children ever higher and higher (outside of man-on-boy, but since boys are just men, and they hate men, they don't care about what happens to them plus it's free Oppression Points/owning the Trads).

Marxism intends to overthrow capitalism. America is still capitalist. Therefore, Marxism has had no impact on American society.

Feminism intended to make women happy. Women are less happy. Therefore, feminism did not achieve anything or cause any changes on society.

How is your comment not anything other than a post hoc fallacy?

You're not actually refuting the central claim that there is a strong current in contemporary leftist thought (critical theory, post-modernism, queer theory) that is okay with exposing children to sexual material or activities, or at the very least actively want to demolish barriers that prevent that from happening - the distinction between child and adult, the concept of childhood innocence.

The New Atheists thought that by demolishing religion, they would usher in an age of rational utopia. Instead they got new pseudo-religions. The sex/gender abolitionists thought they would usher in a sex (in both means of the term) utopia. Instead we have sexual chaos. The claim of the leftists is quite literally 'free love', to put it in a simple term, not sexlessness you claim the only way you get sexlessness is if you go so deep down the rabbithole where you deconstruct every the very concept of sex doesn't exist - but then sexlessness also doesn't exist.

I would suggest the reason pedophilia hasn't taken off despite it's presence in leftwing thought is that it is so intrinsically and self-evidently evil and disordered that most people can't and won't accept it even when they might accept other elements of the ideology in the abstract.

That being said, it's progressive - literally. Twenty years ago open political support for gay 'marriage' was unthinkable. Ten years ago, transgenderism was still a fringe concept. As disgusting as it is, and as much as people try to discredit the "slippery slope", it's not out of the realm of possibility to assume what the next step might be (if the leftists manage to retain unchecked power indefinitely)

Marxism intends to overthrow capitalism. America is still capitalist. Therefore, Marxism has had no impact on American society.

Feminism intended to make women happy. Women are less happy. Therefore, feminism did not achieve anything or cause any changes on society.

Marxism explicitly says it wants to overthrow capitalism. Few feminists seem to think in terms of "happiness" but they explicitly say they want to improve things for women. The people you think are pro-pedo, meanwhile, explicitly say pedos should be put through wood chippers. There's no parallel at all there. The rest is mere sophistry.

I oversimplified for the sake of brevity. I could say something like feminism's goal was to deconstruct the cis-hetero-patriarchy or whatever, the patriarchy still exists (by feminism's own admission), therefore feminism hasn't affected anything. Obviously this is sarcastic.

Did you not read my post? I explicitly reference and quote influential leftist intellectuals and academics who are pro-pedophilia, or as I said, are at least comfortable destroying any distinction that would allow pedophilia to exist. Do you think the quotes I have included are fake?

You're not actually refuting the central claim that there is a strong current in contemporary leftist thought (critical theory, post-modernism, queer theory) that is okay with exposing children to sexual material or activities

I don't need to, because:

the only way you get sexlessness is if you go so deep down the rabbithole where you deconstruct every the very concept of sex doesn't exist

Yes, this is what progressive actually believe (what did you think "all sex is rape" meant?). They don't want sex to exist and act accordingly; that's why all of their "pedo literature" is oppression porn and why all of their efforts to educate children about sex center around portraying sex as ugly and terrible.

That's not consistent with traditional/your understanding of how pedophilia "works", but my assertion is that that/your understanding of the situation is completely wrong, and you haven't engaged with that at all.

the concept of childhood innocence.

Again, if you actually bother to read, this is what progressives fetishize. So do the traditionalists, for that matter (almost like it's the same impulse driving both); that's why all of their purity pomp and circumstances (especially surrounding their daughters) looks and acts so incredibly pedophilic.

To an overwhelming degree, it's a possession/preservation fetish.
If you're wondering what the opposite of that is, well, I wrote about what that looks like here.

I would suggest the reason pedophilia hasn't taken off despite it's presence in leftwing thought is that it is so intrinsically and self-evidently evil and disordered that most people can't and won't accept it even when they might accept other elements of the ideology in the abstract.

Again, you're unwilling or unable to engage with the actual argument. Progressive thought fetishizes innocence, so what we would expect from that is a bunch of so-called "pedo literature" that fails to actually contain any pedophilia [in the "straight man on little girl" sense], and what you actually should be looking for is, again, the fetishization of what they consider innocence.

And because a progressive defines innocence as "everything outside men having sex with women", It is not a coincidence that they advance all sexual causes that are non-straight because, by that definition, they are more innocent and deserve the privileges (when a progressive says "drag queens are innocent fun", this is the meaning of "innocence" in that statement). And the fact that the LGBT stuff dunks on the Trads is a nice bonus, but again, not the primary objective either.

Yes, this is what progressive actually believe (what did you think "all sex is rape" meant?). They don't want sex to exist and act accordingly; that's why all of their "pedo literature" is oppression porn and why all of their efforts to educate children about sex center around portraying sex as ugly and terrible.

I notice you ignored the second part of what I said from quoting me. Leftist are sexual utopians at their core, they just believe they have to radically deconstruct and destroy all existing sexual relationships (because they're oppressive) before the sexual utopia will somehow appear. This is the core concept of critical theory, as applied to sex.

To an overwhelming degree, it's a possession/preservation fetish...

...Progressive thought fetishizes innocence, so what we would expect from that is a bunch of so-called "pedo literature" that fails to actually contain any pedophilia [in the "straight man on little girl" sense], and what you actually should be looking for is, again, the fetishization of what they consider innocence.

They fetishizes insofar as they want to get rid of the concept of innocence. It's not preservation fetish, they want to destroy it. That's not my assertion, it's quite literally what they say, as has been already cited by me and others. Your shota reference example in your linked comment is a terrible example, both by the fact it's not a central example of leftism (if it's related to leftism at all), and by the fact that corruption is a central theme. It's about the loss of innocence - so I don't see how it supports your point.

I actually don't think we're really disagreeing her. The reason the leftist hates innocence is because they think it's a concept created by the oppressor class (cis-hetero-capitalist patriarchy or whatever variation you want to use) to control everyone and prevent them from enjoying the fruits of 'sexual liberation' (in both the physical and metaphysical sense).

I recall seeing this post the first time it was published (or something close to it), and just like back then, I fail to see how this observation about the leftists of 1980s squares with the present day. I see normal people (that is, leftists, ranging from basic reddit just be a decent person-ists to transhumanist plural Marxists) quite a lot (admittedly mostly on the internet). In no spaces is any hint of any indulgent relationship between an adult and a child seen as more abhorrent than those normal people (leftist) spaces. The border between adult and child is far from being erased, it is shifted to mid-twenties. And I know how people act when there is something they really think but can't say (I've been on the Motte when it was on reddit), so I do not believe all of them are merely pretending to dislike any crossing of the 18-/18+ barrier.

The worldview of an average left-leaning normie is "no viewing anyone under the age of 18 as a sexual being at all". A minimal detached clinical acknowledgement is allowed, so as to be able to know teens could have unsafe sex, for the purposes of thwarting said unsafe sex. The attitude of the queer community towards educating children on sexuality is, at the worst of it, myopic and selfish, caring more about bolstering their political alliance than the livelihood of those children, but I don't see calling it pedophilic as anything but mental gymnastics.

In no spaces is any hint of any indulgent relationship between an adult and a child seen as more abhorrent than those normal people (leftist) spaces.

In how many normal people (leftist) spaces was it not abhorrent to schedule a 14 year old girl for a double mastectomy, because she wants to be a boy, 20 years ago? I was still hearing "no one is doing gender surgeries on minors" as an argument until 2-3 years ago, and it was only dropped when you could start linking people to peer reviewed studies, where clinics were bragging about how many minors they performed mastectomies on.

I don't doubt that they're currently not in favor of it, but give me a reason to believe that when their vanguard decides it's time to push that particular door open, they'll refuse.

I don't doubt that they're currently not in favor of it, but give me a reason to believe that when their vanguard decides it's time to push that particular door open, they'll refuse.

I don't think any words will convince you that normies actually can't be convinced of anything anyone wants at any moment regardless of current belief if you're determined to believe that they can.

Because the vanguard did try to push that particular door open, and they did refuse. Paedophile acceptance was part of the counterculture, but was kicked out of the coalition when SJ nucleated. This is an unusual fact pattern suggesting unusual forces at work; the about-face on nerds/aspies is the only other one I can point to. If I had to point to a suspect for the unusual force, it'd be innate "ick" responses of teenage girls.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm actually on the pro-paedo side of this fight, albeit not actually in favour of AoC abolition due to logistical concerns (in particular HIV necessitating sex ed).

So how do you explain the normie core happily going along with the mastectomies? They involve teenage girls as well. Was the pushback against pedo acceptance even driven by leftist normies, or was it a result of conservatives being stronger and better organized?

Trans activists successfully convinced a sufficient number of leftist normies that some kids are inherently trans, those who are know it at a young age, and that those kids will suffer terribly and kill themselves if forced to become physically normal adults of their birth sex, therefore the mastectomies and such are actually necessary medical care.

A lot of normies are still uncomfortable when confronted with the details, though, hence the euphemism of "gender-affirming care".

That's mostly a rationalization for their lack of resistance. What do you think they will actually resist peso rights, instead of coming up with a similar rationalization?

More comments

They involve teenage girls as well.

Remember that I'm talking about an "ick" from teenage girls, not an "ick" on behalf of teenage girls. It's not like mastectomies are being forced on unwilling teenage girls, after all, just given to willing teenage girls who are plausibly making bad decisions (and who do not themselves believe they are making bad decisions).

Was the pushback against pedo acceptance even driven by leftist normies, or was it a result of conservatives being stronger and better organized?

From my memories of SJ spaces, and from the way SJ works*, I feel extremely confident in saying it's the former.

*One of the most poisonous parts of SJ is that it considers those outside the movement to be hopelessly mired in false consciousness and thus incapable of having anything to contribute; this is exactly why it's so intransigent in the face of external opposition. As such, you don't see conservative ideas getting adopted by SJ; it kinda has to be independently rediscovered within the walled garden in order to be accepted there.

Just how independent is that "independent" rediscovery? If progressives make an about face on trans issues and decide it's all abruse by evil capitalists to make money off of vurnelable gender non-conforming children, is that the leftist normies spearheading the pushback, or a copy-paste of an argument they were condemning as fascist five seconds ago?

If I look up that time when the US threatened to withdraw UN's funding, over it's associations with NAMBLA, am I going to see mostly conservative, or mostly progressive names attached to that? Is that a valid way to test your theory? If not, what would be?

More comments

it considers those outside the movement to be hopelessly mired in false consciousness and thus incapable of having anything to contribute; this is exactly why it's so intransigent in the face of external opposition

Which you can see from the traditionalists in this thread, too- they're so stuck on a very particular version of sexual ethics that they believe the argument to be won is the axiomatic acceptance of those ethics.

They are unable or unwilling to understand that "but teh pedos" is not actually a slam-dunk defense- they want to discuss why progressive sexual ethics are wrong, but without the elucidation on why (and that doesn't depend on progressive language, since the first thing they'll reach for is 'consent'... itself a progressive sexual ethic, and the master's tools don't work on the master's house) they fail.

This is just playing defense and trying to ignore all the evidence. What's the purpose of kids' night at a sex toy shop? What's the meaning of "little girls are kinky too"? Why is all "kink" pushed relentlessly at the same time as actual sex is demonized (especially normal heterosexual sex)?

You're doing that typical thing where you tell people to ignore the academics and activists over there, because a majority of leftists don't agree with them (yet). Until recently normie leftists didn't agree that "the idea that there are two distinct opposite sexes is a 19th century colonialist invention," and yet they got on board with it instantly, ignoring any cognitive dissonance that they'd previously spent years spouting "umm actually sex is distinct from gender."

And already in every case where "kink with kids" comes up, leftists have wound up on the pro-kink side with those activists. Why do normie leftists take more issue with a 25yo dating a 22yo than with schools telling 3rd graders to Google leather daddies? Because one is "queer, kinky, and disrupts heteronormativity," while the other is yucky and straight.

Supporting "queer kink with kids" is just the other side of the coin of "problematizing" heterosexual relationships out of existence. The more normal sexuality can be suppressed, the easier all that energy can be sublimated into party-approved "queer culture."

Because one undermines the parent-child relationship and the other one doesn’t. When these people make gaffes and tell us what they really think it’s almost always family abolitionist thought- the same reason they’re inherently skeptical of heterosexual sex.

The point of that original comment was to provide a historical throughline throughout history in leftist thought, which I think it does pretty conclusive for a relatively short post. Later in that original thread I provide an example of a contemporary article.

Futurity and Childhood Innocence: Beyond the Injury of Development by Hannah Dyer (2016)

Other people in this current threat have provided other examples. It's not hard to find articles/academic publications on this stuff if you go looking.

My point was to look at leftist academic thought, which is always upstream of what (leftist) normies think. It may or may not make its way downstream in the future. Probably not as the tide is turning against leftism, and that pedophilia is so intrinsically evil and disordered that normies can't abstract it way like other things.

I actually think the argument anout adulthood 'shifiting to mid-twenties' is actually in favour of the deconstruction of child and adult, not against it, as it makes the boundaries between child and adults, fuzzier, not clearer. Young adults are being infantalized, extended adolescence. The concept of 'adulting' is classic deconstructionism - adult is now something your perform, rather than something you are.

Source for that paragraph? I'm having trouble finding that in the links above, and there's clearly room for much more beyond what I've managed to deduce about these people already.

a way to fetishize the child as both dependent and sub-human

That isn't just slow-pitch, it's tee-ball.

It's darkly funny how people always insist "muh child sexualization" has to be from male child molesters and discount the obvious conclusions even without the iron-clad evidence: that there are female child molesters, that this is how they work, that they're trivially identifiable (and how to identify them), why they think the way they do, why they should be kept away from your children at all costs, and that most of the weird sex shit in the classrooms is not only their fault, but done with this intent.

but as usual there's the ultimate defense of "that's only a crazy fringe that all the moderate liberals are only slowly being trained to support, so stop noticing it"

I am reminded of the Catholic Church and its intentional failure to notice molester priests. But you know what? If you wanted to make a boy [or girl] feel dirty and in need of Christ's grace forever, institutionalized buck-breaking is such a fantastic way to accomplish that goal.

https://magazine.tank.tv/issue-94/features/sophie-lewis

Not just a random commie blog either. Their latest issue has the director of the Irish modern art museum

I keep stressing this, but leftist vanguardism works, and nobody seems interested in making it stop working.

I was hoping for more of that Marxist feminism source material directly. Other than that, I think that's the most incoherent thing I've read in a long time.

and nobody seems interested in making it stop working

Your standard excuses; the only people who understand sexuality clearly enough to correctly condemn it are too tired/busy, and that leaves the rest of the traditionalists who have zero desire [or ability] to actually understand the problem (per the "obviously this is all male pedophiles" comment around here somewhere) and therefore cannot solve it effectively. It's just low on our list of priorities these days, just like everything else.

Let me know if you manage to find a copy, all I could get is the Google books sample.

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