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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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 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?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't need to, because:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link