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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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Also, I think everyone with eyes can see that the standard for "how old should a person be before it's kosher for (older) adults to have sex with them" has only been rising. One has to cook up conspiracy theories such as "well obviously they are outwardly lying while fucking kids on the down low even more", while ignoring what seems to me like a very obvious fact - the less trust society has in close, individual adult-child relationships, the fewer avenues there are for exploitation.

The amount of thirsting over underage male characters I observe, outside of specialized places, is much lower than underage female characters so the exact disparity is hard to observe as well. Millions want to fuck Asuka, barely anyone wants to fuck Shinji.

Plus, it's not uncommon for people to point out the weirdness that kids can apparently consent to virtually anything at any age if you can put a medical spin on it, but women in their 20s can't consent to a relationship with a man more than a few months older.

Maybe those who introduce such standards don't think they're "just putting a medical spin on it", but rather that the case is medical? Then it's different standards of agency for different fields, which is how it worked everywhere since time immemorial, by my rough estimate.

The women consent thing is weird, but there are still age limits for other things that are set above adulthood - like being the President - so there's some precedent.

One, it's an interesting change from the situation where most if not all medical procedures require parental consent with relatively rare and limited exceptions.

Well yeah, it's where the medical meets the cultural. It's kind of like if a child required blood transfusion, and the parents are Mormons who'll say no, and don't blood transfusions sometimes cause rejection? Except in this case, I doubt the child's consent would even be asked, I'd expect the doctors to just do it.

if social acceptance is gender-affirming care, isn't having a relationship also gender-affirming care?

So far "no, you don't have a right to another person's intimacy, not even if you want to die without it" works well enough.

Three, after Diane Ehrensaft talked about toddlers removing barrettes as a non-verbal sign of gender non-conformity, and she wasn't immediately laughed out of the room and defrocked into obscurity, my consideration that there was meaningful consideration occurring on the topic dropped substantially.

I don't know who that is. I suspect the only people who do are the kind of people who don't do the consideration and those who are fed outrage fuel - and only the former are present in her audience.

I don't know who that is. I suspect the only people who do are the kind of people who don't do the consideration and those who are fed outrage fuel - and only the former are present in her audience.

She's a credentialed clinical psychologist. If that doesn't matter unless enough people have heard about her, why do we bother with credentials? Also, how many people, exactly, would need to have heard about her for it to matter? Maybe I can solve the issue with some targeted ads.