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I fear the success of this movie amongst the wrong sorts of people may actually be detrimental to future efforts to fight child sex trafficking. Opposition to pedophilia will become a right-wing boogeyman, mostly disinformation, and, in any case, even if it is real, we will soon learn why it's actually a good thing. We can already see how expressing concern here is being interpreted as a dogwhistle for Qanon. Unfortunately, too many people will be far more horrified by the thought of being mistaken for a Trump supporter than they would at the possibility of indirectly aiding child sex traffickers. Sure, they may quietly, and in private, express their revulsion for pedophilia, but in public one would not want to say too much less the inquisitors get suspicious.
This movie presents an incredible opportunity for actual pedophiles, especially those among the Zeitgeist's activist class.
Perhaps this is uncharitable. No, it's definitely uncharitable. However, if I had made similar claims 20 years ago about transgenderism, then that would have also been uncharitable. Is there are bridge to far? Everyone says that there is, but then many of those people don't seem to have ever seen a bridge they didn't immediately run across, while dragging as many people along with them as they could. Sometimes being uncharitable is the only way to avoid being scammed, again.
God I hope my fear is misplaced.
I can't make sense of this. 20 years ago it would be "uncharitable" to think that pro-transgenderism would go far. Then 20 years later it did.
In order to fit your analogy, the backlash to transgenderism would be out of control after 20 years--not transgenderism itself.
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The left is now experiencing what it felt like on the right when the left was demanding everyone parrot "Black Lives Matter" or else be branded a racist on social media forever. (Which ruined race relations, and became an incredible opportunity for actual racists and eugenics supporters.)
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Become? It's already a right-wing boogeyman depending on the skin color distribution of the average perpetrator in England- bonus points for actually being the motte definition of, and what most people mean when they say, "pedophilia" (exclusively 'old man, young girl').
I'm not as convinced; I think this is also a bit Blue-on-Blue (or rather, Blue-on-Redder-Blue) given [for the former] who the traffickers tend to be (favored skin colors tend to be guilty of it more often due to vanishingly few white men in the places the women come from) and [for the latter] that it's a righteous cause that both the people whose moral foundation is "man bad -> man wants prostitution -> prostitution bad" and the people whose moral foundation is "prostitution bad" get a lot of policy mileage out of.
I think it hurts the ability to actually talk about grooming issues and pedophilia simply because as these become right-coded, it becomes harder and harder to take a position against those things without seeming right leaning yourself. And especially in activist and nonprofits, you don’t want to be seen as right wing.
Which is something that I can understand broadly, but not when it comes to "yeah, we all agree that raping young children is bad". Who the fuck cares if the most raving right-winger who celebrates Hitler's birthday every year is standing beside you when kicking in the door of a place where small children are being raped? That's being too pure.
Hitler's birthday being what it is, it's ironically a somewhat blue-coded holiday in the US...
https://twitter.com/stone_toss/status/1649056653369659393
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I had to look that up since I had no idea when Adolf was born, and yes I did recognise that reference 😁
Telling stoners ‘yes, happy hitler’s birthday to you to, are you collecting signatures on a card for his Argentine nursing home?’ Is the best part of the month of April.
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I'm going to say this. "The wrong sorts of people" is exactly the shitty attitude that turns off ordinary people from the progressives. "Yes, maybe child sex trafficking is arguably not-great, but if you vote Republican you have no right to that opinion and indeed you are turning away Good Right-Thinking Right Side Of History Folx" does not look good, it looks like "we'd happily defend child-fucking if we thought it would offend you normies".
Which is the fear you are expressing, and I unhappily have to agree.
And notably this attitude was why progressives lost the Virginia governors race.
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