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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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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.

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').

This movie presents an incredible opportunity for actual pedophiles

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.

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...

Hitler's birthday

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.