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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28171 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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So the charge is that he, an adult man, tried to convince adult women to engage in consensual sex with him?

I’m getting sick of this thing where every shot a guy takes which doesn’t land is somehow seen as a sexual assault. Do people realize that women have agency as well, and also engage in these sorts of fantasy? “Oh no I guess I have to sleep in this bed with this big strong man who is out here saving the children for the sake of the mission” is the plot of like 90% of female targeted erotica. “We had to shower together to convince the cartel that we were married” sounds like it was literally written by a female erotica writer.

Human adults have sex with each other. Sometimes there is a period of courtship. Sometimes, and in fact just due to pure statistical reality, most times that courtship fails.

That is not a scandal.

The scandal is that these people just cannot understand that the scandal is the fact that adults want to engage in sexual activity with CHILDREN.

Go to a drag show? No problem. You do you.

Go to a drag show, with children? Problem.

Engage in a gender fetish? No problem. You do you.

Engage in a gender fetish with children? Problem.

Make erotic literature? No problem. You do you.

Make erotic literature for children? Problem.

The scandal is that these maybe actual pedophiles don’t understand the demarcation between “sexual activity among consenting adults” and “sexual activity with children.”

The charge is that he violated his vows of marriage, but because neither the reporters at Vice (appropriate name is appropriate) nor a sizable majority of Mottizens consider marriage vows to be particularly sacred they are unable to properly articulate the true nature of the conflict.

He isn't taking criticism because he took run-of-the mill shots that didn't land. He's taking criticism because he came up with bullshit scenarios where he tried to convince women that they had some kind of professional responsibility to sleep with him, or engage in the kind of activity short of actual romantic involvement that most men would nonetheless like the opportunity to do with attractive women. And then to top it off he tried to lay a guilt trip on them if they expressed any reservations, making a claim that children would be harmed or even killed from a position as someone who would at least seem to be a credible authority on the subject. Maybe there's a legitimate explanation, but it all depends on the timeline. The kinds of things he asked the women to do are certainly unusual requests for employees or volunteers for a charitable organization. If you're going to make these kinds of requests from a position of authority, they'd better be necessary, and exactly what is required needs to be made explicit at the very beginning of the relationship, preferably with signed consent forms. If this seems extreme, keep in mind that these aren't women he met at a bar and invited to Ocean City for the weekend who were taken aback by his advances; they were women who never expressed any desire other than to help trafficked children. I haven't heard the whole story, and if he actually did all that it would be one thing. But my guess is that the "we have to share a bed and shower together" thing isn't something they found out about until they got to the hotel.

Keep in mind also that Tim Ballard was married. I'm sure his wife didn't exactly consent to him trying to sexually proposition the women who went with him on these trips.

Unfortunately, as Quantumfreakonomics notes, she has not spoken on the issue, and she is most certainly a victim.

And that makes him, if the allegations are true, an adulterer. That’s an issue for his family. I don’t see the need to make this a national story.

The thing that makes this a national story is that Mr. Ballard, through the fictionalized version of his life that is "Sound of Freedom," one of the major cultural figures held up as virtuous and good by Team Red. Thus, it is imperative in the kulturkampf that Team Blue knock him off his pedestal or prove him to be bad in some way, lest Team Red be able to convince people that Reds can be virtuous, or that it is virtuous to be Red. That's what's driving amplification of this story in higher-profile news networks/through non-Red social media networks. Obviously Reds, Mormons, and Utahns have their own reasons to care about this - their idol has feet of clay / adultery is something they care about, etc.

Yeah, that was what struck me about the reaction to the movie: it was excoriated, and I couldn't figure out why. All the QAnon accusations, about some movie that had been held up by studio internal politics, and was a mid-tier action movie about saving victims of child sex trafficking.

Nobody was having conniptions about the latest Jack Reacher or Bourne movies, which are all about heroic white guy going out and kicking ass in action hero style. Why this particular movie? What was provoking such reactions?

And I honestly had to think it was the religious angle: Caviezel is Catholic (and not the Biden/Pelosi "Imma Catholic who's cool with abortion" type) and probably forever tainted by being in the Mel Gibson movie about Christ, this guy Ballard is a Mormon (again, remember when Mitt Romney was the Dangerous Mormon Theocrat before being rehabbed as The Only Good Republican?). Not the proper type of religious, the bad conservative traditional anti-all things good, right and progressive type.

Caviezel is into QAnon and believes the elite cabal are extracting adrenochrome from children through torture. So the connection is not spurious.

I'm reminded of that classic smuggie. What even is the thinking here?

"Oh no the guy who made that one movie that vindicates the elite pedophiles cult narrative is an adulterer? Allow me to purity spiral senselessly and immediately reject the entire memeplex associated with it"

Smuggies all have a grain of truth to them, but they're also the ultimate example of motte-and-bailey arguments in practice.

Sound of Freedom beat the final Indiana Jones movie at the box office, albeit through a ticket multipurchase scheme, and the idea that Hollywood might lose its power is unthinkable to them. The "need" is to regain control of a public narrative of mainstream moral superiority over Christians, and nothing hurts Christians in the news like the "hypocrisy" of a single Christian falling like Samson to a woman's wiles.

That's the Culture Total War mentality: destroy all monuments and great works the other side might conceivably claim as theirs, and salt the earth, from football and beer all the way down to knitting forums.

Sound of Freedom beat the final Indiana Jones movie at the box office, albeit through a ticket multipurchase scheme

One of the guys from Angel Studios is on this podcast: https://www.thebulwark.com/podcast-episode/how-2023s-oddest-box-office-hit-paid-it-forward/

He claims that under the "Pay it Forward" ticket scheme, the tickets aren't counted as "box office" until a ticket is claimed and used to attend a screening. That is, the theaters do not see the purchase of the ticket until it is actually used. If true, I don't see how that is any less legit than the buy-it-yourself ticket model. Attendance is attendance.

It might say something interesting about the distribution of interest in the movie: some people were sufficiently interested to buy multiple tickets and contribute more towards the movie's success than they had to, and some people may not been sufficiently motivated to see it without a free ticket (although i don't know a lot about how you get a free ticket and it's possible ticket recipients would have seen the movie anyway)

I'm not sure that's negative towards the movie, though: having some people be super excited about your movie isn't uncommon, and it's kind of interesting that we don't see more of this.

Imagine a campaign where feminists and allies subsidize a movie that they think portays women well, to try and get more moviegoers to explore along those lines. Kind of terrifying in what it'll do to movie creator incentives in a Toxoplasma of Rage way, but i don't think people are making a strategic decision not to do it on those grounds.

it's kind of interesting that we don't see more of this

We will definitely see a lot more of it now that there's been such an effective proof of concept.

I have no idea what you're talking about with respect to this story.

If you're saying that the women who accused him, employees of Operation Underground Railroad who dedicated their lives to stopping child sex trafficking and pedophilia, the board of OUR that conducted the investigation and removed him, or the Mormons are all just blind wokies... That's astonishingly uncharitable.

I am commenting on the Vice article, as well as the more general culture war climate where failed attempts at courting women are treated as some form of sexual impropriety.

Also you and the other person that commented something similar: you are both apparently falling into "wait, which side of the culture ware is firmamenti on here? Who is he accusing of being a wokie?" - this is bad form. I would highly encourage you to try to get yourself out of that framing.

n = 2, but I read your comment the same way.

What do children have to do with this guy’s creepy hotel fantasies? It sounded like you were looking for an excuse to take shots at people who “can’t understand” that pedophilia is bad. I think everyone involved in this anti-child-trafficking organization understands that. I assume the rest of the Mormons are fully aware, too. So who are you complaining about, if not some straw progressives?

I’m getting sick of this thing where every shot a guy takes which doesn’t land is somehow seen as a sexual assault

Did you read the article at all? He wasn't cancelled for being 'anti-woke' he was cancelled for being a Mormon man (ie. a sexually conservative culture in which premarital sex is banned) and trying to get young single women to sleep with him.

I’m getting sick of this thing where every shot a guy takes which doesn’t land is somehow seen as a sexual assault. Do people realize that women have agency as well, and also engage in these sorts of fantasy? “Oh no I guess I have to sleep in this bed with this big strong man who is out here saving the children for the sake of the mission” is the plot of like 90% of female targeted erotica. “We had to shower together to convince the cartel that we were married” sounds like it was literally written by a female erotica writer.

Your boss / employer telling you to get into bed with him is different than a man hitting on you in a 'UwU...unless' way. Why are you so deliberately trying to reframe the allegations?

Seriously -- if sex-positivity is a thing that needs to be discussed/encouraged with 9 year olds by their teachers, then I think grown women are going to need to learn to handle a dude asking them "how 'bout it?" from time to time.

They have learned to handle it, by reporting when their boss does it to them repeatedly under coercive circumstances.

The next step is for men to learn how to handle that.

Do you think the Mormon church is sex positive or has liberal views on promiscuity? He's being cancelled for being a hypocrite.

Do you think that 'Vice Magazine' is likely to reflect the interests of the CJCLDS in any way?

Liberals calling out conservatives for their hypocrisy about promiscuity, homosexuality and so on is as old as time, what's your point?

"Look at this self-identified Mormon conservative trying to sleep with his interns against the core tenets of his church" is a story, sure.

And liberals being explicitly pro-promiscuity and pro-homosexuality is even older so who's the real hypocrite here?

"Look at this self-identified Mormon conservative trying to sleep with his interns against the core tenets of his church"

Well, actually...

It could be argued that any righteous Mormon man (and what could be more righteous than rescuing children from sex slavery) has the right, nay, the obligation, to share his righteousness with as many celestial wives and spirit children as possible.

Take that page with a heap of salt. Much of it is outright falsehood, and much of the remainder more misleading than not.

For example, there's a whole section about how women can't be exalted except through men, and are thus otherwise denied salvation. This is false on two levels:

  1. Salvation is different from exaltation. People are saved with no regard to marital status, making the second half of the claim an outright lie.

  2. Men also cannot be exalted without women, making the first half misleading enough that it is essentially a lie. The implication is that righteousness flows forth from men to women, when the reality is just that marriage to a member of the opposite gender is a commandment for everyone. It would be just as accurate to claim the exact reverse, that righteousness flows from women to men.

A quick google suggests that is not the case any more:

Today Church members honor and respect the sacrifices made by those who practiced polygamy in the early days of the Church. However, the practice is outlawed in the Church, and no person can practice plural marriage and remain a member.

The standard doctrine of the Church is monogamy, as it always has been, as indicated in the Book of Mormon (Jacob chapter 2): “Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none. … For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.”

In other words, the standard of the Lord’s people is monogamy unless the Lord reveals otherwise. Latter-day Saints believe the season the Church practiced polygamy was one of these exceptions.

These sorts of public-facing nonbinding documents are often missing important context which committed members understand. Everybody knows that the banning of polygamy was a reaction to political circumstances (Utah wanted to become a state, and congress was reluctant to condone polygamy), not a reaction to divine revelation about the nature of the eternal law. If a man's celestial wife dies, and he remarries in the temple, he now has two celestial wives for eternity. I couldn't find anything definitive, but it seems like there are certain circumstances where a man may be sealed to multiple living women at the same time, even if they aren't civilly "married".

"The living man, after being granted clearance, can then be sealed to a second living woman in the temple. He is legally married to only one woman, but on the records of the church, he is then sealed to two (or more) living women. Any children from either sealing are “born in the covenant” with him, and are sealed to him.

It dawned on us that despite my husband’s explicit wishes and request, he would continue to be sealed to his first, living wife. If he wanted to be sealed to me, his actual legal wife, I would have to agree to be part of a polygamous family for eternity."

These sorts of public-facing nonbinding documents are often missing important context which committed members understand. Everybody knows that the banning of polygamy was a reaction to political circumstances (Utah wanted to become a state, and congress was reluctant to condone polygamy), not a reaction to divine revelation about the nature of the eternal law.

I mean this is explicitly what the revelation itself was about, according to public-facing documents. The subtext was not hidden, nor is it even accurate to call it "subtext"--the commandment was rescinded explicitly due to political circumstances.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/polygamy-latter-day-saints-and-the-practice-of-plural-marriage#:~:text=The%20practice%20began%20during%20the,been%20for%20over%20120%20years.

Later, describing the reasons for the Manifesto, President Woodruff told Church members, "The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice. If we had not stopped it, you would have had no use for ... any of the men in this temple ... for all (temple sacraments) would be stopped throughout the land. ... Confusion would reign ... and many men would be made prisoners. This trouble would have come upon the whole Church, and we should have been compelled to stop the practice."

If you read the actual declaration it is even more clear that it's a change made explicitly for political purposes. It doesn't even mention any revelation.

Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.

Right. It still leads into conflict with the bit of text from the book of mormon against it and whether or not his existing wife would consent to the polygamy, but I'll concede the point. It is certainly clear the only reason the church walked back the act of sealing men to multiple wives was because of pressure from the country. If the leaders felt the country and rest of the world became more amenable to it, a new revelation would come out reinstituting the policy.

Was he proposing marriage before sex?

For all we know he may have been. Others in this thread have noted the lack of any actual touching. Maybe he did just want to share a bed together in the temporal realm. It's not any weirder than soaking.

EDIT: To be clear, I still think the default hypothesis is that he was trying to get his dick wet, but I don't want to completely discount bizarre-sounding Mormon explainations.

Soaking is a myth. Members of the LDS church find both that, and the behavior Ballard's been accused of, bizarre and sinful.

Liberals calling out conservatives for their hypocrisy about promiscuity, homosexuality and so on is as old as time, what's your point?

"Look at this self-identified Mormon conservative trying to sleep with his interns against the core tenets of his church" is a story, sure.

This. See that Biden scandal is not about "look at this degenerate druggie pervert", but "look how so called servants of the people abuse their position for personal enrichment".

A servant of the people abusing his position is bad in a non-partisan way independent of any hypocrisy. To make that analogy work, you'd need a weird situation where Democrats care about political corruption, Republicans do not, and the Republicans are criticizing Biden only for the hypocrisy in being corrupt, not for being corrupt per se.

Being a hypocrite about adultery also doesn't seem serious enough that you should try to prevent someone from making money from a movie. Notice that the headline calls it "sexual misconduct", not "hypocrisy", because on some level Vice understands this. "They're just after him for being a hypocrite" is the motte to their bailey.

"No enemies to the left" is more succinct.

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