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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25227 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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[Johnson]: "homosexual behavior is something you do, not who you are".

I'd like to soapbox a bit about this.

Johnson is absolutely right on this, maybe more than he knows. One of the more insidious things about the prevailing culture is the way that it encourages people, almost to the extent that it is unthinkable to do otherwise, to identify with their desires -- especially if those desires are sexual. People make fun of the Evangelical thing where they insist on saying "same-sex-attracted" instead of "gay", as if it's some shibboleth, but the reason for this is that "gay" carries with it an assumption that it is, and ought to be, part of one's identity, and the Evangelicals are right that it's a big part of the problem.

Having sexual attraction to other men may be (generally is) involuntary, but engaging in homosexual activity is absolutely a choice, and so is making your desires such a core part of your identity that you automatically interpret any discouragement from gratifying them as an attack on your self. Yet that last choice is, in the prevailing culture, the water that the fish don't know they are swimming in. They are told, "Those people hate you, they want to deny you the right to even exist" because of their opposition to behavior.

People with disordered desires need a narrative other than "you are a disgusting pervert" or "your desires are innate and good and self-actualization means fulfilling them". The bit about "same-sex-attracted" is a (somewhat awkward) way of trying to supply that other narrative.

I think the same is true about "trans". A boy or man who desperately wants to be female, and/or who experiences discomfort at being male, may not be choosing to have those feelings (though they can certainly be fed and encouraged by dwelling on them), but "I am trans" is a decision to adopt those feelings and desires as as an identity. I can't think of any non-awkward way of encapsulating those underlying feelings and desires (yeah, "gender dysphoria", but that carries its own set of assumptions and also doesn't capture the full range here), but the discourse really needs one.

I'm very sympathetic to people saddled with these disordered feelings -- this is not really to my credit, but out of personal experience, as my other posts on the "trans" subject attest -- but I get really angry at the activists who encourage people to see them as a core part of their identity, and accuse opponents of wanting to "deny [their] right to exist". It's like telling an alcoholic that being a "drunkard" is a core part of their identity and that anyone who wants them to stop drinking hates them.

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

The purpose of identity labels is political organizing and political rhetoric for the purposes of obtaining and protecting civil rights and social respectability.

I agree that, without understanding that purpose for the labels, teh labels are kind of silly and unnecessary. People can just do what they want and say what they do and not need a label about it.

And it's true that gay people specifically have sort of made enough progress at this point that they don't desperately need the political organizing function of the label anymore, which is letting people notice where the label is restrictive or counter-productive or misleading. That seems to me like a natural evolution of this process and what we would expect/want to happen; I strongly believe Gen Z doesn't use orientation-related labels in the same way and with the same context that Gen X and millennials did, and it'll be interesting to see hwo that evolves over a few more generations.

But trans people, fr example, still desperately need a unified label for purposes of political organizing. That label is the shield that gets used to create a unified narrative and cultural and political defense to protect their rights and place in society and give htem all something collective to refer to instead of having to explain and justify themselves each individually. Don't expect them or their allies to put down that shield until they stop facing credible attacks.

One of the more insidious things about the prevailing culture is the way that it encourages people, almost to the extent that it is unthinkable to do otherwise, to identify with their desires -- especially if those desires are sexual. People make fun of the Evangelical thing where they insist on saying "same-sex-attracted" instead of "gay", as if it's some shibboleth, but the reason for this is that "gay" carries with it an assumption that it is, and ought to be, part of one's identity, and the Evangelicals are right that it's a big part of the problem.

I want to chime in to absolutely agree with this, particularly from the perspective of a somewhat conservative Christian, though I'd argue it's an insight that you'll find much more broadly as well. You are not your desires. Put like that, it has a very Buddhist ring to it as well, and I daresay you might find similar ideas in psychotherapy. A desire might be a passing thing, or it might be something that you need to tame and control, or it might be something like a sickness or a pathology. At any rate, it is something that passes through your mind, not your mind itself.

I suppose a gay activist might reply here with the claim that same-sex-attraction isn't a desire as such, but rather it's a permanent disposition. A desire is something in the moment, e.g. "I want to have sex with that hot guy". A permanent disposition over time or even an attribute is different. It's not about specific individual desires, but rather about an overarching framework, the structure in which individual desires rise and pass away.

There's a sense in which that's obviously true, I suppose. By way of comparison, a desire to have a beer could arise in anyone, for all sorts of reasons, but the state of being an alcoholic is more than that. Being an alcoholic is some sort of resilient-across-time tendency which may produce the desire to have a beer on a regular basis, but which is nonetheless more than just the first-order desire.

However, while I accept this precisification as a fair description of the nature of desire, I don't think it changes the central point here - whether we're talking about desires or dispositions, there's still a claim about identity that's being made.

Christians sometimes argue that the core of our identity should be in the confession of the risen Christ - it's being joined to him that forms who we are. They then go on to criticise groups like Spiritual Friendship for getting the order wrong. You aren't a gay person who happens to be a Christian - you're just a Christian, and while you may have some struggles in the flesh (as do we all), those struggles in no way change or reorder your fundamental identity, which is to say, a child of God, a sinner, forgiven, redeemed by Christ's blood. It would be absurd for people to identify as 'gluttonous Christians' or 'proud Christians' or 'Christians tempted to adultery'. The same applies. Christ comes first - he will not accept being made a hobby or an extra.

That might be valid there, but if we want to make a wider critique, we probably need to say something that's understandable even for secular people. I suppose for them what I would say is that identifying with one's desires seems like it carries with it the hidden implication that it's the fulfilment of one's desires that's the key to long-term happiness or to spiritual meaning or whatever else. That, I would argue, is a dangerous mistake. As far as I'm aware, even quite basic pop psychology has retreated from the idea that happiness comes from the fulfilment of desires. Instead, it typically arises as a byproduct of something else - the best advice for how to be happy is generally to focus on doing something else meaningful.

This is by no means saying (from a secular perspective, at least) that one shouldn't be attracted to one's own sex, or that one shouldn't live as the other sex, or generally that one shouldn't be LGBT. LGBT identity may well be compatible with all of this! Just be gay or be trans and then go and live a meaningful, other-oriented life. Rather, it's that one's desires, whether sexual or otherwise, should not be at the heart of your identity. They are not what produce long-term happiness or welfare.

I mean, but conversely, who should have the right to determine what feelings are or aren't part of an identity? I mean conversely, if I start saying "divine-attracted" or "people who experience a religious impulse" and note that they don't have to raise their children to believe in Hell, they can't help that they perceive the divine but pushing it on others is a choice- I suspect some of the same people would become very angry at me.

Hell, being grossed out by gayness also doesn't need to be part of people's identity. As they say, "you are not immune from propaganda identifying with your impulses."

The investment and divestment of impulses from your identity is to some extent voluntary. However, it also serves as a signal as to which impulses you value the highest. To say that "SSA do not have to make that a part of their identity" is close to saying "SSA should not make that part of their identity" which is itself approximately equivalent to "society should not try to fulfill or support SSA". At which point I start disagreeing: so what if men have impulses to have sex with men? Society is a system to arbitrate the fulfillment of impulses with minimal friction. The religious impulse or the purity impulse should not get primacy over the gay impulse.

I mean, but conversely, who should have the right to determine what feelings are or aren't part of an identity?

Clearly, the individual.

Of course having the right is very distant from every exercise of that right being good and healthy. I can choose to identify myself by my sexual interests, I can also choose to eat three pizzas a day. Neither is good for my long term wellbeing - even with sexual interests as mild and vanilla as mine.

A society that celebrates gluttony is similarly grotesque to one that celebrates lust or anger or greed or any other vice. And indeed, there are various cultures and subcultures that do celebrate those things, to the detriment of their members.

I am not inclined towards gay sex, but I am inclined towards promiscuity - like most men, I find the idea of sleeping with lots of women to be attractive. But that would not be a good way to maintain a life and a family, so I deny those baser desires. Similarly, I deny my impulses towards anger and violence.

How much worse off I would be if I decided these desires were "simply the way I am" and constructed a worldview where any effort to improve my behaviour was "not being true to myself".

Society is a system to arbitrate the fulfillment of impulses with minimal friction.

If that is what society really is, I say to hell with it. The amorphous blob of "the formless mass that was Ubbo-Sathla reposed amid the slime and the vapors. Headless, without organs or members, it sloughed from its oozy sides, in a slow, ceaseless wave, the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life".

If that's society, I'd honestly rather be an earthworm. At least I'd be performing a useful function.

Useful to who? Useful in what way?

How do you reckon with the fact that the only reason the earthworm does anything is to fulfill it's impulses, and it leverages it's billion year evolutionary history and nonstick skin to do so with minimal friction?

I don't think that people who are grossed out by gay sex think of that as part of their identity, though. They think that their emotions are tapping into something real on that topic, but they don't make an identity out of grossed-out-by-gayness. For the most part, at least, they trust those emotions, not identify with them.

But on the meta level, the object level matters (heh). Yes, I think that adopting some identities is good, and adopting others is bad; that sexual desires are bad things to have as identities; that people would be better off if society discouraged people from adopting these bad identities -- or at least didn't put its thumb on the scale the other way as currently.

Or for those who prefer quotations on the subject, from Heretics by G.K. Chesterton:

Somebody complained, I think, to Matthew Arnold that he was getting as dogmatic as Carlyle. He replied, "That may be true; but you overlook an obvious difference. I am dogmatic and right, and Carlyle is dogmatic and wrong." The strong humour of the remark ought not to disguise from us its everlasting seriousness and common sense; no man ought to write at all, or even to speak at all, unless he thinks that he is in truth and the other man in error. In similar style, I hold that I am dogmatic and right, while Mr. Shaw is dogmatic and wrong.

Why though? Why not attraction as identity, instead of race as identity or job as identity or cult as identity or gender as identity?

They are all equally valid and equally worthless way to construct yourself; I don't see why we should say "This cultural hallucination is good but this one is bad" without reference to either outcomes or principles. Those can be argued, at least.

I'm thinking it's fair for attraction to form a core part of your identity if it's a long-lasting constant. I'm sure even the retvrners might include attraction to one's spouse as essential to identity.

But I don't think it's valid to assume that this applies to everyone, equally, as the wokes do.

And I especially don't think that it should be the only or chiefest element of one's identity, since it's only a small part of the human experience.

As a gender abolitionist, I agree. I think attraction, sex, and gender being part of identity is fucking stupid; anything that you don't choose for yourself as part of your identity likewise.

That said, society at large down to the legal system doesn't agree.

Basically; Until nobody gives more of a shit if it's adam and steve instead of adam and eve it will be a core piece of identity because enough people around said gay dudes will make it plain that THEY consider them diferent.

anything that you don't choose for yourself as part of your identity likewise.

Now this I tentatively disagree with. Do you think that only what you choose for yourself should be essential to your identity?

Basically; Until nobody gives more of a shit if it's adam and steve instead of adam and eve it will be a core piece of identity because enough people around said gay dudes will make it plain that THEY consider them diferent.

Because Adam and steve would have failed to sire so much as Cain and Abel, nevermind the rest of humanity. Society and law should treat gay couples differently because they are different. This seems entirely obvious.

Now this I tentatively disagree with. Do you think that only what you choose for yourself should be essential to your identity?

Yup. Anything else is loser shit in my mind. It's laying the cornerstone of your personality on being tall or having the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap. I allow that in society as it is, your identity will be based off of stuff that has the same value as those examples; things that have nothing to do with your choices or history or efforts and everything to do with the genetic lottery. In an imagined perfect world people going around being all "I am a ciltrosoaparian" will be rightly ridiculed as FOOLS and JESTERS.

Basically; Until nobody gives more of a shit if it's adam and steve instead of adam and eve it will be a core piece of identity because enough people around said gay dudes will make it plain that THEY consider them diferent.

I believe this is true the second people also treat couples that don't have children, the infertile, anyone who remains married to a woman past menopause, people that use birth control, and priests with the same level of scrutiny and antipathy as they do gay people (or the opposite, from some parts of the population.)

As the view I outlined does not exist outside the most terminally online spaces and never extends out of them into real life where it might get you made fun of, I empirically deduce the issue with homosexuality must come from something else.

Sure, but then the argument is on who is right, and I am not aware of a strong reason for why who you love should be wrong to be.

I think that sexuality as an identity is either a very narrow and selfish identity, when it's separate from a culture and community, or when it is part of a community, it is not very healthy to center that community around sexuality.

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