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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25317 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Well we can look at the facts, which are that since the 1980s gay rights have become widely accepted, gay marriage legalized across the West; homophobia seriously reduced, and yet at the same time ages of consent have risen (substantially in parts of Canada and Europe), punishments for abuse of children have hugely increased, many more people are in jail for these crimes, and - perhaps most significantly - it’s much less socially acceptable for a 25 or 30 year old man to have a 15/16 year old girlfriend in 2023 than it was in 1973 or 1993. That’s a good thing (in my opinion), but it suggests that things are moving further against the direction you suggest is likely.

The French tried that in the 70s; it didn't work great for 'em. (Some) Westerners have been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

Ages of consent may have risen, but we're much more accepting of sexual activity at younger ages. Think of "Romeo and Juliet" laws, or the constant tub-thumping over "we must teach sex education at [age whatever] because by age [a couple years more] they're going to be experimenting with sex". That used to be "by sixteen", now it seems to be trending down to "by twelve".

While repugnance around thirty year old man has sex with six year old child will persist, I'm not so sure that "thirty year old man has sex with sixteen year old" will. After all, if some are pushing to reduce the voting age to sixteen, and we accept that a sixteen year old can have a twenty year old boyfriend, then that means we think 'legal minor' may indeed be mature enough to decide such things.

I'm not saying it'll be easy or fast, but I do think there will be a swing back, as with many things, so that the rise in age and the reset of it that you mention may be seen as an over-reaction, and we must correct in the opposite direction, so if Judy is seventeen and eight months of age, why shouldn't she legally be able to have a relationship with thirty year old Tom, what magic happens with waiting just another four months for her to be legally adult at eighteen?

but we're much more accepting of sexual activity at younger ages. Think of "Romeo and Juliet" laws,

Laws distinguishing between young people having sex with each other vs with older ones seem to be rather supporting that increasing acceptance of sexual practices does not imply increased acceptance of paedophiles?

Are they capable of consenting to having sex with one another?

...because right now, 'consent' is the only tool in the toolbox of the Moral Police.

Sex education works at reducing teenage sex and pregnancies, as advertised, by emphasizing the consequences of having sex. If you wanted to encourage teenage sex you wouldn't tell them anything and let nature take its course.

While repugnance around thirty year old man has sex with six year old child will persist, I'm not so sure that "thirty year old man has sex with sixteen year old" will

This is ironic because your second scenario is legal in most of the world, including most of the US and has always been so and in the places where it isn't it's because of feminist campaigning.

The progressive movement that exists today is overwhelmingly sex negative: they are in favor of raising the age of consent (to 25), against age gaps, against workplace relationships, against flirting in public, or in bars, or everywhere except designated dating apps, against prostitution, against pornography (except onlyfans), against sex comedies, against sexy women in video games, against revealing clothing in movies.

Play some of the wokesploitation games (Dream Daddy, Goodbye Volcano High), for example: everyone is some kind of queer but no sex, not even hinted at, maybe a (one) kiss, maybe the farthest they get is holding hands.

The trans kids stuff is the second most successful mass sterilization project in the world. Puberty blockers likely cause permanent inability to orgasm, what has your church done that's as effective as that at preventing teenage sex?

This is ironic because your second scenario is legal in most of the world

It may be legal, but as you point out, there is campaigning to make it repugnant. That's what I mean by the swinging of the pendulum; from 'sure a thirty year age gap between marriage partners is okay, even if it's unusual' to 'he took advantage of that poor twenty-five year old young woman' to, in future, back again to 'yeah she's sixteen and he's forty but hey if she's mature enough to make up her own mind, who are you to say it's wrong?'

The trans kids stuff is the second most successful mass sterilization project in the world.

The irony there being that the extremes of liberalisation have done more than the most conservative attitudes, indeed.

So your evidence for the pendulum swinging in direction X is evidence that it is going in the opposite direction?

to, in future, back again to 'yeah she's sixteen and he's forty but hey if she's mature enough to make up her own mind, who are you to say it's wrong?'

I don’t think that pendulum will swing, because it’s not tenable to get there. Very young women(such as teenagers) being able to have serious relationships, especially relationships with older males, with a rate of it all ending in tragedy that society considers acceptable depends on the power that the parents of very young women exercise over them both formally and informally.

everyone is some kind of queer but no sex, not even hinted at, maybe a (one) kiss, maybe the farthest they get is holding hands.

Ironically, some queer people do complain about this trend of "sexuality without sex," I believe.

The progressive movement that exists today is overwhelmingly sex negative: they are in favor of raising the age of consent (to 25), against age gaps, against workplace relationships, against flirting in public, or in bars, or everywhere except designated dating apps, against prostitution, against pornography (except onlyfans), against sex comedies, against sexy women in video games, against revealing clothing in movies.

The progressive movement that exists today can be summarized as "Straight male sexuality bad, everything else good!". They are in favor of raising the age of consent, but deny that women actually need to get consent from men. They are against age gaps, but deny behavior of older women toward younger men is sexual. They are against men flirting with women unless the women desire it, but think women should be free to flirt with men whenever they wish. They are against any media that panders to the sexual desires of straight men, but are okay with media that panders to the sexual desires of others.

"Sex positivity" has always been tied up in Feminism and thus has always only cared about ensuring sexual outcomes are positive for women.

Sex postive feminists existed at one point, it's just that after they lost the feminist sex wars, the sex negs flayed them and wore their skin to hide their puritanical, hypocritical nature.

Sex positive feminists won the feminist sex wars though. Sex positive feminists were never supportive of male sexuality except so far as it could be exploited by women.

No, that's what "they" say. My conspiracy theory is that the sex positive feminists actually lost. Modern feminists do not like porn and prostitution. They are very fond of sex negative terms like rape culture and objectification.

I think you are misunderstanding what "sex positive" and "sex negative" refer to. The schism between the two groups basically revolves around how one answers the question "Is heterosexual sex oppressive of women?". Sex negative feminists hold that it is and thus heterosexual sex must be eschewed, leading to things like political lesbianism. Sex positive feminists hold that it is not necessarily oppressive and that women should be free engage their sexuality so long as it is empowering to them. Sex positive feminists still often oppose the sexual objectification of women because it is not empowering. That doesn't make them sex negative however.

I don't think anyone self-describes as "sex-negative", and I kind of agree with the "skinsuit" theory on what "sex-positive" means in practice, i.e. feminists feel a need to publicly identify that way whether or not it actually fits. Even from feminists who self-describe that way, the overwhelming majority of the messaging seems to be "sex hurts" and ideas about "rape culture" et al that I would characterize as extremely paranoid. (Granted, I'm mostly around people with upper-middle-class values where sexual violence is quite rare and any appearance otherwise is largely an artefact of expanding the definition beyond reasonable limits. But so are most feminists. These are mostly academic-adjacent notions we're talking about here.) When I deal with these people I'm constantly asking, or at least thinking, "If you're so sex-positive, why do you never seem to have anything positive to say about sex?"

I would say it’s generally a position on (straight) hook up culture and promiscuity more than it’s a conclusive position on heterosexual sex. If you limit ‘sex negative’ to only political lesbians and/or others who think all heterosexual sex is rape and/or generally oppressive, you’re limiting it to a few thousand old women at most, essentially a tiny subset of second-wave radfems.

Many or even most older ‘sex negative’ radfems are married (to men) with kids, I’d say. It’s more of a position on whether promiscuity, porn, casual sex and sex work is empowering or not.

Sex-positive feminists

The terms pro-sex feminism and, later, sex-positive feminism were inspired by Ellen Willis.[14] From 1979, feminist journalist Ellen Willis was one of the early voices criticizing anti-pornography feminists for what she saw as sexual puritanism, moral authoritarianism and a threat to free speech.

The Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce (FACT) was set up in 1984 by Ellen Willis in response to the Dworkin–MacKinnon Ordinance;[17] in 1989 Feminists Against Censorship formed in the UK, its members including Avedon Carol; and Feminists for Free Expression formed in the United States in 1992 by Marcia Pally, with founding members including Nadine Strossen, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Veronica Vera and Candida Royalle.

Note the heavy emphasis on free speech. Does this sound like modern feminism to you?

Sex positive feminists still often oppose the sexual objectification of women because it is not empowering.

It is the sex negative side that adopted and developed the concept of sexual objectification. If they were truly sex positive, they would deny that ‘objectification’ was even a real thing .

The majority of the thinkers discussing objectification have taken it to be a morally problematic phenomenon. This is particularly the case in feminist discussions of pornography. Anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, influenced by Immanuel Kant’s conception of objectification, have famously argued that, due to men’s consumption of pornography, women as a group are reduced to the status of mere tools for men’s purposes.

edit: The true heirs of sex positive feminism are 'individualist feminists', like Wendy McElroy, Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, who are basically considered anti-feminists by feminists nowadays.

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I'd say they were mugged by reality, and not-quite-realized but painfully found out that the wall isn't there to keep them in.

The trans kids stuff is the second most successful mass sterilization project in the world. Puberty blockers likely cause permanent inability to orgasm, what has your church done that's as effective as that at preventing teenage sex?

It's almost like the church wasn't aiming for mass sterilization.

PS. I'm glad that the religious right is making a comeback because maybe they can succeed in making sex negativity uncool again.

"The comeback of the religious right" is a lot more wishful thinking by disaffected liberals poking the pendulum with a stick asking it to make a swing back, than it is something happening in real life. Sorry, but the 90's aren't coming back anytime soon, they were the point when the rubber band was about to break, not a stable equilibrium.

Anecdotally, I think this would track with my experience? Some time ago I knew a trans person in her thirties who was enthusiastically seeking to date a seventeen year old, and fully intended to have sex with them at the first opportunity. I expressed concerns and did not get that far.

We are in a period of category collapse, it seems to me, and the elevation of individual will and preference, with consent and harm as the sole acceptable guardrails. It's hard to see how that doesn't lead to some pretty disastrous outcomes.

Seventeen isn't quite a minor (legally maybe) and thirty isn't that old, but yeah. Not a good augury. The types who chase seventeen year olds will be doing that when they're thirty, and forty, and fifty, and...

Leonardo DiCaprio is getting a lot of stick on that front. Now, it's understandable that "men like young women" and "why is this young woman dating this twenty years older than her rich, famous guy, who can know the answer to that?" but after a certain point, it goes from "uncomfortable" to "downright creepy".

What is category collapse? What are some examples of disastrous outcomes you foresee?

We've become much more accepting of extramarital sex, but I don't think there has been much change in the acceptability of having sex at a young age, other than indirectly in that teenagers are usually not married. But it used to be common for teenagers to be married. Romeo and Juliet were 16 and 13.

The trend has actually been away from there being legal minors. The age of consent was traditionally around puberty while the age of majority was originally 21. So there used to a huge gap between reaching an age where you could have sex or marry and when you became a full adult with full rights. This gap is now completely gone in some jurisdictions and where it remains, it has been shrinking.

Romeo and Juliet were 16 and 13.

Romeo and Juliet was also a cautionary tale. They’re portrayed as idiots who create an entirely preventable tragedy by not listening to their elders who think they’re young, impulsive, and need to be restrained, and the ongoing feud between the two families prevents them from intervening effectively. It’s a plot point that Juliet’s father rejects a marriage proposal from an ally of the family on the basis of age and Romeo is portrayed as a young, ignorant hothead.

Romeo and Juliet is an Object Lesson in the importance of a functioning postal system.

but we're much more accepting of sexual activity at younger ages

Maybe in theory, but not really in practice. Average age of virginity loss is rising, not falling- this is also a reaction to "oh no, every kid has seen porn by 12" (and more recently, "kids have to know they're trans before they hit puberty or Bad Things will happen, so we should be trying to force the issue at 6-8"). [Also, there is very little "experimenting with sex" today anyway; the state of modern gender relations combined with easier alternatives to sex for young men has seen to that.]

what magic happens with waiting just another four months for her to be legally adult at eighteen?

Well, brain chemistry says she's not a human being adult until 25, so she deserves the rules we give her. (That is what The Science says- it's not like we've ever used brain size comparisons to oppress other kinds of people in living memory or anything like that.)

and we must correct in the opposite direction

Gender and sexual politics follows (and slightly lags) economic conditions. Traditionalist-conservatives should fear an improvement in economic conditions as much as progressives do, because with better times comes more demand for sex that is usually met by relaxing the conditions around it (which tend to push the average age of first sex down).
As times get worse, we should expect more desperate flail by the faction that still needs to wear the concept of sex-positivity as a skinsuit- so while you'll probably see more examples of successful predation because of that flail (almost always male -> male), it's not going to meaningfully improve access to straight sex for men (or boys).

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