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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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originated in academia in people studying

At this point, that's a mark against whatever is under consideration. "originated in academia" might as well be a synonym for "pulled out of someone's butt with zero basis in reality" for anything except the hard sciences.

Consider two groups. Group 1 consists of convicted child molesters who report attraction to kids. Group 2 consists of people who aren't known to have had any sexual contact with kids and report attraction to kids. If an academic studies Group 2 and uses the technically correct term pedophile, people--particularly non-technical people--will assume they are referring to Group 1 because the term has lost its nuance and studies based on Group 1 are far more common for various reasons. Thus minor attracted person was coined to convey that lost nuance. By "pulled out of someone's butt with zero basis in reality", are you asserting that such confusion does not exist with the term pedophile, that such nuance is unnecessary, or something else?

Actually, I am in complete agreement with your comment. I do believe that there is a meaningful difference between Groups 1 and 2 and that it is reasonable to differentiate between the two. I will have to re-evaluate which term I meant was butt-derived because your reply is so sensible that I must have been thinking of something else. I will also add that people attracted to Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High are also considered part of Group 1 because she was meant to be 17 yrs and 366 days old in that scene.
OK, after reviewing my previous post, I stand by my statement. GENERALLY, soft science academic activity is mostly butt-derived. In this case, you raise an excellent and valid counter-example. Still, if a Harvard PhD tells me it's raining, I'm going to look outside the window.

The progressive movement adopting the term is merely the inevitable progression to it too losing its distinction.

Since when have Progressives ever been about "losing its distinction" across sex groups? Really, the fact they even feel the need to launder the term actually says quite a bit; they didn't need to do that for any other sexual fargroup, but they aren't just going full speed ahead with the language they already have. I think that says a great deal about their confidence/seriousness about the matter.

If the Progressives succeed in making this term lose its distinction it'll only be an incidental qualifier for their standing policies of "if you pass a paper bag test you are permitted to rape children" and "[fargroup] sex is good -> children can be [fargroup]-> [fargroup] sex involving children is good", thus the term "MAP" is designed to solidify gains in this area by adding yet another thing over which to cry discrimination should one want to criticize those policies.

asserting that such confusion does not exist with the term pedophile, that such nuance is unnecessary

"Abuse of unearned and generally-inescapable social authority to (implicitly, explicitly, or by force) demand normally-unwanted sexual activity from people that don't otherwise want to give it" is common to both terms- the first by popular definition, the second from the fact it's explicitly designed to promote the ability of favored groups to do this (or "comes from academia" for short).

Neither are particularly prosocial positions.

And even then, probably restricted to specific fields of study where hypotheses can be readily falsified via experimentation. Physics and Chemistry are pretty safe (for a given value of safe) but Biology is looking shaky.