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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26200 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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A kid can go into a store and buy a knife. Most kids understand that knives are dangerous. The vast majority of kids don't abuse knives. Why can't it be the same with recreational drugs?

I hate that pornography has eaten sex, especially kinky sex, that good sex is taken to be a simulation of pornography, there is always an imaginary camera in the room, an audience.

When I was younger I often used to feel like I had to perform to some imaginary standard while having sex, but this wasn't because of porn, it was because I was wound up too tight to actually let go and enjoy the fun of sex and because I cared too much about what I imagined the person I was having sex with was thinking about me. If anything, I think that porn has helped me to become more comfortable with my sexuality.

I hate that people consider watching porn normal, even if it is. Jesus Christ people learn to have a shameful dirty secret.

I don't think that there is anything shameful whatsoever about watching porn.

The vast majority of kids don't abuse knives. Why can't it be the same with recreational drugs?

The intent of recreational drugs is to "use it on yourself."

The intent of a knife is never to "use it on yourself" except for exceedingly rare medical emergency situations or incidents of self-harm that are universally recognized as bad.

I think that porn has helped me to become more comfortable with my sexuality.

Bully for you.

I don't think that there is anything shameful whatsoever about watching porn.

Would you be alright with a stranger watching porn next to you on an airline flight? Or in a library? Or around children?

The consequences of modal child drug abuse are both far subtler and far more harmful than the modal child knife abuse along many different axes. The positives of knive availability to children outweigh the negatives. The negatives of drug availability to children outweigh the positives.

A kid can go into a store and buy a knife. Most kids understand that knives are dangerous. The vast majority of kids don't abuse knives. Why can't it be the same with recreational drugs?

Except where they can't:

Restrictions on Sale or Transfer. It is unlawful to sell or transfer any “deadly weapon” to a person under the age of 18. A knife “designed as a weapon and capable of producing death or serious bodily injury” would fit within the definition of a deadly weapon set forth in 18 PA C.S.A. § 2301. The prosecution must prove the item in question was “designed as a weapon.”

While intended to prevent kids from buying switchblades or the like, what this tended to cash out to at my local outdoors stores was that no minors were allowed to buy pocket knives without a parent present.

Now, in the boy scouts we all collected pocket knives, the weirder and more aggressive and more "intended to cause serious bodily harm" the better. But there was friction, we were aware that the item was taken seriously because we had to use workarounds of one type or another to get them.

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