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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Average disabilities also inspire disgust, and how could they not? Being disabled is awful compared to being fully abled. So does transgenderism -- surely it is far afield from even most liberals' conception of the category to think that having an intractable incongruence between one's body and gender identity is a good thing. Any condition that tips one's cost-benefit analysis in favor of a dramatic and life-altering series of surgeries and permanent medicalization must have a pretty terrible cost to make that dismal path preferable over the status quo, and on that basis alone, we have to conclude that being transgender is innately awful.

Well, contemplating awful conditions, and seeing them in others, naturally arouses disgust. It can also arouse empathy (if we can imagine ourselves having been dealt a hand that put is in a similar position) and sympathy (if we believe the person isn't fundamentally to blame for their condition). Those can inspire charity and the desire to make accommodations. And none of that is inconsistent with also feeling disgust.

But again -- this poster clearly went out of its way to centralize disgust-inspiring conditions in its illustration. Sure, the person is smiling and walking a dog and wearing brightly colored clothing. But any political poster attempting to depict a utopia is going to feature that latter stuff. This one went out of its way to illustrate ugliness and disability, to centralize those and make them the salient element of its depiction. So of course the natural reaction that it inspires is going to be disgust.

Average disabilities also inspire disgust, and how could they not?

Well, I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that one. I just don't think that the average disabled person arouses disgust in most people. Disgust is a very specific emotion.

As for the poster, I would suggest that perhaps not all persons, perhaps not most persons, would have a natural reaction of disgust to what is depicted there, or at least that those who produced the poster do not think so, because the poster is meant to attract people -- specifically, to attract voters -- not to disgust them. "Vote for us, and we will create a disgusting world" is not a message that a political party is likely to adopt. So, I would suggest that many people see the world depicted there very, very differently than you do. My initial reaction was a bit of eye rolling at the "kumbayaa, isn't diversity wonderful, 'I'd like to teach the world to sing'" messaging, because it is a bit banal. But certainly not disgust. Nor can you assume that everyone thinks that anyone there is ugly, except perhaps the person with the pink-haired woman. But to me, the pink-haired woman looks pretty attractive, while others specifically singled her out as ugly. And, in real life, some people can carry off purple hair or mohawks or piercings, and others can't, in my opinion. Others find them inherently unattractive. That is what makes horse races.

Anyhow, the idea that Greens or whomever prefer ugliness, which is bandied about quite often here, is rather silly, although I am sure there have been "edgy" people who claim that ugliness is really beauty. People have different aesthetic preferences. I personally like this even though the person depicted therein is not attractive. And, were I to open an art museum, there would be a lot more of stuff like that than works by Rembrandt. That doesn't mean I prefer ugliness to beauty, but rather because I value other things in art in addition to pure aesthetics. In fact, as I understand the left idea of utopia that is captured in that illustration, it is that utopia is a place where people who have traditionally been deemed ugly or weird, or even people who are in fact objectively ugly or weird (to the extent that is possible) are free to live their lives like everyone else. It is not a world where physical ugliness is celebrated; it is a world where physical ugliness is irrelevant. Of course, I am sure that most people here think that is not a utopia. But that is not an excuse to refuse to understand what the claim being made is.

Frankly, it is no different than people claiming that a parent who doesn't want a book with sex scenes in school libraries MUST be motivated by homophobia, just because the book has an LGBTQ theme, or just because the author happens to be gay. Nor it is different from claiming that everyone who opposes affirmative action must be motivated by racism, or that everyone who opposes abortion is trying to oppress women.