#Populism around sexual orientation

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potent geyser
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Writing this after a tangent in Elon Discussion where Elon liked a tweet from the account Libs from Tiktok going for a strawman argument with many outlandish claims. Here to study and discuss the nature of this believe, which is especially popular in conservative parents and has a strong presence in politics as well as in conspiracy theories (QAnon for instance)

Originally posted within #1052844236409675826 but moved here instead

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And now resuming the conversation that was going on there:

I mean, the point @terse dragon makes about populisms having some truth within it is something I'd agree with, populisms transfer political urgencies into political solutions. The feelings are real but the solutions are either ineffective or straight up harmful.

What's the piece of truth here? That there may be parents that feel uneasy about sexual elements about their children. But it's precisely what @weak reef says, it's founded on ignorance. But those feelings, even if stem from ignorance, are still real.

The solution of course is neither easy or fast (educating those older, uneducated and probably unwilling to be educated folk), but I think making an effort of empathy can help to unease the situation

PS: Sorry for pinging again with the same message, I'm just moving the post to a more suitable place

fair flume
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Oh

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Wat

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Why are there 2

potent geyser
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Moved it here since it's more suitable than in offtopic

fair flume
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General vs off topic?

potent geyser
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Yeah, offtopic was a mistake

fair flume
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Is this osint though🤔

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Ah well

potent geyser
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Knife suggested it here, I just obey mod orders 🤷

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Also it can have osint overlap I'd say, especially since this topic is related to things like populism and conspiracy theories

fair flume
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But yeah long story for my point

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Left wing society in west germany tried to remove christian based sexual taboos

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Pedofilia went through the roof

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Official pro-pedofilic policies also showed up

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Great conspiracy theory material

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For those who want to read more traumatising information

fair flume
terse dragon
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I totally agree that it's a straw man argument. AFAIK in the States the way schools teach sex ed can differ greatly across the country which might lead to situations where some people receive very little or very different kind of sex ed than their fellow countrymen and women. some might prefer their children to hear none of it at school all the while reading stories of the material some schools show to pupils regarding the topic which might run contrary to what they believe to be appropriate for pupils to see.

the lengthy explanation of my background thinking leads to what I meant by my populism comment: if a person who's wary of sex ed and everything related to it sees this kind of tweet, he / she might think that the rest of the tweet's claims are true because he / she thinks some of the claims in the tweet are true to begin with (e.g. the innocence part and kids being shown porn at school). the sentiment can then be cleverly exploited to further one's ideological goals and sow disinfo. it sounds to me like this is what some on #far-right-monitoring call "pilling".

I find this conversation to be less of an issue for Europeans given that Europeans tend to be more liberal to sexuality and most likely receive sex ed in a somewhat uniform way. this helps people to have a more or less similar way of thinking about sex and sexual orientation, although not everything is dancing on the roses in Europe either.

I agree with @potent geyser that only time and more knowledge of the subject will "fix" the gap between the conservative and liberal POVs in America but I doubt you'll ever get a uniform way of teaching kids in the US. fighting disinfo can be very difficult if people don't trust the other camp at all, which I suppose is the case in America

potent geyser
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"Pilling" is very much what in psychology is known as anchoring

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And while I'd agree with this being a bigger issue in the US, Europe is not foreign on these talks. I've seen plenty of outraged euros with calls of "sexual children manipulation". This of course is very much homophobic and transphobic discourses, but they are there

kindred crow
kindred crow
potent geyser
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Poor Aeryn, getting the boot without even saying anything 😦

weak reef
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why

kindred crow
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Upon request

tiny shuttle
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This reminds me

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I should preface this by specifically saying this has nothing to do with what LGBT people do, just contributing because of the above discussion and how populism uses such criminality to tar LGBT movement.

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Anyone remember this?

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The so called ||“pedo-partij”||

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Worth mentioning that, shockingly, Marthijn Uittenbogaard, is a guest of the Ecuadorean authorities as of June this year.

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Anyways, I mention it because of what happened at Amsterdam Pride.

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Completely uninvited and unaffiliated with the event, and only not getting thrown out because the clueless people walking past had no idea what the flag meant, he stood up at the parade and filmed himself.

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I’ll get the video

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||Worth mentioning because in addition to the expected conservative right-wing opposition to LGBT, you also have useful idiots in the form of actual pedos, calling themselves “activists”, who interfere in LGBT events, try to pretend they are part of the movement, and in doing so, become useful idiots for right wing populist concern trolling||

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||I can’t find the video, but I remember there being initially a positive reaction, solely because he was literally holding up a pride flag with the symbol on it, and obviously people had no idea of the context of the symbol, probably assuming it was just a regular group, when he gets asked about what it means by the passing crowd he’s cagey about what it means “love who you love” or similar, but you can even see in the video once people become more curious and obviously have googled it, they are disgusted.||

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||I remember at the end of the video, a group of police agents come over to him and politely ask him to put the flag away and f-off.||

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(Decided to censor it due to the nature of the topic)

tiny shuttle
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Here is the video.

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Mixed up who exactly it was, it was Nelson Maatman, another member of that group, one of the group of three Dutch arrested in Mexico/Ecuador.

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Marthijn was obviously in the video too.

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Pim Fortuyn free speech flag.

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immediately after his answer, when the guy walks away disgusted of course, the police agent lady right in front of him:

charred falcon
# potent geyser And now resuming the conversation that was going on there: I mean, the point <@...

In re "parents that feel uneasy", I think in a decent amount of cases at least this may root from places outside ignorance, depending on what you mean. There are some views that would be a bit more fair to consider on the ignorance-rooted side (homophobic and transphobic concerns as an example).

Although if we look at some others, it's more a literal disagreement, hard to claim its rooted from ignorance. Like one thing we run into issues with here in the US is how heavy our religious past is, a lot of sex ed programs still take an abstinence-only view. Although, it's hard to say that roots from ignorance, because it's an opinion based on a want, in some cases they're not really projecting a factual measure besides it can be the "best" way to avoid pregnancies, STIs, etc (which is kind of true for pregnancies)

There's also some weirder worries that are slightly legitimate but I don't think EU nations would have to deal with. Our states here have a lot of power, and one thing that comes with that, is setting age limits for certain things. An actual wise sexual education program would delve into things like age of consent, etc, although that could make really confusing education programs here since you could cross state lines and be dictated by an entirely different set of laws in that regard. This could incidentally lead to that education presenting a belief that could lead to legal issues, and given how our schools work in general its a bit unfeasible to touch on every states law in that regard.
Statistically we tend to top out most of the globe with some of those issues in terms of quantity although, fair debate surrounding that since other countries with closer population numbers aren't as forthcoming about their statistics. Over here, some of the worries here come from both due to the coercive consent behind some cases, that can be promoted by having that knowledge (at any age). It also lends a bit heavier to those worries though, than it might elsewhere.

tiny shuttle
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as a gay person, I am uncomfortable with how political my sexual preferences are. It seems like such a shame to me that at some point, someone decided that the bible should include an anti-gay agenda and that this was a more important sin to clamp down on in public than say, any of the actual 7 deadly sins mentioned in that book. 🤔 People find comfort in hating minority groups of people. It is not ignorance in my opinion, it is merely a group mentality and the desire to "ice the oddballs out" from society. It is human nature.

kindred crow
charred falcon
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Yeah, as much as there is fantastic stand out examples in societies and certain time periods around the globe, by and large, that's not just Christianity thing either, it's taken as not natural by a lot of diff sorts of folks, then follows the same cycle that creates other similar biases. Conditioning and lack of exposure leading to fear.

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I think we're in a tricky spot though because, you're entirely right to feel uncomfortable about that, it shouldn't be political - Although most societies are built to the point that, implementing needed protections for example, inherently becomes political cause of the legislative process it goes through. Even if you disconnected public opinion from that, the actual process unfortunately remains poliical.

gilded sleet
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I’m of the mind that it’s a fundamentally unsolvable problem.
I’d describe two different aspects.

  1. Making deviant behavior illegal based on subjective judgments that it is bad, especially in respect to traditional norms.
  2. Treating deviant behaviors as a red flag. Such individuals face prejudice under the belief that someone who can’t fit within old norms has some form of mental instability, and this “deviance” could be a gateway to harmful behaviors.
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The second aspect is not entirely dissimilar to current discussion in the USA about gun violence and mental illness.

It’s unfair to stigmatize mental disabilities or illnesses based on the actions of a minority.

weak reef
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?????????

gilded sleet
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I’m talking about the perceived connection between, let’s say, LGBT culture and sexual progressive movements, and the fear of child exploitation.

weak reef
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what

gilded sleet
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If I am not making sense, then I can delete these posts.

weak reef
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No no, I’m just confused what you’re referring to as deviant behaviour

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in a thread about populism and sexual orientation

gilded sleet
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Deviant is hard to define.

weak reef
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What actually are you referring to tho

gilded sleet
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At best, I could describe it as behaviors, from a “tabula rasa” perspective, that give viewers a sense of unease.

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I’d like to think that deviance is based on some sort of instinct for acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and something that exists before social conditioning is introduced

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I’m not a sociologist or anthropologist, and I can’t give you a good explanation of “universal taboos” and how they might arise

potent geyser
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Deviant is not hard to define, it just means that it deviates from the norm

weak reef
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yeah, I’m so confused

potent geyser
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Which raises the question: what is then normal?

gilded sleet
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Yes but then we have to introduce what norms are and why they exist

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We define one concept based on another concept

potent geyser
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Not necessarily

gilded sleet
potent geyser
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Agreed

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But it still relies on that, on the notion that it is something not normal, and with the assumption of normalcy = good, abnormal = bad

weak reef
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this has no relevance to the original thread right?

potent geyser
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It does if you empathise with conservative parents who believe that lgtb+ behaviours are deviant

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I must clarify: empathise != agree and, naturally, lgbt+ is not deviant (but this folk believe so, hence the empathy exercise)

weak reef
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huh, ok

potent geyser
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By doing so it becomes easier to understand why they would fall under populistic rhetorics (and obviously this would apply to any collective that's vulnerable to populism, disinformation, etc)

gilded sleet
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Hm. I always thought it was a form of harmless deviance.

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I have the bias of my community and the social demographic I fit into.

potent geyser
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Again, defining it as deviant (or rather eccentric, since we can agree the negative connotation is unnecessary) would imply a definition of normalcy

gilded sleet
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In a certain sense, I have the opinion that there will always be arbitrary decisions about the riskiness of behaviors or what behavior is adjacent to a harmful behavior.
Similar thing with the use of recreational mind-altering substances.

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And so, I justify to myself that someone will always complain, perhaps rightfully, that the status quo prevents them from exercising their freedoms.

potent geyser
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How is it harmful or risky?

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And how is it analogous with recreational drugs?

gilded sleet
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Self exploration in the pursuit of meeting psychological needs and desires, I suppose?

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Maybe that’s a poor description

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They aren’t the same thing

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I have lived with arbitrary rules like “how large the monetary value of a gift or even a meal, exchanged between a government employee and a corporate representative, is considered illegal.”
Thus I’d like to think that all behaviors can be turned into a quantitative system, where it’s possible to compare behaviors through a metric

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You asked how is it risky?
And I can’t really answer that.
At best I could suggest whether a practice like BDSM could be correlated with sadism and a desire to hurt people.
And thereby establish some sort of spectrum of sexual sadism where we measure the strength of the desire against the self control of the individual.

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Now that’s not the same thing as the LGBT movement, but I am someone who sort of sees rules as having an inherent value in restricting freedom

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....

glossy nova
potent geyser
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This is quite psychoanalytic, which is precisely the opposite to quantitative metrics 😛

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Because I'm trying to understand this: you mean to define a scale of how sexual behaviours are harmful I guess?

gilded sleet
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You have given me a lot to think about.

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I suppose conformity makes me feel secure.

I’m not sure I can prove that it’s effective.

potent geyser
glossy nova
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Rather than being pathological, BDSM practitioners tend to be well-adjusted, to have attachment styles similar to normative adults, and to possess beneficial attributes such as good communication skills and resiliency (Williams, Thomas, Prior, Amezquita, & Hall, 2017; Wismeijer & van Assen, 2013; see Brown, Barker, & Rahman, 2020; Simula, 2019b for reviews). BDSM practitioners fall within normative ranges for honesty-humility, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (as well as emotionality and extraversion; Hébert & Weaver, 2014). BDSM is more than ‘hot’ sex: BDSM practitioners consider sex and BDSM to be separate from one another, with the amount of overlap between the two varying considerably on an individual basis (Simula, 2019a; Sprott et al., 2020).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886921000982

potent geyser
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PDF is freely available if you search for it on Scholar

glossy nova
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Still allot of peaple that you would consider "BDSM sadists" are painfully "average" peaple

potent geyser
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That's why I believe that many people who are opposed to lgtbi education aren't necessarily evil, but just mis and dis informed with the idea that lgtbi is harmful or immoral in some way

glossy nova
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the fun thing is that subs are more likely to hold powerful positions in their daily life, always fun when you run into a couple whare for example the wife is the carrier person with a high position in some important company and the husband looks to be completely henpecked in public and then the situation is completely reversed in BDSM situations 🤣

The most glaring error with 50 shades is that Christain Gray is a top, he should be a sub 🤣

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Sadly BDSM is not a subject that have been studied by psychologists to any extent

glossy nova
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I don't agree with the above theory in that paper.
The fact is that any healthy BDSM community are going to be actively hostile against "true sadists" and as even among Sadistic tops the "inflict" pain will only ever be a small part of a "scene" and failure to adequately perform aftercare toward the submissive from a lack of empathy will result in them being shunned by the group at large.
And that is before looking at the fact that "true" sadists are not going to be receptive to limits and will have a psychological need to increase the severity so for the community at large the existence of "true" sadists in the group are going to be a risk both toward the individuals and toward the group as large.

Sure it will exist a small amount that manage to toe the line or that manage to attract/find the most extreme subs but both of those will be rare

potent geyser
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Yeah, fair, it's a topic that lacks a lot of rigourous research at the end of the day

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But what matters is to not establish prejudices on someone just because they're into BDSM

glossy nova
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yeah, that would be silly as you would never know that unless they basically told you

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on that topic I suspect that the authors of that paper only have a passing familiarity with the BDSM community.
Someone violating consent limits in a public scene is not only something that would be noted, it is something that would lead to peaple stopping the scene at once.

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potent geyser
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Anyway, can we try to return the topic back into the original point of the post? (The use of populistic rhetorics against different sexual behaviours and collectives)

I know that discussing prejudice is going to come up but I like to keep this discussion under the whole assumption of everyone not having a prejudice against sexuality

tiny shuttle
tiny shuttle
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It should be noted in that example, that the police once they figured out who the group were/what they were up to/what the flag represented, they booted them, and likewise, once LGBT people at pride themselves figured out what they were doing/beyond just seeing the flag, the reception went from naively trying to be nice to obvious distain, noping out of the situation.

potent geyser
tiny shuttle
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oh damn 😦

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all g

potent geyser
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Thanks for the reminder tho

tiny shuttle
magic yacht
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I know of no serious LGBTQ community who is even slightly tolerant of those people.

tiny shuttle
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It’s optics that are outside the control of the LGBT movement

potent geyser
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Yep, I finally went through it and I'll just say it's just yet another case of bad apples in legitimately good movements that their opposers will amplify and generalise for their goals

humble lodge
nova sierra
tiny shuttle
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Ecofascism may be an unethical ideology.. but isn't it logical? 🤔

potent geyser
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Al ideologies have some degree of logic, even if it's twisted.

However this is not the place to discuss ecofascism, we can set up its own post/thread (:

crude socket
scarlet owl
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Wow this thread is long. Just speaking as someone who tries to keep up to date with all of the goings-ons of the LGBT community (and responding specifically to the ||pedophilia|| topic above) there was, for a brief while, a movement called the ||MAP (Minor Attracted Person(s)/People) movement|| that had some pretty prominent people who claimed to be a part of the LGBT community advocating for, well, what you'd expect.

Unfortunately it never really saw much backlash - or at least, not as much as it should have. In fact a few of the self-proclaimed ||"MAPs"|| were well-known and well-liked members of the community, though I'm not sure what's happened to them since.

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Just if you wanted to research some stuff a bit further.