The first thing that comes to mind is the conservative movements growing obsessions with pedophilia, real and imagined. It has become the visceral hook that seems to emotionally motivate a lot of the far-right, not unlike abortion.
For decades the lesson was "don't talk to strangers online," yet every kids' app has a social component that encourages their doing exactly that. The channels by which this could possibly be supervised are rendered deliberately opaque. No supervision is possible by MITM.
Then you get the influencer crowd. The kids flock to innocent unboxing videos on YouTube, because ooh shiny. Because there are no broadcast decency standards on the internet, they're free to follow it up with "hey kids now let's check out my animal dildo collection."
Then there's Discord, on which even the fucking FBI is putting out advisories about pedophiles grooming kids from Roblox. The feds are 3-5 years late to every party, so in time that problem is going to prove way worse than anybody realized.
It's not an "obsession with pedophilia;" the idea that there needs to be a culture of "child sexuality" at all is distasteful enough to elicit strong reactions. We don't encourage kids to smoke or get facial tattoos, but we're forced to support their decision to be castrated based on ideas put in their head by Tumblr and the virtual environments they take part in, grooming them in the very games they play. Fire up Splatoon 3 and see how many names and profile images have something to do with yaoi, yuri, gayness or countdowns to HRT. There are none to be found that have anything to do with heteronormative sex, and most games banned sprays depicting such years ago. To each their own, but saturating kids with this stuff explicitly teaches them that transgressive sexuality is how you fit in. It's not for everyone, so they end up miserable, castrated, sexually assaulted, and dragging everyone else down with them and killing themselves, their families or their classmates. Thanks, Big Tech.
It's a visceral hook (and an appealing one) because it appeals to collective frustration. Everything parents try to do gets undermined by Big Tech. They do nothing to help us, and deride us for poor parenting where we fail to keep up with their tactics.
I'm just one guy burdened with a day job, trying to fend off teams of experts who each spend 40+ hours a week inventing efficient ways to sap as much of my kids' attention as possible while replacing their values with ones more friendly to pedophiles and advertisers.
The whole thing can burn to the ground for all I care. It's an entirely emotional reaction on my part, and I'm not alone in feeling this way.
No kid will get "castrated" just to fit in. Actual gender change operations aren't even done until adulthood, only puberty blockers are sometimes used which are reversible. And only if the child's dysphoria is so extreme it really impacts their quality of life or endangers them (think self-harm). In this sense it's entirely "for the children".
Also 99% of trans people have no regrets. The system works. I think it's amazing that we live in a world where people can decide their own life and body. And I don't really get the whole hate against trans people. It's not like they're harming anyone.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/detransitioned-boy-castrated-b... (Note the total lack of sourcing)
https://www.factcheck.org/2023/05/scicheck-young-children-do...
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/mar/05/viral-imag...
People forget also that the parents have the final say in these matters until the child matures. Nobody is coming to castrate your kids :P
Tell that to all the lesbian women who've had their social and dating spaces overrun by men pretending to be women. Or to the female prisoners forced to share cells with such men. Or indeed to any woman who's had to deal with one of these men invading a female-only space for his own selfish delight.
And a trans operation is obviously not done to be able to snoop in the women's shower.
This reality-defying assertion always reminds me of the Catholic belief in transubstantiation. Their position is that even though the bread looks like bread, tastes like bread, behaves like bread, has all the properties of bread, and so on, it somehow is literally the body of Christ in substance.
Just like how these men are somehow literally women, according to acolytes of the transgender belief system.
It's nonsensical. Why do you even believe this?
This seems to be false according to this article [1] which claims that “In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims.”
1: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tran...
Edit: According to this article linked below, it's not allowed in the US either under the age of 18: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/mar/05/viral-imag...
In fact, it's kind of fucked up how the entire anti-trans movement completely pretends intersex people do not exist.
>99% have no regrets
Why is the suicide rate so high then?
Suicide here in Europe is not higher (in fact it's higher when not carried out die to dysphoria) but I can imagine that in strongly conservative areas bullying is very strong driving people over the edge :'(
So while I sympathize with your plight, you chose this bed. Why should I have to sleep in it?
The only change is that now we recognize that bullying and abusing children because they're the "wrong" sexuality is wrong, and homophobes have decided that instead of doing it directly they're going to try the "sex is sin" path of abuse and then say that the only reason for a non-straight relationship is sex, and therefore is adults only.
The fact that you go on an uninformed transphobic rant tells me which camp you're in.
The only thing that gives me some peace of mind is seeing the growing backlash to all this nonsense. Seems to me that thrusting this crazy ideology onto kids, chopping body parts off teenagers, celebrating creepy pedophilic men if they happen to align with some bespoke 'gender identity', attacking free speech and attempting to ruin the lives of those who criticize this delusional denial of reality is most likely not a winning strategy after all.
I just hope this is all done away with before my kid is old enough to be affected by it.
But it is a good example of the over-the-top rhetoric being used around this exact issue.
You said:
"It [pedophilia] has become the visceral hook that seems to emotionally motivate a lot of the far-right, not unlike abortion."
I am claiming that pedophilia motivates many people, not just the far right. It is beyond me how you could misread that claim into something that would lead you to reply as you did.
[Edit: My use of "ought to" may be the problem. The left, based on their positions, should be emotionally, viscerally motivated to oppose pedophilia. If they aren't, then that is an inconsistency in their position. But I think that they (or at least many of them) are motivated. So, to sum up, I'm not sure why you singled out the far-right in your initial statement.]
That implies they do not care about the sexual abuse of minors, but they ought to.
"There is absolutely nothing about real pedophilia that makes it a far-right-only concern"
And implying that anyone, anywhere would think that it is a "far-right only concern" is absurd framing. It's make-believe nonsense.
Being "emotionally, viscerally" motivated, to the extent that it's very obvious, tends to make people do stupid and counterproductive things. You shouldn't be demanding that.
> I'm not sure why you singled out the far-right in your initial statement.
Because of their horrible politicized accusations that take attention away from the actual problems.
Particularly in the context of the appeal of an ad dubiously associating a California tech co with paedophilia to people who believe stuff like Pizzagate and Q because they're inclined to suspect everybody they don't like is in league with the paedos
Child sex abuse is more common that it ever should be, but it is not the epidemic of child abuse that the right characterizes it to be. Accusations of pedophilia are extremely commonplace on the right, even when there is absolutely no evidence, largely because it is the most horrifying thing you can accuse another person of doing, and because the moral panic you can instill in your supporters if you convince them is a highly effective political weapon.
If anything, the people who scream about pedophila the loudest are the ones showing their apathy towards actual real-world child sex abuse, because they are doing so in bad faith, not to protect actual children, but to score political points through slander. If anything that helps obfuscate and enable child abusers, since the focus is now on conspiracy theories and targeted defamation.