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This brings to mind one of my rules about conservative panics: If laws against witchcraft are removed and/or witchcraft is destigmatized and then all the sudde
by api 4y ago
This brings to mind one of my rules about conservative panics:
If laws against witchcraft are removed and/or witchcraft is destigmatized and then all the sudden there appears to be an explosion of witches, the explanation is probably not that hordes of people are adopting witchcraft.
I'll leave it to the reader to guess the simplest and most likely explanation.
- wwilim 4y agoCaptain Obvious here - the witches were already there, they were just closeted
- conchrat 4y agoI understand your point but I think witchcraft might not be the best example. If witchcraft started going viral, I would absolutely be tempted to give it a shot lol. Would not surprise me if I was not in the minority there
- alisonatwork 4y agoSure. Adventurous or curious people might give something a try just for the hell of it. For some it will stick. For many it won't. This is what I find so exhausting about those who try to drum up some kind of controversy around gender identity. Assuming it is all just a fad, who cares? Where's the issue when people decide to switch their gender on a whim? It's their lives. People do all kinds of things on a whim. Adults, teens and children too. Especially children, in fact. Sometimes people regret the things they did, sometimes they don't. Oh well, it's part of life. I could understand being concerned about a social trend if it was causing violent behavior that negatively affected other people's lives, but this isn't that. Who is it hurting if someone decides to identify as another gender? Even if they pursue medical intervention, it's only going to affect them at worst. If anything the small government/pro-freedom position should be to defend the right of those people to live how they want.
- dahfizz 4y ago> Where's the issue when people decide to switch their gender on a whim? The issue, at least for me, starts when we give children drugs and surgeries to enable them to switch genders. There's nothing wrong with little Timmy wanting to play with Barbies. He doesn't need hormone injections because of it.
- maxbond 4y agoThese same points are made & rebutted in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33880094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33880094
- dmm 4y ago> Even if they pursue medical intervention, it's only going to affect them at worst. People are worried about their kids. People are scared and the media amplifies the most extreme voices. Establishing scientifically the effectiveness of medical interventions is difficult in the best of circumstances and most psychology is non-reproducible, so it's hard to know what to believe is best.
- moffkalast 4y agoMaybe the real witches were the friends we made along the way
- nmadden 4y agoAn explosion of witches is usually down to too much eye of newt.
- rendall 4y ago> one of my rules about conservative panic... Rule implies that it applies to past conservative moral panics. Is there a past moral panic in which lots of formerly suppressed identities suddenly expressed themselves once the moral panic was over?
- pjc50 4y agoA lot of people came out after homosexuality was decriminalised. Freedom of religion allowed a lot of people to express their religious identity which was formerly suppressed?
- amarant 4y agoA bit of an obscure example, but: Capoeira was forbidden in Brazil for a very long time, mostly because of a moral panic(for brevity I'll leave the complexities of this situation out of this comment), then when it was legalised, and the stigma around it began to disappear, it quickly became very popular, both in Brazil and internationally!
- cshimmin 4y agoThis seems to be to opposite of the example GP was seeking. Unless you mean to say that a great many people (both in Brazil and internationally) were already practicing Capoeira before it was legalized...
- bigbillheck 4y agoLeft-handed people.
- api 4y agoI bring this one up every time someone brings up Chesterton's Fence arguments about stuff like this. Why was left handedness considered taboo and evil? Do we need to figure out a legitimate reason for this before we can remove the fence? Could there possibly be a legitimate reason for something that clearly absurd?
- rowanG077 4y agoWhy not? If something illegal/destigmatized which has some advantages becomes legal I would absolutely expect there to be an explosion of people who now start adopting that thing.
- adolph 4y agoThe Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organized abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse) starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
- mc32 4y agoWell, there were actual cases of it, but it was exaggerated in the media. Just as the media makes it out like the next stop by a cop could end up in an execution if you’re not the same ethnicity as the cop. It’s still rather rare, or at least not happening at the rate the media portrays it.
- actionfromafar 4y agoYeah, but the ethnicity of cops is blue.
- denton-scratch 4y agoWhy can't blue men sing the whites?
- adolph 4y agoExaggeration of the actual happens for cause and effect alike. It is often hard to tell which side exaggeration favors until time passes.
- naasking 4y ago> the explanation is probably not that hordes of people are adopting witchcraft. I don't know how you can a priori gauge this probability. If something illegal suddenly becomes legal but is still somewhat taboo, that obviously attracts experimentation, at least from rebellious youth.