5 ms·

Conservative doesn't necessarily == old. I'm a woman who loves other women, we've been around forever, but conservatives want to make it difficult for us to hav

Conservative doesn't necessarily == old. I'm a woman who loves other women, we've been around forever, but conservatives want to make it difficult for us to have relationships.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
shiroiushi 3y ago
Conservative means old-fashioned, not old. More specifically, it means returning to some halcyon (usually mythical) "good old days" when things weren't "degenerate". Sure, homosexuals have been around forever, but societal acceptance of homosexual relationships is relatively new. Conservatives (in the US) want to turn the clock back on that, and make those relationships socially unacceptable or even illegal. Of course, conservatives have certain ideas of when exactly the "good old days" were. Homosexuality was very accepted (even encouraged) in ancient Greece, for example, but Christian US conservatives obviously don't want to go back to those days.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  The definition of conservative isn't nearly as black and white, especially in the US. What is conservative, in the sense of wanting things not change, is a constant moving bar and requires more context. Conservative, in the sense of going back to something in the past, requires context of how far you want to go back. > Of course, conservatives have certain ideas of when exactly the "good old days" were. Homosexuality was very accepted (even encouraged) in ancient Greece, for example, but Christian US conservatives obviously don't want to go back to those days. This is a perfect example of the latter. Anyone in the US that considers removing protections for sexual identity must first pick a time in the past where the laws and norms fit their preferences. That can be called conservative, but is it really? For the former, my generation's big push was to finally make gay marriage legal. It was progressive for sure, and classically liberal in the sense that we were trying to further protect individual rights and freedom to choose. Once it passed, though, does it become conservative? Personally I prefer the definition of conservative that is more present focused, preferring to leave things as they are today unless we have a very good reason to change it. In that sense, protecting gay marriage and similar protections on the books today would be very conservative and trying to remove them would fall into some other bucket that likely doesn't have a name (reductivist? destructionist?).
  - skissane 3y ago
    > It was progressive for sure, and classically liberal in the sense that we were trying to further protect individual rights and freedom to choose. Once it passed, though, does it become conservative? Radical gay liberationists argued (and still argue) that same-sex marriage was always conservative rather than truly progressive, since it is trying to co-opt and tame gay radicalism into sustaining traditional social institutions such as marriage, rather than what they argue would be the truly progressive approach, which would be to dismantle those institutions entirely. Words like "conservative" and "progressive" have no inherent meaning, absent a background political ideology to read them against. Once you pick your political ideology, that ideology then gives those words meaning for you – but to someone else, who has chosen a different ideology, they can have radically different meanings. If we can't agree on what is the objectively correct ideology, then there we won't be able to agree on any meaning of those terms as objectively correct.
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      > Radical gay liberationists argued (and still argue) that same-sex marriage was always conservative rather than truly progressive, since it is trying to co-opt and tame gay radicalism into sustaining traditional social institutions such as marriage, rather than what they argue would be the truly progressive approach, which would be to dismantle those institutions entirely. And I would argue that is an unnecessarily extreme stance. The concept of marriage can't be dismantled, at best we could remove any state concept of it and get rid of any legal protections, tax benefits, etc. I don't personally see the value in that over making sure everyone has access regardless of who they wish to marry, though regardless marriage as a concept would never be abolished as it exists both in state and religious contexts. > Words like "conservative" and "progressive" have no inherent meaning, absent a background political ideology to read them against. Once you pick your political ideology, that ideology then gives those words meaning for you – but to someone else, who has chosen a different ideology, they can have radically different meanings. If we can't agree on what is the objectively correct ideology, then there we won't be able to agree on any meaning of those terms as objectively correct. This is a really strange view on language in my opinion. We absolutely could define what the terms conservative and progressive mean, and the definitions could be absolute rather than relative. In my experience people do seem to have different understandings of the terms today, but that can easily be a failure to agree of definitions rather than a given side effect of the terms themselves being relative to one's starting point.
- skissane 3y ago
  > Sure, homosexuals have been around forever, but societal acceptance of homosexual relationships is relatively new > Homosexuality was very accepted (even encouraged) in ancient Greece, for example "Homosexuality" in ancient Greece was different in so many ways from the modern concept, one has to question whether it is appropriate to apply that modern label to it. Doing so tends to promote misunderstanding, by erasing rather than highlighting how very different ancient Greek attitudes were from all contemporary Western ones, whether progressive or conservative.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    It involved men having sexual relations with other men, right? I'm not sure how different it can be, or why you're putting scare-quotes around it. Anything involving sexual relations between men is anathema to Christian conservatives.
    - skissane 3y ago
      A whole bunch of reasons: (1) was it homosexuality or bisexuality? It is questionable whether the distinction between the two even makes sense in an ancient Greek context (2) it was socially acceptable for a grown man to have relations with a teenage boy, but a grown man having such a relationship with his social equal (another free adult male) was (generally speaking) viewed much more negatively; by contrast, in the contemporary West, the former is increasingly viewed as taboo, the latter as increasingly acceptable, which is moving in the complete opposite direction to the ancient Greek attitude (3) the term "homosexuality" encompasses both male-male and female-female relationships, but ancient Greeks didn't treat them as equivalent: in many city-states, the former was much more socially acceptable than the latter (Sparta was a noticeable exception, possibly due to its more egalitarian gender relations). Many cite Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium as one of the few ancient forerunners of the modern homosexual-vs-heterosexual distinction, yet it treats female-female and male-male relations as two separate categories, rather than merging them into a single category of "homosexual" (4) contemporary Western ideas tend to emphasise heterosexual and homosexual relations as interchangeable and equivalent; ancient Greek views did not. Many ancient Greek men had both a wife and an adolescent male lover, but we have no evidence any of them ever thought of marrying the latter. They wouldn't view the two as coequal members of a common category, as much contemporary Western thought does (5) the idea of sexual orientations ("homosexual", "heterosexual", etc) as categories of persons was largely unknown in the pre-modern world. As I mentioned, Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium is sometimes viewed as a precursor of that modern idea, but (a) the Symposium is arguably not representative of the mainstream of ancient Greek thought on this topic, (b) given it is a speech by a comedian in a text rich with irony, it is unclear how seriously Plato actually wanted us to take it (c) in the details it doesn't agree with modern concepts either (missing any concept of bisexuality, and treating male-male and female-female relations as two separate categories on the same level as male-female ones) > or why you're putting scare-quotes around it To emphasise its status as a word (and the specific concept/cultural construct that word represents), which emerged in the context of a particular culture and historical period, and hence whose applicability to very different cultures in very different historical periods is open to question > Anything involving sexual relations between men is anathema to Christian conservatives. I don't see how the views of contemporary Christian conservatives has any inherent relevance to the question of how applicable the word "homosexuality" is to ancient Greece

Conservative doesn't necessarily == old. I'm a woman who loves other women, we've been around forever, but conservatives want to make it difficult for us to have relationships.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

shiroiushi 3y ago

Conservative means old-fashioned, not old. More specifically, it means returning to some halcyon (usually mythical) "good old days" when things weren't "degenerate". Sure, homosexuals have been around forever, but societal acceptance of homosexual relationships is relatively new. Conservatives (in the US) want to turn the clock back on that, and make those relationships socially unacceptable or even illegal. Of course, conservatives have certain ideas of when exactly the "good old days" were. Homosexuality was very accepted (even encouraged) in ancient Greece, for example, but Christian US conservatives obviously don't want to go back to those days.

_heimdall 3y ago
The definition of conservative isn't nearly as black and white, especially in the US. What is conservative, in the sense of wanting things not change, is a constant moving bar and requires more context. Conservative, in the sense of going back to something in the past, requires context of how far you want to go back. > Of course, conservatives have certain ideas of when exactly the "good old days" were. Homosexuality was very accepted (even encouraged) in ancient Greece, for example, but Christian US conservatives obviously don't want to go back to those days. This is a perfect example of the latter. Anyone in the US that considers removing protections for sexual identity must first pick a time in the past where the laws and norms fit their preferences. That can be called conservative, but is it really? For the former, my generation's big push was to finally make gay marriage legal. It was progressive for sure, and classically liberal in the sense that we were trying to further protect individual rights and freedom to choose. Once it passed, though, does it become conservative? Personally I prefer the definition of conservative that is more present focused, preferring to leave things as they are today unless we have a very good reason to change it. In that sense, protecting gay marriage and similar protections on the books today would be very conservative and trying to remove them would fall into some other bucket that likely doesn't have a name (reductivist? destructionist?).
- skissane 3y ago
  > It was progressive for sure, and classically liberal in the sense that we were trying to further protect individual rights and freedom to choose. Once it passed, though, does it become conservative? Radical gay liberationists argued (and still argue) that same-sex marriage was always conservative rather than truly progressive, since it is trying to co-opt and tame gay radicalism into sustaining traditional social institutions such as marriage, rather than what they argue would be the truly progressive approach, which would be to dismantle those institutions entirely. Words like "conservative" and "progressive" have no inherent meaning, absent a background political ideology to read them against. Once you pick your political ideology, that ideology then gives those words meaning for you – but to someone else, who has chosen a different ideology, they can have radically different meanings. If we can't agree on what is the objectively correct ideology, then there we won't be able to agree on any meaning of those terms as objectively correct.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    > Radical gay liberationists argued (and still argue) that same-sex marriage was always conservative rather than truly progressive, since it is trying to co-opt and tame gay radicalism into sustaining traditional social institutions such as marriage, rather than what they argue would be the truly progressive approach, which would be to dismantle those institutions entirely. And I would argue that is an unnecessarily extreme stance. The concept of marriage can't be dismantled, at best we could remove any state concept of it and get rid of any legal protections, tax benefits, etc. I don't personally see the value in that over making sure everyone has access regardless of who they wish to marry, though regardless marriage as a concept would never be abolished as it exists both in state and religious contexts. > Words like "conservative" and "progressive" have no inherent meaning, absent a background political ideology to read them against. Once you pick your political ideology, that ideology then gives those words meaning for you – but to someone else, who has chosen a different ideology, they can have radically different meanings. If we can't agree on what is the objectively correct ideology, then there we won't be able to agree on any meaning of those terms as objectively correct. This is a really strange view on language in my opinion. We absolutely could define what the terms conservative and progressive mean, and the definitions could be absolute rather than relative. In my experience people do seem to have different understandings of the terms today, but that can easily be a failure to agree of definitions rather than a given side effect of the terms themselves being relative to one's starting point.
skissane 3y ago
> Sure, homosexuals have been around forever, but societal acceptance of homosexual relationships is relatively new > Homosexuality was very accepted (even encouraged) in ancient Greece, for example "Homosexuality" in ancient Greece was different in so many ways from the modern concept, one has to question whether it is appropriate to apply that modern label to it. Doing so tends to promote misunderstanding, by erasing rather than highlighting how very different ancient Greek attitudes were from all contemporary Western ones, whether progressive or conservative.
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  It involved men having sexual relations with other men, right? I'm not sure how different it can be, or why you're putting scare-quotes around it. Anything involving sexual relations between men is anathema to Christian conservatives.
  - skissane 3y ago
    A whole bunch of reasons: (1) was it homosexuality or bisexuality? It is questionable whether the distinction between the two even makes sense in an ancient Greek context (2) it was socially acceptable for a grown man to have relations with a teenage boy, but a grown man having such a relationship with his social equal (another free adult male) was (generally speaking) viewed much more negatively; by contrast, in the contemporary West, the former is increasingly viewed as taboo, the latter as increasingly acceptable, which is moving in the complete opposite direction to the ancient Greek attitude (3) the term "homosexuality" encompasses both male-male and female-female relationships, but ancient Greeks didn't treat them as equivalent: in many city-states, the former was much more socially acceptable than the latter (Sparta was a noticeable exception, possibly due to its more egalitarian gender relations). Many cite Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium as one of the few ancient forerunners of the modern homosexual-vs-heterosexual distinction, yet it treats female-female and male-male relations as two separate categories, rather than merging them into a single category of "homosexual" (4) contemporary Western ideas tend to emphasise heterosexual and homosexual relations as interchangeable and equivalent; ancient Greek views did not. Many ancient Greek men had both a wife and an adolescent male lover, but we have no evidence any of them ever thought of marrying the latter. They wouldn't view the two as coequal members of a common category, as much contemporary Western thought does (5) the idea of sexual orientations ("homosexual", "heterosexual", etc) as categories of persons was largely unknown in the pre-modern world. As I mentioned, Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium is sometimes viewed as a precursor of that modern idea, but (a) the Symposium is arguably not representative of the mainstream of ancient Greek thought on this topic, (b) given it is a speech by a comedian in a text rich with irony, it is unclear how seriously Plato actually wanted us to take it (c) in the details it doesn't agree with modern concepts either (missing any concept of bisexuality, and treating male-male and female-female relations as two separate categories on the same level as male-female ones) > or why you're putting scare-quotes around it To emphasise its status as a word (and the specific concept/cultural construct that word represents), which emerged in the context of a particular culture and historical period, and hence whose applicability to very different cultures in very different historical periods is open to question > Anything involving sexual relations between men is anathema to Christian conservatives. I don't see how the views of contemporary Christian conservatives has any inherent relevance to the question of how applicable the word "homosexuality" is to ancient Greece