Weekly Open Thread (2/11/26)
Talk about anything!
It’s Wednesday again! To all Primos who will be celebrating Valentine’s Day this weekend, good luck lovemaxxing!
Substack is the home for great culture
It’s Wednesday again! To all Primos who will be celebrating Valentine’s Day this weekend, good luck lovemaxxing!
So we now know for certain that Imane Khelif is in the strictest sense male:
https://www.tvasports.ca/2026/02/04/boxe-imane-khelif-revele-avoir-pris-un-traitement-hormonal-avant-les-jo-de-france-en-2024
For me, this revelation has been an object lesson in just how little facts matter to people.
I am a long-time member of a web forum for a book series you'd all know if I named it. On this forum we talk about a variety of non-book topics, and one of these has been women's sports. The forum has skewed way more left in recent years, and accordingly, it was full of voices insisting that Khelif was as female as Beyonce. In light of Khelif's admission, I went back to the forum, naively expecting some crow-eating.
Nope. The folks there mostly refused to talk about Khelif, and the few who did said the news just didn't matter--the greater topic was what counted. Being the gadfly that I am, I pointed out that it would be nice if people who wanted to discuss the topic could at least admit the truth we now know.
Nope. The best I got was someone telling me that I had just been guessing that Khelif was male, and it was pure luck that I was correct. This came without any acknowledgement that they had been wrong.
Gender ideology is straight-up religion. It has nothing to do with science, is inextricably linked to morality, invokes spiritual concepts like "gender identity", motivates adherents to isolate heretics, cannot be falsified, and is utterly immune to rational discourse. So whenever I hear Jack Turban or Chase Strangio spout some bullshit, I just remind myself they are high priests of a new, emerging faith. No more.
I am going to take a stab at explaining why distinguishing hebephila vs pedophilia is a distinction that matters.
I think the reason why so many reasonable people are pissed about the “pedants” insisting there is a difference is because they think it’s about classifying the victims. And if a girl has been through puberty, she shouldn’t be considered as less of a victim than someone who has not.
But the pedants ( and I am one of them!) are focused on classifying what kind of monster the perpetrator is.
It is not fucked up and evil to be sexually attracted to other humans who have gone through puberty. When I was 14, I was sexually attracted to 14 year old boys. I could even have had sex with one, and it wouldn’t have been a crime.
A full grown man being sexually attracted to a 13 year old girl with breasts and a woman’s figure is biologically normal. And immediate dismissed in a normal man’s brain. It should never ever be acted upon. The Epstein did so makes him a particular kind of monster.
On the other hand, being sexually attracted to a pre-pubertal child is not normal. It serves no evolutionary purpose. So that’s another kind of sick monster.
I get from the episode thread that some people don’t find the different classification of monsters interesting. But I do, and so do a lot of other people. If you are a forensic psychologist, you’d probably be interested in it as well. Because it involves different pathologies and motivations.
I am so irritated by the scolding nature of posters who don’t get this.