Sort of. I would agree with “On a micro level, dehumanization is individual. On a macro level, is it entirely related the perpetuation of power differentials in society as a whole.”
But this is a complex concept, and I don’t think it can be summed up in a single sentence.
This, very much.
My God you-re fucking tedious.
I’ll try again:
Should municipalities, states, and the federal government enact legislation that protects from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Why or why not.
Should they have done the same for discrimination on the basis of race? Why or why not?
What, if anything, are the relevant differences between the two.
It doesn’t hold a candle to Naziism (which you may think serves your point, but it does not.) This was another form of white supremacy. As I stated earlier though, the world champ at inflicting suffering is communism. Somewhere around 100-150 million people murdered under communism in the 20th century. Communism is founded on class struggles.
All these murderous philosophies have something in common. Stated as simply as possible, the only commonality between these issues is that place a greater importance on one’s group identity, than one’s individual identity. Once society draws that line and starts believing that it is well down the road to ruin. That is the primary evil that must be fought.
We should be extremely careful about how we draw the lines and categorize each other.
Race, gender, sexuality… these are the least interesting and the least telling things about an individual. They don’t tell you anything of importance about them.
If you determine that 80% of suffering is caused by white supremacists, and you determine to protect minorities based on this you are committing a logical fallacy that exacerbates the problem rather than fixing it. All you are doing is shifting the points of contention upon which these group conflicts are based. You are doing nothing to solve the problem, because white supremacy is not the root problem. The root problem is tribalism based on one;s group identity.
It is an easy and pervasive mistake to make that plays out over and over In world history. 100s of millions have died from it. It is practically a heuristic built into our psychology that we function this way.
Even if the number is 80%. There is still 20% where it’s not. Why would you draw your categories in such a way that ignores the 20%? If you could choose a way to categorize the problem that catches 100% wouldn’t that be the better choice?
The 100% percent way is that placing the group identity over the individual identity is a broom that sweeps up Nazis, white Supremacists, and communists.
You get all three this way.
It’s not easy and convenient. After all, white supremacists are easy to identify. They are pretty much all white. It’s hard to tell how somebody relatively values their group versus their individual identity. There is no easy test for that.
If the correct answer to the problem were easy and simple to identify, it would not plague us throughout our history.
If the problem is white supremacy, if that is how it is Identified, than history suggests that the inevitable solution is to get rid of the white people. Identify one group as the cause of the problem. Gang up on that group and get rid of it. The Nazis played that game, the communists played that game. It’s not a good game. Why would you want to go down that road.
Why engage in a fallacy based on a known heuristic?
The idea that somebody died at the hands of a black supremacist is just as bad as somebody dying at the hands of a white supremacist. If it’s one versus a million what difference does it make? Why go down a road that a value’s a human life based on skin color?
If i’m Tedious stop wasting your time and mine. I don’t want to take your bigotry test.
Uh, what you say is a fallacy itself. Fallacy of the excluded middle with a dash of false choice.
Dealing with a racist society does not lead to the genocide of the former oppressors, and regarding America, there is a good number of whites that do understand how better is to make efforts to give minorities the same rights and opportunities as most of the whites have.
Yes, that was six years ago…but two days ago you said this
So, sure you said it six years ago, but unless I’ve interpreted it wrong you still believe that it’s a valid comment, and that calling someone a brazen slut in those circumstances is ok?
Anyway, you’ve got enough people piled up on you, so not much more to add from me on this topic.
Would David Jolly count?
Okay, I’m not sure what the point of this post is. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t conflict with anything I’ve posted. My philosophy and what I advocate doesn’t commit any of the sins you criticize in this post.
I’m not convinced restricted sexual mores for women is a lesser role. Women seem to prefer their restricted sexual mores, and I don’t think it’s my place to tell them that refusing to sleep with me means they’re brainwashed by society and collaborating with their own oppression. Don’t get me started on what happens when you try to free them from their false consciousness by complimenting their breasts.
Women weren’t relegated to the home and childcare because that’s a lesser role; the home and childcare are regarded as lesser because women traditionally handled them. Spend the next six months living on beer (which you have to fetch yourself) and Slim Jims, and then tell me if cooking is unimportant. And if no one cleans the house for six months, the roaches will eat your Slim Jims. And whoever raises the children controls the future. Childcare is unimportant only to people who have no stake in the future of humanity.
I think the masculine form of “slut” is “wimp.” Both words are about not following sex roles.
I quite agree: a slur isn’t the same as an insult, but I don’t think the difference is that slurs prop up bigotry. Feminists have been called fat, ugly, hairy-legged, demonic lesbians—all perfectly good not-slur words, that were used in this context to prop up bigotry.
I think what makes a slur is that it’s bigoted by definition. A perfect example is “nigger.” Its denotation is “black person”; its connotation is negative. The very meaning of the word says being a black person is bad. All slurs work like that.
On the other hand, “asshole” means “an obnoxious person.” It has a negative connotation, but being obnoxious really is bad. We’re never going to be woke enough to not care if someone’s obnoxious. It’s an insult.
So what about “slut”? It has a negative connotation, but it doesn’t mean “woman”; it means “promiscuous woman.” Some people hate Mother Teresa, but I’ve never heard anyone call her a slut, because she wasn’t promiscuous, so, IMHO, “slut” isn’t a misogynist slur. I suppose it’s unfairly insulting to women who sleep around, (which is really none of our business) but if we go down that road, it will quickly get very weird, because most of our good insults are sexual. “Bastard” stigmatizes out-of-wedlock children, “cocksucker” stigmatizes sexually-active women and gay men, “motherfucker” stigmatizes victims of mother-son incest, and “stupid fuck” stigmatizes a warm, joyous act that is the beginning of life.
If a woman drowns her children because her new boyfriend doesn’t want kids, I may just lose my temper and say she’s a cunt. What’s that, I’m a sexist pig? Well, first of all, I consider the nuclear option c-word a really harsh insult rather than a sexist slur, and second, what word should I use? Inappropriate? Dysfunctional? Lawyer? We’re running out of insults.
Maybe running out of insults would be good thing. Maybe we should follow the Christian injunction to love our enemies or the Jewish laws of lashon harah and never say anything harsh about anyone ever again. That would make for a much kinder world, and it’s harder than a vow of celibacy.
As I said, I don’t think “slut” is a bigoted slur, but even if it is, bigotry is wrong, but it’s not the only evil or even the worst evil. If I have to choose between living next-door to Iago from Othello, someone who slashes my tires because they don’t like how I park, someone who glares at me because I control the fake media and the banks, or someone who won’t stop blasting Earth, Wind & Fire, John Cage, and Laurence Welk—I pick the antisemite.
Scylla’s imperfect. Whatever. Go read The horror of blimps.
It’s a lovely thread, indicative of great narrative wit. Meaning he’s not stupid, he’s just an asshole. :mad:
You’re a fucking coward.
Based on the things you posted earlier (then backtracked from and then ignored all requests for further information), I think I know why you’re a fucking coward. You’re afraid actually saying that you think that anti-discrimination laws should only apply to the most severe cases and maybe not to sexual orientation (but I think you’d hedge that one by saying they should for “public trust” or severe harms), because you know how that makes you look and sound. I also think you believe anti-discrimination laws may cause more harm than good, and that the harms they are meant to combat should be solved by persuasion of the offenders or social pressure. I also think that, if you were honest with yourself, you’d go even further and say that your “public trust” exception was more to protect your reputation than what you actually believe.
So you keep your actual views hidden and refuse to answer these important questions directly. Like so many people who hold tired, old, unsupported by evidece beliefs that molder unchallenged by debate or self-reflection, you don’t want to talk about them. Unlike many, though, you’re smart enough to know how actually saying them makes you appear to others. So you don’t want to directly answer the questions or talk about them. And I’m betting that, if you do, what you say will be more obfuscation and trying to look good than actually being truthful.
So I remain unsure if you’re a bigot.
But I KNOW you’re a fucking coward.
You know nothing, Jon Snow.
Ooh, sick burn.
Disagree with the first sentence, but I’m baffled by the rest of this paragraph… no idea what this is responding to (especially the “brainwashed” stuff about sex).
This too. No idea what this is attempting to refute. It doesn’t appear to conflict with my points, aside from the first sentence, perhaps, but I’m not exactly sure what even that one means.
I think this actually illustrates one of the ways in which the patriarchal hierarchical system of gender roles harms men. Men also have relatively narrow roles in traditional society, and this is also bad.
Okay, we disagree on whether “slut” is a misogynistic slur – I think it’s a slur because, for one thing, it often is used against women for reasons other than their promiscuity (and even if it was only about promiscuity, I would still think it would be a slur – there’s nothing intrinsically wrong about promiscuity, and there’s no countarpart for promiscuous men, and promiscuity has been an excuse to oppress women but not men, etc.). Tons of women have been called “sluts” for the way they dress, or their body shape, or even just their political or philosophical views about life and gender roles.
Not sure what the rest of these paragraphs are trying to argue… they don’t seem to address much, if anything, of what I’ve posted.
Ok, I was going at the “sort of” that Andros mentioned. I was aware from the start that this might not be what you are arguing.
What you are arguing, as you say, is complicated. It appears to be not easily definitional. Maybe it’s an ideology, or part of one (though I’m leaning against this.). Perhaps it’s a philosophy, or a code of behavior. Perhaps it is tied into your specific cultural background, experiences, upbringing, or what have you.
It is also possible at this point that it is inconsistent incoherent or not fully thought out (i’m Not accusing you of this, just saying it’s possible)
At any event, it doesn’t seem reasonable to hold me to this standard that you can’t explain or define.
Still another possibility is that I am just genuinely stupid. That is the basis of the problem. In which case it’s still not reasonable to expect me to adhere to the standard (I don’t think this is the case, but we are exploring all possibilities)
So, let’s try a different tack.
I think it’s obvious that there is something to what you say, and that we live with the legacy of our history, and that history includes repression of groups, and our language is preloaded to some extent to perpetuate and reinforce that.
I am, and have been fully aware of this.
That however is not a comprehensive description of language, and it does not mean that all kinds of communication should be assessed with this in mind.
The repressed/repressor associations of language are just one of the cultural and historical ways that our language is preloaded. There are all kinds of other associations in there as well.
So, if you bring all this baggage to every conversation and deconstruct what they say keeping in mind all the past and historical associations, you are not actually communicating. What you are doing is assigning your own meaning based on the various choices your associations give you.
What you have to do in my opinion is figure out what associations the person saying something is aware of and choosing to use. You guess at this based on context and what you know about that person. People of good faith, usually seek to clarify rather than correct when they are not sure what associations they should use. In no case, does the listener get to an impute the meaning of the speaker.
If someone calls someone else a “Vandal” they are not making a genocidal slur. That however, is the historical genesis of the term.
Similarly, if in 1982, a baseball player thinks he received a terribly bad call from an umpire, and he calls that umpire a cocksucker, he might get thrown out of the game but not because he made a homophobic slur, even though that is the origin. He might actually have needed to stop and think about it before he recognized that rather obvious origin.
In my opinion leftists and liberals are especially sensitive to the cultural and repressive associations of language. They see them as being hard and built in.
Conservatives tend to be relatively insensitive to these.
A persons background and upbringing may also charge those associations.
My background is both conservative and one where insults are pretty much background noise.
I use these terms more loosely and casually than many others, though, as I’ve spent the last 20 years in PA, i’ve Been slowly losing my New York accent, and I tend to curse and used charged insults less.
“Calling out” a speaker for using a term that is charged with associations that he thinks are wrong is not an admirable thing, unless he is sure that the person in question is meaning to use those associations.
If you don’t ask, politely, and just assume what you want, you are the commuting the wrong, not the speaker. The speaker has nothing to apologize for. You would.
I don’t recall anybody asking me what I meant. It sure seems like a lot were telling me what I meant.
And then my children were attacked.
There. Six years later I have again defended myself for the same thing.
We are like four or five pages into this, and exactly what is that you object to has still to be defined and made clear.
Hey, if he doesn’t spread the bigotry, then that’s a step in the right direction. I completely missed the “brazen slut” bit, so I did a quick search and saw that entire conversation. As my wife would put it, that’s interesting. (FYI: when my wife says something’s interesting, it’s most definitely not a compliment.) Yeah, as long as he keeps that nonsense bottled up, the world will be a slightly better place.
Okay, this is a bit more clear. “What you meant” could be helpful but IMO would not justify or exculpate the usage of such language (at least for any explanation I can think of – maybe there are others I haven’t thought of). By all means, please explain what you meant when you called Fluke a “brazen slut”. I think I’ve asked you this before (and several folks did in that very thread, IIRC), but I’m happy to do so again.
But to step back a bit, I’m “calling you out” over, at worst, an extremely minor sin. We’re probably spending a lot more time then a single flippant offensive comment is worth. What keeps me interested is finding out more about how you (and presumably many others who disagree with me about politics) think about these kinds of things.
IMO “slut” is different from “vandal” because the latter isn’t used (AFAIK, at least) to support or justify any systemic oppression or hierarchy, while the former serves to highlight and strengthen traditional gender roles with regards to sexuality, and stigmatize women who fall outside those roles. And not just women who fall outside those roles, but any woman can be branded as a slut – and if the “brand” sticks, regardless of their actual behavior, there can be serious consequences, including more free reign to sexually abuse them. Which wouldn’t be justified by promiscuity or any behavior, of course.
I meant it as a throwaway insult. I chose that, because of certain associations. “Brazen” is a bit of an archaism. To the extent that it is used these days, it usually used to make fun of the viewpoint that a women needs to hide her sexuality. It’s a term for grandmas spinsters and old men. This should have softened “slut” which I would have deemed unacceptable by itself, modifying it to show that it was not literal, but to be taken as part of the archaism. It seemed apropos as the actual circumstances were of a young woman expressing her sexual demands to an old stodgy institution that disapproves and wants nothing to do with it.
She was a public figure, and not on this message board, so I didn’t have to worry about hurting her feelings.
Also, and this is important. It was not an accident that she was in this role. She chose to go to that school or whatever specifically so she could make the argument that her right to birth control through insurance trumps their religious objection.
She was not being victimized, she was, if anything empowered. The role of “brazen slut,” was being played out ironically by her and deliberately. The tables were turned. In the past disapproving churches and institutes were forcing women to adjust their behavior lest they be seen as brazen sluts, and suffer disapproval.
In this circumstance, she is the one trying to modify the church’s behavior by generating disapproval and a lawsuit.
“Brazen slut” describes just the amount of actual disapproval to show that I am not on her side, but the archaism shows that it is not a full strength use of “slut,” and in fact is referential that we are talking about a sexual thing. “Bitch, wench,” don’t work there. “Hussy” would have been the better choice, as it conveys the sexual nature of the issue she is putting forth and is another archaism and would emphasize that aspect.
Language is a wonderful and beautiful thing. I am known on this board for being slightly internet famous for my humorous anecdotes. I was being humorous and witty and making an argument simultaneously.
I thought it was ironic and clever and smart. I still think it is. “Pearls before swine.”
So you see…
Or maybe not.
I really don’t think Scylla is any more a bigot than most people. I don’t think he holds any animosity toward blacks or gays or women. Calling him a bigot for having … more conservative … beliefs is completely unproductive.
What he is for sure, though, is a coward.
He, like so many on the right (and some on the left), believe something that is unsupported by evidence and more than likely wrong, but he believes it, so he won’t challenge, or allow others to challenge, those beliefs. For many on the right, those beliefs involve stereotypes about race or global warming or enforcing societal norms. They have no interest in having those beliefs challenged by debate or to see the light of day, because that might mean their beliefs are wrong and they simply cannot abide that.
For Scylla, in this thread, his beliefs about anti-discrimination laws are being challenged, and, rather than engage in self-reflection or debate, he runs away. Because having your beliefs challenged, and kinda knowing that they’re not well supported, is tough to deal with.
But I think there is great value in shining a light on these kinds of beliefs. The greatest value of debate and free speech is to bring all these ideas out into the sunlight and try to make each other see each other’s side. It’s so much better than letting people have their little stereotypes and beliefs go unchallenged and fester in the dark.
Sure, calling him a coward isn’t the most accommodating way to actually get him to share his underlying beliefs and the reason for them. Giving him an out where he can save face or trying to reach a compromise are much better ways to get those ideas out of the muck and into public view for testing. But I got frustrated spending pages trying to get an honest answer from him to my questions. He intimates and hints at his real position, but he’s too cowardly to actually come out and say them. And calling a coward a coward is, at the least, truthful.
So, I likely screwed up, and now Scylla his unsupported beliefs can go hide in the dark and let his ideas fester and solidify some more. In the end, it is just a message board, and one person’s cowardice and refusal to state, let alone debate, his beliefs shouldn’t frustrate me so. But it’s a symptom of so much of what is wrong with stuff in this country: people hold unsupported beliefs and it is so much more important to them that they not be wrong than it is to have a public debate about them.