I think you really wanted immutable characteristic there.
Immutable is not the right word. For example, if I stay out in the sun, my skin turns very dark. Some people develop a different gender identity after birth. Some people acquire or lose accents.
~Max
And which of those three examples is a protected characteristic?
All three are, or should be.
~Max
Which sounds like an attempt to broaden the meaning of “protected characteristic” to the point that it eventually makes it meaningless.
As stated on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EOCC) website, these are eight protected characteristics in the United States in the context of employment discrimination: race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, and genetic information.
Surprisingly, having a tan is not on that list.
The three examples are skin color, gender, and accent. Maybe I’m having a brain fart, but wouldn’t it be uncivil to denigrate people for having a certain skin color/gender/accent?
~Max
“Color” means skin color, and for some people, a dark tan means you don’t pass as white any more.
~Max
This would be acceptable if the mods actually were all-knowing on the matter. But as the various moderation problems around racism, misogyny and trans issues has shown, mods have had gaping holes around either their knowledge of, or willingness to moderate, various issues in the past. I don’t think the newer mods, as dedicated as they are, are immune to all of that.
Clearer rules would be better.
This is the same idea as Ed’s " these terms are well known and do not need spelling out. " And it is not always true. It took a while for misgendering to become moddable, for instance. And let’s not go into how I had to fucking work to get Hottentot recognized as a slur.
I trust the mods’ ability to apply clear rules more than I do their ability to read minds.
Exactly. Well put.
Dehumanizing may not mean what you think. It is not some sci-fi concept.
All racism is dehumanizing. You can’t say something is usually racist and yet not dehumanizing. That’s a contradiction.
My feeling too.
Agreed.
~Max
The ‘First they are Xs, then they are humans.’ construction is the othering that leads dehumanizing.
‘First they are Jews, then they are “humans”.’ would have been a fine, early, Nazi slogan.
Completely agree.
I would accept the new non-rule rule if I had any confidence that when this kind of clearly racist othering language is used, the combination of post flags and poster pushback would result in mod action against the racist usage. But what has actually historically happened, and what continues to happen to the present, is that the callouts against the racist usage are themselves flagged and modded as distracting hijacks if not outright attacks, so the racist usage ends up persisting, tolerated if not de facto endorsed by the board’s culture. In the abstract, an official promise to guard against inherently racist rhetoric sounds good, but in proven practice, this is just a restatement of a principle which has not been upheld.
This whole discussion is discouraging and dispiriting.
“More rules” has also led to better moderation around misogyny and transphobia, and made GD better on the open racism front. More rules has overall been better, not worse.
“Clearer rules” here seems like a euphemism for “bureaucracy” – i.e.- rigid bureaucratic dictates. There is no substitute for good judgment. We may sometimes fall short of it, but rigid rule-making often does more harm than good, because in the absence of the good judgment that it seeks to ameliorate, we can end up with well-intentioned but ultimately asinine rulings. I can think of a few examples right here on this board but I’d rather not digress into specifics
What, it’s a surprise to you that culture changes over time? And that moderation criteria would change accordingly? Why would you think that rigid bureaucratic rule-making would put us ahead of the curve and make us more enlightened? Bureaucracy usually has the opposite effect.
It’s not about mind-reading, it’s about reading posts in the same cultural context as represented by the vast majority of posters on this board, and, indeed, the same cultural context as the sane inhabitants of the world.
The problem I’m having is that othering unlawfully present aliens as “invaders” does not, in my view, lead to “first they are invaders, then they are humans”. At least no more so than othering of “Floridians” and “Republicans”.
Even othering of Jews is not inherently dehumanizing. When one says the Jews take Sabbath on Saturday, with the connotation that he doesn’t do so and isn’t a Jew, that does not imply Jews are Jews first and humans second. Othering is not the same as dehumanization, and the former does not imply the latter.
~Max
Do you feel the clearer rules about misogyny, misgendering or “no scientific racism/9-11denial/MRAs/Holocaus Denial in GD” were “bureaucracy”?
I’ve already provided my take on why that is not true.
What, it’s a surprise to you that I don’t appreciate sarcasm in a serious thread?
What are we asking for, if not a change in moderation criteria?
Your strawman. Better rules don’t have to be rigid ones.
Of course it is.
Not sure who you’re calling insane here, but I’m pretty sure whoever it is, you’re dehumanizing them.
“Pretty good”? How many years did it take for misogyny or scientific racism to rise to the level of moddable?
Not your ox being gored - I, for one, am glad to be rid of the “Africans are all congenitally intellectually disabled” days.