Bigotry is not against the rules in its own right, mind you. If it weren’t for scientific racism being on the list of tired topics, the rules would allow Great Debates on whether Black people are less intelligent, subhuman, etc. Likewise with women.
Technically such topics are still allowed if you can persuade mods that you will cover new ground.
~Max
The American far right is really good at making words do a lot of work for them. Stochastic terrorism is a real phenomenon and we would do well to do our bit to fight it.
I could do without any terms with deliberate negative connotations to refer to any group.
I’d happily skip using deplorables, rethuglicans, ammosexuals, MAGAts and other cutesy stuff if that means invaders, illegals, groomers and other (real) dehumanizing/demonizing language got banned.
This is an excellent post–thank you!
Despite your evident anger, @What_Exit (I was pretty pissed off yesterday, too), I actually appreciate your clarification that it was the “shameful” part of the post that you read as an attack. That helps me calibrate myself going forward–I genuinely didn’t realize that’s what you saw as the problem, and I thought that you were objecting to “racism informed by xenophobia,” which is a big part of what I found so frustrating. If it’s acceptable to use accurate language to call shit out, I’m a lot less worried about this ruling.
In this particular case, I fear that the mods and admins just aren’t familiar enough with Great Replacement Theory and the lingo used by its adherents. Moderating speech around immigration without that awareness is going to lead to problems, IMO.
I think part of this is pretty simple.
In a hostile post where hostile words are directed at a poster by name or “you”, mods are going to find that violates the
It is in the end the prime rule, especially in any forum I moderate but especially in GD and P&E where things are far more likely to get heated.
Remember that and everything will be easier for posters and Moderators.
Believe it or not, I don’t actually like giving out warnings, especially in threads already being watched as the OP is pinging troll alerts. In fact that was why I just went with a thread ban, I expected the thread to be closed or disappeared within a day.
And for the love of ice cream, of course I don’t mean in The Pit.
Yes, that’s probably true.
This is worth expanding on. The term doesn’t literally mean “making somebody not a human.”
Most people, even most bigots, would - in a theoretical vacuum - agree with the notion of natural rights: that “being a human” is enough to qualify you for certain rights and dignities.
Dehumanization is the process of eroding that implicit belief. It happens around the edges, and it’s done by degrees.
The citizens of Weimar didn’t live and work and laugh in the shadow of Buchenwald because they thought the prisoners there were literal inhuman monsters. They’d just been given enough of a perceptual turning of the dials to believe that maybe “those people” didn’t rate quite the same intrinsic dignity as “our people.”
That’s what it means to dehumanize an out group. It’s just about twisting dials to say, hey, you don’t have to spend quite so much empathy on them. They’re different. And it all flows out from there, eroding around the edges until your out group goes from different to disliked to vilified.
It’s a process, and demanding that we only act at the end of the process is missing the point. Its the difference between preventative healthcare and cutting off a diabetic’s foot because he drank two gallons of soda a day for ten years.
The way I like to explain it is that the root of “dehumanizing” isn’t really “human”, it’s “humane”
There’s been a trend lately among antivaxers to claim that the term antivaxer is “dehumanizing” or “hate speech”.
Evidently someone on Twitter agrees. I had a response blocked the other day with the explanation that it used problematic language. The post went through after I found an acceptable synonym for antivaxer.
Say what?
There are sane human inhabitants of the world, and for that matter on this board, who are in widely varying cultural contexts from each other. You don’t get to claim one of them as the only sane one.
The board can, of course, consider explanations from those multiple cultures as to how those different contexts appear to apply to a particular post. And the board can then, IMO, decide that if the language of the post is harmful in some of those contexts, then that language should not be used. That doesn’t mean that everyone in the other cultures isn’t sane; it means that they need to recognize and respect the existence of other frameworks.
That isn’t “othering” of Jews; not unless the rest of the context is a strong implication that only weird people who don’t need to be respected would do such a thing. Just noting an actually existing difference isn’t “othering”.
When I point out to an agency offering services to farmers’ market vendors that is contemplating offering information entirely online that many such vendors are Old Order Mennonites who would then be unable to access information they may be required to have, I’m not “othering” my fellow vendors. I’m telling the agency that they need to respect those differences by also continuing to offer a print version – that the Mennonites need to be included, not excluded.
Seconded.
In fact, I’m already skipping those terms, and have been all along.
I think that needs to be more carefully phrased. Groups that are openly espousing white supremacist positions, for instance, I think can be fairly described as “bigots” even though the word has a deliberate negative connotation.
Modnote: I’ve asked Max_S to stay out of this thread for now on as he aided a Sock/Troll I’m pretty sure was the sock of Jackass to hijack this thread back about the word “invaders”. So he shouldn’t be replying in this thread any further.
I’m pretty sure all replies to the troll are deleted or in the cornfield.
Note: Brand new users that jump into ATMB threads are always suspicious. They have since tried to come back twice.
I have no problem with calling someone a white supremacist if they actually espouse white supremacist positions. But the left has gotten awfully loose with the term 'White Supremacist", applying it to all kinds of people who have never espoused such views. Also misogynist, etc. These are also dehumanizing words when used against large groups of people you don’t like.
For example, our own Prime Minister said this about people who didn’t want to take the vaccine:
Not just ‘othering’, but eliminationist. And wrong. He said Quebec is not the problem at 80% vaccinated. Except the people in the prairies he was suggesting not be ‘tolerated’ had significantly higher vax rates than Quebec. In other words, he was literally ‘othering’ people primarily because they came from a region he doesn’t like.
I never heard a single complaint about that language from the left.
This is the first I’ve heard of it.
And to the best of my knowledge, he didn’t say it on this board.
If somebody on this board calls someone else a white supremacist who you say does not espouse such positions, I certainly think you should feel free to say so in the thread, and/or to report the post.
@Sam_Stone, as this forum is literally named #about-this-message-board, can you please keep your complaints and examples about this message board.
I keep hoping this thread is done.
ETA: Removed due to mod note above.
Yes, I need to phrase that better.
Malicious intent is hard to pin down.
I hope refining our language and calling out little dog whistles and other fun little attempts to other the scapegoats of the hour could be an ongoing thing.
But let’s not do that in troll infested waters 
Fwiw, I’m finding a lot of it to be thought-provoking, and I’m glad this thread was created.
I think it pretty much has to be an ongoing discussion; dying down at times, and then picking up again.
@What_Exit?, if the implication is that the moderators would rather just not think about the subject, I’m not happy about that. If you’re just feeling overloaded right now, that’s a different matter.
I, too, feel this is a good discussion to continue to have.
My personal view is that language is fluid, with terms coming in and out of favor. No word list allows mods to adapt quickly to changing conditions in language.
I’ve watched the terms, “illegals,” and “invaders,” become used more and more as snarl terms from certain political factions, and I won’t hesitate to moderate them as derogatory in conversations held in forums where I moderate if I believe that is what is happening. However, sometimes the usage is not intentionally fraught. Sometimes it is used in ignorance. I want the flexibility to make those calls.