Few things are more baffling to me than Der Trihs fandom. Even accepting that some are enamored with his oft-praised contributions to non-political threads (which I assume are made in the threads about comic books and sci-fi that I skip over), I can’t fathom how anyone— left, right or center— could find his arguments “compelling” when they consist almost entirely of uncited assertions and childish hyperbole.
I am likely not far from him on most political matters, but I think he’s a terrible debater whose silly rants paint him as a tiresome crank. If anything, he does harm to “our side” with his style of argument, and it’s hard to imagine the Right doing a better job coming up with a more effective agent provocateur to discredit the views of the Left.
I agree with this. I think he particularly has a problem understanding motivation - he can’t fathom how anyone could have a different opinion than he does without it being caused by whatever nefarious motives he ascribes to them. He seems wholly unable to concede that people can have a dissenting take on an issue without being bigoted or hateful. As a lefty, I find him embarrassing.
This is pretty much exactly how I felt. I think in retrospect I probably lumped him in with the other handful of men who did this, and everything they said is all sort of globbed together, but it’s still one of the most disrespectful things I’ve ever witnessed on these boards. It showed a complete disregard for the experiences and feelings of every woman posting in that thread. If he wanted to start yet another debate about what lying whores women can be, that was not the appropriate time or place. And the act of willfully disrupting that thread in such a way I really can’t interpret as motivated by anything but vitriol.
That was also a hell of a week for misogyny, too. It felt like every thread had some bloviating asshole bitching and moaning about women. IIRC, and I certainly may not, the conversation he wanted to have was already happening in another thread. I believe the thread he hijacked had specifically been set aside to have the conversation about womens’ very real experiences with sexual assault, so that it didn’t interfere with the other thread about lying whores. But he just had to talk about lying whores at every possible opportunity. Given that context, and the fact that he wasn’t the only one doing it, maybe his post was more like the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Now at least people can make their own judgments on that matter.
Just re-read the thread from Der Trihs’ first post onward, and I stand by my original assessment. He acted like an ass, but he was far from the only one. God, what a trainwreck that thread became. Now I’m pissed off all over again.
I didn’t participate in that thread, but I did read along at home, and it was a goddamn nightmare.
I didn’t then and don’t now expect the posters here to fall into ideological agreement with me. I do expect basic human decency, and the hijacking of that thread was a prime example of a lack of it. Bleagh.
So then were I to claim that most black people were extremely stupid, violent animals who fantasized about raping white women I wouldn’t be “a bigot”, I’d merely be guilty of “a generalization.”
Considering the fact that he never actually supports any of his arguments and pisses in his pants and flees in terror when challenged that’s a rather odd assertion.
Perhaps then you can illuminate for us what compelling arguments he’s put forth for his bigoted views against women.
Obviously it depends on the nature of what you’re saying (“Most people love ice cream” would be harmless hyperbole) and whether you’re generalizing something that’s true of many or just few (“Most men like sports” vs “Most men are sexually aroused by children”).
It’s strange that about half the responses to Der Trihs say that his premise is insane and false, and the other half agree with his premise but take issue with his reaction to it.
“What are you talking about, women don’t think of men as potential rapists, you’re out of your mind!”
is followed by
“Women have to think of men as potential rapists, that’s just being cautious. They don’t know which men are rapists.”
The truth is, he gets away with it precisely because it is never clear exactly what he is saying. Which specific acts is he complaining about? Refusing a drink handed to you at a bar by a stranger? Feeling uncomfortable when followed down a dark alley? Or getting randomly maced by a woman as he walked down the street?
Are we to mock him for becoming enraged at inoffensive acts of simple caution, or for falsely claiming that all women commit actual offensive acts due to their universal belief in the rape-potential of men? Nobody knows, so half of us do one and half the other.
The thing I find so very disappointing about this thread is that other supposedly rational male posters find a shred of sanity is DT’s statement that the majority of American women view all men as potential rapists. I’ve read DT’s posts about women before and managed to dismiss them as the vitriolic ravings of an isolated angry man.
Now, not so much.
To paraphrase Ibn Warraq, is it ok for me to say "The majority of white men view black men as angry violent criminals who would as soon mug a white guy as say good morning to him while other black men stand back and cheer?"
I’m not really sure why his refusal to participate in pit threads is seen as laudable either.
Do I think he had vitriol? Yes. I think the act of responding the way he did in the context that he did it is in itself sufficient to merit that judgment. It disturbed me enough to remember it two years later. Was the vitriol ‘‘insane’’? Who the hell knows? I think he’s insane and vitriolic, does that count?
Well said. In that thread, the context was the key. Had he made those same posts in a different thread (meaning NOT a thread specifically created for women to talk about experiences with sexual violence) I would have found them obnoxious but not disturbing. In that thread, reading in real time, it was way out of line.