# Disputation and The Straight Dope Message Board **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [November 25, 2019, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977 "2019-11-25T18:20:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 20
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/381 "2019-12-04T08:06:22Z")
> [@DirkHardly](#): > > I think you know this but you just want one standard for yourself and people you agree with and another for everyone else. Yes. That is exactly what I want. Of course, on this one, the group “people I agree with” is the same as “people who think racism is offensive”, and “everyone else” is “racists and people who apparently aren’t offended by racism even a little bit”, so I am happy to embrace this double standard. Ecstatic, even. It’s a very _avant garde_ stance, I know. ---
**Author:** ![Calavera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calavera/32/70_2.png) [@Calavera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calavera)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/382 "2019-12-04T11:38:25Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Read it: :rolleyes: > \*\*kambuckta \*\*replied: … > \*Oh, and FTR, I’m a woman, and I know plenty of male shrieking harpies too. Idiocy on this scale knows no gender boundaries it seems. > \* Learn to quote properly. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/383 "2019-12-04T16:10:39Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > And how do you determine if the question and responses are posted in bad faith if you always give posters the benefit of the doubt? This is a serious question. I don’t _always_ give posters the benefit of the doubt. I might do so initially, but I’m not going to bend over backwards and ignore clear signs of bad faith. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to give examples here, but I am sure that at least once I have publicly articulated exactly where and why I stopped giving a poster the benefit of the doubt on some question. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/384 "2019-12-04T16:27:24Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Seriously, why? There are times that despite my best efforts to put myself in any specific “their” place I cannot understand what being in their place is like. I can still appreciate that their lived experience is as they report it to be and do a reasoned best to be respectful of it. I don’t need to understand someone’s experience or agree with their position to “understand” it. The problem is that I am unconvinced by appeals to consequence. That kind of argument isn’t usually persuasive to me, especially if the consequence itself contradicts some premise that I hold to be true. I mentioned this a couple weeks ago in the concurrent misogyny thread: > [@Misogyny, victim-blaming, and the board culture (yet again)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misogyny-victim-blaming-and-the-board-culture-yet-again/843504/217): > > I think what you are saying is that women who leave the board come to this point, throw up their hands, and walk away. That’s the particular response that I think, so much worse for the women. > > There are two alternatives, in my opinion. One, you can outlaw the sort of posts in question. Two, you can address the post directly. > > The former option is the easy way out, but I think it is contrary to the mission of this place. By all accounts the man in question is ignorant if he argues in good faith while still being demonstrably wrong. The stated purpose of this message board is to fight ignorance, so why would we outlaw ignorant posts? To outlaw ignorant posts because they make people so uncomfortable that they leave the board? I mean, we can do that, it’s within the staff’s rights. But I think to do so would be contrary to the purpose of the board. IMO, of course. > > The latter option has the benefit of fighting ignorance, or at least attempting to. The drawback is that it is an endless uphill battle. But, again, fighting ignorance _is_ a never-ending uphill battle. It’s taking longer than we thought. > > Just my thoughts. > > ~Max > [@Misogyny, victim-blaming, and the board culture (yet again)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misogyny-victim-blaming-and-the-board-culture-yet-again/843504/225): > > Let’s assume that under the current set of rules, the board will turn into an echo chamber of misogynists. That it is impossible to entertain unwitting misogynist arguments, made from ignorance but in good faith, without driving out everybody else and removing the capacity to address those arguments. > > I also take it as a premise that it is impossible to fight ignorance without addressing it - entertaining the ignorant arguments. > > Therefore, it is impossible to fight ignorance that takes the form of misogyny. Would you agree? I don’t. > > ~Max So I am thinking here, perhaps there is some other form of argument. Maybe there is a different appeal to consequence that I am persuaded by. I don’t know everything, my opinion isn’t set in stone, after all. Maybe there’s a flaw in my rebuttal and someone can point that out. But absent something like that, it’s very much “let’s add rule X because some people say we should” or “because of [invalid argument]”. And that’s a no-go for me. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/385 "2019-12-04T16:46:10Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > So are you saying you _don’t believe people_ when they say these things are offensive, or that them being offended just isn’t enough, and only \*your \*offense counts (as in the case of a suicide thread)? I believe people who say they are offended. That people are offended is not enough to change my opinion on anything except whether or not people are offended. I need to know what specifically they are offended by, and why (doesn’t have to be specific) they are offended. Then I can determine, for myself, whether or not it would be appropriate to take some sort of action that addresses the offender. For example, a homosexual might see a number of threads where people argue that homosexuality is immoral. This might make them uncomfortable because they do not like being exposed to other people calling them or their traits immoral. Said homosexual then comes to ATMB and asks for a ban on topics that question the morality of homosexuality, because it makes them uncomfortable, because they do not like being exposed to other people calling them or their traits immoral. I am not convinced by such an argument. I don’t think this board should be a safe place for people who do not like being exposed to other people with different or even offensive views. If those views are wrong or ignorant then the mission of this board is to [ETA: provide a place where people can] combat them with sound reasoning. The counter to my rebuttal is that such threads are made in bad faith. The posters there aren’t interested in debate, they only wish to spread propaganda and hope to win people over by sheer exposure. My response is to combat bad faith in its own right, not to institute a ban on sensitive topics. Another counter is that even if we are only considering good faith posters, homosexuals will just give up and leave the board, and so will women and other minorities. The board will turn into an echo chamber and then it will really be impossible to fight ignorance. My response is that this leads to the absurd conclusion that it is impossible to fight ignorance, see the spoiler in my previous post. As such, I must reject the counterargument. That’s my read of the situation here. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/386 "2019-12-04T16:52:53Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > I don’t think this board should be a safe place for people who do not like being exposed to other people with different or even offensive views So, as per your own earlier example, people at risk for suicide should also just suck it up if someone is advocating it as the best solution to their problems, no? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/387 "2019-12-04T16:57:06Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > So, as per your own earlier example, people at risk for suicide should also just suck it up if someone is advocating it as the best solution to their problems, no? No, advocating suicide is advocating harm which is wrong and outlawed in its own capacity. I really do hope you keep pushing this line of thought and change my mind. I’ve been trying to and it hasn’t worked so far. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/388 "2019-12-04T17:46:26Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > As much as I usually hate “ditto!” and “QFT” and “this!” posts, I wish more lurkers in this thread would let those fighting the good fight know that they are heard, agreed with and supported. Yowp. Several days when I couldn’t get it the time to more than glance at this thread; and now I’m going to wind up producing the sort of post in response that some people won’t even read. And while I’m composing it probably a dozen other posts will intervene. Oh well; here goes anyway. > [@Shodan](#): > > does it help, or hurt, disputation on the SDMB to class advocating curfews for 11 year olds as slut-shaming? Context. In a thread about child-raising, discussing curfews for 11-year-olds in general and presumably of any gender, of course it wouldn’t be. In a thread specifically about the rape of an 11 year old, of course it is. It’s shifting blame to the child, or at best to the parents, as if the fact of a person’s being vulnerable means that others are entitled to take advantage of the vulnerability. And some 11 year olds are raped in their own houses. > [@Max\_S](#): > > I don’t think it’s necessarily victim blaming to think that wearing a short skirt is “asking for it”. I haven’t seen the X-Files so the reference is lost on me entirely. Asking to be raped? assaulted? harassed? That’s victim blaming. Asking for people to look at your legs? Not victim blaming. I have never seen the X-Files. Nobody needs to have seen the X-Files, or any other single specific cultural reference, to have run into “asking for it” in the sense of ‘asking to have sex with anybody who sees you, including in the form of rape’. It’s all over the place in this culture; has been for all of my life. And wearing a short skirt isn’t ‘asking people to look at your legs’, either. It’s often ‘this is comfortable clothing on a hot day.’ Sometimes it’s ‘this is what’s in style and I might be teased, or not promoted, if I don’t look stylish’. Sometimes it’s just ‘this is what was clean in the closet today’. It’s very rarely ‘I want to be leered at.’ > [@steronz](#): > > The message board/bulletin board format is limited in its usefulness, and people have been trying to fix it since the Usenet days. Slashdot’s moderation system was developed to address this 20 years ago, and since then we’ve seen many attempts to improve that system, most notably at this point, Reddit. Every form of human communication is limited in its usefulness. It’s vitally important that humans try to communicate anyway. I find Reddit nearly unusable. Any sort of protracted detailed conversation is difficult to follow. It’s impossible to get any sense of a community of people across different topics, because every topic is its own separate group with its own separate rules. It’s possible to find specific topics one already knows one’s interested in, but next to impossible to notice ‘here’s person whose other posts I like posting about something I never heard of, maybe I’m interested in that?’ And I’m highly dubious about the upvote technique being useful for this sort of problem. A handful of bigoted posters, for instance, could easily upvote each other’s posts enough to keep them from being buried – and could even have them at the top, looking relatively highly praised, if those on the board who are bothered by such posts take the advice we keep being given to just ignore those threads. > [@Max\_S](#): > > I don’t understand how their very existence is offensive. > > No, really. > > I’ve brought this up before, but if someone made a thread claiming that they are the only person who exists (a form of solipsism), I would not be offended. If someone told me to my face that they think I and those of my religion are going to hell, I don’t become irate, I just think that they are misguided. When someone tells me, to my face, that my race is inferior and deserves to be rid from the face of the earth, the primary emotion I feel is one of pity for the person in front of me. > > If someone were to say they wish harm to me or my loved ones _personally_, or if there is an actual threat, _then_ I get angry. I’m going to guess that you didn’t have a large number of your relatives murdered by bigotry a handful of years before you were born. And that you don’t know anyone murdered by bigotry this year, or last year, or any of the years before. But don’t you read the news? Bigotry is dangerous. It isn’t just dangerous in the abstract. It isn’t just dangerous historically. It isn’t just dangerous to a couple of people a year, somewhere far away, who nobody on this board happens to know. When someone tells me that people of my heritage are inferior and deserve to be rid from the face of the earth: they are saying they wish harm to me and my loved ones. When people say that people of any social group are inferior and deserve to be rid from the face ot the earth: they are saying they wish harm to my loved ones, or my loved one’s loved ones, and also that they may well be coming after me next. When people say that people of any social group don’t even exist, they’re saying that those people shouldn’t be on the face of the earth. And, as a matter of plain fact, people die because of this. > [@MrDibble](#): > > You don’t have to _understand_. You just have to believe it’s true that for some people, they really are. > [@Max\_S](#): > > I do have to understand, or I won’t be on board. You’re never going to fully understand everything about people who are significantly different from you. What you need to understand is that there are people who are significantly different from you. I very much doubt that I understand what it’s like to be trans. I don’t have to. What I need to understand is that trans people exist; and ought not to be disrespected for existing. > [@Ruken](#): > > And we should ignore those people. This board is dedicated to fighting ignorance. How are you going to fight ignorance by ignoring people? Which question, of course, you can easily turn around. But why should the people objecting to bigotry be the ones to be ignored, while the bigots should be paid attention to? What we’re talking about here, AIUI, is how to fight ignorance of a particular type. I’m not entirely clear, in my own mind, to what extent we should ban particular language, let alone particular topics. But I’m fairly sure that ‘we need to keep endlessly debating everything as if everything were a serious position which it’s reasonable to hold’ is creating problems. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/389 "2019-12-04T17:55:14Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > No, advocating suicide is advocating harm which is wrong and outlawed in its own capacity. Why should that matter? You’re acting as though the inherent harm in suicide is a settled matter (which - [several governments disagree abou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_death#Legality)t. ) not worth debating any more. Or are you talking about the rules of this board? Because this thread is about those rules, pointing to the current rules is a non-starter. And anyway, for consistency with your own argument, surely you must admit there could be ignorance on the part of suicide advocates that could best be fought by debating them, not silencing them? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/390 "2019-12-04T18:08:54Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Why should that matter? You’re acting as though the inherent harm in suicide is a settled matter (which - [several governments disagree abou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_death#Legality)t. ) not worth debating any more. Yes, right, I am assuming that it is inherently off the table to encourage suicide on these boards. I don’t really have an opinion about assisted death but I am definitely against advocating general suicide on a medium like this, where we don’t have access to verifiable facts about the person involved, and we can’t physically restrain them if they attempt suicide mid-sentence. ETA: Not only are there moral dilemmas, but there are legal issues as well. > [@MrDibble](#): > > And anyway, for consistency with your own argument, surely you must admit there could be ignorance on the part of suicide advocates that could best be fought by debating them, not silencing them? In my opinion any such benefit is outweighed by the risk of immediate and tragic harm. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/391 "2019-12-04T18:35:46Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I have never seen the X-Files. Nobody needs to have seen the X-Files, or any other single specific cultural reference, to have run into “asking for it” in the sense of ‘asking to have sex with anybody who sees you, including in the form of rape’. It’s all over the place in this culture; has been for all of my life. > > And wearing a short skirt isn’t ‘asking people to look at your legs’, either. It’s often ‘this is comfortable clothing on a hot day.’ Sometimes it’s ‘this is what’s in style and I might be teased, or not promoted, if I don’t look stylish’. Sometimes it’s just ‘this is what was clean in the closet today’. It’s very rarely ‘I want to be leered at.’ Yes, I had a pretty good idea about that but qualified my post just in case. The reason I treat looking at legs differently than sexual assault is because I personally see one as normal behavior and the other as not. By “asking for” I don’t mean the woman literally wants people to look at her legs, just that she ought to know that going out without pants will result in people looking at your legs. Looking at people’s legs is not inherently wrong (in my opinion), I mean it can be overdone like anything else but that’s different. I’m not saying she is asking for her coworkers to peer over the cubicle licking their lips, that goes far beyond looking. I know girls who are terribly embarrassed when people look at their legs. I don’t think it’s victim-blaming to advise them not to wear miniskirts (there’s better advice, obviously). There’s no victim in that situation. Something like rape, by contrast, is inherently wrong. If you haven’t noticed, I’m approaching this from a deontological perspective. Even if it were the case that statistically, wearing miniskirts increases the risk of rape (false to my knowledge), under no circumstances can someone make that general correlation into a blame-shifting causation without blaming the victim. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > When someone tells me that people of my heritage are inferior and deserve to be rid from the face of the earth: they are saying they wish harm to me and my loved ones. That is certainly possible, but it does not follow. It is possible for me to wish group X simply disappeared while also being a pacifist. For example, it is possible that an American last century wanted to eradicate the black population in this country, yet still wished no harm upon them (see, Liberia). It is possible that some people wanted the Native Americans out of their towns but did not go so far as to wish harm upon them. Of course, there are always people who want both removal and harm. Those people have no place here. But not everybody is like that, and if you are basing board policy on the assumption that bigots want to hurt minorities, I might not agree with that policy. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > What you need to understand is that there are people who are significantly different from you. Understood, recognized, acknowledged, and agreed with. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/392 "2019-12-04T18:53:47Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Context. > > In a thread about child-raising, discussing curfews for 11-year-olds in general and presumably of any gender, of course it wouldn’t be. > > In a thread specifically about the rape of an 11 year old, of course it is. It’s shifting blame to the child, or at best to the parents, as if the fact of a person’s being vulnerable means that others are entitled to take advantage of the vulnerability. No, it doesn’t mean that. The fact that the parents did not impose a curfew, and especially that they allowed their eleven year old daughter to “date” a nineteen year old, does not shift any blame onto the eleven year old. Does it shift blame onto the parents? Hell yes, it does, and rightly so. “What in bloody hell were you thinking?” is a perfectly valid question when directed at a mother or father who, when a nineteen year old shows up at the door and wants to “date” your eleven year old, lets it happen. Nobody expects an eleven year old to make consistently wise decisions. Because they’re eleven years old. That’s why they need parents - and why those parents had better have two brain cells to rub together and see if they can strike a spark. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/393 "2019-12-04T19:55:50Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Yes, right, I am assuming that it is inherently off the table to encourage suicide on these boards. What about a discussion that _you see as clearly advocating/encouraging suicide, but other posters (including mods)_ seeing as merely discussing a hypothetical or a point of statistics? > [@](#): > > In my opinion any such benefit is outweighed by the risk of immediate and tragic harm. And you think advocating misogyny, transphobia, racism carries no risk of immediate harm? Are you aware of the suicide rates for LGBT youth? Or the clearly established link between discrimination and suicide ideation in Black youth? ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/394 "2019-12-04T20:22:29Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > That is certainly possible, but it does not follow. It is possible for me to wish group X simply disappeared while also being a pacifist. For example, it is possible that an American last century wanted to eradicate the black population in this country, yet still wished no harm upon them (see, Liberia). It is possible that some people wanted the Native Americans out of their towns but did not go so far as to wish harm upon them. > > Of course, there are always people who want both removal and harm. Those people have no place here. But not everybody is like that, and if you are basing board policy on the assumption that bigots want to hurt minorities, I might not agree with that policy. Forced removal **is** harm. It doesn’t matter whether it’s dragging screaming families out their houses in the middle of the night and sticking them on cattle cars, passing restrictive covenants based on skin color that have the power of law, or low level aggression & prejudice to make members of a group feel uncomfortable. It’s harm. People advocating it are advocating harm as much as those advocating stringing them up. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/395 "2019-12-04T20:57:16Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Forced removal **is** harm. It doesn’t matter whether it’s dragging screaming families out their houses in the middle of the night and sticking them on cattle cars, passing restrictive covenants based on skin color that have the power of law, or low level aggression & prejudice to make members of a group feel uncomfortable. It’s harm. People advocating it are advocating harm as much as those advocating stringing them up. It is also possible to be a bigot who wishes people of color would go away, yet still be against forced removal. Or to support the establishment of Native American reserves, but decry the Trail of Tears. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/396 "2019-12-04T21:03:18Z")
Beep beep boop! ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/397 "2019-12-04T21:37:57Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > What about a discussion that _you see as clearly advocating/encouraging suicide, but other posters (including mods)_ seeing as merely discussing a hypothetical or a point of statistics? I would start an ATMB thread to understand why I am wrong. > [@MrDibble](#): > > And you think advocating misogyny, transphobia, racism carries no risk of immediate harm? No I don’t, and emphasis on _immediate_. Directly advocating suicide, which is harm by definition, is different than advocating for some position that is linked to harm in some statistical and societal sense. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/398 "2019-12-04T21:41:35Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > It is also possible to be a bigot who wishes people of color would go away, yet still be against forced removal. Or to support the establishment of Native American reserves, but decry the Trail of Tears. > > ~Max You’re trying to desperately find some platonic idea of “racist who is not dangerous” and like… why? Like why is it worth it to you to try and find an example of a… I can’t even find the words to describe it… worthwhile racist viewpoint? Non-violent one? People don’t exist in some weird vacuum of opinion. People who want PoC to go away have other viewpoints that reinforce that belief. **Why** do they want people of color to go away? How may they treat PoC around them? Will they give them worst service if they come to where they work? They probably support policies that clamp down on PoC because the viewpoints that want them to leave also make them think they’re violent/thiefs/rapists/whatever. Peoples opinions don’t exist independent of their world view, and the world view that causes people to “not want \ type of person around them” generally, in the real world, entails other beliefs and actions that **are** harmful. And also like reservations are like… inherently violent? Even without forced relocation they were straight up an admission by the US government of “you have no sovereign hold over your traditional land or governance structure, so we’re going to pseudo-sanction a small postage stamp of land for 5-6 different tribes that lets you have some degree of illusory autonomy on our own terms.” Note that tribes were forced to share the same lands, often tribes with mutually unintellagble languages and vastly different cultural customs or traditional governing structures. Tribes that were traditionally nomadic forced into small areas of land where nomadism can’t be done and sharing it with tribes who had sedentary ruling structures. The US has tried to dissolve the reservations before, or at least declare the US government “wouldn’t support them” anymore. For instance the [Indian termination policy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_termination_policy). Forcing tribes together, grouping them in a way that changes their governance structures and erasing their cultural traditions, forcing them to live in a government-sanctioned location without their own country with full autonomy if they want to continue their millenia old nations, and all that? **That’s violence**. It’s violence with a smile. It’s violence under the guise of being gracious and magnanimous. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/399 "2019-12-04T21:48:00Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > You’re trying to desperately find some platonic idea of “racist who is not dangerous” and like… why? Like why is it worth it to you to try and find an example of a… I can’t even find the words to describe it… worthwhile racist viewpoint? Non-violent one? Why do I want to welcome bigots who aren’t bad people? Who only happen to be ignorant? Who actually stand a chance of being reasoned out of their bigoted views? I live among these people. They aren’t bad people, at least not all of them. These are your fellow human beings, whether you live in the U.S. or any other state with bigots. They aren’t all lost causes. Apparently you don’t believe in the tagline, but I do, and fighting ignorance is the explicit reason that I am here on these boards. Be it someone else’s ignorance, or my own… ~Max ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977/400 "2019-12-04T22:02:50Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > The reason I treat looking at legs differently than sexual assault is because I personally see one as normal behavior and the other as not. By “asking for” I don’t mean the woman literally wants people to look at her legs, just that she ought to know that going out without pants will result in people looking at your legs. Looking at people’s legs is not inherently wrong (in my opinion), I mean it can be overdone like anything else but that’s different. I’m not saying she is asking for her coworkers to peer over the cubicle licking their lips, that goes far beyond looking. I know girls who are terribly embarrassed when people look at their legs. I don’t think it’s victim-blaming to advise them not to wear miniskirts (there’s better advice, obviously). There’s no victim in that situation. Going out without pants will result in people seeing your legs, yes. Nobody’s expecting everybody to go around with some sort of blinders that prevent the viewing of legs. Looking at legs in such a fashion that it’s noticeable to others that you’re looking specifically at legs, and not at the person in general, is another matter entirely. If the “girls” you know (are they all minors?) are terribly embarrassed by having people look at their legs, it’s almost certainly because the people in question are staring at their legs, not just casually noticing them on the way by. It’s not polite to stare at people in general. It’s proper in some situations to be looking directly at a particular person, rather than generally and casually around the room or the sidewalk or whatever, but in most of those situations one is suppose to be looking at the face. > [@Max\_S](#): > > That is certainly possible, but it does not follow. It is possible for me to wish group X simply disappeared while also being a pacifist. For example, it is possible that an American last century wanted to eradicate the black population in this country, yet still wished no harm upon them (see, Liberia). It is possible that some people wanted the Native Americans out of their towns but did not go so far as to wish harm upon them. > > Of course, there are always people who want both removal and harm. Those people have no place here. But not everybody is like that, and if you are basing board policy on the assumption that bigots want to hurt minorities, I might not agree with that policy. The result of bigotry is harm to the persons who are targeted by it. The result of attempting to forcibly move all black people who were in the USA in the 1900’s or the 1800’s to Liberia would have been to do harm to many of them, even if not all those who wanted to do so wanted to think of it that way. The result of some people in the Americas wanting Native Americans out of their towns did a great deal of harm. Wanting entire categories of people to just disappear is to wish harm upon them. In addition, while there may be some bigots who are deluding themselves into thinking that it’s possible to want all the people they disagree with to not exist, or to want them to exist but Somewhere Else, or to want them to exist but only as second or third class citizens, without that doing them any harm: bigotry in general also encourages the people who do actively want to do harm. Again, don’t you read the news? > [@Shodan](#): > > No, it doesn’t mean that. The fact that the parents did not impose a curfew, and especially that they allowed their eleven year old daughter to “date” a nineteen year old, does not shift any blame onto the eleven year old. Does it shift blame onto the parents? Hell yes, it does, and rightly so. n There may be blame applicable to the parents. But _shifting_ blame onto the parents is still a distraction from placing blame on the rapist. And it comes across way too much as ‘well of course an 11 year old girl isn’t safe outside her own house, that’s just the way people should expect the world to be!’ ETA: Just saw this: > [@Max\_S](#): > > It is also possible to be a bigot who wishes people of color would go away, yet still be against forced removal. Or to support the establishment of Native American reserves, but decry the Trail of Tears. > > ~Max No. It may be possible to claim that one supports the separation of Native Americans onto reserves away from their homelands, but decries the Trail of Tears but the Trail of Tears was an essential part of the policy. You can’t force people out without forcing them out. You can’t force people out without harming them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977.md?page=19) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disputation-and-the-straight-dope-message-board/843977.md?page=21)