I know you said that you are not naive enough to believe that the right ideas always win out. But I have to take advantage of an example where the tactics we are trying to stop have worked. I hope you will not be offended.
What you have stated here is not in any way the position of the #MeToo movement. What you are claiming is what the opposition to the movement claims happens all the time. But it doesn’t actually match with the reality. Whenever the opposition claims this is what the #MeToo movement is about, there will be multiple people trying to explain how they are incorrect, using nuanced arguments.
Yet it isn’t those nuanced arguments that you remember. It isn’t all the articles where #MeToo itself explain what the movement is about. Heck, you don’t even remember the salient point that gender isn’t relevant, and that men are also saying #MeToo.
No one who puts forth an anti-rape movement can ever push the idea that you should always believe the accuser and not be out of touch with reality. There are documented, verified cases of false accusations. This is a strawman put forth by those who oppose the movement, in order to make #MeToo look irrational and wrong.
I don’t think you’re one of these people. I don’t think you have an interest in maintaining the status quo. Yet their tactics work. Maybe not enough for you to say the movement is all bad, but enough for you to think that what you described is a significant part of the movement. Enough for you to see the few cases that can be perceived in this way, and have your confirmation bias take over.
This is why we have to worry not just about debunking people, but also deplatforming them. This is why these arguments are dangerous. This right here is an example where the reader took away the wrong idea.
And, now, because I’d be remiss not to at least briefly give a counterargument: The problem is not when people question the idea of believing the accuser. The problem is when the accuser is assumed to likely be lying. Or when someone tries to argue the accuser should not have said anything. It is when people yell about “innocent until proven guilty” in old cases where proof is unlikely. It is the lopsided issue where the accused is defended at the expense of the accuser.
It is not about questioning the accuser, trying to figure out what actually happened. It isn’t about assuming what the accused is thinking, but looking at the evidence without a bias towards disbelieving the accuser. It even involved looking at what the accused themselves actually said.
And, again, it is not a women vs. men thing. Men can be the victims, and thus the accusers. Women can be the perpetrators and the accused. Making it only about women vs. men is just a way that the opposition uses to try and play into a culture war, using existing biases to their advantage.
Where you err is in assuming that these readers think like you. Sure, some do, but “the loon” isn’t going to convince them anyways, as their argument is clearly bad.
The people they set out to convince are not those who are persuaded by the evidence. And all of our rational arguments debunking them don’t work.
The loon only looks loony because they’re not engaging in the same framework we are. I could go into more, but it would simpler to redirect you to stuff like “the Alt-Right Playbook” mentioned earlier. I apologize that it is in video form, but that is a better form for reaching people these days.
The war we fight now isn’t against accidental ignorance. It is the willful kind, the ones who, for emotional reasons, want to believe what they say is true. The goal is to use our own biases against us. We want a fair debate, but they won’t give it.
Where we, as a country, are on sex/gender ~now (2017) is where we were on same sex marriage in 2007. We’ve been debating and it works. If this board actually cares about fighting ignorance, then we’ll keep it up. If someone’s feelings get hurt along the way, fuck 'em; I’m done with the abusers in my life who try to control what others say or do while using their untreated issues as an excuse for their demands.
And now to address this post for its actual points. I had to debunk the stuff in the first post, but I’m not going to let that become the focus of the argument.
This argument might work in other contexts, but it doesn’t work here. The problem with sexual assault isn’t a difficult problem. The problem is (1) not understanding consent, as we’ve seen them arguing things that ignore it. And (2) that they felt they could get away with it.
Those are the point of #MeToo. Number 2 comes first: people won’t get away with it, even if it’s been decade. But there’s also #1, with victims sharing their stories so that people can hear actual examples of what consent is and how important it is.
This is not a hypothetical issue. Someone actually PMed me when I was arguing about the board needing to deal with transphobia, and let me know that they and a dozen other people had quit because of how the mods were dealing with the trans issue. I can’t be more specific, as I promised not to reveal names, even of those who were already out as trans.
I would also say that transphobia comes up more often than antisemitic arguments. It isn’t “every so often.” The way it comes up IS part of the “real hate” trans people experience in the world today. And it’s compounded by the need of the mods to defend the transphobic people from anyone who is uncivil to them, while not removing the far worse bigotry.
And yet the alt-right, which didn’t previously exist, is still recruiting new members. The “Alt Right Playbook” works. That is why we’ve had to change our tactics, to become better equipped to deal with the new threat. We can’t keep using the old tactics while the enemy improves theirs.
The problem is not squeezing out discussion as much as it is squeezing out people, which then reduces the diversity of ideas. The problem is that you can’t have a civil place that people want to stay around that allows bigotry. People who abhor bigotry will want to fight it, and those who are targets of it will not want to stick around.
Maybe this was less true in the past, when their were fewer options online. But now you could post here and have to face being condemned as a human being for who you are, or you could go somewhere where that shit isn’t allowed. Because “no bigotry” is the foundation of most civil forums.
None of this is to completely eliminate all topics related to bigotry. There are still plenty of issues that are gray, and I think the mods should err on the side of allowing things to be argued. But some things are just beyond the pale.
And, as a bonus, even making some things beyond the pale communicates a desire to deal with bigotry, and thus helps make the place feel more welcoming. It opens up the possibility that, if something else gets too bad, it will be dealt with. And not that civility is the only thing that matters.
Indeed, in general, people accept some of the changing attitudes of society as they change, and it isn’t by being bullied into it. On the other hand, they can be bullied into shutting up, which alters the Overton window.
It just appears that people become more conservative as they age because they don’t change rapidly enough to catch up with the new cohorts of adults.
It obviously doesn’t work with all topics. The progress in gay and trans rights would not have happened without a lot of people changing their minds which wouldn’t have happened with a “fuck the old people, they’re all ossified bigots” attitude. On the other hand, marijuana reform did indeed need to wait for the pre-Boomers and some Boomers to be displaced by the younger generations.
As a discussion board, we should allow discussion. But like I’ve said before, sometimes an obvious troll is obvious and sometimes the arguments have been rehashed by the same person time after time and they will not change their mind. I wish we could get rid of those problems without shutting the door to open-minded discussion of all topics.
The sanctioned posts that we have seen of late are like this
Poster: I can’t believe you said that. ALL REPUBLICANS* kiss the Cheetoes’ ass all the time and are racist misogynists and are too stupid to realize the rapist Trump is the worst thing to ever happen to this country ever.
Mod: Take it to the pit if you feel that way. No warning issued.
*Since it does not say “you”, it is not insulting the target.
This board is starting to remind me me of “free speech” advocates on college campuses, i.e. I support free speech that allows ME to have MY viewpoints and that NO ONE should be allowed to disagree with me.
I feel like you all are coming at this from this highly idealistic theory about what should work, and ignoring the evidence of what is actually happening. The reality is that lots and lots of groups are being run off by our “anything goes, as long as it’s civil” mentality. This includes reasonable, reasoned conservatives, people that fall under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and women. We are in this weird place where we have radical voices on both sides of the spectrum pissing each other off. Really, really noticable, however, is that the progressive side includes fewer and fewer minority voices. It’s white dudes arguing with white dudes about the experiences of people unlike them. I can’t imagine that the lurker population that we are supposed to be so worried about is any different. You talk about the need to educate the lurker. But that’s making the assumption that the lurker is a Standard White Dude. Who else would possibly be interested in these conversations?
Look, I know lots of teachers who love to be hard-asses. And they always justify it by pointing at that one or two kids who came back and thanked them for the swift kick in the ass. But I gotta tell you–those teachers never even see the many, many more students that their idealistic hard-ass tactics drive off. What we are doing is driving off swathes of people. It may be too late. If having some board standards beyond civility is not acceptable to you, is anything?
I feel like you guys are treating the experiences of people directly affected–targeted–as inconsequential, as collateral damage, and treating their exodus as something that is beyond our control or culpability.
I don’t necessarily disagree. And finding a way to balance the above cartoon with an interest in discussion is what I’m current working on.
Please take any direct ideas - no discussion, just ideas - to the thread in GD that I’ve stickied. That’s where I’ll be going through looking for ideas that can facilitate where I’m trying to get us to.
I’d like to invite all y’all to click on the button that shows who has posted and how many times. I am not 100% on everyone’s demographics, but I am pretty sure I am the only woman who has made substantial contributions to this thread. Mr. Dibble is the only person of color. Is that because they are happy with the statusbquo, because they don’t see the point of even trying, or because they are gone?
I don’t think this describes GD. I can’t speak for other fora (I spend most of my time reading GQ and GD.) If I’m counting correctly there were only 18 threads started in November, of varying OP quality. But with people mostly behaving themselves. If anything, I think we can work to help people develop more and better OPs. I’ve posted some ideas there. Some of the folks posting in that thread have never even started a GD thread or haven’t done so since before I joined. Yet want to make new rules for the rest of us.
Yep. Sure there’s still bigotry but as people get better informed, it’s dying off. Some of the arguments about SSM was that it would allow sex with animals, and other really fucking stupid things.
So yes, knowledge and reasoning can help the sort of bigotry spread by ignorance and lies.
Umm, no the term “Alt-Right” is new, the bigots in it are not- the KKK has been around since the late 1800’s, then there’s Gov Maddox, American Independent Party (AIP) established in 1967, John Birch society (1958) and so forth. We just have a new term for all of them.
Go look at the threads about Christine Blasey-Ford. The same people who are adamant that Kavanaugh is innocent till proven guilty see nothing wrong with accusing of lying deliberately. Every time a case of rape comes up, there are too many people accusing the victim of lying. What’s fascinating is that suggesting the accused is a liar never, ever, comes up. Just women.
In general, Hillary Clinton is the primary example of this, though I am thinking more of in the real world.
I think that’s politics not misogyny . The GOP playbook is that “our guy is great and a Moral paragon, thus anyone accusing him is a liar”. Altho yes, all of Kavanaugh’s accusers are women, Trump is being accused by some men, including Military heroes, thus all of them have been accused of being a liar.
Calling women who report sexual misconduct “liars” is textbook misogyny, no matter how similar it looks to a somewhat analogous scenario.
Women who have experienced this and have clear opinions how misogyny looks, appears, and happens in real life are saying this. Please do not reflexively shut it down because you don’t see it that way.
The alt-right is also new in its tactics. You can name the John Birch Society and the KKK because they were structured groups that relied on specific recruitment tools that didn’t involve public debates or mainstreaming (hell, the whole point of the white sheets was to stay *away *from the mainstream). I guarantee you won’t find the Turner Diaries or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in your local bookstore ;).
The alt-right recruits by polluting other online communities in an informal, unplanned, stochastic way which may or may not lead individual alt-righters to group up, either formally as e.g. Proud Boys or informally as e.g. groypers. But that’s the minority. For the most part, the alt-right are just isolated dudes behind a screen… who sometimes happen to go on to shoot up a mosque/synagogue/campus à propos of nothing.
The FBI’s assessment is that while far-right asshole numbers have increased dramatically over the past couple decades ; the number and membership rolls of established/formal hate groups has markedly decreased, in part thanks to the effort of law agencies to bust them up or infiltrate them. I’m reasonably sure Interpol would tell you the same thing about European fashy assholes. Hence the move towards decentralized “leaderless resistance” (aka lone wolf terrorism) and infiltration of police & armed forces which is at the same time directly encouraged but nigh impossible to trace back to the movers & shakers of the movement (guys like Bannon, McInness, Spencer etc). They’re barely even needed any more, either - by and large the alt-right radicalizes itself organically at this point.