But expecting them to be won by telling them that it’s perfectly possible to want entire groups of people to disappear from their homes while not wanting to do any harm isn’t going to win them. That’s just going to make them feel comfortable with their nonsense. They have to recognize that pain, in order to be won.
And the people who are in pain aren’t required to dedicate their lives, or even a chunk of each day or each week, to explaining their pain to bigots. Some do anyway; but it needs to be optional.
The question here is, to what extent do the people in pain need to have the fact of the bigotry shoved in their faces every time they come here? That seems to me to be what we’re debating.
I agree with everything here. By girls I was referring to minors, I guess mostly adults by now but this sort of thing doesn’t really come up so often in discussions with grown women.
You are right, of course, about how things are in the real world. I know that you can’t support Native American reservations and be against forced removals and be consistent. I don’t think you are right about how people think things are. A person can also hold a self-contradictory opinion, and if we’re talking about bigots that argue sincerely and without malicious intent, isn’t that a given?
It is optional. There is no requirement that a trans member jump into a single trans thread. They can go to any other thread, or make their own. People might ask them to join such a thread, but they are under no obligation to do so or explain why they won’t.
I think there’s a limit to all things. If every other thread is about the morality of homosexual relations I would support the administration saying, cut that out, keep it in one thread please. I believe they did exactly that with the gun control threads this summer (or was it abortion?). Too much of anything is toxic.
But I don’t expect the question to go away any time soon. Plenty of people have diverse opinions and the morality of homosexual relations is, in fact, one of the great debates of our time.
I’m getting very weary of this “If you don’t like it, don’t read that thread” approach to racism, misogyny, and transphobia. It’s one of the approaches that helped perpetuate iniquitous, damaging situations:
*Don’t like Blacks having to sit in the back? Don’t eat at that restaurant.
Distressed that Issei and Nisei are getting herded into internment camps? Don’t watch.
Don’t like sundown laws? Don’t live in that area.
Don’t like your boss referring to female employees by their bra sizes and refusing to promote them? Don’t work there.
Would you say that at work or the gym? If people are carrying on a big old racist conversation, the solution is to just keep walking?
You can still create an atmosphere that is hostile even if all the women and colored folk dutifully scroll past the hostile threads. This should be obvious.
Thanks! but I’ve found a problem with it, though at least I had the sense to say “may”:
That was in partial response to this:
I haven’t read all of that 8 year old thread. But I’ve now been through the first hundred or so posts; and read the stories linked in those posts.
Shodan, where are you seeing that the parents allowed their daughter to “date” a nineteen year old? I’m not finding that anywhere in those news reports. I’m finding, rather to the contrary, that the mother, when she saw signs of trouble (though it’s unclear whether the “young man” was the 19 year old in question), called the police.
First just to Max. My post made no appeal to consequences. It was an appeal to basic decency.
What follows addresses all of the above posts -
Individuals A are the presumed expert on whether or not they were offended by what individual B posted. They have ZERO expertise on whether or not individual B meant to offend or whether or not any other inference about Individual B’s thinking is valid.
Feeling offended does NOT give a free pass to offend others, which is what many want to do based on what they think they “know” the other person actually meant. Agreed it is the offending not the being offended which is the issue to control.
Once individual B knows that a type of statement offends individuals A it is high order jerkdom to persist in that sort of statement if it could be avoided and still have meaningful discussion of the subject of the op. Obviously if a progressive is offended by someone claiming Sanders is unelectable, then respecting that offense would hobble discussion, and they would need to suck it up, for example. But OTOH I don’t care if you know or understand why say “Hymietown” or accusations of “dual loyalty” are offensive. Or for someone else maybe the word “cracker”. If you use it, without some fairly unavoidable need in a conversation, knowing that it offends some other in the conversation then you are an ass. That is true for posts received as misogynistic, racist, and transphobic, AND for ones announcing your “knowledge” of the hateful intent of others. Moderation does not require proof of the hateful intent; the being a jerk by persisting in offensive posting for no adequate conversational subject need is sufficient.
Setting up an op in GD along the lines of “[Hateful beliefs X] are horrible.” when expressing X is something that will offend others, is trolling. An op is an invitation to offer counters to it, not a post on your Facebook feed looking for likes and shares. Inviting someone to say [hateful belief X] in that manner is trolling and should be forbidden to the same degree that a thread espousing [hateful belief X] is. If you want support and affirmation post in MPSIMS, not in GD. That forum should be maintained as fairly safe spaces fairly strictly IMHO. OTOH an op that asks if [set of actions Z] is an effective way to address [hateful belief X] should not be allowed to be hijacked by those who would defend the hateful belief. In that context they should be warned fast.
Whether or not we decide that moderation is the tool chosen to implement this standard, being a jerk as above (and Max S., I would describe your standard as being a jerk in this regard) is something to avoid in all but The Pit, where jerkishness should stay contained.
It requires, on some level, malicious intent to be that willfully ignorant.
The intent may not be on the conscious level, I suppose.
But ‘I sincerely want all those people to disappear, which they clearly don’t want to do, but I have no malicious intent towards them’ is the kind of statement that, if you’re present at the discussion at all, IMO really calls for pointing out the contradiction.
(“Supporting reservations”, now that they exist, is a confusing statement. I don’t think people and communities should now be driven unwillingly off the bit of land they were allocated, even though they were unfairly driven there in the first place. But you probably didn’t mean that.)
And I’d like to press this point. Do you think we’ll ever again get decent female or person of colour moderators if they are expected to simply scroll by racism and misogyny?
I want to express how much I appreciate your thoughts here.
FWIW I did have relatives murdered by bigotry a handful of years before I was born, and I am with you with an appreciation that communication is messy, dangerous, and important to keep chugging at.
I am in fact very comfortable with major constraints, if not outright bans, on some topics. Some are not reasonable to endlessly debate. The discussions are of no value and of distinct harm. The list though should be small and kept with consideration that not every discussion that offends some number is without value.
There are those who see any significant divergence from their specific bubbled POV as “hateful” in some way, as literally supporting torture and murder, for example, and experience pain every time they come here. To them a majority of Americans are hateful and not worth talking to. Catering to those specific people in ways that hobble any meaningful discussions about a wide variety of subjects is not reasonable. And we cannot be a place in which the hateful posts are allowed to run rampant and jerks of all stripes dominate the posting space.
In other words, they’re not bad, just stupid. If you feel like wasting your time arguing with stupid people, feel free. But why should the rest of the board have to host these losers?
The whole “fighting ignorance” is just a corporate slogan, like Burger King’s “Have It Your Way” or whatever.
I would not, because in my opinion the purpose of a gym is not to discuss potentially offensive topics or fight ignorance. Contrast with a message board or philosophy/debate club.
It seemed like you were drawing a distinction between “racism/mysoginy/transphobia” and “discussions about racism/mysoginy/transphobia”. If you were this distinction isn’t valid because the point of avoiding a discussion about those topics is that people in the discussion will actually make racist/sexist/transphobic comments, and you would therefore be asking people to have to actually scroll past real bigotry, not just a discussion about bigotry that avoids bigotry itself.
As I said, perhaps I don’t understand what these “people” (of which you are one, right?) are offended by, or why.
I made the assumption that you are offended by being exposed to misogyny because being exposed to misogyny makes you uncomfortable. But the exposure is largely voluntary, and now you are telling me that closing your eyes or passing by offending threads might make you feel unsafe. But you haven’t told me why. The reason might be obvious to you, but it’s not obvious to me.
What can I do? I can make another assumption, and I hate to do this, but I have to understand things at least in a general sense before I can truly accept them. There’s [DEL]three[/DEL] four things I can think of. These are not intended as insults or even accurate representations of your motives and I’m sharing my thought process, trying to rationalize your opinion:
[ul][li]You feel compelled to correct bigots and therefore cannot stay away from obviously bigoted threads, even if they cause great distress to you[/li][li]You take some sort of pleasure in reading bigoted arguments, even if they cause great distress to you[/li][li]You aren’t offended about yourself being exposed to bigoted arguments, you are offended because other people are offended[/li][li]You aren’t offended about yourself being exposed to bigoted arguments, you are offended that bigots still exist[/ul][/li]I doubt that I’ll bend for #1 or #2. #3 is only delegating whatever reasoning I might understand to another person. #4 seems most likely to me. But if you are offended by the persistance of bigots in general, I still don’t think that’s any basis for banning bigoted debates. Removing them from this place does not change the world for the better, it denies them a platform yes, but no minds are going to change as a result. Less communication between bigots and non-bigots is worse for everybody, and this is my opinion, isolation breeds ignorance breeds fear breeds hate.
If by magic I could prevent any bigoted idea from being spoken, would bigotry disappear? I don’t think so. I’ve seen young children formulate complex notions of racism and sexism and other tribalism all on their own. I think part of it is a natural survival strategy. Just telling everybody that the question is settled won’t eradicate bigotry. It emerges ex nihilo.
I shared a story earlier about how I used to be sexist. I can imagine myself today, having never learned that lesson. I would still be just as obstinate about not accepting anything as truth unless I understood it. I could have been one of those bigots, this message board could have been an opportunity for me to change my ways, but not if we take it as a settled question, unworthy of debate, deserving of punishment for questioning, the equality of the sexes.
Reading your more recent comment, I would like to return to this.
Being considerate to others sensitivities is simply the right thing to do - to an extent. I am not going to join you if being considerate or respectful means changing my opinion about an issue others might find offensive. Speaking my opinion? I can usually bide my tongue, for the sake of respect or friendship, unless it is my job to speak my opinion on that issue.
Support a measure that I don’t understand? Vote or argue against my conscience? Absent some extreme circumstance, it’s almost definitely not going to happen. I’m not that considerate, and I am not that polite, if it can still be called that.
ETA: I suppose, I could drop this cause. After all, I’m no misogynist or racist or transphobe. Banning those topics will not prevent me personally from expressing myself. I really don’t have any skin in this game. I think it’s the wrong move to make though, and the thread is soliciting my opinion.