No, because that’s actual argument. What is frowned upon is stuff like just posting how hot she is, or conversely, how ugly she is. Or comparing her attractiveness to other candidates.
And you definitely shouldn’t make a thread where you rank who the hottest politicians are.
Thing is, this board is run more like a common law system. The rules are there, but the actual law is made by the rulings of the moderators. And only rarely are the actual rules updated.
That said, I have advocated that more things should be made explicit in the rules before, saying it would cut down on infractions if the things assumed to be obvious but people get mixed up on would be explicitly written down.
That’s nice what you prefer.
The mods, they appear to have other preferences. They have often expressed that they prefer that there be space for norms to evolve, some fuzziness, rather than what they see as lines that invite people to see how close they can toe up to it or over it without getting called out. It just gets rolled into don’t be a jerk. Specifying everything that counts as being a jerk and even how what qualifies as being a jerk changes as times change, is not something they have shown any interest in doing. I don’t blame them.
We’re a community, not a court of law. When are all the norms and rules of a community ever written down?
“Just locker-room talk”, eh? Well, not any more. It very much is being a jerk (even if not every mod would see it that way now, that’s the way the world is going)
The law *is *promulgated. It is “Don’t be a jerk”
By being suspended, banned, or intimidated into silence of course. Or driven away from the board.
We’ve had poll threads done before that indicate that liberals outnumber conservatives on this message board by a ratio of roughly 5 to 1. I don’t think there is any danger of liberals ever getting driven off the Straight Dope by conservatives.
Bolding mine. Just like what happened with women here.
“Liberals” are not a monolith. People - no, scratch that - Conservatives have done a pretty good job of driving off trans posters and many women.
That is a good observation. I thought I had accounted for it but it is worth exposing my line of thought to you, and I hope you can point out some mistake and bring me in line. Please, let me attempt to explain myself.
First, I approach the rules here from a viewpoint opposite of yours. Where you say, “there’s no reason to allow the blatantly bigoted opinions you gave”, you appear to rely on an assumption that speech is disallowed by default, and only allowed when there is a reason to do so. The way I look at it, I assume all speech is allowed unless there is a reason to not allow that speech. So my default position and your default position appear to be at odds, but we can find common ground where we agree that there is a reason to disallow speech.
I was pushing the view that bigoted wishes are not necessarily wishing harm upon others because I thought that was why thorny locust et. al were offended by them. In this spoiler I reproduced snippets of the exchange where I drew that inference:
[SPOILER]
Boldface added for emphasis in thorny locust’s post.[/SPOILER]
Based on this exchange I came to understand her argument as, ‘discussions of bigotry should be censored because they lead to harm, because they make bigotry appear more commonly accepted, because they drive away non-bigots, because they offend non-bigots, because such discussions involve bigots wishing harm upon people, and non-bigots find that offensive.’ I agree that non-bigots find wishing harm upon people offensive. I don’t agree that people who present bigoted opinions necessarily wish harm upon others.
But you are raising a different line of argument, a much simpler and direct one. You are saying that discussions of bigotry are harmful and cause harm of their own accord. In my mind, your argument looks like this:
[ul][li]Discussions of bigotry should be censored, because[/li][LIST][li]discussions of bigotry are discussions that cause harm, and[/li][li]discussions that cause harm should be censored.[/ul][/LIST][/li]My question to you is this: in what sense do discussions of bigotry cause harm?
The most straightforward response, which I can identify with and that I think fits the mother-child example, is that it hurts one’s feelings. So let’s flesh that out:
[ul][li]C1) Discussions of bigotry should be censored[/li][LIST][li]C2) Discussions of bigotry are discussions that cause harm[/li][LIST][li]C3) Discussions of bigotry are discussions that hurt people’s feelings[/li][li]C4) Discussions that hurt people’s feelings are discussions that cause harm[/ul][/li][li]C5) Discussions that cause harm should be censored[/LIST][/LIST][/li]My response to this argument, which may well be a straw-man*, is that hurt feelings are not the kind of harm that I would support censorship over (I think violence/physical harm would be necessary), and even if it were such a person could simply stay out of bigoted threads to begin with. After all, we have a whole section of the message board devoted to hurting people’s feelings. My read of the people on this message board is that they do not want to ban misogyny/racism/homophobia/transphobia because they want a safe space where feelings are not hurt. If people admitted that is what they want here, I could understand that and argue that it is counter to the purpose of these message boards (which I did in the previous misogyny thread, and earlier in this thread). But again, I get the distinct impression that people have some other more compelling reason to disallow bigoted speech on the Dope. And that’s what I want to understand. Why?
When I look further upthread I find that this was my original position.
~Max
[quote=“Max_S, post:589, topic:843977”]
The most straightforward response, which I can identify with and that I think fits the mother-child example, is that it hurts one’s feelings. So let’s flesh that out:
[ul][li]C1) Discussions of bigotry should be censored[/li][LIST][li]C2) Discussions of bigotry are discussions that cause harm[/li][LIST][li]C3) Discussions of bigotry are discussions that hurt people’s feelings[/li][li]C4) Discussions that hurt people’s feelings are discussions that cause harm[/ul][/li][li]C5) Discussions that cause harm should be censored[/LIST][/LIST][/li][/QUOTE]
The argument could be made that discussions of bigotry trigger a conditioned response possibly including discomfort, nausea, and stress, which can lead to actual harm. That was the theory I took away from the thread, “[THREAD=880135]I have a confession to make. When I see an attractive woman, in any context, my concentration shifts[/THREAD]”.
But those harms are avoided entirely when the person in question stays away from threads about bigotry. Or at least, it can be considered a hijack (and thus warn-able) when bigotry makes its way into threads that aren’t about bigotry.
Then again, there are a lot of issues where a bigoted worldview is highly relevant to one’s stance. Like, most issues. Hmm.
Avoiding threads places a lot of responsibility on the minority posters with thin skins. Maybe that isn’t fair. But then again, they are minority posters, and it is not personally the fault of a bigoted poster that a specific minority poster is so distressed by the mere articulation of bigotry. A person with food allergies (such as myself) must take it upon themselves to avoid foods they are allergic to; an allergy is very much a problem of the person who is allergic, even if it is not their fault either; sensitivity to certain issues seems to me to be a problem for the person who is sensitive, even if society at large is to blame for the sensitivity itself.
~Max
If I am friends with a person with food allergies, out of respect for them I will avoid presenting foods they are allergic to. That is basic decency. We all respect women and homosexuals and racial minorities and transgender individuals, so basic decency says that we should avoid presenting opinions that would likely offend them.
Ah, but the Straight Dope Message Boards is not like a meeting of friends, at least not in a forum such as Great Debates. To take the analogy and make it relevant to the Straight Dope as an institution, consider a restaurant which exists to serve the finest popular foods. It just so happens that some of the finest popular foods include common allergens such as nuts or shellfish. The restaurant does not cater to people with allergies by only serving allergen-free food. To do so is contrary to the stated purpose. Still, they respect people with food allergies, and so they make a food-sensitive menu and clearly mark which entrees may trigger an allergic reaction for people with common food allergies; despite the fact that only 10% or so of their customers might have food allergies. It is still the responsibility of the customers with allergies to order items which will not trigger a reaction.
And so on the Straight Dope Message Boards, I continue to think the ultimate responsibility falls on people who are sensitive to certain topics. An outright ban on sensitive debate topics because they are sensitive is not in order, and I continue to think such a ban would be against the stated purpose of the forums. I think perhaps we can work out some sort of standard way to let people know which threads are especially sensitive. Maybe a plugin or a thread naming convention of some sort. Or maybe the Great Debates forum itself is warning enough. Just thinking out loud here.
~Max
Even in IMHO or MPSIMS?
Op in IMHO: “what do you think of Beto O’Rourke now?”
Response:" I still think he’s hot af. He never really had a chance tho."
Is that necessarily being a jerk?
Op in MPSIMS: “Tulsi Gabbard is really hot for a politician”
Is that necessarily being a jerk?
In my experience, objectifying actors or public figures is commonplace, across gender and racial lines. I hear people say “I’d bang/hook up with [some celebrity]” or “[some celebrity] looks pretty (ugly)” to their spouse, children, friends, acquaintances. In restaurants, buses, on airplanes, in bathrooms, on couches, at dinner tables, in schools, at work, in kitchens, in movie theaters, at parties, while walking down the street, heck man, even on the radio. Fox News purposefully and infamously exploits the legs of their female anchors.
Sexual objectification is literally everywhere. Not everybody thinks all sexual objectification is being a jerk. If you want to roll sexual objectification up into “jerkish” behavior, that’s fine, but please make this explicitly clear in the FAQ at least. It is not obvious.
~Max
This is a clear disconnect.
I would hazard a guess that few of us, including those who lean more towards the end of allowing more speech even if it is offensive, view the articulation of bigotry as any mere thing. The articulation of bigotry is big deal thing, if consciously done an overtly hateful act, and even if done without awareness one with significant harms.
Objectification and its casual acceptance is a behavior with significant harms, perhaps even especially in IMHO and MPSIMS, because it normalizes offensive behaviors. The fact that in some circles such behavior is considered “normal” and acceptable is a real harm.
I would not say that there is no place ever for considering someone’s appearance. There are some threads in CS for example in which the performer’s appearance is relevant. (See some of the discussion in The Irishman threads for example). And discussions on what we each find attractive or not are not I think off limits. Cultural norms of beauty standards male and female and their differences have often been interesting discussions.
But the default of considering these things that commonly offend as “mere” leads to a different mindset than I have anyway.
To explain my mindset, I’m thinking there’s a range on just how harmful an individual act of bigotry can be. On one extreme you have a bigot killing another human being. Compared to that, articulation of ideas seems very much a mere act to me.
Yes, lots of expressions of bigotry can lead to bigots killing minority groups. But lots of bigots killing minority groups is even worse than lots of expressed bigoted ideas. I feel quite confident in saying actual violence and calls for violence are significantly more dangerous than discussion of ideas that could be used to justify violence or calls for violence.
~Max
Having a hard time understanding what you thought the point of typing that out was. Who do you imagine would disagree that physical violence is more dangerous than written bigotry?
The second paragraph, which you quoted, was a pre-emptive argument. I hope that nobody disagrees that physical violence is more dangerous than written bigotry.
~Max
Yes good thing we can all agree that an overt call for specific violence based on bigotry is clearly not something okay here.
And compared to that mere calling someone a kike should be okay!!
I don’t see any need for preemptive arguments that violence is bad before we continue discussing message board rules. Physical violence is not going to break out here. We don’t need rules about that.
I don’t agree with that, which is a form of red herring.
~Max
In post #594 I defended my usage of the word “mere” against DSeid’s post #593. I was not using the relative dangerousness of violence/advocating violence versus written bigotry to make or refute any argument about the rules here.
~Max