I didn’t realize my definition of “bigotry” was nonstandard. Sorry!
If you put forward a definition, I’ll go back through the whole thread and tell you if I need to change the substance of anything I have written.
~Max
Not only sincere, also non-malicious. I don’t think you can torture someone without wishing them harm, or at least I’m having trouble imagining such a situation. But I can very much imagine a Baptist minister saying “I love and respect homosexuals as fellow human beings. We should treat them with compassion. I wish no harm upon them. But it is my opinion that for a man to have sexual relations with another man is an abomination before God, and I hope they recognize this and repent.”
So let’s say a nominally Baptist homosexual man is on the receiving end of that line, during a theological debate. You are saying that based on so many words, this man reasonably feels that the minister hates him, or is threatening him.
My impression is that he cannot reasonably think the minister hates him, because the minister says he loves and respects homosexuals as human beings. Arguably, even Jesus taught that much. Neither can he reasonably feel threatened, because the minister says he wishes no harm upon homosexuals.
Perhaps there is cause to feel threatened by the consequence of committing a sin and failing to repent: purgatory and hell. But walking away from the debate does not remove or lessen that threat, nor does it advance an alternative interpretation (if there is one) where homosexual relations are not sinful.
~Max
“Repent” of what? That’s the question you’re blithely ignoring. And its a really important one.
Because if all you’re saying is that they should “repent” of having had sex with another man, at least you’re focusing on an action the person voluntarily chose. I mean, you’re effectively demanding that that person either embark on a lifetime of celibacy or that he live a lie and pretend to be straight when he’s not, both of which are incredibly fucking cruel but at least the Baptist minister gets to feel all loving and self-righteous about it.
But of course most of the time that’s not what is meant. Maybe the Baptist minister means “stop being sexually attracted to men” which is the same thing as saying “stop being gay”. And that’s even worse, because the minister is demanding that the person stop being who he is and by implication saying that who and what he is is inherently sinful and wrong. How could this not be interpreted this way? How is this different than saying “you are an abomination before God”? Do you think adding “I love you, but…” beforehand somehow mitigates this?
What you are arguing once again is that as long as the person means well, the fact that the outcome of their views, statements and actions is hurtful and damaging is lessened or negated. And that simply isn’t true.
How many horrors have been visited upon people throughout history under the premise that “I’m doing this for your own good”?
There is plenty of cause - and plenty of precedent to back it up - to feel threatened by people who say “If you are not as I am, or as I demand you should be, you are a lesser being”. You really, really need to understand this.
Why would anyone give one wet fart what the guy “says”. He is lying (at the very least to himself) because he clearly does not respect the homosexual “as a human being” in any way, shape or form. Because his sexuality is part of his humanity, and the minister does not respect that.
I think this highlights a difficulty the SDMB experiences in achieving civil discourse.
You mention that you don’t know the facts of the case. That’s OK. What’s not OK, in my view, is to read me say “based on the evidence” and then assume that means “based on bigotry” or generalization of women or alleged victims or men. IOW “I don’t know the evidence, therefore the statement must be based on bigoted assumptions about women” is not a valid syllogism.
In its extreme form, it becomes “support for Trump and the Republicans really means ‘I want to kill you’”. Which is counter-productive to civil discourse, to say the least.
Regards,
Shodan
We are on page 14 now, about three weeks after **TubaDiva **started this thread, and I think some of our most recent posts here (since a few days ago) illustrate the OP’s point perfectly. To say that “My Doper opponents are saying that they want to murder and torture me” (when they have said no such thing) is the very essence of “turning the Straight Dope into a place where we can’t talk about anything.”
There have been a lot of ridiculous statements in this thread, but anyone who equates any announcement of support for Trump with a personal death threat should probably talk to a doctor. And we should not be allowing their irrational reaction to dictate board content.
For what it’s worth, I am familiar with the facts of the case and so I know enough that a statement like “Blasey-Ford’s allegation is probably false” is nonsense. I mean, it’s not quite a statement of opinion but that “probably” is doing a lot of work in there, work that it hasn’t been hired to do and is making a mess of it.
That said, Max S. has missed the obvious. That is, there are bigots who think Blasey-Ford is lying, and there are Republicans who think that she’s either lying, or mistaken about the identity of the perpetrator, or whatever else they need to tell themselves in order to make statements like “the accusation is probably false,” but they’re doing it because they hate Democrats. So we have bigots, and we have partisan Republicans, and they sure are cozy together. And the bigots can always put on that partisan Republican outfit and hide among them, so we don’t know what kind of wrong we’re talking to.
That’s not what I was saying. At all.
I’ll pass on that tempting offer.
Emphasis in original.
Another example of the kind of thing I believe works against civil discourse. “Based on the evidence” is interpreted as “you hate Democrats”, and it is asserted that this is obvious.
I agree with this. And I don’t think “you want to kill me” and “because they hate Democrats” and “because you are really saying that women should shut up and spread 'em” leads to genuine civil discourse.
Apparently other people’s MVs.
Regards,
Shodan
When someone repeatedly claims that something is true “based on the evidence”, but the evidence does not show what they claim, and this has been demonstrated to them over and over, but they just double down on the same disproven “evidence” over and over, you are eventually forced to conclude that they are either willfully ignorant, simply dishonest, or blinded by their hatred and prejudice.
Personally, I think people like yourself should consider the possibly that you may be subject to the same types of biases and emotional forces that you so readily attribute to others. But from a purely logical standpoint, it’s technically possible that you’re right and that anyone who disagrees with you about these issues is willfully ignorant etc.
But that’s not what relevant in the context of this thread. The bottom line is that right or wrong, what you’re saying amounts to a negative answer to the OP. That no, it’s not possible to have disputation outside of your own prescribed boundaries because in your opinion ~40% of the country is willfully ignorant etc., and not worth talking to.
I made this point earlier, in my first post to this thread (#97), but subsequent discussion has continued to validate this.
Velocity, plenty of illustrations in every direction of conversational minefields here.
Yes, stating that nearly half of voting Americans are saying they “want to kill” you is one. I’ll take at face value Der Trihs’s truthfulness of their perception, but respecting that sensitivity is unreasonable and incompatible with meaningful discussion. It should be and is rightfully just ignored. In a tightly facilitated sensitive subject thread a post like that, IMHO, should be “noted” with its poster advised that attributing such motivations to other posters is not acceptable in that specific context.
AND Shodan, for example, illustrates another of the conversational landmines: dishonest debating techniques, which minimally border on trolling, if not in fact being so. While there are Der Trihses here the general argument IS NOT, and could not be honestly understood as, the elimination of debates from those with conservative positions. The sorts of dishonest techniques that Shodan employs, his general jerkiness, his constant pushing his toes just over the line just enough that he’ll get away in the fuzzy zone, undermines any real exchange and mutual understanding of ideas.
Max S.'s cluelessness reaches a point that impedes discussion too. At some point it strains credulity to believe that he really thinks that “good faith” bigotry is okay, that someone for example, believing that [Group X] are inferior so it is their interest that we give them special training only and keep them out of colleges and otherwise look out for their best interests as they aren’t smart enough to do so themselves, is just fine, because it is “non-malicious”.* Assuming* he is making that argument in “good faith” it reaches a point where other discussion is diminished as the thread becomes focused on reducing his ignorance to the exclusion of much else.
And I say that with full knowledge that I have been one of those feeding that process.
Some of these things may not be fixable.
I agree with that.
How about stop worrying about why someone said something and just focus on what they say? If you want to respond to that do so if you don’t don’t? No mind reading necessary.
You’re right, and I did do this, which led me to the realization that I was jumping through a whole lot of mental hoops to justify certain beliefs I had always held on to. Once I opened my mind and thought objectively about the beliefs I had, I was forced to change them, because they were inconsistent with each other, and with the way I viewed myself and the world. That’s when I stopped being religious, and became a lot more liberal politically.
And a child in the back seat saying “I’m not touching you” is just making a factual statement about the physical location of his or her finger in relation to their sibling, and in no way should you attempt to read their mind and figure out what they’re actually up to. They should just be praised for their accurate spacial reasoning and nothing more.
Why have rules at all? Maybe we should close all the forums other than the Pit? Is that what you’re saying?
To answer this with a little more substance, because I do think you make a good point – you’re absolutely right. Self reflection is incredibly important, as is rethinking your perspective. I try to do that on a daily basis. For example, just the other day, I saw a story about a state senator who’d done some shady stuff, on what you’d probably consider a “liberal” news source. They didn’t mention the senator’s party, so I got suspicious. Perhaps he was a democrat, and they were trying to omit that information to make him look better. So I looked deeper into the story (in this case, the senator was actually a republican). But that is something I do constantly when reading the news – I go find other sources. Now, are the claims I’m likely to fact-check biased to an extent by my inherent point of view? Certainly. But I try to be even-handed, and often when I catch myself agreeing with a story a little too whole-heartedly, I’ll look up the other perspective, if only to make myself feel better by confirming my instinct.
My point is, I don’t mean to be dismissive when you say that I should examine my own bias. You’re absolutely right. If I come off dismissive, it’s because that’s something the right likes to harp on, but careful consideration and self reflection is exactly why I have trended leftwards over the last few years. It seems a bit like projection.