[Moderating]
Calling a black poster a “primate?”
That’s going to be a warning for hate speech.
[/Moderating]
Okay, I’ll play along. Why is saying, “our guns laws are irrational and killing people! You need to quit with the thoughts and prayers shit and do something!” more true coming from someone whose school got shot up than from the countless people who have been saying it for decades?
Why is not being one of the random victims a badge of honour or heroism? What is meritorious about being lucky enough to be one of the vast unshot majority?
Just as a matter of interest, how would any poster know the actual ethnicity of any other poster?
Easy. Keep a spreadsheet of people’s posts and results from their 23 and me tests. Also have on record the medical history of each poster. Furthermore, don’t rely on any previously allowed or disallowed behavior as a guide or precedent. Do all that and you should be fine. Or just call those you disagree with, including the lady folk a “cunt” and that’s cool as well.
The “actual” as in factually documented ethnicity? Presumably they wouldn’t, unless they happened to know the other poster IRL.
But plenty of posters here make allusions to their own (unverified) ethnicity. Off the top of my head I can think of a few posters who have at some point described themselves as white, others who have identified as African-American, South Asian, etc.
So if you use a racially loaded epithet to a poster who is known to identify as the ethnicity targeted by the epithet, yeah, I’d say that lays you open to a charge of deliberate hate speech. The fact that you can’t know for sure whether the other poster is actually of that ethnicity in real life is not enough to get you off the hook.
Presumably you could argue that you had no idea the other poster identified as that ethnicity, and therefore you could not have been personally targeting them with the racially loaded epithet. But it doesn’t sound to me like a very solid defense.
Surely if you don’t know you don’t know, how much more solid could it be? I wouldn’t have the slightest clue what ethnicity any poster is unless they’d made it clear specifically in the relevant series of posts, the same goes for gender or sexuality or pretty much any other attribute.
Maybe - just spit-balling - one shouldn’t use hate speech at all?
What a novel concept!!!
And I agree. Want people treated equally? Then treat them equally. No double standards or bias.
Well, you might have some trouble convincing the mods that you weren’t actually aware of that information.
Fine by me, but we’ve only got your word for that. If you’re being accused of targeting another poster with hate speech based on your awareness of their ethnicity or gender or sexuality etc., you have a certain amount of incentive to lie about that awareness.
A nice idea but is an insult “hate speech” independent of target or originator?
Are there any circumstances where terms such as “monkey”, “primate” “ape” “gorilla” can be used?
I think there has to be a “reasonableness” test for anything like that. If the target of the insult has not made it clear in the immediate conversation then it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect posters to know or remember. Why would they? how can they?
All we have on here is anyone’s word for who they are, what they know and what their experience is.
Handing out warnings based on “you must have known that” carries with it a duty of reasonableness I think. I don’t know the history of these two posters and perhaps the mods can indeed make that case. All I’m saying is that from what I read it seemed to come from no-where. I certainly had no idea of the various ethnicities involved and can’t see where any reasonable person would. If that duty of reasonableness has been shown then fine.
Thing is, unknown race doesn’t mean “not black.” There is a possibility the person is black, and thus using speech that would be hate speech to a black person is still ill advised. It hurts the same, either way.
You also put yourself in a difficult position if you have to argue you didn’t know. Because that’s exactly what someone would say if they were trying to get away with it. You’re relying on people giving you the benefit of the doubt–something they may believe you do not (or no longer) merit.
I’d think you’d have a better leg to stand on if monstro had been remotely shy about her race. But she definitely hasn’t been.
Finally, there’s the apology principle. Zeke posted again, right after the Warning. He thus was made aware of the Warning at that point. (You’ll get a notification, even if you don’t scroll up.) Yet I see no public apology, and doubt he gave a private one. It’s not even a matter of seeing if it seems sincere–it’s just not there.
I don’t know anyone who isn’t racist who, after saying something perceived as racist, would not either immediately apologize or at least try to explain that racism was not their intent.
It’s not a phrase I can ever see myself using, but I’m having a hard time identifying “pestilential primate” as hate speech. Largely because humans are, in fact, primates - so referring to someone as a primate is biologically accurate in a way that referring to someone as a “monkey” or “gorilla” is not (and therefore I would view the latter two as potentially hate speech, for sure). It didn’t occur to me when I first read it that it was hate speech - it seemed to me just a colourful (no pun intended), alliterative insult.
Having said all that, I don’t wish to defend the poster in question and I think the board will probably be better for their departure.
ETA: the last sentence of BigT’s post above is on point here, though.
Well I don’t know what to say. I don’t keep track of individual poster’s names so I can honestly say that I don’t know monstro is either black or a woman and the preceding posts that I saw didn’t suggest either to me.
Maybe you take a deeper interest in such things but I think it is unreasonable to expect that I should know.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking, and what if it’s…he got tired of consent? I think sometimes these guys are at first thrilled to have fans, then they get jaded, then they get bored with “yes”…I remember reading Tim Beneke’s “Men on Rape”, and there was a section on guys using hypotheticals to justify rape. “Well, what if the only thing to save the planet is rape?” Then there was, “What if she’s a female Nazi concentration camp guard?” (That was an attempt to justify rape, period. If the woman was evil, it was okay.)
There’s a trope that rich or famous or good-looking men “don’t need to.” In fact, I think they’re the ones you have to watch, because they come to expect, then demand, then they get bored and decide to try shoplifting, so to speak, just like some stereotypical bored suburbanite.
Only if you are at a zoo or discussing zoo mammals or discussing, you know, primates. Primates like monkeys are not native to North America, while gorillas and “apes” are associated—in popular culture----with Africa.
humans are primates though surely? Why is North America relevant?
I insult lots of people and I don’t worry about accidentally being racist about it. You probably shouldn’t either.
come on.
I’m completely lost now. Why is North America relevant?