Thanks for the advice, taken in the spirit it was intended.
Posts/threads don’t happen in a vacuum. There are folks who spew bile and snark at me that I might engage because, at the very least, they have something interesting to say, there might be something worth discussing and/or I am unawares of previous posting history. There are others, who are historically odious and vile, inteligence or lack thereof notwithstanding.
I’m not good enough a man with the proper restraint to give those people a pass or an ignore all the time. That’s why pencils have erasers.
Well, that kind of comes back to the first thing I said in this thread, which is that it’s hard to discuss PC because it’s unclear exactly what is and is not PC.
And there’s a reasonable argument to make that the Tim Hunt thing has nothing to do with PC. People didn’t react to him because he said “broad” or “dame” or even “lady” instead of “woman” (or “womyn”). They reacted to him because of what he actually said, his actual words and his actual meaning.
As for whether what happened was “right”, well, that’s also hard to really address, because a bunch of different things happened. It’s not like he made his statement, and then the International Committee for Political Correctness met, and its 12 members debated, and they came to the conclusion that he should be fired, and he was fired. If it was that simple, well, we could certainly say that we disagreed with the action taken by those 12 members. But what actually happened was that a lot of people were upset by what he said, and they responded with various tweets (most of them sarcastic, NOT calling for him to be fired). And that got coverage a lot of places. And then eventually he either stepped down or was forced to step down. Was there one particular place in that chain of events where the system clearly failed?
The main thing that society as a whole did is that lots of people were offended and tweeted about it. Should they not have been? Should people not express their opinions about things? Are you upset that Donald Trump has gotten a bunch of backlash for saying ridiculous things about immigrants?
I agree with the underlying sentiment, but the title of the thread, if read literally, is clearly overbroad.
There are four main reasons to bring up the concept of Political Correctness:
(1) As a rhetorical tool for bashing some policy you don’t agree with. You disagree with zero-tolerance policies against guns in school? Well, say so. You don’t actually make your argument any stronger by using the (in that case totally inaccurate) scary boogeyman phrase “Political Correctness” while describing it
(2) As a way to get away with bigoted speech or actions. Either by tossing in “well, I know it’s not PC to say this, but…” with a knowing wink; or, when facing consequences for something said or done, by claiming that you are only facing those consequences due to PC
(3) As a punchline. Har har, now they want us to call short people “vertically challenged”. Har har.
(4) In actual cases when actual political correctness is actually an actual problem
My contention is that (1), (2) and (3) happen ENORMOUSLY more often than (4). Someone bringing up PC, particularly without any kind of preamble or disclaimer, is a massive warning flag to me, and it puts me very much on alert that there might be bigotry lurking nearby.
The OP was obviously focusing on (2).
Cite? Has this actually legally happened?
Again, are you talking about laws or about extralegal things like Nancy Grace?
And if there were approximately equal numbers of rape victims and people-who-have-suffered-due-to-false-rape-accusations that kind of calculus would be convincing and meaningful. But they are not equal, in fact they’re not even in the same universe. Which again isn’t meant to trivialize the suffering endured by actual victims of false-rape-accusation. But false-rape-accusation isn’t within orders of magnitudes of being as much of a problem for society as a whole as actual-rape is… which again means that someone focusing a lot of energy on it raises a warning flag for me.
The OP said that all complaints about PC are motivated by bigotry, and while you’re disagreeing with that you’re getting around it by saying in essence that all the OP really meant was that complaints about PC which are motivated by bigotry are motivated by bigotry.
If that were the case I would also agree with the OP (although I would note that complaints about bigotry are also widely used “as a rhetorical tool for bashing some policy you don’t agree with”) but I don’t think that’s particularly meaningful, or what was actually meant.
Whether they’re “in the same universe” or not is open to considerable question, and is frequently the subject of debate in the very discussions you decry. So you’re objecting to the discussion on the basis of your position in that very discussion.
But even beyond that, what’s a bit odd about this is that in other areas the general concept that “it’s better to let 100 guilty people walk free than to convict 1 innocent person” seems to be pretty broadly accepted - and the odd part is that it’s most strongly accepted by the very type of people who most strongly favor tilting the field against accused rapists. If one applied your approach to an organization like the ACLU, for example, you would find them to be very unconcerned with crime victims, for example, and should raise a lot more “warning flags” than people who focus on falsely accused rapists. But somehow it doesn’t seem to work like that (possibly this is due to PC considerations :))
There’s a key difference, though. Clearly there is a basically rigorous and accurate definition of “Scotsman”. A man from Scotland. That’s why that whole fallacy exists… someone is trying to exclude someone who is clearly in the group because they are not a TRUE Scotsman. (Obviously there are still corner cases… people who lived part of their life in Scotland and part somewhere else, etc., but that’s not the point.) On the other hand, there is no rigorous and agreed-upon definition of “Political Correctness”. So I just don’t think your claim applies. If you and I disagree about what is and is not PC (and it’s not clear that we do), that doesn’t mean that I’m trying to redefine PC to exclude all the things that don’t fit my narrative, or anything like that.
You’re leaving out a key bit… I’m saying that the OP is saying that the PREPONDERANCE of complaints about PC are motivated by bigotry.
As for all the stuff about false-rape-accusations, I only brought that up as an analogy in the first place, so it seems like too much of a hijack of the thread to continue discussing, unless you’re genuinely curious to hear my response, in which case we can move it to a new thread.
That’s because jsgoddess is able to discuss her opinions
A) without sounding like a brain-damaged, lecturing, condescending twat, unlike you. Also, she adds quality to the board.
B) has actual life experience with with to back them up. She’s not a shut-in who’s only interaction with other people is berating her mommy for not buying the right groceries for her.
And…before it “outlived it’s usefulness”, you thought it was a term of endearment? Hint, you’re wrong.
It is a slur against the mentally disabled to be compared to a piece of filth like you (Zeldar thread among others), but it’s just one more burden they’ll have to bear.
Could someone explain the hate directed at BigT. I’m not saying it may not be deserved, just that I’m unaware of the reasons. I’m pretty sure we generally disagree, but I didn’t have the impression that (s)he was such a bad person. I looked at that Zeldar thread, but the level of hate being dished out seems to indicate that there’s much more at play. Can anyone offer a few examples of the "retard"ness?
There’s a really nasty current of pretty classic bullying going on in this thread. I can’t speak on behalf of the OP, but I don’t think that matters; it’s a hijack of the thread.
Physical (hitting, punching, or kicking)
Verbal (name-calling or taunting)
Relational (destroying peer acceptance and friendships)
Cyber-bullying (using electronic means to harm others)
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Throwing out the first one for obvious reasons, if you don’t think this represents pretty much any thread in the Pit (including this very thread severals ways), GD, or Elections then you aren’t paying attention. Try witnessing in GD, try “A Vote for Libertarianism is a Vote for Liberty” in Elections.
If you want to defend the practice, go ahead. I’m not interested in arguing whether it’s bullying; either other posters will agree or they won’t, and I don’t think that question lends itself well to persuasion after first consideration. But I’ll note that so far everyone who has justified the “BigTard” shit has done so by pointing out how irritating the target is rather than by attempting an explanation of the group aggression itself. That aggression by the way which includes almost verbatim attacks on the target from people who’ve had very little to no previous involvement in this thread.
We have posters who almost daily give masterful examples of clever, pointed and thread theme appropriate, yet sharply dismissive or wildly insulting reactions to stupidity. Check the history of the poster just after your last post, FG. “Shut up BigTard” is to that as Don Rickles is to the Algonquin Round Table.
But it’s not the poor quality of putdown that pisses me off. It’s the pettiness, and the fact that the pettiness is the only fucking point. I don’t want to be a part of that, and I don’t want to let that sort of ignorance-perpetuating and victimizing behavior go unremarked, no matter how deserving anyone thinks the target is.
I’m not “witnessing” by pointing out the bullying, and I’m not wrong that it’s a hijack of the thread, bordering on thread-shitting.
I have to agree with you completely for once. It is rather ironic that a thread dedicated to defense of PC rhetoric has devolved into an attack on a specific person with little justification given using labels that would be considered unnecessarily juvenile even if they were done on a 1st grade playground. I can’t say that I agree with BigT on many issues but that applies to lots of people here. I don’t recall him ever saying something that has been less intelligent than many other similar posters. Even if he had, the personal attacks and slur on his name seem to be completely out of place and unjustified.
My point has been to drop the political pretensions and just be nice people on a personal, day to day basis. Some people seem to take the opposite tactic and I can never support that no matter who the new target of the day is.
Start a new thread if you like… or not…, but as someone with 4500 posts and who has participated in some of the same behavior that THIS is the hill on which you choose to die. I find it bewildering and a bit disingenuous that you are overcome with the vapors over, not a only a regular occurrence, but pretty much a way of life on this board.
I’m not sure what it is about this guy that you find needs white knighting, but there is, at least, one other thread going on right now specifically devoted to this kind of behavior. However, the poster in that thread is not getting the cavalry treatment. Hell, there is even one going on in ATMB at the moment. Not a whisper, not a cal lfor a fan and an open window. In that thread ya got the guy getting pummeled (deservedly IMHO) and one other white knight flailing away like Brave Sir Robin.
Off the top of my head, Doorhinge, Adaher, Shodan, Clothahump, Smapti, Amateur Barbarian, ElvisLives, Scumpup and, most notably, Bricker have all had their turn in the barrel from this board, deservedly or not. That BigT is where you draw the line seems weird.
