That’s ok if you don’t understand the analogy.
And your definition is still far out from typical that it’s not a useful one for broader discussion on this point, so I’m disengaging. Not because dissent and disagreement is a problem in and of itself, of course, but because the definition s just not one that can really be worked within.
Do you understand it? Does anyone?
How in the world would it follow from anything I’ve said that “white supremists pushing back on tolerant language” are comparable to posters insisting on increased sensitivity to women’s concerns?
It sounds from what you’re now saying that you meant it as written, in which case it has to be one of the most tortured analogies ever.
That seems like a semantic escape hatch. If at this point you understand what I was saying then it makes no difference if (you think) I was incorrectly calling it “political correctness”. Call it something else, then.
Yeah, it’s super clear. You said:
White supremacists who don’t like folks to use tolerant language are insisting the rest of the world reflect their ideology. Do you consider them politically correct?
I’m not aware of white supremacists “who don’t like folks to use tolerant language”. I assumed that “white supremists pushing back on tolerant language” meant “white supremists pushing back on [attempts to force them to use] tolerant language”, since that’s something which is far more common, even assuming the other scenario exists altogether.
But assuming that situation does exist, then obviously it would follow from what I said that this would be the equivalence of political correctness. I say “equivalence of” partly because practically speaking situations of this sort tend to involve enforcing LW viewpoints and not the reverse, so the term acquired its meaning in that context, and partly because white supremacists have no political power and it would be difficult to describe anything they’re advocating for as “politically correct”. But from a conceptual standpoint, they would be equivalent.
Assuming that that’s what ITD meant, what could have been the point of that observation? OK, so they’re equivalent. Now what?
To repeat something I said above, I am always suspicious of people who whine about political correctness stifling them.
Since the vast majority of the time it is flung about by people objecting to what they call Political Correctness, (often because they would prefer to use impolite derogatory language), I would agree that sincerity has little connection to Political Correctness.
This. And I’m bringing it up because it got ignored in subsequent posts. It’s an important point.
I’m going to be honest, while I, a long time ago, thought “don’t be a jerk” or “don’t be a dick” was a good rule, I have seen it fail as a code of conduct constantly. At least 5 times over the last decade.
The issue is that it basically means, “you can do what you want as long as you don’t say mean words at each other”. And for people from marginalized groups that’s exhausting to a level I don’t think cis straight white men grasp. When you have an internet in front of you, and other communities you can go to in your free time, constantly being in an environment where you’re exposed to things that suddenly dehumanize or invalidate you is not the most fun use of your time.
The whole “making jokes about boobs in threads about serious women’s issues” is just a small example of that. A similar example that contributes to why I keep leaving is because every time I come back I feel like there’s a thread on trans politics where half of it invalidates or hates my existence. Why would I want to deal with that? And it’s not even that there aren’t valid topics to discuss, I’m on a Discord with a lot of trans people and the sports issue that’s being discussed right now in GD has been discussed multiple times (and no, the trans people don’t all agree), but it’s much less exhausting because I know I’m not going to constantly be indirectly insinuated to be a man, or met with bigotry-adjacent language like “chop their dick off”, and that everyone there respects and values me and my group. Or at least if they don’t, they have to discuss the issues without invalidating others “in the room” so to speak.
Hell, I’m not even against threads about the theory of gender identity (including if the current view is valid) or race or whatever, but they have to come from a place of respect and genuine curiosity. Respecting those groups intelligence, self determination, and a recognition that the topic is essentially on “their turf”. It’s a thread that requires much tighter moderation and a much thinner band of allowed language than one about, say, global warming.
And there are many examples: behaviors in rape threads, whataboutism that redirects towards men’s issues when certain women’s issues are discussed, and so on. On their own, sure, an annoying quirk, but all together they can create a hostile environment for women (trans or cis), and being at the intersections of that (gay women and/or black women etc) is more exhausting.
This isn’t something you notice usually as a community; it’s not a thing that tends to cause a ruckus and be extremely noticeable by the members. It’s just a slow drifting away by women, by black people, by trans people, whatever. And by the time people notice and ask the question, many of the people remaining from those groups are, unsurprisingly, the ones not bothered by it and asking the same question.
It’s not until you’re part of one of these groups, or a strong ally, and online a lot that you start talking to people and getting a sense of how many communities have had an exodus or slow bleed due to the same thing. Moderation expecting that “personal attacks” was about the line to draw in the sand and the people on the fringes just blew away in the wind because of the constant frustration.
Now, this place isn’t quite as bad as some other sites which have turned into giant alt-right dens, but I’m not going to lie, it can be pretty exhausting to come back to.
Jragon, are you advocating rules and moderation changes? It’s not clear. And if you’re not, do you see any solution at all, for this or any other general interest board?
There doesn’t seem to be any way to keep thoughtful conversations from attracting those who want to derail them because they wouldn’t like the outcomes. Everyone who cares has to keep pushing back. Even when it’s a lot of work, you can hope that over time there would be more people opting for openness and goodwill.
Anyway, I for one appreciate the discussions of the past couple of weeks, they have been very enlightening for me, and I very much hope that discussion on this order of seriousness and heartfelt sincerity continue.
Bolding mine.
Wait.
What?
Are you saying that being respectful towards someone is subjective? Like saying “please” and “thank you” and “only stabbing someone in the eye so at least they’ll still live” are on the same level?
And the fact that women are asking for “simple respect” is somehow bad because only mostly women and some men are asking for it?
Well as a human being I would love it if every other human treated every other human with some “simple respect”.
Jragon, I hear what you’re saying and I think you’re right. There is going to be inevitable bleed off as more welcoming communities have come on line. But is it reasonable to expect a general discussion board to be quite as inclusive/protective of diversity as an issue/gender devoted website? Is there not some value in a place where you can talk to nonaccepting people on an even playing ground?
What I got out of it was Jragon wantinga poster called out on the carpet for describing transwomen athletes as “men who have cut their dicks off” because it’s disrespectful, hurtful, and actually factually inaccurate. The sad thing? I don’t think the poster who wrote that actually seems to be mostly on the side of the transgender folks. Nonetheless, it’s jarring, as if a long-term advocate for racial equality and campaigner for civil rights referred to someone with an African-American heritage as n***** while discussing why they should have the same educational and career opportunities as everyone else.
And it should have been reported. Someone should have spoken up and said “not cool, dude - that was rude.” But as someone cis who has done some of the advocating for transgender people (I guess you’d call me an ally) it gets exhausting, and it’s not something I have to deal with every day day after day after day. I can walk away from it and recharge. They can’t. I can only imagine they are so much more tired of it, and tired from it, than I will ever be.
I spend time on another message board that, on the surface is much more vicious and hostile (as an example, profane personal insults are permitted) but has a significant trans participation because that sort of tolerance isn’t permitted. You can call people all manner of names, but if you described as transwoman as a “man with his dick chopped off” you’d get the moderators on your backside immediately for hate speech and a chorus of people making it very clear that that sort of thing is unacceptable.
(Not that I want to oversell the place - it has some serious flaws - but it does have a diverse community with many types of diversity.)
The Dope is loosing its transgender members because of the constant level of “polite” hostility that is permitted here both under the rules and under current moderation practice. It’s loosing other types of members for similar reasons.
Of course, if I have misinterpreted anything Jragon please do correct me.
We can call out language that is inaccurate in describing minorities of any sort. We can forbid dropping words or phrases - intentionally or not - that WILL cause hurt into serious discussions.
We don’t allow racial slurs
We don’t allow calling women “cunts”
I don’t think we allowing calling homosexual people “fags” although I can’t recall a specific rule. I’m pretty sure anyone doing that would get an invitation to the Pit along with some moderation.
We don’t allow personal insults.
Likewise, we shouldn’t permit people to refer to transwomen as mutilated men, we shouldn’t allow terms like “permavirgin” (Not that I recall seeing that here). There’s probably a bunch of other examples that don’t come to mind at the moment. It should go beyond simple banning discreet words to not allowing circumlocutions that same the same thing.
Does that mean there will be some judgement calls? Yes. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, especially as there is a forum within this forum to discuss these issues.
BPC wasn’t really my major issue in that thread, I got the impression that line was more a response to others insinuating or saying the same thing (including a very transphobic quote from a comedian on the first page). I have other issues with BPC, but they largely boil down to boring “arguing my side poorly” sorta stuff. In general, any thread here on any trans rights topic is extremely boring because it more or less instantly morphs into a “are the trannies crazy???” thread with several usual suspects.
Which like, fine, gender identity is a complex notion. Defining sex and gender is hard and even among transgender scholars there’s tremendous disagreement about what being trans means and how sex or gender should be defined. Not only does this restrict us to a low level of discourse about the topic (you can’t exactly bring up Social Performativity vs Subconscious sex vs… when you know your audience isn’t even going to entertain the premise beyond “but chromosomes”), but there are other trans-related topics and it’s really alienating that you can’t even discuss the “okay, assuming trans people are the gender they identify as” ones. I find myself almost reflexively backing the extreme “obviously transpeople should be able to compete in the bracket they identify as!” not even because I entirely agree with it (I’m somewhere in the “it’s complicated and we need more evidence” area), but just out of distaste for the rhetoric of the “well no, duh, trans women are men” variety on that side.
Like Broomstick, I hang on some pretty rough and tumble boards/discords/etc. There’s no pit because language and insults are pretty well allowed as long as they don’t get distracting or excessive, and yet the debates are more interesting than the arguing-in-circles about atheism or whatever we do here has ever been. But they also have hardline stances on bigotry (as well as fascism and often tankies). Some get left echo-chambery, but a lot don’t. (Not to mention that what conservatives or left-center neolibs might think of as a "left echo chamber’ actually has a lot of arguments anyway. Ever see a Democratic Socialist and Anarcho-Communist fight? Anyway, I digress…)
I think it’s fine to have an open forum for all sorts of discussion, but if you want to maintain members who are women, who are trans, who are black or native or latino, who are gay, you need to take certain measures in rules and moderation to keep bigoted language at bay, reign in bigoted derails, and when bigoted threads are started (including of the sealioning form), keep them on a very short leash.
There’s also something to be said about sanding down the frequency of certain types of threads. IDK if we still are, but for a while there we were drowning in “race realist”/“are black ppl stupid” JAQing off threads that were functionally identical and while sure, you can let people debunk that occasionally the frequency it was allowed was absurd. See also the fact that we even have the joke “oh, is it rape month already?”
I suppose what it all boils down to is “you are entirely within your right to foster a certain culture on your board, and to out-group, passively or actively, those who complain about it, but you can’t then act surprised those people are leaving.”
Yeah, I’m sorry. I ignored that, because, well, I’m trying to change minds, and any response to that particular statement is going to end up less as a reasoned attempt to explain my reasoning and more as social shaming, but… Yeah, a little social shaming is more than overdue for that shit, and I should have said something. (And now I have.) That shit’s fucked and shouldn’t be okay.
The overall discussion here re: tolerance of awful viewpoints is something I agree with to a point. It’s obvious that regular “black people are worse” arguments are both fucking awful and are going to lead black members to leave the board because it’s fucking awful to listen to. And that’s bad, because that kind of discourse rarely goes anywhere productive anyways.
On the other hand, I’ve been admonished on leftist message boards for pointing out that maybe curing autism might be a good idea - I was called “ableist”, even when I specified that I was talking about the kind of low-functioning autism that makes life a nightmare for both those suffering from it and their caretakers. So this isn’t an automatic gimme.
I think there’s a line somewhere, where “don’t talk about this because it might upset minority group X” becomes problematic in the search for truth. “Transwomen are dudes with their dicks cut off” is pretty fucking far away from that line, in the same way “black people have a subhuman intelligence” is, but we should be careful where we draw that line.
FWIW, I think Jragon’s recent set of posts illustrate the point I was making.
A MB where certain views are tolerated but others are beyond the pale, with the parameters of acceptability driven by a left wing mindset, is something fundamentally different than what the SDMB officially aspires to be.
From my perspective, the people “derailing the conversation” are those who object to concepts based not on rational grounds but because they find the expression of such ideas offensive.
You can cater to these people, but you will be fundamentally changing your board.
Personally I suspect that there are some people - perhaps not as vocal as this current crop, but people who have what to offer - who will find that type of board less attractive. Making the board less attractive to those people will perpetuate the cycle even further, as the membership shifts even more towards the intellectually intolerant.
In the event that these were intended as legitimate questions, see BPC’s recent post (#337) for something along the same lines.
Yes, what do they have to offer?
If a significant portion of posters consider doing the right thing “catering to these people”, then maybe this board is long overdue for a fundamental change.
The overton window is a thing. Some views really are beyond the pale (make one really bad joke about antisemitism you don’t realize crosses the line, be my guest…). The question here is, is “transgender people are not really the gender they self-identify as” one of those views? Call me biased, but I don’t think it’s a huge loss if that’s the case.
