Is that what you’d say to a non-white person faced with a thread in which racial epithets and hate speech are being freely tossed around and unmoderated?
Change isn’t just about the determination of the oppressed group being willing to face hate speech. It’s also about the society at large making it socially unacceptable.
Ooh, ooh, Mistah Kottah.
I’m not sure I follow you. With such amorphous concepts like “hate speech” or “dehumanizing language” I don’t think anyone is more qualified than anyone else to answer what those terms mean because they are inherently subjective and therefore not really conducive to any meaningful policy without a further limiting principle.
Those speeches are saying that a person of another race is worth less as a person simply because of their race. Or that they must be <insert racial stereotype here>.
Examples: a criminal is caught, and they are a particular race.
Acceptable speech: “what a stupid individual. I hope they receive the punishment they deserve”.
Hate speech: “what a <racial epithet>. We should lock up all the <members of that race>.”
Nate isn’t saying a woman is worth less as a person. Just that as a man, when he sees a ‘hot’ one, his brain inserts sexual fantasies for the obvious evolutionary reason to encourage him to act on them. This seems like something you would *expect *a lot of men to experience, whether or not they admit to it, because this would be an obvious trait that would get selected for by evolution. People denying it seem uncredible - it’s like a fat person claiming the reason they are fat is because they have a slow metabolism.
You didn’t answer the question. Yes or no, are you a practicing attorney?
Maybe I’m exhibiting just a touch of devil’s advocate here, Manda JO, but in my view there’s an answer to that – and I say this while understanding your position (I think) and certainly respecting it. And the answer is that language – objectifying or not – is essential in all its variations and nuances to express ideas, and in that sense language is damn near sacred. Because the consequence of prohibiting certain words or expressive vernaculars outright is the Orwellian consequence of trying to stamp out ideas, even when there is a valid reason to express those ideas because one wants to condemn them.
One example I could give is the editorial policy of the New Yorker, acclaimed for the quality of its writing, which permits words and phrases that would send most mainstream editors straight to the fainting couch. The condition under which they are permitted is simply that they must be relevant, and not simply gratuitous – whether the relevance is serious social commentary or just satire and sarcasm. And this is the sense, I believe, in which the OP of the thread you object to is using such phrases. I’m not sure if he ever actually says “I’d hit that” or if that was inferred, but he certainly says equivalent things like “damn, I’d like to f**k the hell out of that”. But note: he is trying to accurately express his mental state in a particular circumstance. He is not using the term gratuitously, as would, say, someone who just randomly blurts it out. If he were to write, instead, “I found that woman extremely attractive”, he is not only failing to express the pertinent emotion, such a banal description isn’t even expressing the same idea!
As I said, I found the OP of that thread and the poster’s subsequent comments to be stupid and puerile and didn’t read much of it, but my objection to it is entirely different from yours. It’s not the particular words that I object to, because they’re actually part and parcel of the idea being expressed; it’s the idea itself that I find immature and annoying. Expressing the fact that one is a testosterone-infested horndog obsessed about sex is objectifying women every bit as much regardless of how bland the particular phraseology is.
Actually, some people DO have a slow metabolism and while they don’t have to be fat they are more likely to be fat because it really is harder for them to stay thin than for other people.
Anyhow, reducing men to just one drive (sex) is pretty ludicrous (or even insulting, but I don’t get to answer on behalf of men for that question). Humans are complicated and raising baby humans is complicated - evolution selected for much more than just “fuck early and often” in the case of human beings. A man’s sexual urges compete with all the other inherited urges and acts that keep him alive long enough to have sex in the first place, then all the inherited urges and acts that keep him alive and providing for his offspring. Then there’s the fact that individual men do not seem to have inherited equal portions of all of the above - some men are love-'em-and-leave-'em r-selection strategists and others are K-selection guys who stick around to provide their offspring with protection and resources. And all sorts of guys in between those two extremes.
So when a guy “admits” he thinks about banging every woman around him all the time I don’t really have a reason to doubt him. I would certainly prefer he exercise some tact when discussing it, and that he respects women as full people in their own right regardless of whether or not he actually gets to bang them or thinks about banging them all the time. And when a guy says he’s not continually distracted by the women around him (even if he, too, would like to bang more or all of them) I will take him at his word. Because for damn sure men are individuals just as women are, they’re going to vary in the level of their sex drive, and also in how well they handle their urges.
Remarkably, there are even men who are either asexual (it happens) or aren’t distracted by sexy women (or just women in general) because they’re thinking about banging other men - because, clearly, natural selection hasn’t eliminated homosexuality, either.
Yes.
Further, a little more than 25 years ago I was on the Student Council at my local University when the first “hate speech” code was debated.
The issue at the time was that college students were adults and insults were not policed. If you called another student an asshole or a dickhead, well, as long as no laws were violated, then all was fair. And, at the time, if you called a black person a “nigger” that fell under the same rule of no punishment.
At that time the popular thing to do was to ban “hate speech” on campus whereby a student could face internal discipline for calling a black student such a racial epithet. There was not a person on the council or any faculty advisor that thought such speech was good or positive. Several people thought it might pose a constitutional problem as it was a state run university, and some thought that people should be free to use the slur under a wide belief in free speech.
However, the overwhelming majority of members and advisors wanted to have at least a modest punishment for using such slurs. However, how to write the proposal to make it understandable and fair caused issues. What is “hate speech”? The slurs were easy fruit to ban. However, what if a white student told a black student that the only reason he was there was because of affirmative action? Is that hate speech? Many said yes and others said no.
What if a student, even in class, proposed that blacks were better off under segregation? Hate speech? Some said yes, some no. Would a research paper that concluded, with citations that blacks were better off under segregation be an acceptable topic? Most said yes it would, but a strong minority said it would not. Therefore a few people would have banned the class discussion, but the paper would be okay. That seemed silly.
Then there was a debate about how we were now discussing making research topics off limits when we started out wanting students to have a learning environment without racial slurs. Some minds were changed and others changed back.
The measure did not pass when I was there because of these concerns. A few years later it passed by ignoring the real problem of constraints by just banning “hate speech” without definition. When I talked to faculty, they said many of the same things the mods said here, that they needed a broad rule to prevent “rules lawyering” and “we know it when we see it.”
What is defined as hate speech now is so far afield of the original intention behind the policies that would be laughable if people were not being punished for it. Now, of course, this is a simple message board and the downside is that a poster might wrongfully get banned and have to get a real life, but the principle is there.
It cannot just be an ad hoc, the most vocal minority sets the policy, and people get dinged in these threads for things that are not generally applicable to similar situations. Yes, a law can be general and outlaw a general course of conduct, but such a thing should at least be applied across the board with that same generality.
I do not like if anyone feels insulted or denigrated, but such is a necessary thing to have open debate without the disfavored side having to choose words very carefully or else be punished. As Slacker said above, what started as a laudable goal has devolved into preserving ideological purity.
No further questions. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, clearly the witness is a qualified speaker on the dividing line between “hate speech” and the matter at hand. I rest my case.
Also, I appreciate the following speech you made on the difficulty of defining hate speech. I also might note that those specific examples are cases where a specific student is being told that he doesn’t belong because of his or her race. If segregation (or slavery) resulted in overall improvements to the well being of black people vs the current situation (something that some have argued and produced credible seeming statistics, at least in the case of slavery, that appear to support their argument), is that hate speech? You’re not directly saying any given black student should be re-enslaved or re-segregated, just pointing out the cruel irony of unintended consequences or something.
What is the point of even bringing that up? That language reduces a human to a body part; which shouldn’t even need saying.
That’s exactly what Manda JO’s been doing.
Super interesting about that campus debate.
And there are BTW policy preferences I find deeply offensive. A couple that come to mind:
—That we should continue to support the blood-soaked, oppressive regime in Saudi Arabia because their arms purchases profit American companies and create jobs
—That the federal government should go back to the rapacious policy of regarding unspoiled wilderness as valuable only for the resources that can be extracted from them, therefore lifting bans on drilling and open pit mining
But I am also strongly opposed to saying someone cannot argue vociferously in favor of those policies.
Because if it’s not about “hit that”, what you really want is for the nature of those “intrusive thoughts” not to be explained. I can assure you that they are not along the lines of “My, what a lovely human being. Time spent with her in mutually rewarding intimacy would be welcome indeed.”
No, being a horndog is not the same thing as “liking” women.
Misogyny includes “liking” women for what their bodies offer (eye candy, sex, production of offspring) but not valuing them for anything else.
And if you like them for both, or either, depending on the woman in question and the context?
Not necessarily. It’s entirely possible to also like other things about women than their potential for satisfying sex. But each of us has a finite amount of time for social encounters - why not spend as much of it as possible with hot women rather than unattractive ones? That is a completely reasonable thing to do. Similarly, if you meet two women, and one is physically unattractive but great to be around, and the other is less interesting but hot, it makes perfect sense to invest more time into a friendship with the latter person.
Finally, regarding this - like any real setup, actual relationships and decisions are more complicated. The most optimal thing is to invest your time into women you feel you have a chance with - that hot acquaintance who is out of your league is a waste of your time just as much as that unattractive acquaintance .
Is it right or fair that it works this way? Eh. We’re all just trying to get the most out of our lives.
More than one person, me included, has pointed out both that and how the subject could be discussed without going into that sort of detail, in any form. I don’t see why we should have to keep giving repeated examples, over and over, of how to do so.
I think this is important as well. If I see a woman walking down the street in revealing clothing and very attractive, I don’t have any other information about her at the time to make any sort of judgment about her other qualities.
If I comment on her appearance, and even if I am a vulgar person who uses vulgar terms to comment on said appearance, it is not because I believe that women are only sex objects created to serve my own sexual pleasures. It is because the only information I have about this particular women is her attractiveness.
And for most strangers on the street, that will be all of the information I ever have about her. I think the test is when I do know things about her and dismiss them because she is a woman and want her only for her sexual attractiveness.
The attitude of, sure, she might be the CEO of a company, but I’ll bet she could suck a good dick is pretty good evidence that you are disregarding her human qualities and reducing her to a base level of sexual pleasure. But if you know nothing about her, then I don’t think there is anything you know to discount.
Apparently you mean post 55, and no: that does not convey even the gist of what the thoughts are like.
I mentioned in the other thread how there’s a thread about menopause. Your criticism could apply there, too. There’s literally a disclaimer about half way through that OP that encourages men to stop reading.
I don’t think it’s objectionable. Not every thread has to be inclusive (although being exclusive on some topics can limit the value of responses and conversations).
Respectfully, you’ve consistently misquoted that other OP (I don’t believe he actually wrote “hit that”, although the distinction is minor). I read him talking to women in parts of the OP. I fully understand that you read it differently, but I disagree that it’s as much of a “just us guys” thread as you do.
Kentucky Fried Movie:
Hornung : Mr. Grunwald, in addition to your occupation as a spoon, is it not true that you are a driving instructor?
Grunwald : No.
Hornung : Then it is true.
Grunwald : Yes.
Hornung : That you’re not a driving instructor?
Grunwald : No.*