Fine, like I said, maybe it’s just my personal peeve. But I personally wouldn’t approach him and say, “Hey, my Dad says he wonders why dwarves aren’t euthanized at birth. What a dork, huh?” What would even be the point?
I admit, I do find it a tad hard to believe that a person could get so upset on behalf of what must be an abstract group to him.
Ah. Supportive huh? I see the crux is that we have way different experiences & POV on and about this board. Thrusting Arabs, gays, and blacks as fodder into a debate is undoubtably going to draw enough members who will argue that Arabs should all be nuked, gays are sick, and blacks are stupid and worthless. Do you think those people go to bed feeling “supported” by the SDMB community? As two out of three, I’ll speak for myself and say no, I don’t.
I added bolding to the important word in my quote in hopes that you would see it this time. As to the rest of your strawman, you’re simply being either intentionally thick or a dickhead.
As above, you’re either being thick or purpose or simply being a dick. People disagree with you. Respond to their arguments and prove yourself worthy, or fail to do so and show yourself to be a dick. I would prefer that you do the former, but the choice is up to you.
This is an example of inflammatory speech on your part. I think you’re intending to show a parallel, but it rings false to me. As with your Death Spike thread, you’re showing a lack of talent with analogy and parallel. You should probably try to cut down on doing it.
I don’t. It’s called compassion.
You’re right in thinking that I don’t support you as a community member, but that has nothing do with with your ethnicity or sexual orientation. I don’t support you (or rather, I argue against you, which is much the same thing) because I disagree with you. That’s healthy. It’s not prejudiced (although I am starting to acquire a degree of prejudice regarding you as an individual; I now assume that you have poor debating skills but like to argue).
And do you find the majority of members of this board arguing that “Arabs should all be nuked, gays are sick, and blacks are stupid and worthless”, or arguing against those views? People who espouse those views here are vilified for them (and rightly so).
Maybe because, despite not being able to “walk in their shoes”, it’s not necessarily an “abstract group” for this person. He could, say, actually know quite well people belonging to this group.
And you don’t even have to be related in any way to a group in order to feel something. People are upset when they hear about other people starving somewhere in the world, even though they are unlikely to ever starve or live in this place themselves.
People on this board are feel passionately about a lot of issues they aren’t directly involved in. How many Palestinians are there on this board? How comes there are so heated debates about the Palestinian issue? How many only manage to get by using foodstamps or are homeless (some SDMB posters used to be)? How comes there are so many debates about these issues, once again?
Once again, I feel there’s something segregationnist, an “us and them” stance in your comments. I also am quite worried by your inability to even grasp the concept that people could actually care for/be upset by something which doesn’t affect them personnally. Let me tell you that at this point it makes me suspect that it reflects your personnality, which wouldn’t be a good thing in my book.
Okay, I take that comment back. What I wish I said is that I sometimes distrust some posters’ display of sympathy especially when they feel so comfortable stirring up discussion about certain things where discussion is pointless. Talking about horrors in Iraq spreads important awareness about those horrors, and encourages real debate about it. Telling everybody what your crazy sister said about fat women just spreads her comments around.
Why is it such a bad parallel? Euthanasia of infants with conditions like dwarfism isn’t something I made up, so it’s not unfathomable that someone would support it in the U.S. Posters here like to share stuff like that all the time, which is what I’m ranting against.
That’s such a load of crap, one reason to spread her comments around is to show how ridiculous they are.
You seem to be in the camp of mass-censorship, why can’t you let individuals censor themselves? Why are you so patronizing and assuming that they are frail and get hurt by the slightest mention of anyone being offensive?
If we had an edit function, I’d put “(mild)” in my title. I’m merely annoyed by this specific board’s (as I’ve never seen this phenomenon on any other board I’ve been to) penchant for sharing whatever crazy, horrible thing its members happened to stumble upon, and wish that social graces would restrict a person from extending the life of an overheard boorish comment past himself. It’s not a totalitarian censorship thing, I’m just questioning the politeness of this practice. Haven’t you ever heard anyone say “which I won’t even repeat here!”? That’s the mindset I’m coming from. And it’s not just entire threads I’m talking about - sometimes these things just sideswipe a guy out of nowhere. The discussion could be about what to bring on a picnic and then suddenly someone will repeat some outrageous nasty comment somebody somewhere said and I think “Well did we all have to hear about it?”. If I could search for “actually said that” on this board (I can’t), I could provide a bunch of good examples.
It’s a bad parallel because what **clairobscur **did is:
repeat statements made to him/her* to a general audience of people who discuss things like racism and intolerance and have an agreement to be civil about it and fight this kind of ignorance
You, on the other hand, are suggesting that you’d:
walk up to a person in the group being insulted and convey the insult
Do you see why this is a bad parallel? I suspect that, since you have indicated that you’re in one of the groups being disparaged by the comments relayed, you feel that **clair **was doing what you’re suggesting about in your example. Except that she’s not. She’s assuming nothing about you, other than that you’re a member of this community. The intent is different, and intent matters.
I still don’t know, clair. I’m just going to assume you’re female because it’s easier. Feel free to correct me. Or you can follow the example of the OP and get huffy about it.
See, I’m still confused. My first thought was “Oh, the 'bzzzzt, thanks for playing” sound." Then I thought “maybe it’s the ‘You are correct, sir!’ sound.”
