Making those people, who are probably fairly rare, go find the racists and homophobes on their own is much better than bringing the racists and homophobes to them. This isn’t like the difference between kids learning about sex on the playground versus learning sex-ed from parents and teachers. You can’t practice safe racism.
If someone wants to subscribe to Derek’s newsletter, they can go do that. No one has to make that easy for them.
Basically, yes. Women make up half the population and there are a lot of talented female musicians. Their absence from something like a gig line-up is noteworthy but not automatically down to malice or deliberate intent. I doubt the number of “non-binary” musicians in Australian bands established enough to perform at a gig like that would fill a shuttle bus. It’s a stupid thing to bring up and then attack someone for not caring enough about, in other words.
(Bolding mine) Yeah, it absolutely does. So I’m going to ask you now to drop it and move on, sincle clearly you don’t get my wider point and at this point I suggest you don’t actually want to, since apparently it’s easier to argue over a single word than acknowledge anyone on the other side of the debate to you might have a point.
Then why did you say, quoting you again:
“Fighting for actual social injustice is a good thing - ensuring all adults over the age of majority have the vote, for example. Raging over nonsense like there not being any females in the band line-up at a closing down uni bar is not a good thing.”
What’s going on here?
Your wider point seems to be that it’s terrible for someone to care about people you don’t care about and people aren’t allowed to ask questions about non-binary folk lest news organizations pick it up and force you to read about it.
ETA: And defending the use of a term because internet gaming culture uses it that way is never going to fly with me. Internet gaming culture is the source of GamerGate, the source of the SJW bullshit you espouse, and the source of an incredible amount of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia.
Just because something’s noteworthy doesn’t necessarily make it worth getting too worked up about. Noting there are no women in a gig line-up: A fair observation. Getting into an argument over it or suggesting it might be for a disingenious reason is not a productive way forward. Add the whole “non-binary” aspect to it and crosses from “fair observation” to “SJW” territory.
If that’s your takeaway, at this point I suggest you’re deliberately choosing not to understand what I’m saying. And I’m sorry I use a definition of a word which you haven’t personally approved, Your Majesty. English doesn’t work like that.
“Getting too worked up” means asking a question? Because that’s all we actually see in the article you shared.
And the idea that if someone even asks a question about “non-binary” folks they must be ridiculed in this thread is absolutely flabbergasting.
Or I reject what you’re saying as a self-serving rationalization and find even those attempts reveal you in a terrible light?
Personally I happen to think fire works a lot better. We should disinfect Milo Yiannopolous with fire. Set him on fire. With gasoline. Do it now.
Jokes (maybe) aside, even if sunlight is the best disinfectant, why the fuck should that sunlight be in the form of a university lecture? Think about this for a minute. We’re talking about a situation where someone is inherently held up as an authority and allowed to speak without correction for an extended length of time at an institute of higher learning. It is assumed that most people present agree with or at least are interested in the claims made. The location and format do a ton of work in legitimizing the positions and the claims made.
A debate is slightly better, but it still sucks. It still treats the ideas of both people involved as worthy of consideration and on similar ground. Which is not a fair thing to assume. This is a big part of why you don’t see too many geologists or biologists debating young earth creationists - it puts YEC beliefs on an unreasonable pedestal, implying, “Hey, there’s something there”. There isn’t. And that would be better, but that’s not what’s going on either.
Overt, deliberate sexism or racism is easy to spot and call out.
Casual, culturally “neutral” racism or sexism is much more difficult.
The organizer of this event may not have intended to exclude female performers (or non-binary performers) but the fact is that he did do so. Once it was brought to his attention he should have apologized and / or tried to correct the situation.
Sometimes, yes.
The problem with this debate is every time someone asks for proof of what an SJW is, nothing provided is ever good enough and the examples get nitpicked to death.
What would be acceptable as evidence? I know it’s hard to be objective when you’re talking about people who agree with you, but I’m fully prepared to admit that lots of gamers are dickheads with some real issues. If someone says “Here’s a story about gamers being fuckwits to someone”, I’m likely to say “Yeah, they’re definitely doing that” and agree it’s not cool. I don’t get into semantic arguments or try and suggest there’s no such thing as “Gamers” or any of the similar absurdities we’ve seen in this thread.
For having an opinion you disagree with? Jesus, Morty, if I thought everyone with an opinion I disagreed with was self-serving and terrible I’d… I’d be living in a dimension full of self-serving, terrible people. You don’t want to do that, Morty. I’ve been there. It’s not pretty.
Absolutely agreed. Why, when nothing provided is ever good enough, and when the examples die under scrutiny, do you conclude that the problem is with the skeptics?
If I wanted to prove that astrology was a thing, and I kept providing historical examples of leaders whose horoscopes determined their destiny, I’d probably discover a similar thing happening: no example I provided would be good enough, and my examples would wilt under scrutiny. I should conclude, not that people are poopyheads for mocking my examples, but that the phenomenon I’m describing isn’t a real thing.
Heimdallis a character from the comic/film Thor…specifically a Nordic god/space alien, who they cast a black actor for.
Gokuis a space alien from the Dragonball manga/anime/movie, and therefore it’s racist that he was played by a white actor because…reasons, I guess?
I disagree; and if that’s the attitude folks have toward university lectures, we’re failing as educators. Someone who’s speaking on politics should be challenged at every turn, should be required to support their claims with verifiable evidence. Students must not regard them as having any particular claim to the truth. This holds for professors and guest speakers alike.
We may live in an age where it’s easier than ever to find misinformation; but it’s also the easiest time in human history to find well-documented, verified information, the easiest time ever to disprove misinformation. Folks should learn how to do that.
As for folks being interested? Don’t go to the stupid lecture if it’s stupid. Better yet, organize an alternate event. If Milo shows up to a campus, and twenty people go to his shitshow, while five hundred go to a panel on the rise of the religious right in the mid-seventies, it’ll say something much louder than folks shouting at Milo would ever do.
I think this is a reasonable approach. But I think peacefully protesting is also a reasonable approach. I think shouting disruptively is different, and usually not reasonable or appropriate (especially since it’s probably counterproductive).
In my last post I transposed “right” and “left” in a sentence. I hope it was intelligible nevertheless.
It might be educational for people critiquing “SJWs” to go back and look at what people were saying about Dr. King and Malcolm X in the 60s. With the benefit of history, it’s much easier to see how critiques of tone and tactics were really discomfort with the underlying social justice goals.
Heck, he could have said “Tried to get some women but wasn’t successful. I’ll admit ‘non-binary’ wasn’t on my radar.”
When someone says you can’t even ask a question about non-binary folks, it’s hard to argue that it’s a question of tone or tactics.
I agree with all this, with the caveat that leftists have a bad history of considering their actions more for their motives than for their results. Protesting a speaker does not seem to me an especially effective way to handle stupid opinions, especially when it can Streisand-effect the speaker, and/or give some lame-ass freshman the opportunity to feel like a Bwave Intemuleschual Mavewick by attending a lecture protested by Snowflakes or whatever half-formed concept crawls into their idiot brains.
Noticed? Look at the post prior to this one and there is a blanket statement. If your critiques are 100% directed at one type of blanket statement i.e. those directed at the left, perhaps you are letting a bit of bias guide your actions.
I’ve criticized such blanket accusations from all sides on this board, but I’m human and it’s probable that I’m more likely to notice them when they come from the “other side”. As always, I will strive to do better… and I urge you to do so as well and banish all such blanket accusations from your vocabulary.
Dr. Fidelius hit the nail on the head. It’s not about malice. It’s about taking a moment to think about things. Okay, so they didn’t intend for there to be no women. Even so, why aren’t there any? Are there no bands on offer that are good and have women in them? And if not, why not? This isn’t an unreasonable or invalid question to ask, on virtually any level.
I no word goods.Then what is the point of them speaking at a university? Yes, I agree, it would be better if we didn’t automatically treat the position of someone speaking, or the venue they’re speaking at, as some indicator of quality. However, if speaking at universities didn’t improve someone’s clout, I doubt they’d seek it out.