Stupid Social Justice Warrior Bullshit O' the Day.

The BBQ Pit
1822

A lot of racists and sexists do that. If there are specific parts of his ten page manifesto that you feel are particularly salient to the issue of whether or not he has problematic views toward women, I am open to exploring that. I also want to say ‘‘misogynist’’ is being used as a shorthand here but my impression isn’t that this is a person who hates women, it’s that he has problematic views toward women, which is a different beast. If you believe that women are so biologically different that it affects things like career outcomes, I would call that problematic. Not as dangerous as actively hating women but indirectly harmful to women. That’s a personal opinion based on my understanding that biological differences among the sexes are really difficult to quantify and yet we have piles of social psychology evidence that point to environmental factors and behavioral norms as having a significant impact on said outcomes. I read a lot of social psychology books so I am both biased and probably more informed than he is on that side.

I understand that you think pattern-matching is bad, but it literally saves people’s lives, and in a society that is relatively hostile to women, protects us from harm, so I’m not sure you’re going to win that battle either. Please bear in mind I’m talking about behavioral pattern-matching, not stereotyping people based on arbitrary characteristics like race and gender. I’m not obligated to ‘‘wait and see’’ if someone is truly a rapist if they are being pushy and ignoring my boundaries, or give them the benefit of the doubt. On the flip side, people who work in professions (family law, for example) in which their assumptions can cause great damage had better be really damned careful. In this case, Google corporate had an added burden to avoid pattern-matching.

And I love SlateStarCodex, I had no idea this was the same guy. But I think parts of his message are off-base here. I don’t think it’s the fear of being pattern-matched as a misogynist that makes him paranoid, I think it was my initial impression that he thinks women are even capable of wreaking the same kind of damage to society as the patriarchy does. And honestly, this struck me as cowardice. Calling out feminist bullshit is all well and fine, but refusing to stand on the side of feminists with legitimate grievances because he is afraid of some hypothetical bad consequence is shitty. He says a lot of shitty things about feminism as a whole, or at least fails to differentiate in a way that makes it look that way, and in doing so, really does a disservice to women.

For doing that, I wouldn’t call him a misogynist, but I wouldn’t exactly call him an ally, either. Some people, and I think it is just a personality thing, are highly analytical at the expense of their empathy. It makes their stuff really interesting to read but doesn’t much engender a sense of humanitarian trust.

We have no way of knowing why more than 80% of comp sci graduates are men. The unjustified certainty with which many approach this issue does not lend much credibility to their capacity for critical thinking. Also, I’m not sure what policies this guy thinks are discriminatory, because it’s actually illegal to not hire someone because of their gender.

I have no problem with the discussion it and of itself, but I don’t understand how his chosen venue is the appropriate one. The idea that people should be able to talk about whatever they want at their jobs, without repercussions up to and including unemployment, is specious to me. A ten page document is not a complaint about a policy, it is a manifesto. It is a statement about this person’s most closely held values. I think if he had said, ‘‘I’m worried this policy is discriminatory toward men, and here’s why,’’ it would be different. But he launched into this impassioned argument for biological differences in ability between the sexes, which, as I’ve stated before, is problematic.

My opinion is that you could make a rational case for keeping him and a rational case for firing him.

If by ‘‘culture’’ you’re referring to the media backlash, we are in agreement. Google’s statements on this matter seem to be pretty even-handed by comparison, so I’m not as much worried about them.

1823

I’m not convinced. You’ve been victim of abuse. But in a society that condemn such abuse. There might have been people not doing what they have should. Bad apples, even. But, on the overall, people at large, society at large are on your side. Medias would run stories condemning your abuser. Authorities, even assuming they sometimes fail you, are expected to be on your side. Eventually you can be vindicated.

But that will likely not be true for the guy who “had the shit burned out of him in a political prison”. Society is likely to be on the overall against him, telling him that he deserved everything he got and maybe more. The medias, assuming they mention him, will vilify him. The authorities presumably will get him into another round of burning shit out of him if he dares to complain.

Being told that what you’re complaining about didn’t happen, or not getting the help you would have wished for is one thing. But being told that yes, it happened, and it’s too bad that it wasn’t even worst because you totally deserved it is another one entirely. Having possible recourse failing you is one thing. But objectively not having any possible recourse is vastly worst.

You mention Maus. It so happen that I reread it yesterday after having been unwilling to open it for almost 20 years. People depicted in it aren’t simply victimized. They have their whole world turning against them, supporting and encouraging their victimization. Considering them, despite the horrible things happening to them, not as the victims but as the culprits. They have no recourse altogether. I believe it makes their situation worst and their experience qualitatively different.

1824

Listen, bud. I’m not drawing an equivalence between my own life and that of a political prisoner. I’m talking about the necessity of drawing from your own pain in order to resonate with others in art. I have no fucking clue what it’s like to be that guy, but everybody on this planet understands terror, fear, pain, loneliness, and shame. Writers don’t always have direct experience with what they write about, so we have to work with the only thing we have: empathy and personal experience. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with virtually every other writer in existence.

That said, I am utterly fucking furious that you have the nerve to come in here and minimize my own pain with no goddamn clue what I actually went through. You don’t know shit about my life or apparently about the social context of sexual abuse in this country. I was a child. I was a captive. I HAD NO RECOURSE. My mother was violent and suicidal and the sociopathic fuck who was molesting me was trying to get her put away in a mental institution so that he could have me to himself. He told her that to her face when I was fourteen, and she did nothing. I legally emancipated at 17, was disowned by my family, was told it was my fault and that I was ruining everything, was pressured for six fucking years to retain a relationship with the man who molested me from the age of 10 to 17, and was never, ever vindicated by the people who owed me that. I was never allowed to see my brother or sisters again. My mother tried to get power of attorney over me so that she could convince my doctors to medicate me for psychosis, since it was easier for her to believe I was crazy than that I was molested. Everyone was turned against me, and he never suffered a single consequence. I can’t believe you could make such an ignorant and callous statement to an abuse survivor. Apparently you have no goddamn clue just how bad this issue in the good old U S of A. All that shit you hear in the media condemning abuse? It’s pure fucking fantasy lip service. They mean those other kids who are abused, because when it’s their fucking kids and the abuser is their fucking husband it’s too fucking inconvenient for them to deal with reality.

By the way, the unique cluster of PTSD symptoms in the aftermath of repeated violence, commonly referred to as Complex PTSD, generally hold true for survivors of repeated trauma in captivity, from domestic violence to political terror, according to one of the foremost experts on trauma. So according to science, I actually have way more in common with that guy than you think.

1825

Seriously, there is nothing shittier you could have possibly done than use that as an opportunity to minimize another person’s trauma. Not even Viktor Frankl would do that.

You could have made your point without spouting off about shit you have no clue about.

1826

Budget Player, here’s an interesting article I found that examines the validity of Damore’s scientific claims.

Also the fact he’s running first to alt-right sources for vindication is not endearing me any further.

1827

Forgot to respond to this:

I would think it would be obvious that the Holocaust is qualitatively different than almost anything. Being a victim of genocide is incomprehensibly bad and totally outside the realm of most human experience. But the skilled task of any great writer is to bring the inexperienced human as close to that experience as possible. Spiegelman did that with Maus. It was his father who suffered in the Holocaust, not the artist himself… and yet he did his job so powerfully you admit that you couldn’t crack open the book for 20 years. I don’t believe Picasso was present during the bombing of Guernica, but he pushes the viewer as close as possible to that experience with his work. That’s art.

I have no problem with acknowledging that some experiences are generally worse than others. But telling me ignorant falsehoods about the qualitative nature of my own experience is beyond the pale. I am prone to intense emotionality around the subject of my own abuse, so I ran this exchange by my husband. He’s a much more reasonable, level headed person, slow to anger, and serves as a helpful check when my emotions are heightened.

He said you got off easy.

1828

I think maybe it’s time to drop the whole “social justice warrior” deal. Lump it in with “snowflake” (which WAS used by WW2 Nazis by the way) and all the other crap. It seems more and more that it was fabricated and used by the far right extremists to turn us against each other.
Dog whistles for them, bait for us.
Maybe it’s time to just stop.

1829

Can’t we still use mockery?

1830

I don’t care what you call it. Leftists being dumb. It’s still mockworthy, and particularly irritating because it makes my side look like a bunch of reactionary idiots.

Reactionary. That’s it.

1831

Are you willing to drop “dog whistles”? And lump it in with “check your privilege” and all THAT crap?

1832

I don’t think I ever used “check your privilege” in any BUT a joking way, usually with a pic of P.C. Principal to go along with it. – jokingly. If you can find an example of me doing any different, post it for everyone to see.

I myself have called people “Snowflake”. Hopefully the sarcasm in it was obvious enough. I use it to call out the folks who hate “PC” and want to stomp on other people’s “fee feez” but shit their diapers when anyone gets on their case.

As for “dog whistles”, it’s an appropriate term unless you have a better one.

But understand this. I do intend to be a lot more blunt about things. Shit has gotten out of hand.

Clean your own mess, and THEN get back to me.

1833

Since we’re being somewhat generous with the definition, I’ll admit that I was none too pleased to hear about a (white) female gubernatorial candidate being shouted down by obnoxious demonstrators/supporters of the rival (black) female candidate at a progressive conference last weekend. It’s the kind of autocannibalism the left is so goddamned good at, which for the right is a gift that keeps on giving.

Also, protesting racism and white nationalism by desecrating a peace monument is a pretty embarrassing act of ignorance. If you’re not gonna crack a book once in a while, at least read the plaque before you start breaking shit.

1834

Of course, that’s just as true for someone who is absolutely certain that it is entirely due to sexism and the patriarchy as it is for someone who is absolutely certain that it is entirely due to a gender-based biological difference in ability.

1835

Correct.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

1836

OK. I apologize for my insensitivity.

1837

Thank you.

1838

No, it isn’t an appropriate term. All it is is presuming to know what’s in someone else’s mind. I haven’t called anyone names, and you have no idea where I stand on any issue, and yet you seem to think I have some sort of mess to clean up.

1839

This article addresses the oh it’s just dumb college kids rebuttal?

[‘Just wait till those campus snowflakes enter the real world—that’ll shape ’em up!” So goes a typical response to totalitarian hysteria at colleges. The firing of a Google engineer last week for questioning the company’s diversity ideology exposes that hope as naive. The “real world” is being remade in the image of college campuses with breathtaking speed.

A conveyor belt of left-wing conformity runs from the academy into corporations and the government, so that today’s ivory-tower folly becomes tomorrow’s condition of employment. Google’s rationale for firing James Damore perfectly mimics academic victimology—the equation of politically incorrect speech with violence, the silencing of nonconforming views, the refusal to hear what a dissenting speaker is actually saying.](Don’t Even Think About Being Evil - WSJ)

1840

In modern corporations, you have to deal with and ‘get along’ with all types of people from every walk of life and every religion and ethnic group. It becomes imperative to accept and respect each other as equals.

If you want to whine about how you can’t talk anymore, then I’ll remind you that no one actually gives a shit about your opinion on anything at work other than your ability to do the job and interact respectfully with your co-workers. Save it for your friends and your anonymous internet accounts, as much as those still exist.

Or speak your mind and accept the consequences of your words and actions like an actual adult.

1841

I don’t think i understand dog whistles…but i do think im starting to get ‘virtue signalling’

“Dude, people are dead! Why haven’t you issued a condemnation instead of worrying about when the next Captain America is coming out on Twitter”

“Cause I don’t have to virtue signal my hatred of Nazis. They’re Nazis!!!”

Is that the correct usage?