Trolls R Us Resurrections

The BBQ Pit
7380

God, I was, what… 22? 23 years old?

Was living with Laura and we would have fights about the chores and dishes and who was to do them.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that the pattern was fight → John does dishes. And then I realized the pattern really was Laura asked → John chose something to disagree with → fight → John does dishes.

So I just, like, started doing the dishes without that middle portion which was all just me-me-me. And it really helped! We communicated better, I learned some great habits, and there was no, zero, zilch bad emotional energy which I brought to the table merely because of my refusal to communicate like a growing adult. No, I insisted as if a child, speak to me in my language, otherwise I get to ignore or fight you, and all that attitude did was bring ruin.

Just shameful behavior on my part. Learning to speak the languages of the day, of your communities and interests, of those you love, is one of the joys of life, and I didn’t begin to figure this out until my mid-twenties. Thank you, Laura.

Octo, your entire approach to language makes me sad. And your insistence that you can come into a community and insultingly demand they change for your benefit… for years… without bothering to learn our language, is why you fail here.

7381

Are you serious? I am not demanding anything. I am suggesting that when you are trying to convince people that their usage of man and woman is wrong you might want to allocate some time for that task.

7382

This mod action was taken prematurely. I’ve reversed it, and restored the posts to this thread.

7383

Censorship and denial of other people’s reality is in the long term counterproductive.

You surmise that censorship is counterproductive to communication. You are correct in a sense. Imagine a get-together in someone’s house. If I place my hand over your mouth when I think you are saying something hurtful, it is much more difficult for you to communicate your thoughts. Ergo censorship is counterproductive to communication. Yet this example demonstrates superficial understanding of the issues at play.

What is communication but a means to other ends? A command, written or verbal, is a means to bring into effect some action. An essay may be written, or a speech may be given, with informative or persuasive intent. A joke is told to elicit laughter, and a good joke also makes you think. Any means by which I directly influence what you are thinking about is communication. The letters I write, the words I say, the decorations I put up, the clothes I wear, the movements of my body - these are all forms of communication.

When I put my hand over your mouth, I communicate to you that I do not respect your right to continue speaking (or your personal space). It may be that I don’t like what you’re saying, and I feel like I have the right to put a stop to it. So I put my hand over your mouth, and you get the message. Everybody in the room who sees me censor you gets the message. If your words are unsettling to other individuals, they see that I won’t stand for it. If others were thinking of adding to your thoughts, now they know to expect my hand over their mouth. If I am not the host of this get-together, the host may reprimand me, or may choose to affirm my judgement.

Censorship is communication. As far as I am concerned, that is a fact.

it is legitimate to debate language, perceptions, participation in sports, etc.

Legitimacy, however, is an opinion. You are of the opinion that open communication changes hearts and minds. I agree with you in most cases. But mere opinion does not entitle us to unfettered communication in someone else’s house. We seem to disagree on how much of a say we should have over the house rules. I am a guest and defer to the host’s decisions, with one caveat: I am a stickler for clarity and consistency. Misgendering is clearly prohibited, and YWTF is clearly prohibited from discussing transgender issues altogether. You keep on whining in the back room.

~Max

7384

Well said!

7385

By your logic of physical assault being communication an ass whipping which someone would be receiving is also communication. As well as clubbing someone over the head. Your equating physical violence with speech and writing is flawed.

I am not disagreeing with the right to set house rules. I am disagreeing with the conjectured ramifications of said house rules when said house has a written mission statement.

7386

Completely. All you do is whine about our language. We’re “woke”, we’re a hive, yadda, yadda, yadda. Dude, we are a community which has a standard and you just want to throw shit all over it because you disagree with it.

It has been my contention that this place would be better run as a business, with an eye to the actual generation of revenue and maximization of profit. If it were, one of the side-effects would be that people like you and Ditka and Shodan would have been gone quite a while age, not because of some vague “this poster is being rude and insulting and they earned x warnings in y months” reason, but because you are working to destroy the value of the Straight Dope Message Board brand. And if we were large enough, fine, you’d be drowned out amid the din, but we’re not.

And I genuinely think the mods have to take business concerns into consideration (if they do not already - I do not ask how they do their job): “Is this poster driving or suppressing traffic”? Same question, “new members?” Same question, “the value of our Goodwill as a balance sheet asset?” Same question, “create interesting threads which drive value and outside interest?” Same question, with a number of different metrics.

Most of us are in the great muddle, our presence an asset but not really creating value. Fewer, like the “What if LOTR was written by another author” and that Blimp thread, genuinely create value and goodwill for the SDMB.

And some posters seem determined to damage the balance sheet, to negatively impact SDMB revenues by driving paying members away, to not create their own discussions, but to snipe at others for the mere act of participating.

Screw the damn culture, from a pure business analysis case, I do not see how you are anything but a financial and economic detriment to this Board, Octopus. And your actions should be viewed and weighed with these financial considerations in mind. If this Board is to survive, it needs to grow, and it’s not going to do so by wasting resources coddling the malignantly malcontent.

7387

Fucking YAWN.

7388

“Actions speak louder than words.” Ass whoopings, clubbings, and other battery convey a message. To deny this would deny the chilling effect of classic mobster violence. Besides, censorship on the Straight Dope often amounts to written communication (a warning).

I don’t equate physical violence with speech and writing. These are three distinct kinds of communication.

~Max

7389

I apologize @Octopus, I overstepped and should not have done the split and move.

7390

I disagree with some of the posts here. YWTF was not topic banned for misgendering. That rule didn’t exist yet. The issue, as I understand it, was that (1) it had become a one-trick pony for her and (2) she couldn’t bring up the topic without repeatedly being a jerk. She said stuff that wouldn’t even be allowed in the Pit (the stuff accusing a poster of faking suicide). She just wanted to attack everyone for disagreeing with her on this one topic.

I actually thought her moderation was too light, but people remembered her before she became indoctrinated by TERFs and became a hateful asshole. And I think she was just doing more of the same when she came back.

There have been other trans-related threads where people did not disparage trans people, and those were allowed to stand. Only now there is an additional requirement that you do not misgender trans people, as well as a few other requirements.

It’s not a hard rule, and not really different than what you, @octopus have insisted we should all do when talking to you.

7391

She said what now?

7392

A trans poster said that she had either attempted or planned to attempt suicide, to illustrate how bad the issues for trans people are. YWTF then came back and said that many people fake being suicidal to get their way.

7393

Oh, fuck that.

I don’t care how long ago it might have been, kick her ass out for that alone.

7394

Wrong! You have no way to establish said metric, nor, more importantly to measure said metric. Who knows? The back and forth that existed prior to the dominance of the hive may have contributed to more participation and more eyeball hits on ads. You can’t disentangle the multiple non-linear variables.

7395

Right, if I recall correctly YWTF was topic-banned from anything related to transgender following her extensive participation in the JK Rowlings thread. The misgendering rule came after.

Speaking of rules and clarity, I’m not sure Kimstu is correct on this point:

Having re-read the relevant rule(s),

I believe a person who normally thinks of “women” as only “cis-woman” would read the above rule without realizing the rules prohibit a phrase such as “women and trans women”. Even if they are making good faith efforts to be respectful of the terminology and other board members, I think such a phrase could casually slip out. So if the administration’s position is that generic “women” shall include trans women on these boards, I think it would be helpful to put that in the rules. It isn’t intuitive in my opinion, and absent evidence of malicious intent or repeated behavior I think an infraction should get a modnote at worst.

~Max

7396

You become more obvious all the time.

7397

And that might attract nothing more than a Note and guidance - perhaps not even that if were in a context where it were appropriate for another poster to inform them without junior modding. Nobody has ever been insta-banned or even insta-Warned for a genuine mistake or misunderstanding, and nobody is advocating that they should be.

Besides, I think that saying “women and trans women” in the context of a good faith effort to be inclusive, even though pedantically it does logically imply that the latter is a separate class rather than a subset, would be unlikely to offend anyone.

7398

And to go one step further, the rule against junior modding is lifted in the specific case of politely correcting someone on gender-related terminology and expressions.

If you feel others are using gender-relating terms or expressions improperly and you wish to correct them, please do so in a civil manner.

I said good faith efforts to be respectful of terminology and other board members, not a good faith effort to be inclusive. In my head I was imagining someone defending cis-women exclusive spaces, i.e. “don’t want women and trans women together”.

~Max

7399

How exactly can you get “the rules prohibit a phrase such as “women and trans women”” from,

The use of the term cisgender or the prefix cis- to refer to individuals whose gender identity matches their biological sex is not required but can be helpful in avoiding ambiguity when discussing transgender issues.

???
The administration’s position is that generic “women” shall may include trans women.