Big serious things, like whether you treat other people as fully human or whether you oppose genocide? I mean, ‘should it be OK for a cop to just shoot a guy and then handcuff his corpse as long as he’s black’ isn’t really a petty, trivial, or immature question. ‘Do you think that me and my queer friends should be accorded human rights or not’ similarly doesn’t hit those marks.
While I think there are a lot of problems with her list, calling the very major, issues she’s talking about ‘petty’ and ‘trivial’ just doesn’t make sense. I certainly won’t date anyone who doesn’t accept LGBT people, who thinks blacks are inferior, or who wears Neo-Nazi symbols, and I fail to see what’s unhealthy about that.
Sure, but that’s not what her list of requirements says. It’s certainly possible for someone to believe that black people deserve full and equal treatment but to, say disagree with the tactics and messaging or the BLM movement. (Granted, that’s also a position it would be easy for a racist to adopt.) She’s not just demanding overall decency and respect for people of diverse backgrounds, she’s demanding very specifically formulated opinions. Which is, of course, her right. But it’s disingenuous to claim that her list can be summarized as “treat other people as fully human” and “oppose genocide”.
Again: listicle. Why is it ten dealbreakers, not eight or fifteen? Listicle format. Why is it first date, not in the texts leading up to the first date or in the first couple of dates before you get serious? Listicle headline.
This is a Buzzfeed knockoff article, and that genre has certain tropes. Taking it at face value, as if she really would read this list of questions or something on a first date, is silly.
If someone is the sort of person that divergence from their various opinions is not only not a chance for discussion and engagement but a dealbreaker, who thinks that no “good” person, or at least person worth having a coffee with, could possess any variation from her exact thoughts, then I’d prefer (was I single) to know that on a first date. Keeps me from wasting my time even if we matched views on all of the items.
The items on her list? Only one I could say I disagree with right off is the BDS one. Every other one would require a discussion to know exactly what the other person thinks. What is meant by “to abolish gender roles”? In the context of feminists I have heard that expressed by some as they attack the very concept of being trans. Does she look down on women who choose to be full time at home as contributing to the patriarchy? Under her item on standing in solidarity with Muslims she notes the breadth within the community and that there does exist a feminist movement within some Muslim communities but does she also support Muslim women who choose to take on elements of traditional gender roles? What are her thoughts on laws in various countries to ban Muslim headwear? Is she for the laws as the headwear reinforces defined gender roles, or against them as anti-Muslim and prejudicial to Muslim culture? Is she willing to discuss why various Arab governments in which a woman who removes her headscarf in public risks being sent to jail should not be subject to boycott, divestment, and refusal to allow performers or academics from those countries to participate in various international events without signing statements that they condemn those policies (as has been done not only for Israelis but for a Jewish-American performer as well)?
As a general rule I find those who are sure that they possess the one acceptable conclusion on a wide variety of issues to be tiresome, at best boring, and more often annoying. More often than not they are incurious people who lack the cognitive capacity and critical thinking ability to see an issue from more than one perspective or to appreciate the world in terms other than Rebel Alliance vs Death Star.
Agreeing that we should treat all people as fully human? Duh.
Of-fucking-course she wouldn’t. She’s saying something from the relative comfort of a committed relationship. It’s easy to be brave when you’re not risking anything.
Brave? It’s “brave” to discuss deal-killers with a date? It’s “brave” to have deal-killers?
I bet those are real deal killers for her, although perhaps she isn’t as rigid as the article comes off. But I also bet that she isn’t advocating that you pull out a list and tick off items.
Of corse she wouldn’t, but why should be? People can date whoever the hell they want. I wouldn’t date someone who believed strongly in open borders / free movement either.
I kind of respect her more for making her preferences upfront and open.
At a basic level, the bullet point doesn’t actually ask whether you agree with all of the tactics and messaging of the BLM movement, so your ‘answer’ is really just a blatant dodge of the substance of the question. Further, it’s abundantly clear from the article that the author (not you or me) considers ‘answers no to this question’ to be equivalent to ‘I don’t think black people should be considered fully human,’ which is all that matters to my evaluation - I’m not talking about whether the question is a good one or whether her criteria for evaluating answers makes sense, I’m disputing the claim of the importance of the topic she’s asking about.
Are you seriously asserting that equal treatment for black people OR that support of the tactics and messaging of the BLM movement is “petty” and “trivial”, and definitely not a “big, serious” thing? Because that’s the claim that I was specifically arguing with, and your answer doesn’t make it clear whether you consider it big and serious or trivial and petty. It sounds like you probably don’t think it’s petty, but you don’t make that clear.
In what was is it disingenuous, exactly? She clearly believes that opposition to her viewpoints on these topics means something like ‘does not treat other people as fully human’ or ‘supports genocide’. As I’ve already made clear I don’t agree with her criteria for evaluating answers either, but that’s completely irrelevant to what the questions on her list are about. The topics she’s touching on are neither “petty” nor “trivial”, and are in fact “big, serious things”, and it was the assertion to the contrary that I was arguing against. “The way she evaluates an answer to this question is dumb” simply doesn’t support the contention “the question is about a petty or trival topic.”
That sums it up for me too. The list is a very particular political formula. I don’t see how any intellectually honest person can really equate that hyper-political screed to anodyne ethical principals like ‘treat people equally’.
And anti-capitalism is IMO a positively unethical, not just stupid, position. Although it’s reasonable to give younger more people time to realize that. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, just less worse than any other system like democracy is, and the two go together. A basically capitalist system that is not some caricature of an absolutely purely capitalist system, which doesn’t exist anywhere in the real world.
That said, various people have stated the obvious: she has a right to set hyper political conditions for dating if she wants to. But also as some already said, this seems really more just ‘look how righteously extremely left I am’, rather than really about her personal dating (especially if she is already married) and probably not really about anybody else’s dating either.
I may have entirely overlooked the context of your response, and if so, might be arguing with something you aren’t really saying.
That said, I think there’s some interesting subtlety here. For instance, let’s imagine a conference on the topic of Feminism in which leading thinkers from across the world gather together. And they all agree with a bunch of really important points (abortion rights, equal educational and career opportunities, maternity leave etc). But then they get into the topic of equal pay, and they all agree in principle that men and women should be paid equally for equal work, but then they get into a huge argument about a fairly technical detail of how such a policy should be formulated, and the entire conference ends in rancor and name-calling. Now, the topic of the conference (feminism) is obviously important. And the topic that they were arguing about (equal pay) is obviously important. But their area of disagreement inside that important topic was (arguably) small and “petty”. So is it fair to say that the conference broke down over a “petty” argument, or “petty” details?
I think this woman is sort of setting herself up for that. She’s setting herself up to end up disagreeing with people over what seem like petty and trivial position-staking in large and important topics. Which isn’t to deny the importance of the topics themselves.
(Again, not sure if that is actually particularly relevant to what you were saying or not… but I do think it’s an interesting topic for discussion.)
No, they’re not. Political opinions aren’t “ethics,” and many of her conditions are merely a matter of opinions. In any practical sense, supporting or opposing BDS is largely trumpeting one’s opinion.
For real–I have a much easier time understanding a sincere right-winger whose politics reflect their values than I do folks who treat politics like a team sport.
“OH NOES SOMEONE WANTS TO DATE A PERSON WITH SIMILAR VALUES!” This thread is ridiculous.
Having spent enough time on that site perusing some articles for entertainment, I can say that this one of the tamer things written on there. You guys should check out the article that says men who are focused on pleasing their female partners in bed are misogynistic. Men simply can’t do anything right in those people’s minds.
Funny, in most feminist circles the general consensus would be that being critical of the notion that sex work is inherently empowering makes you the opposite of an “oppressor aligned with the toxic patriarchy”. I can’t deal with people like that, the slightest divergence in opinion and you become their sworn enemy even if you are on the same sociopolitical wavelength. I don’t think these types of people end up accomplishing much in life besides wearing down opponents in internet arguments.
Yes, even taking into account whatever spin the article puts on her views, the idea of a whole list of shibboleths suggests an inflexibility and a level of self-absorption that would be rather offputting. And I say that as someone who ticks most of the boxes on that list.
My short list amounts to not liking someone with a shitty personality. Everyone has likes and dislikes. Presenting them as a list of demands goes beyond having dealbreakers. It means you have a shitty personality.
Same. Really, it just feels weird because I generally assume people I meet aren’t garbage people. So the idea of spending a first date demanding positive evidence that they aren’t garbage people feels alien and strange to me. Whether or not you’re literally checking off a list is somewhat irrelevant. We just have very different perspectives on people in general despite having many of the same beliefs.
Then again, she seems to set her garbage people bar at a different height than I do.