bad labelling and poor exclusions
Roughseas has a really interestingly contentious post over at her spot. She brings up so many issues in one little post. And I disagree with her on almost every point.
I don’t write about trans issues because I don’t know enough about it, and I have zilch knowledge of it.
- Weird. I write about anything that interests me. I certainly don’t limit myself to having a point of view only on things I’ve personally experienced. I like reading about other people, talking to other people and making conclusions and judgements about their behaviour and their lives. I like commenting and speculating and ranting. Everyone does.
I do care that a shedload of money is spent on trans ops and drugs. Just as I care that money is spent on IVF and plastic surgery.
- I also care about how our precious public healthcare funds are spent. But I don’t judge what the priorities are from my armchair, or even my own NHS experience. I certainly wouldn’t advocate excluding any groups currently getting any kind of treatment because I personally don’t measure their needs to be as urgent as others. Do I care that smokers get lung cancer? Do I care that people stuff fast food and Pringles down their necks, drive everywhere, and then need millions of pounds of precious health care funding to cope with the disastrous consequences of their lifestyle choices? I would never advocate removing treatment for anyone because, to me, their condition or need is more frivolous, or because, to me, they could have made other choices.
The big debate within radical feminism, and those of us who think we are radfems, is whether or not MtoF trans women are women. Can they adequately speak on behalf of feminists? Having spent at least the early part of their life as men, with the accompanying privilege? Did they know what it was like growing up as a girl, a young woman? No.
- So what? Do you know what my life growing up as a girl or a young woman was? No. That doesn’t exclude you from ‘my’ feminism. Our experiences of womanhood, of sexism and of simply being more female than male, are so wide ranging, that none of us live the lives of anyone else. Anyone who fights for women to be treated equally in this sickly male-dominated society, and helps push the scales towards even, is a welcome voice.
I have no answer as to whether or not trans women are women.
- I do. They are whatever they want to be. ‘Woman’ is a poorly constructed label for the ‘average’ experience of a group of people. It’s almost meaningless, but gives us an indication of what to expect from someone. Pushing trans women into a clearly defined and childishly excluded corner just reinforces the idea that humans aren’t simply humans: all the same with a range of shared, similar and differing experiences, and a variety of chemicals driving our behaviour. We’re not in boxes, however much language tricks us into thinking we are.
When I read men, talking amongst their smug little selves about feminism, and how right-on they are, I just groan.
- What? Where? Is this a joke? When I read anyone, smugly or otherwise, fighting for women to be treated equally, I rejoice.
(Yeah, yeah, blog break, whatever…)
I am staying SO out of this!
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Wise… I got in trouble for my sandwich joke.
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I was preempting another lame appearance …
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Well stay out of it then. Don’t dart about making cheeky comments. 🙂
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“Well stay out of it then. Don’t dart about making cheeky comments. 🙂”
I always make cheeky comments, are there other kinds?
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Ha! Interesting.
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Said the Mad Hatteress —
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You’d be mad too, if you sat around at this tea party for too long.
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So why don’t you pop over to Colorstorm’s and sing ‘A Very Merry Un-Birthday‘? You know, spread a little of your special cheer around – it not fair that we should get the full
bluntbenefit of it —LikeLike
What’s interesting? Did you agree with me?
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On the last point: I’ve never heard men talk about feminism in a positive light…it’s always in the context of how women have it better than them anyway, or how we’re stealing more than our fair share of privileges. If I ever heard men casually talking about, say, equal pay for equal work, I might die from the shock.
As for the MtoF transgendered, I agree they should be considered whatever gender they want to be. This does cause some complications in certain arenas, like in competitive female sports where a born-male’s muscle mass could give them an edge. For other practical things though, like which restroom they want to use, I see no problem with them using whichever they prefer.
Can they speak out for feminists? I haven’t thought about that much, but generally I’m in support of anyone speaking out for equal rights. While they may not have experienced childhood as a female, I bet they have some very interesting perspectives on the privileges/detriments of both sexes.
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I have not had problems in women’s loos. On trans privilege, see here.
On sports, we tend to lose the muscle-mass advantage after two years on hormone treatment.
And who speaks out for feminists anyway? Sex worker activists or SWERFs? “Sex-worker excluding radical feminists”. There are many debates within feminism.
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“There are many debates within feminism.” – and Christianity, and Judaism, and Islam, and religion in general, and politics, and anywhere else two or more people get together. It’s the nature of the beast.
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“On sports, we tend to lose the muscle-mass advantage after two years on hormone treatment.” – but there’s nothing about hormone treatment that reduces the leverage advantage (pure Newtonian lever-principle) provided by broader shoulders – don’t have a dog in this race, but just sayin’ —
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Well, if someone transitions in order to win at athletics, they are giving up an awful lot. I feel I have better rewards than that; I don’t feel that would be enough for me.
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I can understand that, and I’m not arguing with you, in fact, I’m not even speaking in specifics, only in generalities – generally speaking, skeleton-wise, men have longer torsos, longer arms, longer legs, and this, regardless of hormones, translates to greater leverage. There may have been a point in time when the two sexes were physically equal, but since prehistoric women stayed pregnant much of the time and someone had to bring home the bacon, evolutionary changes occurred, resulting in males having the kind of strength required to survive against the hazards of the hunt, and women developing the wider hips necessary for successfully bearing children. Those changes affect the physics required to perform athletically.
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Yes, I highly doubt any man would transition for sports advantage alone. I do think though, that transitioned men who were athletically gifted in the first place might still want to pursue their physical talents as a women. This creates some problems as Arch and I have mentioned, but I suspect we’re talking about a very, very small number of people here. I would think the vast majority of transitioners have way bigger issues on their plates.
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Interesting views on slut-shaming in your posts. I had not considered a lot of the issues you discussed, so it was a good read.
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“I’ve never heard men talk about feminism in a positive light…it’s always in the context of how women have it better than them anyway”
That’s depressing! All men I know pay lip service to it. But I suspect few are truly concerned enough to think about it in any depth. And most still love to make sandwich jokes.
“generally I’m in support of anyone speaking out for equal rights. While they may not have experienced childhood as a female, I bet they have some very interesting perspectives on the privileges/detriments of both sexes.”
Exactly!
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There is nothing wrong with sandwich jokes. Douglas Adam’s wrote some of the best. Are you an Antiadamite?
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Yes. And anti-repetitive-bad-jokes-about-sexism-ite while I’m at it. 😀
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Party-pooper. Let me guess, it’s raining up there 😉
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Suffering from SAD. I swear I’m getting a light box this year.
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You just made me look that up. You want some watermelon?
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I might pop out to visit you yet …
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Awesome! Bring me some peat
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“I’ve never heard men talk about feminism in a positive light…” Really?
All men in my expanded atheist family are feminists. I could not see how my sisters would have ever married men, that were not feminists. Such men would not have been equal partners to my sisters, if they had expressed their obvious inferiority through atavistic illusions of superiority by the dingly parts of their anatomy. Most men I call friends are self recognized feminists. Most men I know are more or less for the equality of sexes. Only very sad and stupid and often rather poorly educated individuals (both men and women) I know are openly against it.
I realize I have a different experience from women in my culture, not to speak of women in all the other cultures, but I also have a totally different experience from men in all the other cultures. Would that render my ability to speak for people in different cultures impossible, just because I have different experience. I have a unic and necessarily different experience from everybody. But I can recognize injustice and unfair conduct when I see it and that makes me perfectly able to speak out on behalf of anyone treated unfairly, be that for any reason.
I do not feel I was ever priviledged in comparrison to my sisters by our parents, but I am well aware of the different treatment even my rather egalitarian society has put them through in comparrison to me. They hold no gruges against me and have never expressed in any way, that I would have gotten different, let alone priviledged treatment in our family and this was decades ago.
Here in Finland the otherwise thoroughly conservative people, be they women or men, even use the rights of women and womens equality as an excuse to their fear of Islam. It is a bit ridiculous. It goes to show we have moved a long way towards equality between the genders, but even we are nowhere close to it.
Finland is a rather egalitarian culture even traditionally. It is no mere coincidence, that Finland was among the very first nations to give women right to vote. At that point Finland was largely an agricultural country and in our traditional culture, altough there was a division of work between the sexes, it was not so much divided according to the genders as it was by necessity of ablity for heavy labour. Even in the ancient burials, women may have held items of prestige, like money, scales and even weapons of war. In all the Nordic countries ancient laws about heritage has always been, that all children shall inherit as much regardless of their gender. Also, when the voting rights were decided some hundred years ago, most of our factory workers (as in most of the world that went through the industrial revolution) were and are infact women. They got very organized early on and fought for their rights as both workers and as women. Alas, as in all societies, some men get their expectations of priviledges from the most priviledged classes in the society and as in most human societies, the poor imitate the values and fashions of the rich and the rich do have more political leverage, than most. On the other hand the rich have often a better access to better education and that changes their moral values as they learn more about the reality.
We have a system of military draft. Almost all Finnish men serve in the army and remain in the army reserve to be called upon to serve both in peace time training and in case of a crisis. Almost a couple of decades ago, it became possible for women to volunteer for military training. Ever since the male activists who whine about women supposedly getting better treatment than men because of feminism, have been “bitching” about the service being forced upon men and volunteer for women. They are generally totally ignored, beceause what they suggest as the alternative would be a professional army. Finland simply could not afford it, or it would be such such a ridiculously small army, that it could just about put up a few parades, but not really protect our borders (because of the possible threat from a particular eastern neighbour). In my opinion, we could make the service voluntary for all genders. If we value our country enough, we will train to protect it and we need not to force anyone to participate. If we do not value our indipendence enough to be ready to sacrifice a little time to learn how to protect it, why should we have it? What right do we have to force any other individual to participate in training to protect what is ours? If someone would not want to do it, would we rely on that person in combat anyway? There is in place a system of an alternative of civillian jobs a person whose ethics do not allow them to even learn how to fight may take. It is ever more popular to serve in the firedepartment, in the libraries and in the daycare of children, elderly people or disabled people and it saves a lot of money for the society because the servicemen do not need to be payed real salaries, only upkeep.
But crying for the one thing where women are priviledged, in comparrison to all the things in wich men still are, is childish, sad and reveals the expectation of being priviledged by gender behind the issue of this ever smaller group of men.
There will never be equality of the sexes, untill most men and most women agree to it. Therefore even the very idea of feminism ever being a girls only club would render it to be a mere reaction to what men have made the world and exactly what those who oppose it would paint it as some sort of stupid “war” by women against men, wich may only lead to even more segragation. Sometimes the priviledged are blind to their position, and only become aware of the reality of the injustice, by the victims raising up to it. The real change only comes when most people recognize the problem, and move to repair it. We are not just the gender roles we hold, but so much more than that. We are people.
I like all the points of the topic post. Nice work Violetwisp. But I refuse to say anything about the original post by Roughseas untill I have had time to read it.
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Well said, Rautakyy! And I have just added a new word to my vocabulary – dingly —
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All the men around here are religious. ‘Nuff said!
I have seen atheist men online (on this blog in particular) talking sincerely about women’s equality…it’s quite refreshing.
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“There will never be equality of the sexes, untill most men and most women agree to it. Therefore even the very idea of feminism ever being a girls only club would render it to be a mere reaction to what men have made the world and exactly what those who oppose it would paint it as some sort of stupid “war” by women against men, wich may only lead to even more segragation.”
Beautifully said! I love hearing about how things are in Finland too. We can only remind ourselves that the rate of cultural change is slower than we would want … but that good things do spread.
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Thanks. As I see it, all of us, that accept womens right to vote are feminists on that subject, wether we lable ourselves as such or not. Perhaps it would do good to all people who have misconceptions of that particular lable of this simple fact. Though, not all are reachable even by this…
Now, if someone sees me as a Christian for thinking that people should treat each other as they expect themselves to be treated, then fine, I am a Christian in that sense. However, I am also a Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, Zoroasterian and a Muslim in that very same sense. People do not need to lable themselves to be feminists, to support all the core ideals of feminism. But the more of us do so in what is rationally and morally defendable, then we may change the world and the attitudes of even those who do not accept the lable even when they accept the ideas. Gods and whatnot ideologies may be debatable, but the fact that we have a responsibility towards each other to make the world a better place hardly is. It is rational and moral.
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Oh! Why can’t we all just get along?
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Because we’ve evolved to be incredibly tribalistic, and people simply get a kick out of inventing labels, grouping people, and excluding anyone for any random reason. It makes us feel better about ourselves.
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am I just too Victorian to assume that we are what our genetics make us, not necessarily what we want to be? (covering head and running for dear life) -KIA
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OK, I will take you up on that. We are what our genetics, culture and society make us, which in my case make me a trans woman. It is not what I “want to be”, but what I am. Run away, little man. Too Victorian? No, just too fuckwitted. Your “recovery”, “Recovering Know It All”, must be in a very early stage.
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that’s what I wanted to duck and cover from. I meant the genetics make us male or female, I made no judgment at all on those who feel inside like they are the wrong gender. that would of course be the decision of the individual. and I was saying, rightly so, that government should play no part in it. im not sure why you took my comments in such a way as to blast me for having a differing opinion. -KIA
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“You made no judgment”. Pah. “You were saying, rightly so”: self-righteous twerp.
It’s not just a differing opinion, though, is it? It is my life!
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and you have the freedom to do with it what you like. I did not challenge that
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No, you just said something stupid in order to get a reaction. Well, you got one.
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what is it that you think I said?
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am I just too Victorian to assume that we are what our genetics make us, not necessarily what we want to be? (covering head and running for dear life) -KIA
What is it that you thought you said?
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you’ve interpreted beyond what those words actually say, and removed the rest of what I wrote saying that individuals have the freedom to do what they want. I understand it is an emotional issue, that is why I did not, repeat did not expound on whether or not I agree with it. it simply isn’t my judgment to make. you seem to think I made it.
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Don’t tell me what I think. You are clearly too stupid to understand. I quoted your first comment in full.
I asked Violet why can’t we just get along? Because of judgmental little bigots like you.
Someone who can actually string a sentence together wrote, Trans genderism, through intimidation, death threats and sexual bigotry, pushes one giant act of erasure: they seek to destroy all women-only spaces, which means erasing any possibility of feminist advancement. My blogging buddy linked to this, calling it an “interesting argument”. And if you don’t make a judgment, what is “government should play no part in it”?
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Oh, I didn’t realize the Why Can’t We Get Along was directed at me, sorry.
This is an interesting question Clare, especially when you are personally religious. I live in an extremely religious area (S.E. Minnesota) and would say one of the major reasons people can’t get along is because of Conservative Christianity. Not only do they try and squash all feminism, but transgendered people are not tolerated here (I don’t agree with this in any way, shape, or form). Gay or lesbian people are *barely* tolerated where I live and there is still a stigma associated with it. I realize you’re a liberal christian, but you do belong to a movement that has not been known to be kind to anything other than the stereotypical roles of cis men and women. Honestly, I wonder how you can embrace such a thing?
I should say my background is as a conservative catholic, and let me say, they did not welcome people with trans issues (and many other issues as well). I’m now an atheist.
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Sorry to keep linking, but I remain Christian because it helps me make sense of my World. I think the author of the book of Job (though not the Elihu passages) may have felt similarly. My Christianity is fundamentally different from that which controls people with rules: my liberal Quakerism liberates.
I was not asking you, it was rhetorical. Our hostess answered rather well. Christians are in both camps: dividing the world into Good and Bad and projecting all evil onto the Bad; and also, accepting and liberating- though that is a small minority, it is a thread throughout Christian history.
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Fair enough. But the thread that liberates is very, very thin. Which is nothing less than tragic, IMHO.
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Quakers can be atheists Violet. It’s not a common garden Christian group.
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Yes, at one point I tried quakerism on for size. It was still too much woo for me, even as an atheist.
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Yes, me too! But it certainly allows to Clare to weed out a lot of The Awful from more common forms of Christianity. I respect them. They’re pacifists. They’re open, reflective and non-judgemental. (In principle anyway, as much as humans will ever be …)
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“am I just too Victorian to assume that we are what our genetics make us, not necessarily what we want to be?”
Good question. Not necessarily Victorian, but certainly blinkered to the wider world. Does every man you know share replica characteristics that are firmly in the stereotyped MAN camp? Or are some men emotionally intuitive and good at dancing like GIRLS? There’s a big thick band of majority characteristics in any aspect of any group of people. Our labels tend to come from that e.g. man and woman, but that certainly doesn’t tell us all we can observe around us. There’s everything and more that are scattered around the edges of every majority.
Presumably you were born with male genitalia, you’re comfortable with expressing generally accepted male characteristics and you identify more with men than woman. This being the case, why would you be so limited as to assume that everyone should or would share this kind of black and white experience? Especially when there’s plenty to evidence to show otherwise. Both anecdotally and scientifically.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan/
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I’m sorry Victoria, I’m out of this one after being called a fuckwit and stupid for raising a question. feel free to delete my offending comments if it helps to mitigate the offence. -KIA
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Victoria? Are you apologising to Queen Victoria for not managing to justify your beliefs from her era? Duck and run if you’ve got nothing to add to the conversation. Perfectly understandable. Nothing gets deleted here.
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sorry, I misspoke. violet. thank for your kindness
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If I may just say something on behalf of KIA (and he may or may not agree with me on this): He’s coming out of christianity, and these are commonly held beliefs within it. I suspect he and other people newly losing their faith will have their opinions evolve on these issues as they get exposed to the counter arguments. It’s easy to point at individuals and call them names, but don’t forget, it was a religious system that indoctrinated them in the first place.
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Indeed. I wish he’d stick around to discuss it. There’s no point in being scared off by a frosty response in Blogland. I think Clare’s irritation is justified, it must be exasperating …
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I think you touched on a sore point, KIA, but I don’t feel you deserved the response you got.
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To follow up on your comment, Arch. It seems to me that, in order for people to clarify their thinking on these issues, it’s imperative that these kinds of conversations need to occur. Perhaps, Clare, if you could articulate your reasons for feeling the way you do, we could all learn something valuable. After all, isn’t the purpose of offering our opinions an exercise in developing our own clarification? Aren’t we all learning to be more sensitive to others’ unique perspectives?
Clare, you are the only trans person I’ve ever been associated with, and I value what you bring to the conversation. I certainly understand your sensitivity but I must confess that I, too, feel that KIA got an undeserved response. I welcome the chance for further enlightenment.
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Doesn’t matter now. I’m done. Thx for the cheerup
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“am I just too Victorian to assume that we are what our genetics make us”
Actually, KIA, you are quite correct in your assumption, as long as you allow that the ‘us‘ to which you refer involves not only our physical makeup, but our mental wiring as well, and accept that the same genes that change to allow for evolution, can also give us wiring that differs from that physical makeup. You can argue, possibly justifiably, that it is nature’s mistake, but that’s no solace for one born with those attributes, who has no recourse to do-overs, and simply has to play the hand that he/she is dealt.
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“Further enlightenment” asks Carmen. Oh, God.
KIA is excessively stupid. He did a similar comment on Roughseas’ post, but no-one took him up on it there. Just one idiocy: it would be “Victorian” to say we are what God made us, with Victorian ideas of Manhood and Womanhood, which are not precisely those of modern Complementarianism. He does not deserve more than a frosty response.
Three links. In this long thread from 2010, the poster Happytwinkle starts hostile and through empathy I play my part in winning her over. In Understanding Trans, I deal with one theory of the etiology of transsexualism- we’re all sex-perverts- with how it makes us feel, and how we react to it. Kay Brown pops up in the comments. Her theory is that there are two kinds of trans women: her lot, the real transsexuals, and my lot, the sex-perverts. You will understand my irritation. And today trans narratives: what do we tell ourselves about why we are as we are, and how does that felt need to self-justify affect us? There you will find an instance of my use of Christian stories for liberation.
The comment threads there show my responses. I seek to engage and explain; but eventually give up.
You see I feel that need to self-justify. I am excessively sensitive to the judgments of others, and question my own. My empathy is a beautiful thing, and I can be taken over by another’s views. If I don’t watch out I negate myself. KIA must be made allowances because he is escaping Christianity, says other Violet, and well, I must be made allowances too.
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I would think that one “excessively sensitive to the judgments of others would be less inclined to call others, “fuckwitted, self-righteous twerp, and judgmental little bigot, but that’s just me.
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Then it’s a good job I don’t care what you think. Read his comments again, and see I am justified. Go on, reply to this, judge me again, explain what you think I don’t understand, whatever.
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“Then it’s a good job I don’t care what you think. – How excessively sensitive of you —
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Arch, think of it like this. Is there anything you’ve spent your whole life being severely criticised and judged for by people who don’t have a clue what you’re going through? In this case, people are wilfully ignorant of the science and the personal stories, yet feel they have an ‘obvious’ opinion that the humans are either men or women, and anything that doesn’t fall in the two neat boxes of frankly childish understanding is somehow ‘wrong’. I imagine it’s a heavy burden and think Clare is entitled to respond to offensive and (wilfully) ignorant remarks however it suits her. Your mindless attempts at sparring add nothing.
I do feel sorry for Kia that he wanted to jump in, yet had nothing to say and then wanted to learn nothing because he’s so sensitive. You don’t jump into a discussion like this unless you have something to say, or want to learn about it.
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“they have an ‘obvious’ opinion that the humans are either men or women” – I don’t care WHAT anyone is – I’ve spent much of my life active in Civil Rights – I care only about how one behaves, and berating and name-calling KIA while decrying how ‘sensitive’ one is to the opinions of others, is to me, offensive behavior AND hypocrisy. I don’t consider my response ‘mindless,’ nor was I sparring, I was expressing my opinion of what I believe to have been offensive behavior.
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From one straight, white, cis-gender man to another …
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“From one straight, white, cis-gender man to another …”
Entirely irrelevant – examine KIA’s comments for vicious name calling, then do the same with Clare’s – when you’ve established the ratio, get back to me.
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When you can get your head around the context and the personal ramifications, don’t bother getting back to me as you hang your head in shame. (not likely given your background and attitude)
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For once, you’re right – not likely at all.
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It is the only way I can deal with sensitivity. It is my response, because in the past I have been depressed for days and unable to go out, because of less.
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I’m genuinely sorry about that, but I fail to understand how vicious name calling can in any way help you with that. Can you possibly think of any other approach you might have taken?
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A less corrosive one perhaps?
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I don’t accept your judgment. “Vicious”. “Corrosive”. Your horrid words mean nothing to me.
We exist. The culture is full of us, this year: for the first time on British TV this year, a trans character was played by a trans actress, first in a one-off half hour drama, then in a six part comedy series. Caitlyn Jenner is reported everywhere. I hear there were loads of Trans shows at the Edinburgh Festival.
To this, KIA responds in the most reductive way possible: we are what our genetics make us, not necessarily what we want to be. It is easily stated, far more difficult to refute, and it tells me, personally, that I am a deluded man.
I would rather have died than not transitioned.
So, no. I think I responded with restraint.
I should not have to explain this to people. A simple twenty minute Google will bring up lots of gen, and you can understand. There are useful wikipedia articles.
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MY ‘horrid words‘? You don’t think fuckwitted, self-righteous twerp, and judgmental little bigot had any effect on KIA? Maybe a lack of empathy is your problem.
“We exist. The culture is full of us” – And where, on any blog on which you and I have ever mutually commented, have you EVER seen me say anything critical of transgender people?
I would assume, provided you’ve had the whole procedure (and I’m not familiar with your history), that you’re no longer a teenager, or likely not even in your twenties, and you must have surely encountered responses like that before – have you always responded to them so viciously? Did it ever occur to you that such attacks solve nothing, except to drive still further wedges between you (plural)?
I think the ‘horrid words‘ remark was uncalled for, but other than that, aren’t you and I having a relatively civilized conversation? Couldn’t you have steered KIA into a similar conversation, had you not flown off the handle? You seem like an intelligent person, I have to believe you could have – you had an opportunity to be the bigger person.
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Yawn. Wevs, dude.
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“Yawn. Wevs, dude.” – At least we’ve identified the problem.
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You’re good at this “I’m having the last word” game, aren’t you?
What, pray, do you imagine is “The Problem”? It could not possibly be the ignorance of white, cis men, could it?
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You know, I’ve never felt the need to use that card. Until today. It’s blazing through his attitude.
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Oh fuck. I confused “you’re” and “your”!!!! I have never done that before!!!
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No you didn’t. 🙂
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More likely, it’s the fact that being a jerk knows no gender.
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Was that an apology, Tryxie? If so, I misjudged you.
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I thought I’d wait for your apology to KIA before I considered composing one.
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If I had to venture a wild guess, Clare, I’d bet that “Me” and “I” are your two favorite pronouns. As for, “Look at my blog for a full explanation.,” I have better things to do than participate in your pity party.
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You’re a disgustingly arrogant and truly insensitive dickhead Arch. Keep looking up your own arsehole, it clearly brings you much smug pleasure.
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It’s good to see, Wisp, that you and Clare seem to share the same degree of decorum and sensitivity.
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May I draw your attention, Wisp, as to which of we three are hurling obscenities, and which is not?
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May I draw your attention, Arch, to the kindly worded explanations that Clare, Ruth and myself have directed at you in an attempt to enlighten your chosen stance of rank ignorance, or simply rattle your empathy bone. At some point exasperation kicks in. (Is ‘dickhead’ an obscenity? Someone should really tell Ark …)
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“(Is ‘dickhead’ an obscenity? Someone should really tell Ark …)” – Believe me, he knows.
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About 20 years ago, Clare, I was standing at a bus stop on a main street in Denver, Colorado. Sitting on the bench under the shelter, was what appeared to be a physical male with long hair, wearing a dress, who may have been a transsexual, or merely a cross-dresser, I had no inclination to ask which or why. Standing just outside the shelter was a five-foot six Mexican vaquero, wearing a cowboy hat and a pair of chaps, with a saddle slung over his shoulder – as far as I knew, he had just pawned his horse. I did second looks at both, simply because I had never seen either. Other than that, I tend to mind my own business, and had no further interest.
But if anyone had attacked either of them for being what they were, I would have defended them, verbally at first, then physically if necessary, despite the fact that Wisp seems to feel, “It’s blazing through his attitude..”
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It was either an apology or divorced from reality. But really, Tryxie, we know you would never apologise, because you would never consider the possibility that you were wrong.
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I’m quite quick to admit it when I am, but as for my assertion that you behaved boorishly, I stand by it.
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I did start a long comment, but will post it on my blog instead.
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Putting myself out there, Clare, I do empathize with your frustration. No, I am not Trans. But I am a woman. A woman who hasn’t always labeled herself a feminist because I didn’t understand what that meant. It was…a dirty word in the circles in which I traveled. Having encountered feminists and having stuck my foot in my mouth enough times to wish for peppermint soles on my shoes, I now proudly proclaim myself a feminist and realize that everything – EVERYTHING – that I am even coming close to being equal in is because I stood on the shoulders of feminists.
You might ask what that has to do with this. Feminists, especially since the Suffrage Movement, should not have to explain feminism to people. A simple Google search will explain it quite well. Yet there are so many who patiently and painstakingly do because it is so important.
While I understand that the lack of understanding, compassion, and education of other people feels like an attack on your personhood, perhaps sometimes…sometimes…it is a genuine ignorance, even if willfully so, that can be overcome with dialogue that makes those of us who haven’t experienced your life less fuckwitted.
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(You’re amazing Ruth. I love your comments. As good as those of Raut, just without the quirky Finnish running through them.)
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High praise, then. I love the quirky Finnish, though. He sounds so much more eloquent.
(Holy crap, I’ve been likened to Raut!!!)
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On the other hand, being a jerk knows no gender.
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Sometimes I explain, sometimes I can’t be bothered. I was explaining trans matters on Sunday to four people coming out with comments like “Was that a joke?” No, it was serious, and this is why. It gets wearing. Though they have more excuse of being ignorant of trans issues than of feminism.
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I must say I was rather taken aback by your response to KIA. I know this is very personal for you, though, so I empathize. You’re just normally the peacemaker around here who bridges that gap between fundagelicalism and progressive.
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I am pretty sure I am the only trans person here. Now T’ryxie, rebarbatively, and you, more conciliatorily, are coming at me on the same point.
What can I say to “we are what our genetics make us, not necessarily what we want to be”? Perhaps, Oh, I’m sorry, I have been wrong about the most important thing in my life, I’ll just revert to presenting male shall I?
The phenomenon exists. No-one in the USA can be unaware of it. Kia’s first comment is a bit like a man complaining that women have all the privilege, and feminism is unnecessary. A fuckwitted throwaway comment does not deserve a full explanation. Look at my blog for a full explanation.
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I don’t think either of us were suggesting you let KIA off the hook. If he left the same comment elsewhere and no one took him to task perhaps he really doesn’t understand what’s wrong with what he’s said(though I’m fairly certain he does now). Yes, sometimes men complain that feminism is unnecessary until they are schooled on the reasons why it most assuredly is. Sometimes they get it, sometimes they’re still Neanderthals. I can’t control the outcome of their reasoning. Enough times, though, some daylight gets through to make me think it’s worth the time to make the full explanation. But certainly that mileage may vary.
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Clare,
I’m in a different time zone and have just ‘got going’ this morning. Thank you for the links and I am working my way through those, plus other bits of information. I DO think that education is the key; the more we learn about subjects like this, the more sensitivity we gain; also it increases the chances of us offering an educated opinion. I realize that, in a population of about 650 High School students, there are probably trans teenagers in my classes. (I am a busy substitute and not always aware of specifics of certain students) Also, I have multiple grandchildren. The more I learn about this topic, the better.
I think it’s worth suggesting that there are many perspectives from which to view topics; through discussions (like this one!) and research, we can hope to gain awareness and empathy. I value every person’s contribution to the topic – after all, as teachers we are quick to point out that, for every student who raises their hand with a suggestion one can be sure that there are several others who feel the exact same way. 🙂
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I haven’t commented here nor on Roughseas’ post because I’m reading along to learn. I did want to say something, though, about the dustup here:
I empathize with both Clare and KIA. I see where both are coming from. Anytime sensitivities are heightened there is bound to be disagreement and/or argument. BUT I do wish that rather than KIA just being done, if he were truly seeking an answer to whether or not he were being ‘too Victorian’, that he’d not allow Clare’s reaction to his question to drive him out of the conversation. Internet debates can be harsh, especially when people are passionate about the topic. We can’t let that stop us from learning and growing.
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Agreed.
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‘internet debates can be harsh’
A very true observation there Ruth, it is a bit like road rage, where the motor vehicle sort of depersonalizes it and seems to allow anger to build.
I know I am still chafing over a personal slur on this blog by Tiribulus [not sure I got the name correctly] many months ago.
As Violet commented above, I sort of hoped we could all get along.
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Oh, Tiribulus…yes, he could be a bit of a brute. I’ve been on the receiving end here and elsewhere. I’ve had my nose rubbed in a misspeak as though I were being housetrained like a puppy – even after I acknowledged my mistake. The road rage analogy is spot on. Being able to hide behind our avatars makes some of us a little less sensitive than we would be were we speaking face to face. It would do us well to remember there are, with a few notable exceptions, very real, even if very misguided, people on the other side of the computer screen.
Another observation I would make is that gender dysphoria, while not a new human condition, is a new concept to many people. Especially ones coming out of a very puritanical, fundamentalist, sect of Christianity. Even after we’ve shed our faith, those notions of right and wrong, of black and white, remain for quite some time until we’ve been exposed to other ideas and seen the ramifications that our former beliefs had on those who didn’t fit in our box. And, yes, we were [willfully] ignorant. It takes time to expand our horizons. It doesn’t happen overnight.
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“As Violet commented above, I sort of hoped we could all get along.” – Ironically, Peter, that wasn’t Violet, that was Clare.
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Tryxie: About 20 years ago, Clare, I was standing at a bus stop on a main street in Denver, Colorado. Sitting on the bench under the shelter, was what appeared to be a physical male with long hair, wearing a dress, who may have been a transsexual, or merely a cross-dresser, I had no inclination to ask which or why. Standing just outside the shelter was a five-foot six Mexican vaquero, wearing a cowboy hat and a pair of chaps, with a saddle slung over his shoulder – as far as I knew, he had just pawned his horse. I did second looks at both, simply because I had never seen either. Other than that, I tend to mind my own business, and had no further interest. But if anyone had attacked either of them for being what they were, I would have defended them, verbally at first, then physically if necessary,
Oh! Massa, Massa! Thank you! You are so generous and wonderful! Thank you for defending us!!!
What happened to “I am staying so out of this”?
What have you called people on this thread? “Mad”, “offensive”, “vicious”, “hypocritical”, “corrosive” and “lacking in empathy”, which you characterise as you having a “civilised” conversation. Then you called me a self-obsessed jerk in a pity party.
You don’t care about KIA. All you care about is your chance to be a self-righteous jerk.
I know you don’t care about KIA because of this comment to him: Actually, KIA, you are quite correct in your assumption, as long as you allow that the ‘us‘ to which you refer involves not only our physical makeup, but our mental wiring as well, and accept that the same genes that change to allow for evolution, can also give us wiring that differs from that physical makeup. You can argue, possibly justifiably, that it is nature’s mistake, but that’s no solace for one born with those attributes, who has no recourse to do-overs, and simply has to play the hand that he/she is dealt.
Smug, patronising, sententious bastard. You want to talk down to him while pretending to defend him against me. There you are on your moral high molehill, dispensing your wisdom and generosity to us poor mortals.
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“Smug, patronising, sententious bastard.” – And there’s that sensitivity again. I called you a jerk because you’ve behaved as a jerk.
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Horrible man!!!
Your turn, Tryxie.
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“Horrible man!!!” – That’s telling me! Is this the part where I cover my face and plead, “Please, no more –!“
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Well, it would be nice if you want to. But I have been laughing at you for the last five comments at least. I know your arrogance is completely impervious to communication.
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Holy hell, I hope there aren’t any blacks on this thread, who would surely be offended by a white person’s usage of, “Oh! Massa, Massa! Thank you!”
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I’d jump into the middle of this food fight, but I am too busy enjoying His peace that surpasses all understanding.
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Oh well, at least that gave us all a good laugh. Thanks Insanity, I do have great appreciation for you. 🙂
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Yeah Insanity…I’m sure God and His Peace would welcome Clare into your church, as no doubt would you. But only with the caveat of “hate the sin and not the sinner,” if a caveat were given at all. As long as everyone on this thread is busy being offended, may I say your humor has (slightly) offended me.
Clare, I have to agree with Arch that calling someone a fuckwit is simply not appropriate, and I don’t care how offended you’ve been in life (I have also been pretty damn offended at the world, as someone who was physically disabled young). You don’t have to explain yourself and be responsible for educating everyone to the trans plight if you don’t want to, but reducing people to fuckwits IS pretty corrosive.
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“I don’t care how offended you’ve been in life”
Really? I don’t get that attitude. The whole “my life is horrible and I’m dealing with it therefore you must do the same” makes no sense to me. Everyone’s experience of life is so unique, and the tools they have for dealing with it – through their physical make-up, their psychological state, their childhood and adult experiences – make it impossible to equate these things. I care how offended people have been in their lives, and I’m sure you do too. You’re just sticking up for Arch because you ‘get’ him more and you’re buddies.
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I just don’t think name calling, like “fuckwit,” is a mature response to any matter, under any circumstance.
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Exasperation. If Kia had stuck around to discuss it with Clare and made an effort to understand, I’m quite sure she would have apologised. Or he would truly understand and think he didn’t deserve one.
Coming back to your comparison with your life, if someone came on a post about your condition and suggested it didn’t exist, frivolity all in your head, do you think you might be a little irritated? Along the lines of “I’m not in any pain, and I’ve not met anyone who is, so how can pain exist?”
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There are *many* people (not in the medical profession), even those in my own family, who have confronted me with the “fact” that RA is a psychological condition, or due to poor diet and/or exercise. Have I been irritated by that? Fuck yes. Have I ever called any of them a fickwit? Hell no.
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Vi has too much decorum to ever call that person a ‘fuckwit’ – or a ‘dickhead’ either, for that matter. Interesting thing about birds of a feather —
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I will admit to FEELING that people are fickwits and dickheads, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to actually bust out and call people names. We are not responsible for our feelings…we are certainly responsible for our behaviors. 🙂
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Vi’s not ‘sticking up‘ for me, she’s opposing the calling of KIA a ‘fuckwit,’ as am I. You’d see that Wisp, if you didn’t have your own little clique of favorites, whom you defend, no matter how wrong they may be.
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Thank you, Violet.
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That “Thank you, Violet” was meant for the one with the tree. 🙂
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*huge huff*
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If tolerance is the order of the day this thread is not a good serving of it all around.
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Yes, it is perhaps not the best example of tolerance that was ever put on the internet. 🙂
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“am I just too Victorian to assume that we are what our genetics make us, not necessarily what we want to be? (covering head and running for dear life)” -KIA
This comment is what began this entire dialogue. I’m going to offer a different interpretation of it. I think that had KIA been intending to make a statement he would have done so. I don’t think he intended to make a judgment on anyone. Sometimes, especially when we’re freshly out of fundamentalism(which is the impression I’ve gotten of KIA), we retain some of that thinking and some of that language for a while. It is my opinion that rather than making a statement or comment to get a reaction that perhaps he was attempting, in a self-deprecating way, to admit his ignorance by calling himself ‘too Victorian’ while at the same time wishing to genuinely find out more about how it is that what genetics gave us isn’t the totality of our gender. When you don’t experience that for yourself it is very difficult, if not impossible, to wrap your head around it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t so. That doesn’t mean others don’t experience it. I’d venture to guess by the number of Trans people who say they didn’t know why they weren’t comfortable in their own skin they it’s hard for someone who is Trans to understand what is happening to them.
Sure, KIA could have Googled it up, but this conversation was happening right here.
I’ve tried very hard to remain neutral about this because I do see why the statement would be offensive to a Transgender person. But I do think that regardless of how wrong KIA might be two wrongs do not make a right.
Being offended is not the wrong I speak of. But we can also be right in the wrong way. One that does not aid our position, I might add.
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“But we can also be right in the wrong way.” – That’s all I was ever saying, you simply said it better.
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“I am staying SO out of this!”
Stick to your guns next time. You’re a shit stirrer. Kia could have stood up for himself if he cared. And Clare could have received fewer unnecessary slaps on the face.
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I meant I was staying out of any skirmishes between you and RoughSeas, and I did.
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I think it’s been a fascinating demonstration of the factional tribalism that drives all differences of opinion – the tribalism in the original post. Some of us have attempted to stay neutral but ultimately we’ve all taken sides.
If ColorStorm had made the comment that KIA made and Clare had responded in the same manner, no-one would have batted an eyelid. But you all know KIA, and ‘know’ he meant no harm, in a manner you wouldn’t excuse for the vile Christian (another tribe). I know Clare, and I know how she responds to comments that hit her personally. I excuse her personal attack in a way I wouldn’t normally do.
Humans draw lines and take sides. The playground never ends.
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“But you all know KIA” – I don’t know KIA at all, I just know poor form when I see it. I would rally just as quickly if Clare were being attacked unjustly, albeit a bit more reluctantly since this episode occurred.
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You did attack her, fuckwit.
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Your class is showing, Wisp —
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Now my most favorite blog hostess of all time, the one and only Ms. Wisp, is calling commenters fuckwits (and no, it doesn’t matter which commenter it was). I once said of all the atheists on the internet that I admired your debating style and skills the most, and you were the one I most wanted to emulate.
😦
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So try and work out why. It is not difficult. And consider those debating skills: are they vitiated by one word? Really?
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Yes, as name calling *really* turns me off.
For the record: I barely know KIA, I don’t agree with him, and I do support your right to be respected and treated with dignity. The problem is that you’ve given yourself the latitude to not treat others with respect because you feel offended. And now so has ViWisp.
I guess these things happen, but it’s been a pretty sad day here overall.
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Yeah, yeah. So I should read, “These transsexual people. It is all a fantasy, isn’t it?” And I should respond courteously, and calmly, and explain myself because KIA has no need to think, or be courteous, or explain himself but I have, and Tryxie the fuckwit is my judge and can over about ten comments in a lordly manner tell me what s/he considers is appropriate behaviour for me. I am not offended, but erased. And oh, you’re sad, but you’re sad because of my wickedness. You make me sick.
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A few possible ways to respond to an offense without name calling:
1. tell offender to back off
2. walk away
3. set firm limits and stick to them
4. explain your position
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Do you imagine I am unaware of that? You presume to judge my reaction here. You have no idea, yet you still judge.
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OK clare. No one on this earth has been more persecuted than you, and your off-the-charts defensiveness is totally justified. I’m off to go discuss things with people who have nothing but easy lives.
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Have you ever heard of “internalised homophobia”? We grow up in homophobic society, and learn from society what is natural and normal and right, in my case what it was to be manly and how effeminacy was completely disgusting. So when I saw what I really was, I hated myself, and I ran from it. I paid for aversion therapy. We go into manly professions. We try to make men of ourselves.
So “we are what our genetics make us” stirs up the echoes of what I have myself believed and in the pursuit of which I became suicidal, until I could resist no more and transitioned.
You may see a certain amount of sarcasm in my comments on this thread, but look at my attempts to explain.
And again, Tryxie’s comment on that is that I invite you to my pity party. I now fear that you might say I should have said all this to KIA rather than react as I did. I am not a saint.
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None of us are saints…human is good enough for me. 🙂
I totally get why you were triggered, and I have deep empathy for how this issue has ripped you apart. As a former psych nurse I have some experience with people attempting to recover from aversion therapy and its horrors…many of them will be scarred for life. I would never wish to minimize your trauma or the discrimination you’ve surely faced.
I also understand why you could not give this profound response to KIA…being vulnerable to someone who shows no understanding of the deeper issues is not a strategy I recommend. I only wish to point out that sometimes our gut reactions (name calling, defensiveness, and hostility) are counterproductive to both ourselves and others; though it can be extremely difficult, it’s often worth it to take a higher road if we can at all manage it.
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Ms Congeniality is at it again!
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You are aware my christian neighbors openly call me a “black goat” and “atheist bitch,” aren’t you? They also won’t let their kids speak to me when I say hi. Next time I’ll tell them my online nickname is Ms. Congeniality while laughing maniacally. 😀
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Tryxie, I believe you! If you thought you had a chance of being horrible to someone, and your moral figleaf for that was that you claimed to be protecting me, I am sure you would do it!
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Today is the first time I’ve encountered KIA. If it appears I’ve taken sides I’ve communicated poorly. I didn’t think sides needed to be drawn. I’m only on the side of greater understanding. I tend to give benefit of the doubt on a first go round. Maybe there’s a history here with KIA that I’m not aware of.
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Even before KIA started, the cis folks were commenting on trans folks with various degrees of sententiousness, empathy, sniggering, writing skills. I am the only trans person on this post. Why should he “run for dear life” if he did not know he had said something offensive? I am used to abuse. Had he been honestly asking a question, he could have said so rather than saying “I meant the genetics make us male or female,”
I don’t expect empathy from you. I could tell of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, but you might snigger at that, too.
Oh, how wise you are! How much you know about Communication on the Internet! Poor little Tryxie has come hiding behind your skirts, and perhaps other cis folk will nod wisely and say, how bad the trans woman is. What fun for you all!
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Persecution complex much –?
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Read the thread.
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I haven’t intended to add insult to injury. Yes, you are the only Trans person on this post. Perhaps I have poorly communicated here. I haven’t now nor will I be commenting on cis folks as though I know what you’ve been through nor are going through. I do try to empathize with the the abuse you’ve suffered and continue to suffer. Is this comment meant to say that cis folk ought just keep their pie hole shut and not empathize with you?
Certainly I was attempting to give a person I’ve only met today benefit of the doubt. As I am also giving you benefit of the doubt. I was simply trying to show that there might be another way to look at what was said.
I’m not sniggering nor am I patronizing you. I don’t think you’re bad. I think you’re hurt and for that I’m truly sorry.
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I agree with what you said Ruth. This whole thread has emphasized to me how we can tend to read between the lines and sometimes as a result folk can read far more into a comment than was intended and draw an unwarranted conclusion about the persons motivation and intention.
I suppose this thread could be archived and used as a case study in how not to communicate.
I also think it shows the downside of people commenting when highly emotional.
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I should have reflected on all you had said, perhaps. I was harsh there.
Here’s something Tryxie can have a good laugh at. I was driven out of my house because the local teenagers made my life a misery. I was driven out of my father’s house, and my partner’s house. Someone tried to push me under a car. And Tryxie, apparently, has seen someone once who looked like a transvestite, but he would, because he is so fucking wonderful, “defend” that person.
KIA’s comment means, “It is all a fantasy, isn’t it?” That is why he ducked and ran.
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Perhaps that is what his comment means. It betrays a lack of understanding that he may be willing to explore. I see over at Kate’s she has given him some things to chew on.
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I don’t suppose any of that had to do with the fact that you’re a jerk – from just what little I’ve seen of you today, I’d throw you out too, and your sexuality has nothing to do with it.
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Tryxie, I know you.
I loved your comment “Go well”. It is so clever! I assume that is the correct accent, on the “i”; it is so elegant, so short, and could even be thought to be a friendly comment, yet it is gloating and destructive. Violet W. says “I’m stopping blogging” and you say, in effect, “Good”. You are vile.
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Arch, you’ve consistently shown your insensitivity on this post – not only ignorantly dismissing explanations but attempting to cruelly twist the knife in someone’s clear pain on several occasions. You’ve butted in with your brutish and foolish remarks on too many threads.
But you’ve really taken it too far here. Clare is my oldest blogging buddy and my tolerance is limited. You have no right, place or understanding to judge her experiences and attempt to make them more painful for her.
Consider any further comments you make anywhere on my blog to be spammed.
Banned #3.
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Actually, “I’d throw you out too” is so OTT that the only response is laughter.
In an idle moment today, I was crafting my putdowns:
The annoying sound of an ancient reptile…
Tryxie, darling, I don’t think you are completely stupid. You have some idea of the concept of “triggering”. You’re seeing if you can trigger me, aren’t you?
It won’t work.
and
Tryxie, it has been fascinating seeing you in action. To see myself through the eyes of one filled with self-righteous malice would be an interesting experience; but you really have not done enough work. Your techniques are simple and mechanical.
Anyway, thank you.
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Having been banned for the same kind of reasons you think accurately describe Arch’s ‘insensitive’ comments, I feel far too many bloggers seem to have never considered the tactic of not responding but instead rush to judgement and then act. VW, you may be wrong in your assessment and it’s the person banned who then pays the price… for your mistake. This is neither reasonable nor sensible no matter under what heading you place it (in this case, as punishment for ‘insensitivity’).
Get over yourself. It’s okay to be offended even on your own blog. It helps make interesting conversation. But agreeing to disagree is one thing; what matters is how you respond to it. I think following Claire’s lead you have drunk the Cool-Aid and think yourself virtuous. I think it’s petty, immature, and irresponsible and all of your readers – whether they know it or not – are poorer for it. Vilifying and banning those with whom you have been offended – especially symbiotically – demonstrates exactly those values that I suspect you least want to embrace. That Claire is so sensitive to the slights of others is a problem of coping that she owns. How she responds is up to her and I don’t think she should be banned for using pejorative terms no matter how accurate they may be. But the same standard – and not a special category based on some subject metric of ‘sensitivity’ – should be used for others like Arch. And if you’re really offended, then just don’t respond. That lets every reader arrive at whatever conclusions he or she thinks are justified. Cutting out one part does not; it’s a transparent attempt to use moderation as a means to promote an echo chamber. And that’s a waste of everyone’s time because no one learns a damn thing from someone in full agreement.
Offending is the unavoidable byproduct of honest conversation. I have that right and banning someone like Arch means that on this site he cannot offend me, nor I him. Lose-lose. That’s what banning does.
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Hi Tildeb, thanks for your comment, it’s interesting to read the view of someone new.
“Having been banned for the same kind of reasons you think accurately describe Arch’s ‘insensitive’ comments, I feel far too many bloggers seem to have never considered the tactic of not responding but instead rush to judgement and then act.”
Wrong. You were banned, quite rightly, by SB for going off on a tangent on an excellent post of his and, in the process of doing so, revealing a shocking attitude towards people with mental health problems. He tried to explain to you his argument on numerous threads and you bulldozed over everything he said with some of the most ignorant and insensitive comments I’ve ever read. But nothing specifically personal about him or anyone else, if I remember rightly.
In contrast, Arch has attempted to defend another blogger from being called ‘fuckwit’, and in doing so has got in several nasty exchanges with my oldest blogging buddy. I think you’ll understand the concept of personal loyalty to buddies, however, had Clare been a stranger I think my reaction would have been the same. Other people asked Clare to clarify why she found KIA’s comment so offensive, clearly critical of her attitude but open to discussion and with a measure of respect. Clare was open enough to tell of some of the true horrors she has faced in her life because people (including close family) couldn’t accept her as she is. Arch did his best to use the highly personal and distressing information to harm Clare. Unacceptable.
And I’m not clear in what universe all the silent and likers (saw you Nan!) live in.
“Get over yourself. It’s okay to be offended even on your own blog. It helps make interesting conversation.”
Tell me something personal about yourself Tildeb. Are you married, divorced, single? Any personal tragedies or previously hidden struggles in your life you’d be happy to share here to start an ‘interesting conversation’? Let’s see if there’s anything I could say that will help you realise it’s not always okay to be offended, anywhere, and my idea of interesting conversation about your personal tragedy might not be quite so ‘interesting’ to you. We can even take it to your blog to test your assertion.
“Cutting out one part does not; it’s a transparent attempt to use moderation as a means to promote an echo chamber. And that’s a waste of everyone’s time because no one learns a damn thing from someone in full agreement.”
Absolutely. Two of the three people I’ve banned so far were for personal insults. But the third I have to confess I had no time or desire to deal with and I killed the conversation – you invite Higharka over to your place to talk about anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and see if 100 comments later you might want moderate. I can’t imagine anyone else will ever be banned for disagreeing with the content of a post – I positively invite discord on that front.
“banning someone like Arch means that on this site he cannot offend me, nor I him. Lose-lose. That’s what banning does.”
Please, do invite him over to yours and ask him to comment as frequently on your posts as he often does on mine, and with as much relevance. And make sure you have some female bloggers (with pics) there for him to embarrassingly flirt with. You can have the lose-lose situation over at yours. Along with that ‘interesting’ conversation about your personal tragedy. 😀
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You were banned, quite rightly, by SB for going off on a tangent on an excellent post of his and, in the process of doing so, revealing a shocking attitude towards people with mental health problems.
Factually wrong. I was banned for using the term ‘crazy’ in a strongly pejorative sense. Apparently, it’s fine for everyone else to do this and SB goes along without raising a stink but it seems he expects me to have to figure out a way to use it only in some positive and tolerant way or I’ll end up hurting delicate snowflakes who may take offense.
It’s an unprincipled position and makes a very real rather than hypothetical victim tried and convicted and sentenced. That’s insensitive. That’s intolerant. That’s unprincipled. It’s a bully technique and that what people who ban do: they bully others into either following the sensitivity rule or they will be made voiceless and then subject to further vilification without any means to respond equally. That it tends to be used far more on theist’s sites than it does on sites critical of theism I think is both interesting and revealing.
That’s why I keep showing SB over and over and over on other sites that his banning if principled and not a knee-jerk and biased emotional reaction to his own inflated sense of championing the sensitivity of snowflakes would require him to reject in total the words of dozens and dozens of writers he both respects and quotes. That you – like SB – elevate your idea that the sensitivity of some snowflakes are of greater concern in open conversation than speaking truth to power even if offensive to some reveals a gap in your own principles. That should matter to you.
And I’m all about respecting principles… such as tolerating honest differences of opinion rather than imposing a ban in favour of certain snowflakes. This banning practice is insidious, in that it is in principle and then in practice deeply anti-intellectual, in principle and then in practice quite threatening to arenas of open and honest dialogue, and in principle and then in practice undermines what freedom of speech looks like in action.
Again, being offended is not a bad thing. Not tolerating it is. Being offended is not something to be avoided by dictatorial pronouncements and despotic actions of those in positions of authority. Banning is a clear cut and dried example of what intolerance looks like in action.
Let that sink in for a moment. When you move away from principle and into practices fo sensitivity, this is what you get: intolerance. Look at thread again: it isn’t the person banned who is being intolerable; it is you.
Sure, you can cover up your failure to be principled in this matter with all kinds of rationalizations that make you feel justified. SB has done the same thing. That doesn’t make it any more principled but less when the ban is continued for really poor reasons. As far as I know, Claire hasn’t stepped up to the plate and insist that she is against the intolerance shown to Arch. As far as I know, she continues to go along with you and holds up her sensitivity at being offended as more important than the principle of being free to give voice to opinions. And that’s a direct condemnation of her lack of principles in the matter of free speech and tolerance.
So what can be done? Well, I just thought I’d make clear that not responding to what you find offensive is far more productive and revealing than any amount of banning could ever hope to equal. And it’s a lesson more us – especially sensitive snowflakes – need to think long and hard about.
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I see you’re trying to nail yourself to a cross again, Tildeb.
Your position, again, is incorrect. You were banned because you falsely claimed I was offended and remained stuck on that point. When I tried bringing you back on topic, you resorted to your own anecdotal evidence and ignored any evidence I brought to the discussion. As a result, you were not responding to the discussion, but rather going on a tirade that you have continued here and elsewhere.
I haven’t had to chide people for their use of mental illness terms elsewhere because unlike you, they actually are able to carry on a discussion and can even recognize that mental illness stigma is not ok. Indeed, if anything your later comments has shown, it has been your singular ability to not understand mental illness and how it is stigmatized.
Furthermore, you’re not the free speech justice warrior you proclaim to be. Colorstorm and SOM were prohibited from my blog, and you said exactly nothing at their passing. So if we’re being completely honest here, you’re selectively picking and choosing whose free speech matters to you. And quite frankly, you were banned for the same reason they were. They had decided to go off the rails on a personal tangent, and no amount of begging, pleading, or other persuasion could get them back.
In all of your other efforts at raising awareness for my alleged malfeasance, you have yet to actually link quotes of mine or quote source material. Indeed, it has been left up to me to direct people to the source to make up their own mind on the matter. After they go there, there have been exactly zero comments or emails sent to me claiming that you were wronged. I even invited people to speak on your behalf, and nobody took me up on the offer.
So please, Tildeb, come down from there. You’re not Jesus or Brian. Crucifying yourself isn’t going to get you any more fans. No suicide squad is going to come to save you. Please, please, put down the hammer.
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SB, the fact is that you banned me over my comments utilizing the term ‘crazy’ that you decided went against your commenting policy about respecting people. That was a purely subjective call in that I was saying that beliefs contrary to reality demonstrated what I called ‘batshit crazy’. You decided I was deriding anyone with a diagnosed mental illness. I wasn’t. Never have. Never will. You not only ignore this fact repeatedly in further comments but continued to accuse me of stigmatizing these people by use of derogatory language. Your ‘evidence’ for my stigmatizing was exactly the same as any other writer who called batshit crazy beliefs ‘crazy’. The fact is that I was responding to your post and specifically to a comment you later wrote pointing out that the protecting of delusional beliefs from diagnosis by special exemption under the DSM-V was a very real problem. This was and remains a legitimate and necessary criticism of how we approach and identify mental illness. Banning me doesn’t address the very issue I was raising but you could have stopped the thread in its tracks by not responding to any of my comments. You didn’t do this; instead, you banned me and then rationalized it.
What you’re doing on your blog towards me is part of a wider problem that is shockingly illiberal. It is just another example of a growing movement called the ‘regressive left’ that uses such bullying techniques as banning under the banner of protecting delicate snowflakes from legitimate criticism deemed offensive under the label of tolerance and respect and sensitivity by practicing intolerance, disrespect, and insensitivity. That you can’t see this is a problem you and many other well-intentioned but blinkered thinkers and writers have and continues to be a very real problem all of us have to address.
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“SB, the fact is that you banned me over my comments utilizing the term ‘crazy’ that you decided went against your commenting policy about respecting people.”
Quote me on that, then. Link to the source. Provide your proof.
Here is a link to the post; you can click it to start your search. Even better, I’ll quote the last statement I made to you:
“Tildeb,
Your rehashing of points we’ve already discussed was repetitive and non-responsive. Your second comment was moderated once again per rule 3 of my rules for commenting.
Finally, your comments are no longer welcome here. I can’t stop you from being an asshole, Tildeb, but I can stop you from being an asshole on my blog.”
Notice how I mentioned points you already brought up. I responded to your conjecture and manufacture of facts with actual links. You continued to mention a completely unfounded belief that I was sensitive to the word, offended by its use, and other terms which have no basis in reality.
I mean, if we’re being honest here, the stuff you said on my blog isn’t the worst stuff I’ve heard from other people, and it certainly isn’t the worst stuff I’ve heard from you.
I’ve watched as you’ve tried equating yourself with Dawkins (at least he knows when he’s put his foot in his mouth). You’ve tried equating what I’ve done with other random labels (see “regressive left” above). But the fact is that you’re only using the term “offended” to excuse your own behavior. If I was just offended, then what I did was not okay. But if I had valid standards for intellectual discussion that you were not adding to, then the fault lies entirely on your end.
It was decidedly the latter, as anyone who clicks the link above can discover.
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SB, the issue of contention was “The second issue (what my post was about, and you keep missing) is whether or not careless use of mental illness terms is appropriate. I’m arguing that it’s inappropriate to do so when you’re actively relying on negative connotations of a word to convey meaning.”
And I was arguing that it WAS appropriate in the context in which I used them, the SAME context in which other writers use them… other writers you quote and support. But you went with your feelings< about what I was writing and banned me over this one issue (without any thought to the wider contribution over time on many contentious issues I may have provided) while, at the same time, continuing to use these other writers as worthy of contributions.
Ever since, you try to pretend that I didn't understand your point, that I wish to continue to vilify those with mental dysfunction and expect free reign to do so. That's unmitigated bullshit you're spreading and rather revealing.
By all means, people can go to your site and look at what I said in response to the comments being made and see for themselves if I'm doing what you continue to accuse me of doing, using the pejorative sense of these words. I admit it freely, so that's not the issue. The issue is whether or not using these terms this way is stigmatizing to those suffering from diagnosed mental dysfunction. Of course it is, and shall continue to be, and that's why I used it! On purpose as a literary tool. It's not a banning offense.
The real issue is your insistence that it is right and proper to avoid stigmatizing. Obviously we disagree. But you seem unable to grasp the fact that the term stigmatize means to “describe or regard as worthy of disgrace or great disapproval.” BECAUSE the DSM-V allows for a special exemption for religious dementia and delusion, there can never be a diagnosis for mental dysfunction if it is clothed in religious garb. But as I pointed out, crazy remains crazy, a set of beliefs that I wish to describe or regard as worthy of disgrace and great disapproval. So do other authors who use the same tool. So my point was (and patiently explained but removed from your site as if I wandered off into some unrelated thread) and remains that the notion of ‘appropriate’ is wide open to interpretation and that being offended is not reason enough to ban because it’s unprincipled. You’re not okay with my right to do that on your site and so you banned me on this basis while allowing others to continue to use ‘stigmatizing’ mental health terms in their pejorative sense because – apparently – you weren’t as offended by their context and their ongoing use of stigmatizing terms. You then try to paint my attemtps to show you where you’ve gone off the rails with banning me as being another Dawkins or crucified Jesus. That too is bullshit. I’m attempting to get you to see your own hypocrisy when I point out time and again how other writers you don’t ban, you don’t equivalently dismiss, you don’t vilify, continue to stigmatize using the pejorative sense of mental health terms that you insist got me banned.
The point is germane to this banning of Arch for the same reason. That’s why I continue to point out your hypocrisy, your unprincipled stand on this issue, your pathetic attempts to vilify my character for daring to hold you to the same standard you pretend to have in principle rather than the special one you decided to use on me, that VW has now used on Arch. It is insidious. The special standards for those with whom we may disagree are once again used in this thread to rationalize as you did and justify as you did the banning of Arch. That’s why it’s unprincipled and that’s why writers like you and VW and a veritable host of theist bloggers with whom you share this distinction need to suck it up, get over yourselves, and allow such comments to stand. It’s all part of an open and honest dialogue. Banning is the tool of the bully.
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“But you went with your feelings< about what I was writing and banned me over this one issue[.]"
Once again, Tildeb, you're making that up. Quote me and link to the source. Where did I say I was offended? It should be a simple task. Writing another wall of text doesn't make you right. All it does is show that you're willing to repeat a fabricated construct to appease yourself.
It's embarrassing to watch you do this to yourself.
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Thanks for you concerned opinion about me embarrassing myself – a person you have already judged to write nothing of value you wish to read. Hence, the banning you committed.
I’ve been banned by many bloggers usually for reasons of fear, ignorance, stupidity, and irrationality of those bloggers. CS is a case in point. You join their ranks even though I do not think you share those attributes. That company alone should concern you far more than any faux-embarrassment you think I do to myself to press the point that banning is a bullying tactic unworthy of someone like you who usually presents himself and opinions as reasonable but then bans someone like I am for the reasons you state. Something’s not quite right here, SB and it’s worthy of review rather than defense.
It’s true that I infer some emotional component to your rationalizations banning me but only because you imply them. And I can’t quote what I infer. What I can do is point to the banning itself, for the rationalizations you offer, which is hardly a banner of principle you should wave proudly when you consistently act contrary to it. Maintaining this duplicity is where the embarrassment resides.
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“It’s true that I infer some emotional component to your rationalizations banning me but only because you imply them. And I can’t quote what I infer.”
Okay, then, how about you quote those statements where you think I’m implying that I’m offended or acting out of offense?
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Sure, SB.
The short answer is that you believe stuff about me that isn’t true and use a double standard to ban me.
The long answer is that this was a process about using certain pejorative words like ‘crazy’ based on you stating that “using the comparison, especially with regards to ostracizing and marginalizing people, both increases mental illness stigma as well as inhibiting people from seeking help for possible mental illnesses they might actually have.”
I don’t think this the case. I still don’t think this is the case.
The process started off with you responding to my comment about the DSM-V exemption and attributing to me a quote I never made, namely, that I propose that “You’re batshit nuts and should get locked in a padded room for your beliefs.”
I never said or suggested any such thing.
It then degrades quickly.
You say, “So, if you want to keep wantonly telling religious people that they’re batshit insane or that they’re delusional or just plain nuts, I can’t stop you.”
I explained I didn’t use any such language ‘wantonly’ as you accused me of doing but, hey, who cares what’s really the case if it involves an asshole like me, right? You believe your imaginary quotation is what I really think, attribute it to me the derogatory inference for all those with mental health issues as if I really say such things, so it must be true because SB believes it is and, really, he knows best.
So I clarified and explained that “I also think religious people are engaging in delusional thinking by definition… because the method they use to justify high degrees of confidence in the supernatural beliefs they hold doesn’t work to produce knowledge. It works to support ignorance and belief in belief.”
Is that true? Yes, I think it is. But did I say believers should be locked in padded room? No. In fact, all of us participate in delusional thinking from time to time and for various reasons. But you don;t give a flying fuck about what I really think because you are arrogant enough to assume you already know. But I’m the asshole.
I also said “what I am saying is that religion offers cover and reasons to delay and deny treatment to those with psychiatric and psychological dysfunction and the medical community goes along with this pernicious charade by exempting the same symptoms used to define various conditions for religious reasons. In the vernacular, this special exemption is batshit crazy. Exempting people who demonstrate dysfunction out of some misguided sense of ‘respect for religion’ serves no one’s best interests.”
Again, is this not true? Is this ‘wantonly’ telling religious believers they are batshit crazy and should be locked up? No. That exists only in your imagination. My point has validity. The pejorative meaning of mental health terms is absolutely essential for conveying it.
You respond by asking if the “careless use of mental illness terms is appropriate. I’m arguing that it’s inappropriate to do so when you’re actively relying on negative connotations of a word to convey meaning.”
There’s no carelessness about it. Of course I’m using the negative connotations to convey meaning. That’s the point of using the terms. That’s why all the people you use to quote and say the same as I is a problem for you if what you said you thought were in fact the case. It’s not the case. The difference, however, is that you say to me that you don’t think it’s appropriate… except with all other references you do accept that use the terms the same way and in the same context to achieve the same meaning. And that’s bullshit and you know it’s bullshit (apologies to male bovine fecal matter everywhere…. using such a pejorative term when bulls have no choice but to defecate). Again, you switch standards suddenly for me. Why might this be? I warrant enough of your contempt to supposedly deserve banning not because of anything that is the case – the terms I use – but because of what you imagine is the case – the presumed harm done to sensitive snowflakes.
Well, you say that you have “really tried to be as understanding as possible here” but this is not true. You’ve intentionally decided ahead of time that my use of pejorative mental health terms to describe exactly what I mean to describe is “inappropriate.”
That’s a cop out as you know it perfectly well. I never vilified anyone for having a mental illness; I vilified those faitheists who go along with the charade that crazy is okay if it’s religious. You took exception not to the point I was raising but to the term ‘crazy’ I used in this context. You thought I should use other words less stigmatizing. Fine. That’s your opinion. But not once did you self-correct the empty and misguided accusations you made about me in support of your presumptions and assumptions – you know, terms that attacked me and my motives directly that were factually wrong; instead, you banned me under the label of using disrespectful language… language that you yourself say “Even on my blog, I’ve used the word “crazy” and “deluded” from time to time to describe specific beliefs or illogical adherence to those beliefs.”
You banned me because you determined ‘crazy’ when written by me was inappropriate and stigmatizing… as if these alone were reasonable criticisms and justified banning. But you’ve shown over and over again that they’re not. But no matter right? I’m the asshole and that’s all that matters to you. You should care more about your willingness to apply this double standard and your willingness to exercise intolerance and ban based on your beliefs.
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“The process started off with you responding to my comment about the DSM-V exemption and attributing to me a quote I never made, namely, that I propose that [‘]You’re batshit nuts and should get locked in a padded room for your beliefs.[‘]”
That’s not true, Tildeb. You’re quoting from my comment on 19 April, and I was using that phrase as an example. Nowhere in my comment did I attribute that to anyone.
“I explained I didn’t use any such language ‘wantonly’ as you accused me of doing but, hey, who cares what’s really the case if it involves an asshole like me, right?”
Actually, you have been doing it pretty spectacularly. Over on John’s blog, you’ve been using the words “crazy” and “delusional.” Over on Neuronotes, you did the same thing. Even above, you still said “But as I pointed out, crazy remains crazy, a set of beliefs that I wish to describe or regard as worthy of disgrace and great disapproval.”
“You believe your imaginary quotation is what I really think, attribute it to me the derogatory inference for all those with mental health issues as if I really say such things, so it must be true because SB believes it is and, really, he knows best.”
Actually, you are once again attributing conclusory thinking to what I said. There’s no quote there. Furthermore, you have said things like:
“In addition, I have a hard time with the idea that staying silent about the pernicious effects of delusional thinking itself – religious or not – out of some misguided notion of protecting sufferers of mental illness from ‘stigma’ is an avoidance technique that serves only to appease those who support this very stupid religious exemption.”
“To those who think these stories are ‘true’ in the historical record are so gullible that they meet the stringent medical requirements for the diagnosis of batshit looneytune crazy. And a discussion of scientific validity is not going to make the Millennium Falcon any less historically valid to those so credulous and crazy to think it ever was.”
“That’s a cop out as you know it perfectly well. I never vilified anyone for having a mental illness; I vilified those faitheists who go along with the charade that crazy is okay if it’s religious.”
Please see above. And remember: this is just from my blog and where you decided to pretend I was out to get you.
“[I]nstead, you banned me under the label of using disrespectful language…You banned me because you determined ‘crazy’ when written by me was inappropriate and stigmatizing… as if these alone were reasonable criticisms and justified banning.”
That’s also not true, as anyone who can read my quote from several comments prior can read for themselves.
Tildeb, please note that none of the quotes you even mentioned actually hint at me being offended by what you wrote. I didn’t attack you directly, even after you said I was offended. At worst, I got frustrated with you because you wouldn’t listen. I’ve already apologized for that behavior.
In sum, I did not ban you because of your use of mental illness stigma. Despite all your quotes, you didn’t link the one where I said that I wasn’t seeking to police everyone’s blogs. If I’m that much of a tyrant, why am I not jumping on people to change their speech? If I’m this guy who hates free speech, why did I leave up these allegedly offensive comments? And if I’m so offended, why am I even going through this?
Once again, you’ve failed to produce a quote which people can say, “Hey, SB really looks like he’s acting emotionally here.” Not only that, but you can’t find a quote of me telling you that I’m banning you because I don’t like how you use mental illness terms.
There is another explanation, Tildeb. There is enough evidence here now and on AN for someone to conclude that you’re the one who is mistaken.
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You are trying to tell people what to believe. Our disagreement started with a response to my comment by you that then included the quotation you only now admit was not mine but readers wouldn’t be aware of that. Now you wave it away with a lawyer-like scumbag move that you never said it was mine. This was a slick move on your part to paint me a certain way knowing perfectly well that other trusting souls would assume that you were quoting me. How very ‘appropriate’ of you to use an empty quotation this way to respond to my comment while now maintaining an aura of victimhood from the asshole.
Nowhere in my attacks on the perniciousness of religion you quote do I stigmatize anyone specifically as you accuse me of doing time and time again. Oh right… I’m stigmatizing some u unknown mass of people who legitimately have been diagnoses with mental health dysfunction. What a champion you are.
But note that you simply wave away the descriptive and subjective pejorative terms you used to inaccurately and with some kind of intention (that I infer to be descriptive of your being offended) describe my motives. Of course, it’s all my fault that I would call this consistent use of untrue and derogatory terms as examples of being offended. Those words that you use are the key pieces that indicate your a priori belief about me.
Why continue to be dishonest, SB? You made a boneheaded mistake. Own it and let’s move on. And for crying out loud, stop insulting others by telling them how they should properly interpret your explanation. They are quite capable without your interpretive and linguistic hand holding to pay as much or as little attention to this issue as they deem worthwhile. In the meantime, do us both a favour and stop banning people for whatever rationalizations you deem sufficient at the time. None of us including you deserve that kind of brute and stupid treatment.
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Tildeb, you’re complaining about this perceived attack on free thinking and intellectual debate, yet your version of debate (on this subject at least) involves ignoring everything other people are saying and ranting about something else. Can you try and digest that please? You haven’t responded to single point of mine, yet you’re still saying things like “The point is germane to this banning of Arch for the same reason.”
At the risk of going blue in the face for someone who is demonstrating they have no interest in reading or understanding what other people have to say, Arch was banned for personal insults – malicious, cruel, personal insults intending to harm. There are no parallels. You’ve been banned by SB because you couldn’t follow what he was saying to the extent that you broke very clear and reasonable rules on his personal blog.
I’m afraid you overestimate your ability to process information, based on the fact that you can string a nice sentence together with some complicated words and the occasional complicated concept. That doesn’t mean you understand everything. And you very obviously have a blind spot the size of a house on this one. Please try and let that sink in and mean something to you – and ask someone who’s judgement you trust (who isn’t a white heterosexual male etc) to review the whole discussion and give you their thoughts. Please do, I know you ignore most of what I write, but perhaps this exercise will be of value for you. I believe people can change, you will understand this at some point in life, it just takes and the right explanation from the right person …
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VW, the issue I’m commenting on is banning. Arch can no longer defend himself because you have banned him. You say, “Arch was banned for personal insults – malicious, cruel, personal insults intending to harm.” Yet look who is doing the actual insulting here, writing the the actual words that are malicious, cruel, personal, and intentional: Claire. Yet you don’t ban her; you exempt her from the same standard you’re trying to use to ban Arch. That’s the problem I’m pointing out. That you forgive Claire under a host of rationalizations for her malicious, cruel, personal, and intentional insults isn’t the point; that you apply different standards is. And that’s exactly the same case with SB banning me. This is a thinking error.
All the other requests you make of me are not germane to this point. Your double standard is and I think all of us understand that we share in principle that honest and open dialogue that will offend is of greater value in the service of each of us coming to a deeper understanding of differences of opinions. Disagreements of opinion are necessary; the handmaiden of disagreements is being offended. You can’t have one without the other. Sure, there are levels of intention of insult and some deserve no comment at all. So what? That doesn’t excuse banning.
As I said previously, there’s no means for any of us to avoid offending those determined to be offended and I think Claire falls fully into this category… helpfully and well-intentionally pushed by you as if everyone should play only by your rules of what is an is not respectful regarding Claire. That’s why I keep saying we need to get over ourselves. People can and do cope with being offended all the time. Claire is no different. But banning those who offend us is the same tactic used by theists to parry any and all criticism of some religious perniciousness under the banner of the criticizer demonstrating a lack of ‘proper’ respect. And this tendency continues to grow not just with you and SB – feeling just as fully justified by your rationalizations as any other blogger who bans – but with all the listed theists who also ban for these same rationalizations. And the totalitarian urge spreads… into town halls and academia where feelings to be safe from whatever makes us uncomfortable and offended is given a higher priority than all else… regardless of the stupidity and harm that accompanies the undermining of important values of freedom and equality and tolerance… values such as free speech and listening to differences of opinions.
People who speak truth to power and do criticize bad ideas are now routinely banned from speaking, routinely vilified as some kind of ‘-phobes’, and ‘haters’ and so on of whatever membership identity the offended wish to use. This is the camp you guys are falling into, the company you are joining, the same tactics being employed, the same rationalizations. Don’t fall for it. Tolerate real differences and let them stand. Demonstrate your commitment to such enlightenment values that differentiate us from becoming supporters of some version of totalitarianism. This is the only way each of us can do our small part to put into practice the essential values of Western liberal secular democracies. Banning is the tactic of the bully, incompatible with certain embedded values of autonomy and legal equality and doing so for such trivial reasons is both stupid and shortsighted no matter what the rationalizations may be.
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“Yet look who is doing the actual insulting here, writing the the actual words that are malicious, cruel, personal, and intentional”
As usual, you’re ranting with no evidence. What did Clare say that could truly hurt someone? What did Clare say that is taking the most profound experience in anyone’s life and trampling all over it? Tildib, you spout, once again, tangential rants from your pulpit of indignation.
You have clearly had to your feelings hurt with the banning from SB. Suck it up and get over it. These endless rambles saying nothing about what actually happened are truly tiresome. Take some time out for self-reflection – read about empathy, read about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, and get out of your self-involved funk.
“People who speak truth to power and do criticize bad ideas are now routinely banned from speaking, routinely vilified as some kind of ‘-phobes’, and ‘haters’ and so on”
So you say. Give me some examples, some evidence for once, to chew on, if you want to take this forward as a discussion. And if your example is valid, I’ll explain to you in simple terms why it will surely bear no resemblance to anything that happened here or over at SB’s.
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VW, the examples are legion and they are following the same path used by regressive liberals in their mad march to European fascism back in the 30s.
In spite of effort to historically revise what was the case, fascism arose out of socialism and received widespread support first from liberals seeking to impose on others the ‘proper’ words, the ‘proper’ rules for behaviour, the ‘proper’ ideas, the ‘proper’ politics, in a misguided attempt to protect others from offense.
If we want to have our autonomy respected, then we have to respect the autonomy of others. Sometimes this is hard to do when we feel our rationalizations have emotional merit. That’s why we feel righteous. But if we want to respect the autonomy of others – especially from those with whom we passionately disagree – then we have to act that way and not give in to our righteous sense of censorship. We have to fight against this temptation, this slide into fascism, and we do so by first recognizing when we do so, when we attempt to impose on others by some kind of bullying tactic – and eventually force of law and state sponsored censorship – to force others into compliance with our sensitivities. And it starts right here, right now, by rationalizing the bullying under the rationalization that we do so because we are going to enforce what we think is ‘appropriate’ what we think is ‘proper’. The proof you seek rests in exercising intolerance. That’s not Arch. That’s you.
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Oh, the irony! All this hoo-ha you’ve sucked up and redirected to these two little and justified bannings comes from Why Evolution is True. You’ve got to be kidding! It’s hasn’t gone unnoticed that there’s a big dose of the typical male arrogance that invented all our stupid religions running through the rest of our naturally evolved ideas, such as realising there are no gods. Evolution is true, but people like you seem to forget it’s still going on. We are learning about life and each other, and you and your ilk want to stick your flag in the ground and say we know it all.
And the article you point me to is full of this (presumably) man’s interpretation of what the argument was about, with not a single link to original sources, just the backlog of his interpretation of everything. Sounds exactly like you!
So I googled the emails in question and this is the key bit in the original email from the Intercultural Affairs committee:
“Halloween is also unfortunately a time when the normal thoughtfulness and sensitivity of most Yale students can sometimes be forgotten and some poor decisions can be made including wearing feathered headdresses, turbans, wearing ‘war paint’ or modifying skin tone or wearing blackface or redface. These same issues and examples of cultural appropriation and/or misrepresentation are increasingly surfacing with representations of Asians and Latinos. Yale is a community that values free expression as well as inclusivity. And while students, undergraduate and graduate, definitely have a right to express themselves, we would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.”
The response from the ‘Master’ was patronising in the extreme and revealed someone who is totally out of touch with human society’s evolving sense of how we treat each other. Sorry you and your buddies got left in the last century.
As the for the list of demands Mr Understands-F-All-About-Evolution finds so offensive, he needs to learn to stop being an over sensitive snowflake and attempt to understand why these requests are being made. I’m quite happy to join the brigade – sick to death of history being about white men, buildings being names after white men, statues being built to white men. Sick to death of money and power staying in the hands of the same people, by actively excluding anyone whose face doesn’t fit. You want to stay with the status quo? Stick your evolutionary flag and the ground and tell the world to stop revolving.
You’re still wrong, so wrong about everything. And it makes me giggle you’re drawing such dire conclusions from your own backwardness.
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Just a very small sampling. Just keep scrolling… and scrolling…. and scrolling….
You say to suck it up and get over it. Can’t. So my only other option besides shutting the fuck up is to challenge it – not on the site, obviously because I’ve been banned and so I have had any opportunity to do so taken away – so I can’t ‘get over it’ any more than one can get over dying. It’s done. But it’s still wrong because it’s unethical. And it’s unethical because it’s based on a disagreement on what is appropriate. When ‘inappropriate’ is considered a banning offence, then we’re encountering the Regressive Left in action.
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I feel for you Tildib. If this sort of thing continues, middle-class white men might cease to hold all the power in western society. We really should quash all any kind of action that makes them stop and think about anyone other than themselves. Everyone else should suck up the violence and discrimination they face in their lives – but you, YOU, the middle-class white man, should NEVER be banned from a small blog for refusing to follow the clearly stated comment policy. Actually, do you not have a comment policy on your blog? Still waiting for you to post something so we can check what you’re willing to put up with.
But to return attention to the link from one of your fellow Outraged Freedom of Speech Fighter (ie complacent white man who loves the status quo in society and overreacts to any suggestion from anywhere that this might change):
“Even taking these bits of evidence at their strongest and considering every source’s sources, so far the evidence from within The Atlantic’s reporting on PC culture within campuses yields data points from eight known American colleges and universities, one anonymous university, twelve professors, two researchers, three comedians, and one blog. No first hand interviews or viewpoints from actual students. There are over 4,700 degree-granting institutions, almost two million post-secondary professors, and 21 million enrolled students in the United States. These sources hardly form enough to decide to pursue a question, let alone form a broad cultural commentary, and further still show that these things actually impact campus life and policy in a meaningful way.”
“This isn’t to say that student life isn’t changing in a meaningful way and that some students could get out of hand or exploit a trigger warning system and assume victimhood status. These students likely exist, and they likely have for as long as there have been students. College is as much as place where one learns to get over on people as it as a place that teaches values. But these sorts of unevidenced broad strokes analyses do a serious disservice to the real plights of real students who are women, members of the LGBTQ spectrum, or people of color.”
http://sevenscribes.com/straw-freshmen-why-the-war-on-campus-pc-culture-is-bullshit/
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This is a prime example of how liberals become part of what the regressive Left does: paint the ‘opposition’ – those we disagree with – with false colours, vilify them using group labels and the social injustices ‘they’ have supposedly enabled, and then use that creation to then justify fascist (meaning “authoritarian, or intolerant views or practices”) actions.
Your description of me is imaginary and exists entirely in your head yet I have no doubt you see the intolerance you have exercised and that I bother to criticize – banning Arch – as ‘standing up for the bullied’ – in this case Claire – and is thus you see it as a demonstration of your tolerance!
This shift by many liberals – identified by explanations that present black as another kind of white, up as another kind of down, and in your case intolerance as another kind of tolerance – is a real and growing danger. I have noticed that it particularly effects younger liberal adults… perhaps because far too many have been raised to assume that being offended righteously places blame on the offender, that life should be as safe as possible for them, and that the proper use of authority is to allow them to remain cocooned from feeling uncomfortable or challenged or criticized.
See how easy it is for otherwise reasonable and tolerant and well-intentioned people like you to fall into this trap?
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“This is a prime example of how liberals become part of what the regressive Left does: paint the ‘opposition’ – those we disagree with – with false colours, vilify them using group labels and the social injustices ‘they’ have supposedly enabled, and then use that creation to then justify fascist (meaning “authoritarian, or intolerant views or practices”) actions.”
Really? I thought I just pointed out that the website that is the core source for your rage (apart from the fringe action you’re exaggerating in your own head) isn’t really well founded.
“Your description of me is imaginary and exists entirely in your head yet I have no doubt you see the intolerance you have exercised and that I bother to criticize – banning Arch – as ‘standing up for the bullied’ – in this case Claire – and is thus you see it as a demonstration of your tolerance!”
No. And your description of the situation emerged solely from your own head. Arch was banned because he made a vicious personal attack, (Yawn, I’ve explained this already, but you clearly don’t read anything very closely) he was banned at my discretion, on my personal blog, not going against any stated rules, and with no warning. I don’t want to be rude, but he was annoying me anyway, and I had little tolerance for him when it came to such attempted cruelty. Yes, little tolerance. I’m not up my own arse on a crusade or anything, and I haven’t attempted to get him blacklisted, or silence his voice on any other blog. There’s no freedom of speech issue, just a minor local skirmish of the type you will see when you publish something personal about yourself on your blog, and we test your limits. 🙂
And yawn again, you were banned after fair warning for not following a clear comment policy on another private blog. So can we stop building a case for the end of civilisation based on two completely different blog bannings? You seem desperate to see a pattern.
” I have noticed that it particularly effects younger liberal adults… perhaps because far too many have been raised to assume that being offended righteously places blame on the offender, that life should be as safe as possible for them”
*Giggle* I’ve noticed that particularly in older people, throughout the history of the world, they convince themselves that society is collapsing when progress is made on social issues – be it universal suffrage for women, race equality, gay marriage, recognition of discrimination against any minority, or enlightenment that gods don’t exist. You’ve escaped one generation trap, but fallen into others. Don’t worry, it’s normal. But I would recommend not wasting too much time on it, as SB says, it could get embarrassing …
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VW, my reason for this exchange – and the inclusion of my own banning – isn’t about attacking you. My intention is to get you to try to see that what you’re doing is in principle against your own values. And this is true throughout the practices of the regressive Left.
By all means be annoyed at Arch. My original advice was to stop responding to him when he steps over the line you think is appropriate and that this (often forgotten) tactic is far better (I think) than banning… because it leaves the door open for more valuable contributions later.
The issue here – and with SB in my own case, as I’ve tried to explain – is not about crossing some important line according to the blogger of what is ‘appropriate’ in a single post – silence is as effective – but that banning stops any and all contributions on other issues and later posts that have absolutely nothing to do with the original question of some specific appropriateness. This potential contribution is what is lost. The reasons used for the banning are inappropriate in these other contexts yet the sentencing remains in force throughout. This is a net loss not just to the blogger but to the reading community of that blog. This is what I wanted you to consider… by using my own example of questionable ‘appropriateness’ in a single issue but then banned for all commentary issues. Do you honestly think that Arch has absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever at any time to offer to any of your readers ever? Yes. That’s what you’re saying and this is exactly what Intolerance in practice looks like in action. What ever ‘inappropriateness’ Arch committed in your view is sufficient in your mind to be permanently banned. If other readers like me don;t question you on this practice, then why would you ever reconsider? I don’t think you would because in your mind you would have no cause.
I think that’s a shame and I sincerely hope you change your mind.
As for me and my personal life, if I were to write about some sensitive issues I may have on blogs then I should reasonably expect the full spectrum of commentary about it. It’s very naive in my opinion to put out a personal identity in some group labels and then get all chuffed and rather vicious in response when someone dares to criticize them and the values behind doing so. That’s an emotionally immature approach.
People have every right to think what they want and to say what they will when I invite them to do exactly that on my blog. The the commentary product reflects that. My feelings have nothing to do with it because I realize that I don’t own the commentary. I own only what I say and do and it’s pathetic when a grown up tries to convince others that someone made them do something – like the personal attacks Claire committed against KIA and then Arch – because their feelings were hurt. This is the emotional maturity of a four year old and for a blogger to go along with it like a big sister heading out to do combat with the bully on behalf of the four year old (in this case banning them from causing such ‘harm’ again as well as any further ‘annoyance’) is hardly emotionally mature. The problem is that your decision has robbed me and every other reader here of Arch’s further commentary for personal an immature reasons. I think you’re better than that and I think Claire is perfectly adept at handling her own affairs… which she can still do here but Arch cannot.
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VW, if I’m not mistaken, you can always go to Dashboard –> Comments and delete/trash any comment you do not want to show on your blog. By doing this, you are not banning the person from (as Tildeb says) more valuable contributions later. You’ve just removed whatever comment that you have found offensive. You can then add your own comment to let the individual know this is what you have done … and will continue to do if he/she continues to make (what you consider) offensive comments.
Of course, it’s YOUR blog and you can do whatever you want and however you want to do it. This is just a suggestion for you to consider. 😉
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Thanks Nan. I don’t like the idea of spamming offensive comments. The conversation stands and people can make of it as they will. It wasn’t that I couldn’t bear to look at his response to Clare, but that what he said revealed something so cruel and foul about him that I don’t want to spend time with him anymore, if you get what I mean.
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Okay Tildib, thanks for making the effort to focus on the conversation in this response – it’s a refreshing change from you heading off on a wildly disjointed rant, and I can almost see your point, even though you’re still wrong. 🙂
“Do you honestly think that Arch has absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever at any time to offer to any of your readers ever?” You’re pushing me into a corner here. Arch was a pain in the arse, dotting over a great many posts making irrelevant comments, cheap shots and predictable quotes. Yes, on very few occasions he made useful or insightful comments, but really, really rare. I looked at my stats the other day and he’s still sitting at three times as many comments as the next person – the same as me. It was annoying and time consuming. Regarding his comment to Clare (that’s Clare without an i, Tildib), it moved him from generally irritating and off topic like usual, to downright disgusting. I don’t want someone that rude and unproductive to make a home on my blog. And it really felt like he was making a home, given he replied to almost everyone.
“It’s very naive in my opinion to put out a personal identity in some group labels and then get all chuffed and rather vicious in response when someone dares to criticize them and the values behind doing so.”
Patronising much? Everyone’s blogging for different reasons. They may find valuable support and conversation from some quarters. I think it’s naive and immature to suggest that everyone should put up with every stupid or harmful insult thrown at them, or simply keep quiet. Would you accept racism? Don’t blog about being black if you can’t take being insulted by racists. If you don’t like it, just keep quiet! You’re being ludicrous.
“People have every right to think what they want and to say what they will when I invite them to do exactly that on my blog. The the commentary product reflects that.” You haven’t posted for a year, have you? And you have a warning about appropriate commentary, right?
“My feelings have nothing to do with it because I realize that I don’t own the commentary.” I used to argue this same point. I assumed I would never ban anyone. But as I’ve said before, I blog for fun in limited time slots. When people become consistently personal in comments and ignore the topic completely (Pink popping over only to tell me I’m an awful blogger is another great example), take up my time and make blogging generally boring or unpleasant, I’ll ask them to leave. If they don’t leave, or they don’t deserve a warning, it only makes sense to emphasise how unwelcome they are with a spam threat.
“I think Cla[i]re is perfectly adept at handling her own affairs… which she can still do here but Arch cannot.”
Yes, she is. That doesn’t mean I want people making foul comments cluttering up my blog on an ongoing basis. As for Arch, anyone who misses him can encourage him to set up his own blog, finally.
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Here’s today’s regressive Left in action.
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Yawn. And you’re today’s paranoid fear-monger in action. For all these tiny (alleged) acts of comical over-thinking, there are a million acts of ignorance and harm going unchecked. I would happily watch things swing too far the other way if I thought it would eventually bring a fairer, more equal society. The sad part is that these cases are probably all exaggerated and over-reported by people worse than you, for the simple fear of change, or of anyone outside the usual suspects having a say in society.
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And today’s….
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Thanks, you’ll enjoy this:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkeman-column/2014/nov/13/political-correctness-science-conservatives-liberals
“Most other instances of “political correctness gone mad” turn out, on inspection, to be false – or alternatively, just the resentful mutterings of people who wish they could still spout racist abuse without other people expressing disapproval.” Sounds like you? Yes!
“it’s not that there are things you can’t say. It’s that there are things you can’t say without the risk that people who previously lacked a voice might use their own freedom of speech to object.” Sounds like you? Yes!!!
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So people losing their jobs is false, eh? Professors aren’t reformatting their courses to avoid controversy, right? People aren’t being banned? Speaking invitations aren’t being rescinded? Student Unions aren’t actively shutting down dissent? It’s all – upon some supposedly ‘closer inspection’ by such an authority you quote here as Oliver Burkeman, a journalist with a university degree, all to be false, merely the mutterings of the enfranchised?
How very convenient to be so dismissive simply with a wave of the hand or, in this case, the written word of a journalist who includes a study about enforced PC and its effect when practiced by gender-mixed and same gender on ‘creativity’ (they’re opposite, in case you were curious).
You asked for examples to show that regressive Left was gaining momentum, so I’m supplying them on a daily basis because I said they were becoming more and more common. You doubted that. But I think they are. Rejecting each daily contribution by just waving it away (and that’s all this article does) doesn’t refute my point one bit.
You keep rationalizing why each of the daily real world examples I offer is somehow okay because you feel it is… in every case… while ignoring the alarmingly growing aggregate I have pointed out: the regressive Left is a movement that is growing and that is a danger to the enlightenment values upon which our rights and freedoms stand. Banning, in case you were confused, doesn’t promote free speech.
I know that sounds like, hyperbole but go stand at Auschwitz like I have and try to figure out how such a monstrosity could be built by a willing population of good Catholic people under such a vile purpose by an otherwise civilized nation filled with nice people. Examining HOW this happens will open your eyes to the importance of standing not on the rationalized beguilement you like to use but on stalwart principles common to all (slightly more advanced, than Clare’s ‘boring’ scale) even if its exercise sometimes causes you and others some measure of discomfort.
Waving away the same incremental bullying that nourished fascist totalitarianism for the same rationalized reasons is how it happens. This is how fascism takes root in the wider community and this is exactly how it unfolds: by well meaning and civilized people like you one small regressive and unprincipled step at a time. This is what you’re doing, what you’re going along with, what you are defending, what you are practicing… incremental fascism all for rationalized and unprincipled reasons – unprincipled because they are diametrically opposite to our fundamental enlightenment values. That you feel good about banning isn’t the issue: that you’re willing to uphold and defend a double standard to justify selected banning is. And this criticism is what you’re not refuting but either waving away in dismissal or obfuscating with scattershot rationalizations and personal attacks.
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“So people losing their jobs is false, eh? Professors aren’t reformatting their courses to avoid controversy, right? People aren’t being banned? Speaking invitations aren’t being rescinded? Student Unions aren’t actively shutting down dissent? It’s all – upon some supposedly ‘closer inspection’ by such an authority you quote here as Oliver Burkeman, a journalist with a university degree, all to be false, merely the mutterings of the enfranchised?”
Relatively isolated incidents. Do you have no faith in human logic to redress any balance that gets over-stepped? Can you not even see, a little bit, how it could lead to overall improvement?
“You asked for examples to show that regressive Left was gaining momentum, so I’m supplying them on a daily basis because I said they were becoming more and more common. ”
Yes, and I’m enjoying them. Thank you. I can’t see why you think they mean anything other than we should all be more thoughtful. Keep them coming.
“that is a danger to the enlightenment values upon which our rights and freedoms stand”
Oh, our freedoms!!! Quick, get your gun! You are being ridiculous.
“Banning, in case you were confused, doesn’t promote free speech.”
Banning on the blog of an individual is the playground equivalent of “I don’t want to be friends with you”. I’m sorry it means more to you than that. Organisations who invite people to speak for their enlightenment, have every right to judge if they find someone’s position too hateful to advertise. If you want to invite the KKK to comment on your blog, feel free.
“go stand at Auschwitz like I have and try to figure out how such a monstrosity could be built by a willing population of good Catholic people under such a vile purpose by an otherwise civilized nation filled with nice people”
I have. I never came to conclusion that it happened because people were willing to see life from the point of view of marginalised minorities. And I’m not quite clear how you have …. (wtf!!) Again, you’re sounding like the Christians you so enjoy verbally assaulting.
“This is how fascism takes root in the wider community”
Really? Or perhaps we could consider that fascism takes root by allowing people to trample all over anyone not like them. Perhaps fascism takes root by giving a platform to people with messages of intolerance and hatred, that feed to ignorant xenophobia and tribalism.
“That you feel good about banning isn’t the issue: that you’re willing to uphold and defend a double standard to justify selected banning is.”
Blah, blah, blah, off on your tangent as if we haven’t discussed both little bannings in all possible boring detail. Yet another block rant saying what you’ve said before, with no reference to any points I’ve made. You’re really into that, aren’t you?
I’m sorry if I’m getting personal. I do agree that is unnecessary, and I appreciate you are doing your best to have a discussion about an issue you feel very passionate about, and have clearly sewn up the ‘facts’ tightly in your head. But please, make an effort to understand what I’m saying in all these comments and in the new post, and reply in kind. You could start by explaining why the experiences of people who don’t hold the balance of power, who are routinely discriminated against, are to be so readily dismissed.
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Oh look… a PEW survey about limiting free speech and by whom. Let’s see if it aligns or contradicts my assertion about the growth of the regressive Left – especially by the young – shall we (you are already suspecting the answer, aren’t you)?
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I don’t know what to say to you tildeb. You’re desperately out of touch if you can’t see where any of that is coming from, and you don’t understand what young people mean.
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Oh, I think I do: they want a more fair and just and kind and tolerant society… by being less fair, unjust, bulling, and intolerant. What could possibly go wrong?
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The solidarity sit-in at Smith College, anyone? Even the College’s spokesperson is confused:
“Stacey Schmeidel, Smith College director of media relations, said the college supports the activists’ ban on media.
“It’s a student event, and we respect their right to do that, although it poses problems for the traditional media,” Stacey Schmeidel said.
Schmeidel went on to say that the college reserves the right to remove reporters from the Student Center because it’s a private campus.”
Yes we must ban any media who won’t promote only our views. That will fix the problems. And yes, let’s do a sit in for ‘special’ racial segregate because that’s the solution to racism.
Good grief.
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Wow, you don’t for second think you might be missing something. And did you read anything I wrote? As usual, you’ve by-passed everything and continued steam-rolling the same rant. Your arrogance is supreme and you go off on your little tangent on every occasion. And, interestingly, no personal details about a tragedy of yours we could explore.
Out of interest, are you a straight, white man? You know there’s research to show people in that demographic lack empathy with minorities that face discrimination and mistreatment?
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2015-12040-001/
“This banning practice is insidious, in that it is in principle and then in practice deeply anti-intellectual, in principle and then in practice quite threatening to arenas of open and honest dialogue, and in principle and then in practice undermines what freedom of speech looks like in action.”
I agree completely. If I was banning people for their ideas, I’d be worried. As I said before (ignored by you AGAIN) I’ve banned them because they aren’t even discussing the topic in hand and they are being personally rude to other bloggers (or me). Also, my little blog, read by relatively few people, is hardly an arena of concern when it comes to free speech. You seem to be confusing me with a government, or something. This is my personal space, I do this for fun, in very limited time slots. If I don’t have the time or interest to deal with someone and their foul or ‘insensitive-to-snowflakes-and-other-oppressed minorities’ views, AND they don’t take unfriendly hints to clear off and clutter up someone else’s space, I think it’s quite acceptable to make the fact they are unwelcome crystal clear.
Again, feel free to explore your theory that you support free speech by publishing something from your personal life that has been a deep tragedy for you. In the interests of proving your point, it would be silly not to.
“So what can be done? Well, I just thought I’d make clear that not responding to what you find offensive is far more productive and revealing than any amount of banning could ever hope to equal. And it’s a lesson more us – especially sensitive snowflakes – need to think long and hard about.”
Absolute, sheer nonsense. I expect more from you Tildeb. Isn’t evil something that triumphs when good women do or say nothing?
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Tildeb, start a new thread. None of this can be read in order.
You asked today what could possibly go wrong?
A problem with free speech is that the loudest voices are those of the privileged. They have the access to print and the education to express comfortable ideas in exquisite prose. The voices which need heard are those of the excluded, pushing back against the clichés of the Kyriarchy with authentic human feeling.
If you have been playing soccer on a downward slope towards the goal, it may seem “being less fair, unjust, bulling, and intolerant” when someone tries to make the pitch level.
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Anyway, this is a prime example why I should stop blogging. Apart the supreme loss of time, no-one has benefitted, and several people have been upset. Adiós!
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LOL! Take heart, Violet, sometimes people need to get upset. The truth is not always gentle on people’s feelings.
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Who said, ” I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
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Is your soul at rest and are you gentle and humble at heart?
Christ also said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
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Christ leads me to life and freedom. Perhaps I spend too much time explaining this, casting pearls before swine.
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That Christ guy, he could never make up his mind, could he? He just HAD to have it both ways…both the peace bringer and the sword bringer. I don’t know how you can put such stock in man with so many dueling opinions. 😉
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LOL! You have no idea how true those words are, Violet! But not unlikely earthly men, much of their charm is in their contradictions and paradoxes.
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Vaya bíen
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May I only say another nice pic Vwisp…
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Thanks ColorStorm. That makes you Official Fan of my artwork. Odd.
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Just supplying a soft answer in the midst of a turbulent comment thread; it’s still a cool pic.
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This is not an apology.
Probably my term “fuckwit” was too strong. But consider “Man”- the basic concept of a human being with all that set of primary and secondary sexual characteristics, and the cultural accretions in the words “manhood” or “manliness”. And “We are what our genetics make us” is very very stupid- we are what our genetics, culture and experiences make us. In the context, he is saying I am a man. He knows it is insulting, because he “runs for dear life”.
I was riled from the start. Perhaps I should not comment when riled. But I am the only trans person here, and I wanted to challenge the ignorance. I don’t like us being discussed by the outsiders.
Possibly KIA should be cut some slack. We weird people out.
Slavery allusions. I should not use slavery allusions. But there I was triggered. That means I am back in the feelings of my past trauma, the rage, terror, and sense of complete powerlessness. Tree-Violet saw that, though not immediately.
Maybe KIA is merely ignorant, but he was commenting rather like Trixie. Trixie was malicious. “I would throw you out too, and it has nothing to do with your sexuality” was his mistake, for it is OTT, and shows his malice beyond all doubt. And anyone with any knowledge of the issues knows that gender identity is separate from sexual orientation, so that we have the acronym SOGI- SOGI issues rather than “Queer” issues.
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There’s the cultural angle to consider too. We were both brought up in Scotland, and the word you used really isn’t a big deal. Maybe to American ears (where all the complaints came from) it’s received as something more shocking and unacceptable. I think also we’re generally more explosive, gritty and sarcastic people.
I ask people not to personally attack other blog visitors, usually. Usually conversation is about abstract concepts and belief systems – personal attacks are silly. KIA’s comment was personally insulting to you, even though he clearly didn’t get that, or care much to explore it.
Arch has been an annoying mosquito on my posts for a long time now. He occasionally makes interesting comments but usually just pointless jabs and clutter, as well as horrendous attempts at flirting with female bloggers. It’s kind of icky. But Victoria and Ruth seem to respect him, so I let him be. I think his comments to you were unacceptable on more than one thread here. You exposed your vulnerability and he attempted to hurt you with it. Disgusting.
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Use of the term “fuck” in general is quite shocking to most Americans, women in particular. Men use the term quite liberally when they’re all slapping each other on the back in their man circles, but they duff their hats and call each other down in front of the women folk because of our virgin ears and all. It’s their attempt a chivalry and respect, I think(even if it is misguided).
It took me a little while to realize that in other parts of the world expletives are just words like any other. It’s sort of part of the language and it’s not seen as anything taboo, whereas here in America in many circles it most definitely is.
I would urge you not to consider my treating everyone with respect a sign of my opinion of them in general. I do keep in mind that there are real people on the other side of the computer screens. I generally am trying to diffuse dissention rather than fanning the already inferno.
No, KIA did not get that his comment was personally insulting to Clare. I wasn’t defending him per se. I, when I was part of fundamentalism, had very much that same mindset. I wouldn’t have had a clue what was wrong with what he said. I very much get it now, but someone, somewhere, had to explain to me why and how that was wrong and demeaning.
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If he did not realise he was personally insulting, why did he write (covering head and running for dear life)? I can’t remember if I had stated I am trans on that thread, but at best he was saying something which was personally offensive to some people: does it make that any less indefensible, that no-one personally affected might be reading?
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I can’t speak for him, but in the past I might have said something similar. I would have thought that because this is a sensitive subject merely daring to disagree or question it would draw ire. Not because I was wrong but because others were being too sensitive and looking for offense. I would have also thought the same thing about people who are gay, lesbian, an bi. Now, having had exposure to people in that community and having learned a bit about it AND having listened to the pain and abuse LGBT’S have suffered I realize how wrong headed my thinking was.
But to answer your question it is possible to say something you think might be controversial and unwelcome without intending to cause personal harm. Just because that isn’t the intended consequence doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
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Then I am glad I responded as I did. I attempt to engage all sorts of views in many ways- usually, I seek to be winsome- but with KIA’s post, at once polemical, self-righteous, and ignorant, I responded pungently. If he wants to say rubbish like that he can go on the Christian blogs, where he will find lots of agreement. Or alternatively click the link to my blog which I left on his, of a post intending to explain to those who know nothing of the issue, if he wants to engage.
I am more or less happy with this thread now. I am happy enough with my own contribution. I am not ashamed of my slavery allusion, though commenting when that provoked is risky: I have a cooler head now, and without support I would simply have remained that provoked, unable to pass through the emotion.
Tryxie showed his destructive malice, and is properly banned.
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I’m sure if what he wanted was an echo chamber he would have done. I don’t feel like he was looking for agreement. Rather I think he was looking for explanations as to why he was wrong. That’s just my opinion, of course. You don’t think he knows he could have gone to other places and gotten a slap on the back and an atta boy?
Of course, as I’ve said, I understand why your reaction was what it was. I get it that what he said erased your experience and negated you.
In the end, though, VioletWisp is right. No one learned a thing from this thread. No one sought to find common ground and understand where others were coming from. Stereotypes and caricatures were only reinforced on both sides. And that is a shame because, as Violet said, tribalism was rampant and sides were drawn.
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If he was looking for explanations, why not ask for them? He was looking for an atta-boy, and was too arrogant to imagine anyone could think differently, even here. Then he ran away.
I have learned something of what triggers me, and what malice merely makes me laugh. I have learned that quotidian and unexceptionable words like “fuck” produce HM Bateman responses in some quarters (google it if that cultural reference eludes you, I hope an image-google will give you a few moments’ amusement). I learned from tree-Violet’s rebuke and qualified sympathy.
On the French flag on your gravatar, I heard something about Kenya and thought it was this past weekend. Now I look at this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-34833134
Complex.
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Thank you for the link and the HM Bateman reference. I did google it and was most definitely amused.
If you’ve learned some things about yourself, and hopefully all of us here have through this exchange, then I suppose it wasn’t all a loss.
Quite complex. France is the oldest ally of the U.S. and my heart breaks for them. But it also breaks every time I hear of another act of violence. Yes, I thought the Kenya ordeal was some months ago, but there were other acts of violence over the weekend. There will be more yet to come. So sad. So senseless.
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Oh, and-
I started out with some explanation. We are what our genetics, culture and society make us, which in my case make me a trans woman. It is not what I “want to be”, but what I am. There was other stuff, of course. KIA then went into self-justification mode, ignoring the explanation. We might learn something from that!
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Clare, I think you’ve been overthinking KIA! He just made a superficial comment that most people who know nothing about the subject would be prone to making. He knew it can be controversial so made the ‘funny’ comment about running for cover – an ice-breaker if you will. His desire to scuttle off is equally common. People who are or have been know it alls find it difficult to challenge their linear thinking, and certainly it’s common for people to refuse to continue a conversation where they’ve been sworn at. I agree his words and actions displayed ignorance, but we don’t need to read much into it …
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I think we’ve hammered out enough where we each stand on this. As I’ve said a number of times I can see where both sides are coming from.
Yes, he did seek to self-justify. I must admit that being called a fuckwitted little man would have likely put me on the defensive as well. If I was, you know, a man. I don’t have the right equipment for it.
It is likely your explanation fell flat. This is all I’ve ever been saying. Not that you weren’t justified in being offended. Only that it wasn’t only KIA that was your audience.
It’s neither here nor there now. It’s done. Each one feeling justified and likely equally happy with their actions.
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Tildeb, a four year old? Really? I am 49!
I heard a white cis man read out Still I rise today, and he might as well have been reading Patience Strong. I freely admit I am damaged, the exclusion and endemic transphobia has done that to me. I could read it and make it meaningful. The anger and contempt in it is Mine.
I feel the anger of the excluded has value and authenticity that the self-righteous condemnation of the privileged has not. I would ban you because you are boring and self-righteous, and because you go on at such length. Lighten up! There are millions of blogs you could go on!
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I feel the anger of the excluded has value and authenticity that the self-righteous condemnation of the privileged has not.
Then speak up. Speak out. I read you. Others do, too. And isn’t it handy FOR YOU that you are allowed by bloggers like VW to do so? In fact, it’s handy FOR ME that you do so.
But you think it isn’t okay for Arch to have the SAME OPPORTUNITY!
That’s not fair, Clare (sorry for misspelling you moniker in other comments; my bad). And a world where you can be just as accepted as Arch depends on BOTH having the same rights, the same opportunities.
Why the double standard?
I would ban you because you are boring and self-righteous, and because you go on at such length.
See? I didn’t malign the quality of your opinions nor call for or expect you to be banned; I pointed out that you did what Arch was banned for. Double standard. Aren’t I the terrible one? And won’t everything you want – equality, respect, acceptance – be easier once you ban everyone who offends you… including those of us supportive of your struggle but who dare hold you to the same standard you demand others meet?
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I would ban you, because what you say has been said by millions of undergraduates in millions of bare-pass undergraduate essays, far better, more elegantly, than by you. My anger is an authentic human reaction, of far more value. My own comment policy is “Don’t bore me” and I am sometimes infinitely patient, sometimes tyrannical and draconian, depending on my mood. And no-one can do a thing about it!
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Better late than never … 😉
I actually wanted to comment on the banning issues, not about the individuals, higharka (? yes?), Pink and Arch.
I’ve banned someone. I was bored with his personal insults and his endless jibes about Gib, and no he hadn’t visited. Do my blogs suffer from the lack of his commentary? Personally, I think not. I don’t want to see slanging matches, insults and offensive language on my blog, and I think everyone is within their rights to ban someone who persistently behaves like that.
Disagreement is fine, but not when it comes down to insulting commenters or me. I don’t blog to have a load of vitriol hurled around. I think I do have a comment policy somewhere, but tbh most people are pretty reasonable anyway, and like you, I’ll step in if I think commentary is getting too insulting ESPECIALLY when it’s using inflammatory language that victimises minorities.
I’m not commenting on TB and SB. As far as I’m concerned that’s between them.
So, I’m really saying I agree with you. It’s your blog, or my blog, or whoevers, and we can do what we want. If we think someone’s contribution is minimal or negative and offends others, why accept it? Why give someone a platform? They can find another one. And as for free speech? It’s an illusion anyway.
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Pingback: introducing the victims of PC | violetwisp
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As per your wish, Clare, I’m responding to your comment about my question, “What could go wrong promoting a more fair and just and kind and tolerant society by being less fair, unjust, bulling, and intolerant?”
Accusing the privileged of having a louder voice is quite accurate. That’s a legitimate criticism. Telling us to listen more carefully and closely to the ‘excluded’ voices by “making the playing field level” is also a wonderful idea. I’m all for it. That’s what an egalitarian society does: allow a common field to be used by all. Great. Let’s do our part to advance those values. that.
This is where we get into trouble.
The problem that defines membership in the regressive Left, however, isn’t that you speak up and speak out against privilege; that’s a necessary role that benefits all. The problem it’s that the members of regressive Left feel fully justified in disallowing others to speak at all (all for kicking others off the playing field entirely… in this case one small example by being banned). The rationalized basis used for supporting this fascist policy is on the basis that ‘The Privileged(TM)’ first breaks an arbitrary and subjective policy called ‘appropriateness’ (regardless if some contribution looks and sounds very much like legitimate criticism).
This is a clue.
When we pay more attention and grant more importance to the context of what is being said than the content it contains, then we’re entering the territory of the regressive Left.
This is a clue.
The major policy being applied by the regressive Left is ‘appropriateness’ and other tangential considerations that can be painted to suit the rationalizations for the Left’s support of fascist actions, its members busy deciding what is the acceptable ‘appropriate’ tone, the acceptable ‘appropriate’ comment done in an acceptably sensitive and thus ‘appropriate’ way, accepting only comments that use the ‘appropriate’ terms, and so on… as if these considerations were paramount, that these considerations were of far more important value than the content of any legitimate criticism.
This alignment of far too many otherwise intelligent and compassionate people to elevate ‘appropriateness’ to be the ultimate standard over and above any respect for disagreement and/or criticism is fascist because it does exactly what I claim it does: it creates an atmosphere of vilified partisanship, divides people into Us and Them, and then utterly fails to respect the advertised common values and common respect for individual autonomy upon which its members slip into the jackboots (yes, YOUR individual rights, your individual freedoms to speak up and speak out with important criticisms about the privilege are grounded).
In other words, the regressive Left isn’t just acting contrary to all of our best interests but by deed act contrary to the very principles used to justify these fascist actions… actions like banning.
To answer my own question: everything will go wrong if we allow this kind of social engineering to dismantle our rights and freedoms one small and perhaps trivial action – like banning Arch here and me at SB’s blog – at a time.
The job of those of us who support enlightenment values of individual autonomy (and its demand for respect to the the dignity of personhood) is to police our own rationalized urges to become fascist in our treatment of others.
This is where all of us need to do our small part to stop fascism first with us – each and every one of us who wants to be respected as an individual – right here and right now and not when it becomes state policy bully us but backed by armed force and popular support in the name of values incompatible with the actions taken in its name.
This is the lesson from history that far, far, far too many liberals have failed to grasp and this failure needs criticism as much as any criticism offered on the detriment of tolerating privilege,
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Thank you for starting a new thread.
As I understand it, the reason for banning Tryxie was that he said something vile: at that time I was in my “if you cut us do we not bleed” mode, and I wrote that I was driven out of my house, my partner’s house, my father’s house, and he responded that he would “throw me out too”. Arguably I was nastier with less provocation (I felt provoked; Kia called who I am ridiculous) but, well, this is a blog, more like a group of friends down the pub than a great public forum.
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1. I’d take you much more seriously if you didn’t think that you and Arch being banned were in any way similar, or a cause for global concern. This constant harking back to these very different cases, and cases of no interest to anyone except you and Arch, is petty and silly.
2. You talk at some length about the dangers of putting people in groups and not approaching people as individuals, then you spend most of this rant lambasting a group you have invented, who don’t self-identify together, with the dismissive and derogatory label of ‘the regressive Left’. Interesting you can’t even start to take your own advice, yet you expect the rest of the world to deal with people on a level playing field as individuals.
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In your first point you say, “This constant harking back to these very different cases, and cases of no interest to anyone except you and Arch, is petty and silly.
This is the point you continue to fail to grasp; it is these ‘petty and silly’ outcomes that demonstrate how fascism incrementally evolves. It’s important BECAUSE it’s small and seemingly trivial in practice but is incompatible with the principle you presume you are championing. You’re not. You’re part of the problem.
The second point you raise about me creating a group appears to be valid. But, again (and because you keep missing the point), note how I am criticizing those individual members who do a host of fascist actions in practice that are incompatible with the principle they use to justify them. This is a movement that needs to be stopped… one member at a time starting with each of us, each individual who acts this way.
So yes, I’m creating an artificial group label that uses this fascist standard but I am not banning anyone, not trying to silence anyone, not imposing on you or anyone else only what I deem to be ‘appropriate’. What I offer, instead, is a series of explanations and responses why what you’re doing grows and enhances the very problem you presume you are trying to fix. This sin’t a social problem; it’s YOUR problem that you are imposing on everyone you ban… under the standard of ‘boring’.
I started this commentary thread with a simple solution: why not exercise the option of simply not responding to those you feel are behaving or writing comments that you think are inappropriate? I mentioned this first BECAUSE it is the most effective method of demonstrating the values you wish to promote – fairness, justice, tolerance, respect without infringing on these values you say you want to promote. Well, what’s so terrible and unfair about leading by example? What is so difficult to accept to treat others as you would wish to be treated? You don’t need any belief in some god for that; you need to allow yourself to be led by principles all of us share.
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Oh, I see Tryxie is still about, “Liking”.
Hello, Tryxie!
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He does that on ColorStorm’s blog too. And here he’s silently cheering on Superman, fighting for the oppressed Victims of PC …
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Oh, before I forget… today’s example of the regressive Left in action once again..
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Thanks Tilteb, these are all fascinating. You really get nothing from them? This one is a typically exaggerated piece by the Obsessive Victims of PC.
If you have a group, yes, a particular ‘group’ of children who are excluded from using a valuable learning resource because of irrational cultural expectations, it makes sense to encourage that group to break the trend. It’s not to the detriment of the dominant group because they have already established patterns of use. But most importantly, it was a trial arrangement, for a month, to get the girls started using it. I seriously can’t see what any intelligent person’s objection would be, beyond her off-the-cuff remark, which illustrated her zeal in the drive for redressing equal opportunity of access.
Your movement is repulsive in its blinkered ignorance, whipping up controversy over something so harmless and well-intentioned. I can only hope that time will heal this chasm of understanding. If people like you can’t see it, we really are doomed to a future of continuing imbalance and inequality.
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Violet, I am surprised that you shrugged off this teacher’s action. I was astounded by it. The teacher is actually stopping the boys play with a toy that she acknowledges help them develop needed skills.
If Lego is good and dolls are bad she should only have Lego and no dolls in her class room, but to not allow boys to play with Lego is just wrong, if you can’t see that I am staggered. Worse still she lied to the boys she said they could play with later then admitted she would not allow this. How is that modelling anything but deceit.
By the way I noticed that after this report the enforced segregation was ended was the school district.
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Maybe you’re misunderstanding the reason I keep introducing these examples: all urge us to go along with some kind of bullying tactic that imposes some kind of approved ‘appropriateness’ as the intention… as if this intention were the important criteria to justify some greater fairness by being less fair. The disconnect between principle and practice, so obvious to me, seems elusive to many. I wish I could change that.
You say, Your movement is repulsive in its blinkered ignorance, whipping up controversy over something so harmless and well-intentioned. I can only hope that time will heal this chasm of understanding. If people like you can’t see it, we really are doomed to a future of continuing imbalance and inequality.
You have no idea how ironic in real life this accusation is! I caused many problems to many people, it’s true, in establishing fairness, respect, tolerance, and justice for all in my charge but never have I received anything but friendship, admiration, praise, and thanks from those who were subject to my treatment… from children to adults.
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“Maybe you’re misunderstanding”- the arrogance of the man! Thousands and thousands of words pour out of you, repetitive, incoherent, uncomprehending, and you think someone else’s intelligence is the problem!
Formerly seeking to wipe out indigenous culture, the majority now seeks to preserve it. I value group ways of perceiving reality, whether the minority is indigenous or sexual. We need safe spaces because we get murdered. Google transgender day of remembrance.
I did not see the egregious flirting, but it was not conducive to rational debate. Sometimes someone says uncomfortable things which need to be heard, and sometimes someone is just an arse.
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Speaking of identifying who the arses are in the context of this thread, I immediately thought of this germane quote:
“If we ban offensive speech, how will we know who the assholes are?”
I thought you might like that.
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Me, certainly. I can be a total arse. (BrE may have slightly different connotations from AmE). But I don’t expect someone will agree with me just because I continue making assertions, even argument. Eventually I decide that I have expressed my point as fully as I can. Sometimes I am even aware of the weight of the opposing argument, and the value of individual rights as well as group rights; I just happen to disagree on relative weight. It really is not that important. Other people beside you assert the rights of the individual, and even if I am not convinced here, now, they will continue to do so.
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Tildeb, you’re clearly a person with good intentions and respect for others in a general sense. However, I think you’re understanding is:
1. Dismissive of the experiences of people not like you, or people with whom you don’t have automatic empathy.
2. Lacking any practical application, in that we don’t and can’t live in a society that fully respects individuals. We don’t, because not everyone cares, and our primary cultural influence is oblivious to the discrimination against individuals with certain shared minority characteristics. We can’t, because we are tribal animals, herd animals and our brains automatically group people into ‘us’ and ‘them’. It will take a global concerted effort and constant mindfulness on the part of the human race as a species to neutralise this, which would/will take more than just a few generations.
People need relief, safe spaces and the opportunity to be listened to NOW. We need to take action that can move change forward, ie positive discrimination. It’s not the end of the story or a fair end point, but it’s the most sensible and practical approach to bring change in less than 1000 years. Your suggestion that by simply saying individuals should be treated equally can bring change is absurd. Your suggestion that we should approach discriminatory and harmful actions and comments with silence, is laughable. In Arch’s case, if everyone had been silent, he would have taken it as tacit approval and continued to hurl abuse in a cruel and potentially harmful manner. He may still do so on other forums, but the risk of something changing in his life (e.g. being banned) will make him think twice. If can’t see what he did is unacceptable, he’ll at least learn through anti-socialisation that others do.
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Tildeb, Violet, I’d like to jump in please, as I loved Lego. I’m probably going to annoy both of you equally but at least I’m being fair. 🙂
I had Lego coming out of my ears as a kid. Mostly it was red and white. Then blue brick bricks were introduced. Maybe yellow too? But pink and purple? No. So I’m wondering why we have pink and purple? To get girls interested? That is gender specification at its most ludicrous. I am sure I have had the Lego debate before on another blog, but colours are irrelevant. All that is needed is to teach children of both sexes to build with bricks. Why should it be the favoured toy of boys over girls?
I not only had Lego at home, I had a girder and panel building set (cantilever construction was really interesting) and a science set with test tubes, as well as a few dolls.
But, Violet said on my blog, that children display innate gender roles initially. Really? There are plenty of studies to show (I’ll look up my book on return to Spain) that adults inculcate gender specific traits from birth. Equally, if you bring up a child to play with Lego, building bricks etc why would they not do that at school, unless the boys are being more pushy, which is an issue about early inbuilt male domination.
I don’t remember dolls at school. Or Lego. But we did have bricks and trains and constructive toys. And a fine sandpit.
I see no purpose in doll-type toys. Construction ones are useful. Provide more Lego would be my answer. Rather than the approach linked to. Anyway, as a non-parent I’ll shut up on that.
Separately, @ tildeb, I think you make great points. I don’t agree with you all the time, but you do put your case well for women and against religion. Leave the bannings alone. Blogs are not the government, they are personal. Violet made a good point about its on the level of ‘I don’t want to be friends with you any more’, and that’s basically it.
Interestingly, Violet and Pink managed an exchange about Syria on Sirius’ without a reference to bans. (Unless that’s changed) Surely that’s the way to go?
And, I also like your links to the posts. I actually disagree with the stance in this instance. I suspect there could be better ways of managing distribution of toys and time. I think we used to have xx minutes with this and move on to the next. Or is that too too simple?
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Thanks for chiming in, it’s good to hear another perspective that can see sense in both sides. The lego colours thing is very annoying, agreed, and this is something that is clearly programmed, and even obvious in my own children. My daughter only started making reference to it at 3 and a half, and I’m a broken record saying all colours are for all people, but the pink and blue nonsense has soaked right into her. Construction toys are the best, I can play with them for hours so it’s easy childcare. Apparently dolls can be good for imaginative play, role-playing and empathy building or something, so boys are encouraged to play with them too.
You xx minutes comments is interesting because it does seem logical, but current educational theory for pre-schoolers (based on who knows what research), revolves around free play – children wandering aimlessly round rooms with different areas of play. That’s why the teacher would be so keen to encourage the girls to play with the obviously beneficial toys that are now seen as the domain of boys. I feel her frustration.
I was surprised by Pink the other day, the first time he’s exchanged comments with me without feeling he had to tell me how stupid I am, or what a terrible blogger I am. It is a good lesson for Tildeb, who can’t see SB without lamenting the injustice and the downfall of society …
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Pink and blue nonsense? Um, and where does that come from? Not genetically programmed. At all.
Dolls! Really! Ugh. Just, they were there. I did paint all of them yellow on their abdomens after I had appendicitis. Is that what you mean?
No free play when I was a kid. And although I went to a private all girls school we had yummy boys too in prep school. I don’t remember any issues. But, my mum taught me to read before I went to school, and we were all just pals. Looked at an old school photo last week. Must post it!
His behaviour was perfect. He didn’t even rise to your jibe about armchair art dealer. But, I thought it was good that you both had a reasonable conversation about Syria without going elsewhere. It’s a move on thing.
I like tildeb, Pink, Sirius. So all these bannings ain’t my business. As you say I see both sides, but not mine to chime in, apart from to say, each to their own, move on, which is why your conversation with Pink was a good example.
I’d like to see tildeb and Sirius do the same. They are both reasonable people. Clare and Arch? Oh. No.
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’m probably going to annoy both of you equally but at least I’m being fair. 🙂
Ha!
RoughSeas, you know perfectly well that your differences of opinion with me are actually valuable to me. They make me think. I like that… even if I tend to conclude more often than not that you’re quite mistaken! Rather than find that annoying (or offensive), I find it as refreshing as a good stiff wind off the sea… sometimes with a hint of rain. That you are a wordsmith is a gift that keeps on giving.
I stick with the banning only because the thread started with it and revealed the emphasis on a double standard. Like John Z and many others, I really and truly don’t mind being banned by idiots and crazies and religios (and any combination thereof) so I tend to think of these bans more like badges of honour. It was the reasoning VW used that I questioned, the same kind of reasoning that really is gaining more and more momentum, dividing mostly like-minded and naturally allied people from each other. That’s why I decided to take such a stance and commit so many words to it. I really do think it’s insidious and far too many of us are susceptible to its glamour (oh sure, that word requires a ‘u’ but all my ‘colour’ words receive that nasty and rude squiggly red line. It’s a conspiracy against the Queen’s tongue, I tell you.).
And I agree about teaching gender roles and this shifting idea of what is and is not ‘appropriate’ according to the top-down presumptions from parents. Neither m y spouse nor I suffered from any such constraints in our parenting and things seemed to have worked out just fine… fine, that is, except financially where we’re out quite a lot of money for all the LEGO purchased. In contrast, I grew up with a stick and shoved outside to find its companion ‘dirt’.
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🙂 Thank you for that. Also, it’s precisely because my career has been about words that I remain concerned about their usage, and loathe to see any discussion taken down to below basement level with the excuse that ‘it’s PC’. Use of words is about far more than political intent. I say political with both a small and a large P. There are politics within every minority movement or social grouping and wording IS very important. For example let’s look at medico v social terminology. Clinicians define a person in terms of illness eg a diabetic, the socio thinker describes the person first ie a person with diabetes. Or people with disabilities (not ‘the disabled’) where antiquated thinking describes people as wheelchair bound rather than wheelchair users. One describes a restriction, the other describes a means to get out and about. None of that to me is PC, it’s reflecting how people, of a minority disadvantaged health group wish to be seen positively. And why not? Give me one good reason why we should not respect people’s wishes?
Violet and I also differ, qv this post, despite the fact that we have common goals. But the devil, as ever, is in the detail. Whether it’s feminism, vegetarianism, history, or whatever. My original point on my blog post, was that if we aren’t sufficiently well-informed we should STFU and read and learn first.
I’m afraid when I enforced my only banning I didn’t bother with a fanfare. And my reasoning, known only to myself as it wasn’t announced, was I’m sick of reading this crap. Go insult someone else on another blog. I don’t see that people need a reason to ban. From the sidelines, in Violet’s case, I see an escalation in each case, and basically, one could reduce it to my rationale, ie sick of this now, you’ve gone too far. In the most recent case, ie picking on a minority disadvantaged group – transgender – wasn’t exactly the smartest move. Whether or not it was intended as ‘picking on’ isn’t the point, that’s how it came across. But that leads us into the intent v impact discussion, into which I will not go. Because we won’t agree 😀
I can only speak about toys from childhood experience which makes me a rarity in this world although I’m doing my bit for population control. Interestingly I don’t remember doing anything with dolls, what does one do with them? Apart from put Sindy in a raincoat and wellingtons when it’s raining outside and then get told off for taking her outside? 😀 I also had a black doll (Bella) and a white one (Belinda). They were my two favourites. I knew no black people as a child. I treated Bella and Belinda the same.
But mostly I played with Lego. Or jigsaw puzzles. Or climbed trees until my dad sawed off the lower branches. Or climbed on the roof, until my bedroom window got changed. Controlling parents huh?
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it’s (language) reflecting how people, of a minority disadvantaged health group wish to be seen positively. And why not? Give me one good reason why we should not respect people’s wishes?
And this is just it: the concerns of actual people – individuals – versus the group identity that may or may not be an accurate reflection of those who supposedly constitute it. My preference, of course, is to deal with people straight up and if the language I use is inappropriate for that person, then I immediately respect his or her wishes and alter it accordingly. Communication is a two way street.
What bugs me are the ‘champions’ who speak on behalf of the group as if they represented all of the individuals who populate it and then demanded respect for and obedience to their pronouncements of ‘appropriate’ language I must follow or be vilified (usually with the flippant term ‘arrogant’) as an active member of some oppressive regime.
Yes indeed, the details really are the buggers (no offence to any Bulgarians living or dead intended… do you think I should have started this comment with a trigger warning?).
BTW. I love the “into which I will not go.” Take that treatment, you dangling prepositions!
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My original point on my blog post, was that if we aren’t sufficiently well-informed we should STFU and read and learn first.
Absolutely love this and agree with it 110%!! Not only true for blogs but in the world at large. So wish people (politicians in particular) would follow this axiom.
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Except, our blog host disagrees.
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Indeed. You can never know the infinite detail on every topic. We will always be lacking in pertinent information. At what point do you call it expertise? An undergraduate degree? Doctorate? We’re all woefully ill-informed by the standards of the next person. And we should all be interested in every aspect of life, have opinions and learn from there.
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Well now you are beginning to sound like men who say ‘I know a woman who thinks differently to you, so therefore your points about feminism/sexism are invalid’.
The whole issue is that some people are more politically active than others. My mother had diabetes and dutifully called herself a diabetic. Her ignorance about language doesn’t invalidate someone who is more aware of the connotations of language. The point is, you can’t have a sensible discussion with people who are ill-informed. So no, I don’t buy your individual viewpoint perspective.
But on the other hand, are you not a champion for women’s rights? For bodily autonomy? For the right to choose? For the right of anyone to reject religious ruling? Wherein lies the difference?
I read something earlier about, up with which I will not put, so I couldn’t resist it 😀
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RS, was this comment a response to me?
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Yes. 🙂 sorry, missed the stupid box.or stupid me. Whatever.
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Then let me clear about the ‘groups’ you think I’m championing: I champion individual rights, I respect individuals, I advocate for the restoration and supremacy of individual autonomy.
When a group has been systemically discriminated against, then, sure, I’ll champion the restoration of individual rights…. which look very much like championing the ‘group’ because that’s the basis – the grouping itself – for the discrimination I am trying to reduce! And I’ll stay true to this fundamental enlightenment principle (as much as I can) and criticize anyone’s belief who thinks imposing more of some regressive action will magically turn into some progressive improvement.
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“I’ll champion the restoration of individual rights…. which look very much like championing the ‘group’ because that’s the basis – the grouping itself – for the discrimination I am trying to reduce!”
I mean really, enough said, if you don’t see your fatal stumbling block …
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It seems that Tildeb is not the only one who feels the way he does. Two sides to everything, eh?
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/11/its-time-to-retire-the-pc-police.html
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Carmen, the article you linked to concludes with perfect seriousness and not a hint of irony that “It’s time to retire the PC police — not by legal edict but by ignoring people who whine about it.” ‘It’ in this case means those who act as the PC Police to ‘deal’ with those of us who complain about having someone else’s ‘appropriate’ whatever forced on them. Take the following: here’s today’s example… a nice compilation. But anyone who dares to address these ‘suggestions’ with any kind of criticism should be first vilified and then ignored and then maybe we’ll just go away and stop being such a nuisance to those who know best… because they speak on behalf of a disenfranchized group and that’s why they know best.
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Tildeb and others might like this article, criticising the idea that any attempt by an English speaking American to learn Spanish is cultural appropriation while retaining a measured view of the difficulties particular groups have. That these things can be taken too far does not vitiate the basic idea.
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It’s necessary to watch our own ideologies and cliques at least as carefully as we watch the ones to which we are opposed.
Quite true, and a good conclusion. This is why I think the best guides are the best principles and why I keep on harping about addressing biases and prejudices that in practice have caused real harm to real people through a shift to understanding equality is best achieved through primary respect for individual autonomy and not some artificial group identity.
I think racism, to take but one example, is best addressed by dismantling the notion that race itself is – in all its various specifics – should continue to be used as a meaningful group identity to which individuals ‘belong’… even though I am well aware of how the notion itself has been used to create and sustain privilege for some as well as a source for a constant stream of victims for others. When you have been harmed by some group affiliation based on race, for example, then I understand and empathize how very challenging it is to not to respond in kind.
I think the best way to eliminate the problem of racism is not to use another version of the same rules that continues to empower race as if a meaningful identity but to change – what you call – the playing field entirely into one that rejects racism itself and replaces it with what’s fair and just and tolerant and respectful for all. That’s what kills racism. And I think the same can be true for all kinds of ongoing interactive problems. To paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir, until we see the Other as another version of Us, we will continue to support walls of separation grounded in bias and discrimination and maintain the Us/Them divide.
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What is fair and just and tolerant and respectful? Research shows that Afro-Caribbean men are more likely in Britain to be hospitalised for mental health problems than white men. This may be because what is ordinary exuberance in an Afro-Caribbean man would be seen as manic in a white man. Whose culture should define what is “respectful”?
I am very much against the Us/Them divide, but those who imagine they are against it may still judge others by standards only appropriate in their own culture, not in the others’. And culture is by necessity a group thing.
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Exactly: culture is very much a group thing – and quite variable in practice – and THAT IS WHY WE MUST STOP USING IT for our individual identities!
If we want respect and tolerance and fairness and justice for all, THEN we we must have a universal standard that applies to each of us and this the genius of the enlightenment value of individual autonomy. Each of us possesses the basis for this standard common to everyone. What’s fair for me must by definition be fair to you. John Ralston Saul taught me how this must be done in principle… by offering an analogy of the curtain with chairs on either side that everyone must sit in, and everyone will be subject to have all their rights and freedoms and responsibilities and treatment by law and governance determined by the person sitting in the other chair.
It quickly becomes obvious to anyone doing this thought experiment that the problem is that we may find ourselves assigned to that other chair and so we’d better be very careful about exercising any kind of privilege or bias against anyone, the hypothetical ‘Other’ in that second and hidden chair who may turn out to be ourselves!
In this way, we have a means in principle to find out what our common moral and ethical standard really is, one that each of us thinks is fair, just, tolerant, and respectful. Saul suggests this is how we proceed in our daily treatment of and interactions with others. We are to see ourselves in the Other and behave accordingly.
I think this model works far better in practice (and Saul has written many books about this topic comparing and contrasting various political and social ideologies, my favourite being A Fair Country that offers tremendous insight into the Canadian psyche) than any other position I have yet considered and studied.
By far, the very worst model is assigning rights and freedoms and privileges to group identities not least of which is the very reason I pointed out upthread: individuals can have membership in many groups that when assigned some kind of power or status for that group (always and by necessity must reduce the rights and freedoms and opportunities of others) will come into conflict with power and status awarded to other groups. The individual is is degraded into being a secondary consideration.
So what?
Well, Jefferson addressed this very issue in his “All me are created equal” portion of the Declaration assuming that everyone would properly understand this to be the central criticism of the British premogeniture law that caused the discriminatory problems and grievances he later lists in detail. Implementing group policies causes later and greater problems.
Trying to achieve greater equality of fairness, justice, tolerance, and respect for all by exercising and supporting and advocating group privileging is a disaster-in-waiting. Attributing to group identity the power to define individuals in practice is how institutionalized privilege is born and how it is then supported by public institutions with public approval. TRhis is what I mean by incremental steps towards the extremes.; these policies are doen for the right reasons but end up with the wrong result. And we know this because the products from using this model of privilege are easily available for consideration to anyone who studies any history of any culture that fell into this trap… from tribalism to slavery to colonialism to apartheid to totalitarianism – these forms of final solutions that are the embodiment of this principle in action… but that are demonstrably antithetical to the very values first used to justify implementing and empowering them to effect. What we always end up with are cultures and governments that embed privilege and use the organs of state to maintain them at the direct cost to those individuals outside of the favoured group. Why should anyone concerned with what’s fair, just, tolerant, and respectful offer respect to any such cultural practice that continues this victim-producing social dysfunction?
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Blah blah, big idealistic rant about how the world should be – no reference to reality. And the guy doing the idealistic ranting can’t even follow a simple request on an individual’s blog to avoid using language that affects how that individual is treated. Honestly, is there a mirror near you? If there’s no hope for you, having over-thought this grand theory and claiming you base your life on it, how can you imagine it already works out in the real world? It doesn’t.
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And the guy doing the idealistic ranting can’t even follow a simple request on an individual’s blog to avoid using language that affects how that individual is treated.
Wrong, VW: I never attributed ‘batshit crazy’ to any individual and I never would: I attributed it to beliefs in conflict with reality. That you can’t even grasp this demonstrates your inability to first identify the root of the disagreement: accused of of being inappropriate. That’s why the rationalization for the banning is utter bullshit.
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Still. Still. Still. After what feels like one million words, you don’t understand. It’s mind boggling …
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Okay, this will be my last blah, blah, blah and point out the obvious: by incorporating the principle I’ve talked about and let it lead you in your daily behaviour, it isn’t a matter of should or pie-in-the-sky or some grand philosophy; it’s immediate and makes you responsible for being as fair, as just, as tolerant, and as respectful as you are willing to concede to others right here and right now. That’s the best I can do explaining why it’s important that you demonstrate the values you use to justify your actions rather than their opposite and assume you’re righteousness will magically make the conversion into alignment for you.
Reap what you sew. Do unto others. Cast your bread. How many times and in how many different ways are there to personalize this fundamental idea before you grasp the fact that they pertain as much to how you live your daily life as it does to those you presume to punish for their trespasses beyond your ‘appropriate’ standard?
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Okay Tildeb, thanks for the conversation, and sorry I can’t make sense of where your ideal functions in the real world or how it relates to banning someone with a foul attitude from a little blog. 🙂
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Tildeb, I’ve just found a way to help you understand how unreasonable your position is. Tom from Quiner’s Diner has the same opinion as you! If that doesn’t frighten you into understanding what’s lacking in your viewpoint, then nothing will …
http://quinersdiner.com/2015/11/28/times-change/
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Tut! Atheists debating rationally???
What logical fallacy is that one, again? One of those with Latin names, I’ll warrant. Oh, Violet, imagine all those Christians laughing!
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I think this helps to describe, investigate, consider, and identify what my concerns are: the threat to actual practices by imposing restrictions in the name of ‘appropriateness’.
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I agree, and it was fairly balanced in the process. I can’t think why you think it supports your case. In general, the notion of warning students that some material may be upsetting is a perfectly practical, sensible and considerate thing to do. It shows that educational organisations are developing in positive way. If, as someone suggests, this development is putting pressure on universities to remove material, then quite rightly there should be open discussion, and I would agree that it is most probably taking a good idea too far. One person commented that it’s a generational issue and demonstrates how younger people are looking out for each other more – I think this is true. As I’ve said before, you’re just having the standard older generational response to change – they didn’t do it my day and we’re still alive!! Yes, and I make my kids wear seatbelts in the car too.
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I thought it was well-balanced, too, and so what we heard was a variety of issues at play. I hear them. I consider them. I incorporate them. I am not deaf to them.
You probably failed to notice how the justifications used by various supporters of ‘trigger warnings’ based them on potentially offering aid and comfort to those snowflake unable to deal with the real world without suffering from feelings of exclusion. (Much of this is hypothetical and I suspect imaginary ‘group of victims’ makes these ‘champions’ in favour of trigger warnings feel like they’re doing battle on behalf of the disenfranchized… by actively encouraging the disenfranchizement of others). This argument put forth by supporters was effectively and utterly dismantled by the fact that ‘triggers’ are involuntary and can be caused by anything. Those real people who actually do suffer from triggering have a psychological condition that needs professional treatment. Those who feel uncomfortable from real world disturbing stuff are using this kind of language to try to gild their cage at a very real cost to the freedoms of others. The various administrative policies being brought into being to address ‘triggering’ the vulnerable are really policies to try to offer protection to hypothetical snowflakes by empowering fascist GroupThink ‘champions’. That’s why we don’t find these ‘champions’ outside of sociology and faculties that philosophically align with this GroupThink approach (primarily ‘Women’s Studies)! The important take-away from the discussion was that implementing such group-oriented policies – even when done with the best of intentions – has a very real and chilling effect that first hobbles and then muzzles academic freedom. That is the cost of protecting mostly hypothetical snowflakes from feelings of discomfort.
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This is the practice of the regressive Left in action: where a group claiming to represent feminists ally themselves with a group claiming to represent Islam against a speaker renowned for advancing not just human rights but in particular women’s equality rights. Look at the typical jargon in their press release and try to wrap your head around how this support for maintaining women’s inequality is done in the name of supporting women’s rights!
That’s always the dead give-away: exercising the double standard and acting contrary to the principle of what is supposedly being advocated.
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Again, your stance is completely lacking any reference to the real world. Changes in Islamic practice come most helpfully from within the religion, made by Muslims themselves. This woman is undermining valuable work by feminists within Islam by painting the whole religion as evil. It’s not a practical or sensible way to push for change. I can understand a student body not wanting to support someone like that on their campus.
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Mayam Namazie is undermining valuable work – like legal equality for women – by criticizing a religion that is incompatible with this goal, is she? That she has to live each and every day with a sentence of death and threatened violence against her means what to you? That she deserves this? And how completely have you rejected your values, your principles, your moral standard, when you try to side with those who threaten her life and security for daring to do what needs to be done for any reformation to take place, namely, criticize those religious tenets that are contrary to and incompatible with and used to deny this goal of legal equality?
VW, do you even hear what you’re saying? Do you have grasp at just how far into this relativistic morass you fallen where you support those who would turn you back into the property of some man solely on the basis of your gender and think they were being pious throwing your friend Clare from some rooftop to her death?
What is the matter with your brain these days?
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An excellent and insightful article with good links and commentary well worth reading.
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Honestly, the whole attitude is disgusting. Those cartoons are foul. Poor elite students having to think about what they say! And the Victimhood Culture? Why can’t all the oppressed minorities just suck up the discrimination and get over it? They won’t? Well, let’s give them demeaning group name for daring to suggest other people should show them any consideration. After all, who would want to treat such an irritating group as individuals??
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We have different needs, and different tastes. Universal standards only fit Procrustes- that is, fit no-one.
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Sure they do, Clare: throughout each and every day by living the principle to the best of your ability. In that way, you become the change you want to achieve. How much more personal and relevant can it get?
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Another thread needed, again. It is impossible to find a place to reply or to read the argument in order.
Please stop using the word “snowflake”. My own functioning in the world is significantly reduced by the rejection and hate I have suffered. You have no idea how resilient I am.
I wondered what equally unfair word I could use, and I come up with psychopath. A psychopath is incapable of empathy.
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Actually, Tildeb, I have read further information about the fellow who wrote that article, Malcolm Harris. If I had done my homework, I would never have linked to the above article. As people say, “My bad!” 😦
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The misleading title is not your fault, C,and falling for this kind of dishonesty is something all of do from time to time..
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Violetwisp,
I’m replying at the bottom of the thread because it’s just the easiest way to reply – and I’m all about taking the easy way out! 🙂
I have started to type a reply twice now, and ended up not pressing ‘Send’. To say I didn’t like the way this thread evolved would be an understatement. Here’s a couple of things I’m having trouble with:
There are people who commented on this thread whose suggestions were completely ignored and/or were treated derisively. For instance, Ruth – one of the most diplomatic and patient people I’ve run across – tried her best (several times) to sooth ruffled feathers. Her attempts fell flat and she withdrew from the conversation. Violet tried, unsuccessfully, to make points – again, *crickets*. KIA, himself, tried to re-direct and asked for clarification. . as far as I could see, he was labelled ‘the enemy’ and anything he tried to say after that was met with hostility. And Arch. I have read through – yet again – the comments on this entry and I still do not see that his comments were any more ‘over the top’ than the nasty, hurtful, pointed comments that you and Clare made; comments – in my mind, anyway – that alienated not only the person they were directed to, but also other commenters who had no idea where the hostility was coming from.
NOW, don’t think for one moment that I have no compassion for Clare and her circumstances. I have compassion for every person who’ve had negative experiences in their lives, as many of the people mentioned above have (and ARE) experiencing, as well. I understand that you feel that – bottom line, here – any kind of criticism about Clare’s methods are a sign that one is critical of Clare herself, but I think you missed the point Tildeb has been trying to establish. That line, “If we ban offensive speech, how we will know who the assholes are?” has merit. (I also recognize my own precarious position on that list) 😉
Also, it is worth pointing out that the people who DID try to make points and involved themselves in a discussion to LEARN something have now gone silent. I cannot think that THAT’s what you had in mind when you wrote this post. Of course, that brings the conversation back to the ‘banning’ issue, which is certainly a definite door-slamming activity in itself. Although I can see the point, at times, I also am able to understand what Tildeb is trying to say, in this particular incident.
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No. You are wrong.
> Violet tried, unsuccessfully, to make points – again, *crickets*.
No. For example, tree-Violet rebuked me about using the word “Massa” and I have repented. At the moment I used the word, though, I was triggered, right back in my terror and despair. Triggered. Look it up. Or, if you do understand the word, go on, tell me I was not, or that I am not traumatised, or something. Look at my comments: sometimes I am dismissive, but I have given a huge amount of explanation here, to continual sniping from Tryxie.
That is the point you miss with “any kind of criticism about Clare’s methods are a sign that one is critical of Clare herself”. The criticism of my methods came when I was at my most vulnerable, and tree-Violet later saw that. I have accepted the criticism.
> KIA, himself, tried to re-direct and asked for clarification.
No. The only question KIA asked was “am I just too Victorian to assume that we are what our genetics make us, not necessarily what we want to be? (covering head and running for dear life)”. I answered him, explaining the situation, though dismissing his perspective as ignorant and self-satisfied. He then made a further self-righteous comment, that “government should play no part in it”- so I should not be protected from discrimination, or have medical treatment I need?
He never asked for clarification. However when you asked for “further enlightenment” I gave it as well as I could. The problem is, words to the effect of “They’re all men. It is ridiculous” are the simple, knee-jerk reaction. That is the perfect troll-comment: understanding requires lengthy, detailed explanation, which I cannot always be bothered giving, because it is all over the internet. Look it up yourself!
As for Ruth, see the generally favourable response to her comments, and my mostly friendly dialogue with her. Except when wound up. I should not comment at 5am. But I apologised for that, quickly, saying “I was unduly harsh”.
If you want to come over as the wise friend, seeking to reduce conflict and promote understanding, get your facts straight.
What do you think of Tryxie’s comment “I would throw you out too”? Look at the context, what he was replying to, and defend it. He was trying to trigger me, again. And do you not think that my interpretation of his “go well” comment is correct?
As for group rights v individual rights, or some way of enhancing both, it really does not matter what we think or say here. It is a blog, not the UN. Others have gone silent, perhaps, because Tildeb’s position is only tangentially relevant to the thread.
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Hi Carmen, thanks for your thoughts. I’m sorry you’re not finding the interactions here to your taste. I’m finding the whole thing really interesting – the ‘incident’, the ongoing conversations and responses from every side.
First of all, about how some comments have been treated. I’ve tried to keep up with everything but some days I have a good chunk of time, some days a little, and some days none. I guess some comments slip by, or I don’t get much from them personally and don’t have time to acknowledge them, or someone else replies and I think it’s taken care of.
If you think I’ve ‘mishandled’ any of Ruth’s comments particularly, I’m very disappointed. I hope she doesn’t feel the same way. Her input was fantastic, particularly when it was getting nasty, and I always value her contribution immensely. I assume she’s gone quiet because she’s sick of it or simply bored by it, and I understand that. Violet I sometimes don’t agree with and have no desire to lock horns with her, as I respect her. Also, she has a close blogging friendship with Arch, he’s been very supportive to her, so I expect she’s offended enough by his banning to have marched off. That’s her decision. KIA/Mike doesn’t like confrontation and clearly had no interest is finding out more from Clare after what happened. Fine, his decision.
” I still do not see that his comments were any more ‘over the top’ than the nasty, hurtful, pointed comments that you and Clare made; comments – in my mind, anyway – that alienated not only the person they were directed to, but also other commenters who had no idea where the hostility was coming from.”
I’ve met Clare, she’s a lovely, gentle and thoughtful woman. I’ve read her blog on and off for almost three years. I know her quite well, in terms of blogland interactions. I involved myself in the manner I did because (I think, at least) I understand some of where she’s coming from and where she’s been. Arch’s attitude towards her was vile – smug, patronising, goading. He wound her up and when he didn’t get the fawning outcome he anticipated as the self-designated (biased) peacemaker, he threw out several remarks I found cruel, including his final one that was intolerable, for me at least. For those of you who didn’t see the nuances in some of those remarks, or who think it was no worse than what we were dishing, that’s fine. Everyone has their own perspective.
“That line, “If we ban offensive speech, how we will know who the assholes are?” has merit.”
I don’t think there are definitive assholes. There are people who don’t measure the experiences of others to be of relevance or who have evaluated life differently. If they are encouraged to platform their views because ‘discussion is great!’ then they feel validated. Do we invite the Westbro Baptist Church to discuss the legalisation of gay marriage or allow their members to run riot on public forums? I banned Higharka a while back because he was posting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on my blog, and suggesting everything I said supported her/him. It was tiring and unpleasant, and he had a platform. Pink hated my blog (and me) and came on every post to tell me how useless I am – he’s entitled to his opinion – but it’s tiring and unpleasant. I banned him too.
“Also, it is worth pointing out that the people who DID try to make points and involved themselves in a discussion to LEARN something have now gone silent. I cannot think that THAT’s what you had in mind when you wrote this post.”
It’s an old post, people have other things to do. People got offended and slammed the door themselves, it’s a two-way process. 😀
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Oh! ❤ ❤ ❤
❤ I’ve met Clare, she’s a lovely, gentle and thoughtful woman. ❤ ❤
Can I use that as a tag line??
You illustrate the great value of respect, which perhaps is what I should take from this.
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I don’t know what that means, but I’m bracing myself for having put my foot in it.
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There was no irony in my comment at all. There is none in this, either. ❤ seems to me a more American, particular kind of "feminine", way of self-expression, I am a hard-bitten Scot (see above) and still the ❤ was sincere.
All joking apart, I have read that "lovely, gentle and thoughtful" line several times, gaining pleasure and peace from it. Your friendship here has sustained me. My last line about "respect" was intended to be read as a sort-of apology: respect must be won, may be forfeited, and has value. It was intended to be a judgment only on myself, and no-one else.
❤
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Ah OK, I see. I’m on my phone and only saw “oh!” in the notification. I can see it all now. I’m glad I didn’t say something awful. Unlike Tildeb, I’m aware I’ve not been there and my understanding is partial …
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I have this weird idea I am a pacifist…
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Tildeb, your latest “Trigger warning” broadcast: I am glad to find I can listen to CBC over here. I found it a balanced programme, and not showing any great cause for concern. Best thing said: those concerned about trigger warnings, and those wanting them, both want the same thing, an engaged class talking of difficult issues in a safe space. As a commenter there said, it is courtesy 101.
Triggering exists. Tryxie mentioned seeing “merely a cross-dresser” and I was triggered, back in the misery of being abused in the street, which used to make me depressed for days and frightened to go out. I am a direct challenge to a large minority of people, who imagine that their way of seeing the world is the only way, that we are what our genetics make us etc. Sometimes they get violent.
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