introducing the victims of PC
Offending is the unavoidable byproduct of honest conversation. (Tildeb)
For those of you who haven’t noticed, we live in a much smaller world. It’s a world where everyone has a voice and everyone can find a platform. It’s a world where we come to know the intimate stories and experiences of people from wildly different backgrounds, people with wildly different life experiences.
Our understanding of other people is no longer limited to a small community around us and a relatively small selection of stories that have been printed on paper. People with what would have been considered fringe experiences in life are finding networks of people online who have had similar experiences. They share their stories and find a stronger voice.
As a result of all this, our sense of empathy with mistreated, oppressed and disenfranchised groups within all societies has grown. We read stories of pain, distress and trauma and groan at our ignorance, flinch at the actions and words we have insensitively used in the past and easily adjust our behaviour and our vocabulary accordingly.
Or do we?
It’s come to my attention that there is an angry and intransigent group of people who aren’t concerned about the effect their actions or words have on any group of people. Their paramount concern is that their established thinking and form of expression is never inconvenienced, that they can continue their righteous crusade wielding whatever words they feel are appropriate, and that anyone with a problem should simply ‘get over it’.
Readers, may I introduce to you the sensitive snowflakes in our midst, the victims of a world in which politically correct language and thinking, has undeniably gone mad. Here a few mind-boggling examples.
- People on blogs are writing about their feelings and experiences of discrimination, victimisation and marginalisation and they expect their stories of distress, pain and tragedy to be taken seriously, even asking Victims of PC to be understanding and think about modifying their behaviour.
- People on blogs are banning other individuals from commenting on the basis that they find the language or ideas of Victims of PC to be offensive.
- Organisations have been known to deplatform Victims of PC to make a point that their views aren’t welcome.
Let’s give the Victims of PC a voice, a place they can feel safe. Let’s listen to their story. There is nothing wrong with charging through life ignoring the needs and sensitivities of others. In fact, it’s something that able-bodied, middle class, white, heterosexual, cis-gender men have been used to for generations.
I think you raise the very heart of the problem (ironic use of the term ‘heart’, coming from me, that is, wouldn’t you say?)
For many years I have advocated for individual autonomy and respect for that. When I took sociology, I realized that this ‘field’ of study was about groups… groups formulated by fiat. And then I noticed that people began taking on not their own identity (what King called the ‘quality of our character’) but created a mosaic of various group identities… as if these groups were real ‘things’. My issue was that they were not. They still aren’t. They are constructed based on all kinds of criteria for membership.
Nowadays we have rights and privileges being assigned to group identities. This is a travesty because what we have in common is our individual autonomy but what we find happening is a suppression – sometimes by a lack of respect, sometimes by imposed law and enforcement – of individual autonomy in the name of ‘protecting’ or ‘promoting’ or ‘enhancing’ some group identity.
This shift in awareness away from respecting the autonomy of real people in real life and into the constructs of sociological models – very often rationalized into being by a sense of victimhood – is not our friend but an insidious and destructive enemy of our shared rights and freedoms. Believing in group identities as if they were real and autonomous things in and of themselves is not just credulous but opens the door to gullibility and very real abuse of individuals. Be careful what you wish for, VW; you might just get it.
LikeLike
I think I understand what you’re saying, and agree with you to a certain extent. People are people, we should all be treated equally regardless of any circumstances in our life. That bit’s easy, most people agree in principle.
However, the fact is that we generalise and stereotype people as a shortcut to understanding them – the variety in life is overwhelming. Most of our judgement is based on experience, and what we experience is people with certain characteristics aren’t in prominent roles, people with certain experiences that don’t constitute the majority are misunderstood, underestimated and marginalised. In principle, we know this is wrong, but in practice, unless we make a true and forceful effort, we will continue with the unbalanced status quo.
“Bias cannot be avoided, we just can’t help ourselves. Research shows that we apply different standards when we compare men and women.”
Just one small example from one group traditionally discriminated against. The number of women in orchestras has risen since blind auditions were introduced.
You won’t be surprised to know that I’m all for positive discrimination throughout every aspect of life to increase the number of people from groups who have traditionally been left out of everything. Everyone always thinks they’re doing a job because they’re the ‘best’, but no, they just won a competition of easy pigeon-hole. Your face fits. Change will take forever and a day if we don’t force it.
I’m not afraid what I wish for, I’m excited to see a drive for positive, thoughtful change in society.
I’ve said it before Tildeb, you’d make a great Christian with your doom and gloom proclamations of a world gone mad (just like sin and the devil) and your hunger to keep the injustices of our culture because it suits your fear of change, and your inability to see life through the eyes of others.
LikeLike
your hunger to keep the injustices of our culture because it suits your fear of change, and your inability to see life through the eyes of others.
See? This is the incremental vilification I’m talking about. It is not even distantly related to what’s true.
Awarding group identity legal rights (which is the public expression of recognizing and addressing group injustices) does in part exactly what neither of us wants: empowering stereotypes and reducing the individual into a cardboard cut-out to which we assign character.
How so?
Well, to explain, I require a lengthy comment not to rant but to actually explain why this is the case.
Let me give you an example to start:
We artificially select 100 men based on a standard we create, in this case 50 healthy ‘white’ and 50 healthy ‘black’ men all of the same age. We hold a race and record all the finishing times. Now we get busy doing our sociology work.
We find that just over half the ‘blacks’ finish with a faster time than the ‘whites’. We gleefully pronounce that a recent ‘study’ shows that on average ‘blacks’ run faster than ‘whites’ (which in this case is statistically true) so, being good standing members of the regressive Left, we then use this justification to institute special publicly funded conditioning classes for ‘white’ males starting in elementary school. No ‘blacks’ need attend and, in fact, won’t be accepted or funded into this special program. If a ‘black’ tries, then we vilify that person for trying to maintain ‘privilege’. How very forward thinking of us while claiming we are trying to produce an egalitarian ‘society’ on behalf of its disenfranchized!
But are we really?
Not only do we conveniently ignore the fact that almost half of ‘white’ men run faster than almost half of the ‘black’ men, we empower the idea that the colour of our skin somehow determines and/or influences running ability, that the ‘black’ness of men somehow expresses itself in greater running speed than the ‘white’ness does for other men… and that we should take action to ‘correct’ this ‘social’ imbalance. We forget in our rush to ‘fix’ a social problem we have ‘identified’ that this connection has not been established but assumed… perhaps incorrectly by the sociologists who expect everyone to go along with the charade that group identity is a real ‘thing’.
But the effect from such fixed conclusions is exactly what racism is: granting to people the semblance of ‘knowledge’ to attribute to skin colour certain abilities, certain characteristics, certain components of what constitutes the character of real people when applied to some artificial standard of belonging.
And we love our group standards because it’s easier to categorize the world into chunks we prefer, chunks that allow us to assume our biases are true (that skin colour affects ability) than it is to see the world as it really is… that all of us are far greater in abilities and character than, say, the colour of our skin in this case.
In order for us to develop and express the quality of our character, we first must confront the root of our biases and targeted discriminations. This is what Reverend King and many other philosophers of note was trying to get through our thick skulls: we must allow our perception of others to be based on how we wish to be perceived, fairly and with respect to our character and real abilities, to stop categorizing people on these artificial and socially powered constructs that themselves contain non-egalitarian assumptions, And we can start to do this only when we reject group identities as meaningful in and of themselves but imported to and imposed on the individuals who supposedly populate them. I think we must institute practices of perception based on the principle of empowering values common to all. This breaks the Us/Them construct necessary to lead us by the nose to insidious and pernicious and all too common bias and discrimination we apply to others.
You continue to presume that my interest in promoting this universal respect for the autonomy of the individual over and above any respect for some group identity somehow enables white man superiority. Quite the opposite. I strive to see people as the individual aggregate they really are. I treat all people as I would myself, with the same expectation for respect for our shared rights and freedoms. I do not treat people by assuming their gender determines anything, that their racial profile establishes anything, that their ethnicity ordains their behaviour, that their religious beliefs causes their ethics, that their sexual preference determines their morality, and so on. My biases and prejudices about others based on group identities have been proved wrong over and over again. I may be slow and sometimes wrong but I really do learn and can correct my mistakes.
I don’t ever empower the standard of what constitutes a ‘black’ or ‘white’ person; I see a person. I don’t ever empower the standard of what constitutes a ‘male’ or ‘female’ person; I see a person. I don’t see people as a member of some artificially constructed group to which others have applied standards of meaning (which may or may not have any bearing on that person); I see individuals.
To achieve an egalitarian society to me means treating everyone as the individual they are… not equal in all abilities but as an aggregate of their own…. an aggregate with the same rights and freedoms and expectation to be treated fairly as I have.
I do not fear change nor have any wish for injustices to remain under my watch. I worked to remove barriers from equality of opportunity for real people in real life. For example, simple access to the public domain should not be constrained by ledges and curbs and stairs and raised controls but accessible to all regardless of physical impairments. I’m not physically challenged but some of my friends are so I became aware of these impediments and so I did what I could do. That doesn’t make me a saint but it does make me real enough to be an agent for some small measure of egalitarian effect. So we have to work at getting braille plates into the public domain, work at getting elevator controls accessible to the seated, ramps and elevators put into public schools and public buildings, and so on. Equality of opportunity is important to apply and it does require effort but not because I assign victim standards to the disabled but because I respect OUR common right to have the same access to the public domain.
It’s not up to me to determine for others what their abilities are and what quality of character they should have according to some artificial group standard I empower with my assumptions that may be (and probably are) biased and prejudiced; it is up to me to treat all others as the individuals they really are, as I would wish to be treated given the same circumstances.
Imagine trying to vilify, say, Jews to a population that treats all people as the individuals they really are. I think the vilification would not just fall on deaf ears but be derided for the GroupThink nonsense such a standard really is. The same is true for, say, apartheid policies that really do establish rights based on these group identities. You see, in principle, the GroupThink framework for, say, what constitutes the ‘homeless’ is no better and just as dis-empowering to all the individuals who require shelter aid for different reasons and with different rectifying solutions.
I think that change of perspective away from empowering group identities and refocused on the individuals who supposedly populate them would go a very long way to making ours a better world society for all the individuals who constitute its population. I think it’s a far better legacy than, say, creating artificial ‘safe’ places for ‘blacks’ at local colleges and universities. That’s racist and no amount of rationalizing is going to turn it into anything other than what it is: a race-based policy in the name of reducing racism.
LikeLike
Nice. I think we’re getting somewhere. Well, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying an inch further forward than you did, but I certainly understand where you’re coming from.
Clare’s analogy on the other post that she just left this morning is useful to this stage in the discussion. You’re assuming that an equilibrium will be achieved if we simply want it and acknowledge it’s fair. “Treat everyone like individuals and equality will take care of itself!”
But as Clare said, life for some people is charging down a slope with the ball heading straight to the goal, while others are having to go the other way, a difficult struggle uphill with ball that’s 10 times heavier. You’re suggesting the playing field is level, that everyone has the same opportunity if we simply say it’s the best thing to do. You’re ignoring reality.
I get the perceived harm in grouping people together with a ‘disadvantaged’ label. You’re in agreement with Insanitybytes on this one (which should give you pause for thought). A culture of victimhood I think she calls it, encouraging people to believe they’re hard done by.
What can I say? I think it’s more harmful to ignore the fact that people with specific characteristics are routinely discriminated against and face more challenges and difficulties than people without those characteristics. Do you expect they should fight for change as individuals? Why on earth would they not group together with others who experience similar problems?
Your running example is atrocious and reveals the deep flaws in your logic. In this example, you are suggesting that limitations could be placed on people because of certain characteristics, which has nothing to do with the fact that people are limited because of discrimination in society and are fighting for this to be redressed.
“And we can start to do this only when we reject group identities as meaningful in and of themselves but imported to and imposed on the individuals who supposedly populate them.”
Fine. How do we do this, when people routinely discriminate against other groups of people? When it’s been going on for generations with only tiny shifts. Did you look at the article about gender bias in orchestras? I mean, for goodness sake, if people evaluating musical output are influenced by what they see, can you not understand how much deeper it goes, in every aspect of life, for everyone that doesn’t fit the ‘ideal’ stereotype? Positive discrimination is the only way to make real change happen in less than 10 generations. We can all spout our desire for equality, but everyone is prejudiced because our cultures have evolved that way and it takes a loooooong time to wash out.
You’re confusing idealistic thinking with the reality of the human animal. People from disadvantaged groups want change now, obviously, and you can only achieve this by making yourself heard. What was the most influential factor in women getting the right to vote in the UK? Emily Davidson throwing herself under a horse. What do conservative Christians hate about gay people? That they are loud and proud, after forever hiding in the shadows feeling ashamed and ‘wrong’. The mainstream never likes it when previously marginalised groups get a voice. It’s uncomfortable, loud, sometimes violent. But unfortunately swearing up to the Golden Rule doesn’t bring change.
“I think it’s a far better legacy than, say, creating artificial ‘safe’ places for ‘blacks’ at local colleges and universities. That’s racist and no amount of rationalizing is going to turn it into anything other than what it is: a race-based policy in the name of reducing racism.”
I take it you’re not a black person at a local college or university. Have you spoken to anyone who is about what this means for them? I doubt it.
I’ve admitted I see your point. Can you admit there might be aspects of belonging to an-artificially-labelled-but-real disadvantaged group that you simply don’t understand? Can you admit that your desire for equality based on individuals cannot translate into action or change?
LikeLike
I think it’s more harmful to ignore the fact that people with specific characteristics are routinely discriminated against and face more challenges and difficulties than people without those characteristics.
Hang on, VW. I ignored no such thing. This false criticism you raise is exactly why I included the example of working to rectify a discriminatory practice of limiting access to the public domain regarding the disabled. I specifically addressed the notion of working to establish equality of opportunity. I am NOT ignoring discrimination and I am NOT ignoring problems of equal opportunity. I am criticizing practices antithetical to the reason used to impose it on others (creating racial spaces to supposedly ‘fight’ racial inequality). Only when we dis-empower the very notion of race-determining-character-or-ability will we eliminate this urge (or need) to tilt the playing field on the basis of race. How we do this matters. And I keep saying it starts with each of us not to allow our standard of ‘race’ to affect equality of fair and just and respectful and tolerant treatment of others in any way.
I try my best to use principle to evaluate practice. I want the playing field of what constitutes fair and just and respectful and tolerant actions to be based on equality values. It’s not equal to privilege some over others without a cause that promotes equality (for example, making access common for all) And that means recognizing that the principle of equality is not being met when physical impediments cause unequal access for those with disabilities.
Individuals possess rights. All individuals posses the same rights. Groups do not. When we allow groups to have legal privileges then we create in practice a nightmare of conflicting rights because those who make up the ‘team’ in this case might be on another ‘team’ for that case. Sometimes these teams for which the field has been tilted find that they are in conflict and so the individual members who finds him- or herself on both has a very real problem! This facing the tilted field is the very problem we’re trying to eliminate!
The reason for this is because tilting it for rationalized ‘team’ reasons is no better than tilting it for individual reasons. That’s the root of privilege, of discrimination (although sometimes equal discrimination against all is quite reasonable and necessary… think of driving rules, for example). Rationalizing the intentional tilting of a field is not now and never shall be a way to level it; rather, it’s a way to guarantee ongoing discrimination and privilege. And sometimes even that is quite reasonable if it promotes equality (for example, higher wages in places with higher costs of living). Keeping the principle of equality before us – and not our later-rationalized subjective and relative tangential factors like ‘appropriateness’ – allows us to evaluate whether or not our actions promote or hinder what it is we’re trying to accomplish: to create a fair and just and respectful and tolerant society… a population, let us never forget, made up of individuals first and foremost.
LikeLike
“I am NOT ignoring discrimination and I am NOT ignoring problems of equal opportunity.”
Yes, you are. You only acknowledge it in areas you can see through your blinkers. Equality of access for people with physical disabilities is an easy one. Everything else is invisible to you. People living with discrimination day to day who are insulted, should simply suck it up and get over it. Or stay quiet to show their displeasure. People with mental health problems don’t understand what being marginalised means and should accept that their condition is a throwaway derogatory insult to be used on a whim. If we all wish hard enough for individuals to be treated as individuals, the world will change!
“I am criticizing practices antithetical to the reason used to impose it on others (creating racial spaces to supposedly ‘fight’ racial inequality). Only when we dis-empower the very notion of race-determining-character-or-ability will we eliminate this urge (or need) to tilt the playing field on the basis of race.”
True. But you need to think of it in terms of short-term, medium-term and long-term goals. In the long-term, your vision is valid. For people today living with discrimination and inequality you need to listen to what they need. Stop talking over everyone. They need to have a voice, and if they feel they need safe spaces in a world still completely lacking your Utopian ideals, what is your objection?
“When we allow groups to have legal privileges then we create in practice a nightmare of conflicting rights because those who make up the ‘team’ in this case might be on another ‘team’ for that case.”
Give me an example.
LikeLike
Wisp, are you revving everyone up as some sort of Bad Weather experiment?
LikeLike
Tee hee. I was just thinking of doing a post explaining that I am no longer pregnant or breast-feeding and my ‘tone’ may have changed for people who started reading my blog when I was on a different chemical trip. I felt woozily benevolent in that period, and now I’m just back to feeling annoyed that people DON’T GET IT. Well, kind of … maybe just sleep deprived.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There, there… You’re right, and everyone else is wrong. Now, to bed. I’m sure the weather is conducive to sleeping. Think of watermelons.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks John, I knew you were on my side! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
They need to have a voice, and if they feel they need safe spaces in a world still completely lacking your Utopian ideals, what is your objection?
No one is taking away anyone’s voice. My objection is that when the principle of creating a ‘safe space’ comes at the expense of another’s rights and/or freedoms – making them far less safe – then we’re once again acting in a way contrary to the justification used. Nowhere is this more absurd than re-configuring the university square with banning ‘inappropriate’ books so that snowflakes can feel ‘safe’. Universities are supposed to make you question your assumptions, biases, and prejudices. Supplanting this by removing anything that makes you question anything about anything with cuddly toys and petting zoos and racially based areas hardly achieves the reason why one goes to a university in the first place.
You ask for examples of conflicting group rights upheld by law. Again, the examples for incompatible group membership are legion… especially for tax purposes! Off the top of my head, in Canada, for example, indigenous people often face institutionalized discrimination expressed as funded social polices for, say, women on the one hand and funded band membership on the other. Can’t possibly be both, apparently, and they cancel each out in practice. In another case, spouses that gain membership into a tribal family through mandatory marriage have then been ejected from reserve land because their ‘blood’ is the wrong kind, which is legally binding only in tribal law! In other cases, children have died because the parental cultural right protected by law preempts the legal requirement to provide medical care in the same law. As I said, the examples are legion and they are pernicious because they remove the individual from being the source of legal autonomy and shifts this source to vague and uncertain group standards.
LikeLike
I’m not sure Davison did throw herself under a horse. I’ve been reading around as it came up in a book I’m editing, rather that she was trying to pin something on the horse that reflected the suffrage movement. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/26/emily-davison-suffragette-death-derby-1913
Plus, there was a trend towards female suffrage eg NZ, Australia, Scandinavia; and Britain, as head of the colonies, democracy and all that crap was going to look really stupid if it didn’t give women the vote. Even if the first measure was half-arsed.
That’s not to deny the importance of the suffragettes, but rather to say it was a combination of events not just Davison’s death at Epsom.,
LikeLike
I was fascinated to read “The Feminist guide to being a foodie without being culturally appropriative,” which Tildeb linked dismissively, as an example of the “Regressive Left”, but I see as showing respect to individuals and moving away from exploitative power relations between groups.
Mine is a group identity. There is a particular way of being “a trans woman” which I conform to. It is alien to conventional views of men and women, and is a negotiation, between us and what the wider society will accept, despite strident expressions of disgust and derision from some quarters. We are mostly tolerated within these parameters, which give me freedom to express myself more fully than I could, presenting male.
I see different people thinking differently, polemic or eirenic: the frank exchange of views to get to Truth, or hearing all sides and bringing all into the one big group, to find a more inclusive, multi-faceted truth. I am definitely on the eirenic side. (Attentive readers will remember me tearing Kia’s throat out- I am quite sure I am not being hypocritical and inconsistent here, but can’t be bothered explaining why.)
I miss you from my blog! You have not commented there for ages!
LikeLike
“I was fascinated to read “The Feminist guide to being a foodie”
Yes, it was fascinating! I need to thank Tildeb for that and encourage him to keep finding these pieces. I’m particularly interested because I totally understand why it’s laughable to him, I used to feel exactly the same way. And still, there were parts of it that amused me, but overall I felt I learned something, and could feel the author’s frustration.
I agree with your assessment of yourself, although I had to google eirenic to get there. You were furious with Kia, or simply wanted a reaction, either way I know you were looking for a discussion.
I still don’t have quite enough time to read and comment on every blog I’d like to, but I think I’m getting there. I saw your post about the man who believed he had the soul of Jesus and Buddha in him, but couldn’t think of much to say. Also, from what I have seen on my reader, there seems to be a much bigger concentration of purely personal ones. You’ve changed style in the last year – I’m sure it suits where you are, but you’re not exposing any Blogland Bigots, which is where we have overlapped.
LikeLike
I follow my market. Trans sites show interest, including T-central, and I got four hundred views from Reddit and crossdreaming on Understanding Trans– to summarise, “Loads of people will tell you you are delusional but if you want it, go for it”- so I fulfil a need. But none of them ever comment.
I don’t do the Christian blogs much. I have done it all before. Here’s a recent one, “Gay Marriage: a Stench in God’s Nostrils” but being happy that his view of God, the Bible, Jesus, human beings etc vitiates any claim he has to following Jesus, I don’t want to understand any more. Sometimes I find nice Christians.
Apart from that, I am trying to live with myself, and bear my own existence, and exploring that in public. That has always been my main purpose here.
LikeLike
I don’t get it.
LikeLike
Awww. *pat on the head*
LikeLike
Actually, I don’t think many people will. It was a post specifically for Tildeb, we’ve been having a long discussion on the back of his banning by SB and my banning of Arch. I think this article covers some of what I was trying to say in my own muddled way:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkeman-column/2014/nov/13/political-correctness-science-conservatives-liberals
LikeLike
Yes, muddled.
You banned Arch? When?
LikeLike
Ooh, how very dare you not heap fake praise on my finely crafted post! Muddled indeed.
You’re clearly not in any way a lurker:
https://violetwisp.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/4328/#comment-23480
Brief summary, he jumped in to protect the honour of mike from mikeandbrandy, who received a tongue-lashing from Clare. In doing so got into a nasty exchange with Clare and made some unacceptably rude comments. I know he’s your friend so I won’t go into how annoying he was generally, that he made more comments than me on this blog, most of them irrelevant and many for the purposes of flirting with female bloggers.
Anyway, Tildeb is now fighting for the thin thread on which our right of free speech hangs. Because he got banned from a blog too (I’m sure you know about that one, at least).
LikeLike
I’m getting banned left right and centre!
LikeLike
Cool! Who by? You should join Tildeb’s crusade, he really needs the support. 😀
LikeLike
But he has a full superhero outfit, and all I have is giant red clown shoes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmmm, maybe that’s part of the problem, he’s got all confused by his gravatar. He’s won the fight against religion and now he’s looking for a Worse Crime Against Humanity to fight. Which is undoubtedly the Crime of marginalised people grouping to together and asking for change.
LikeLike
That’s simply because you are Australian.
I think it’s the accent? or the hat.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Granted, my choice of socks is typically atrocious. I can understand the repulsion.
LikeLike
You wear sock? Is this on orders from your wife or is it a mandatory thing in Brazil?
PS. You having fun with Phadde? lol….
He is a grade A serious Dickhead.
LikeLike
He’s diamond-encrusted fuckwit.
LikeLike
Let me assist you there, Zande.
”He’s diamond-encrusted (profanity deleted).”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Much better.
LikeLike
LOL!
LikeLike
Watch your language please.
LikeLike
May i swear in Portuguese? 😉
LikeLike
You too. Save the personal insults and foul language for your butterfly posts.
LikeLike
Moi? Butter wouldn’t melt in it.
Pure as driven snow, I am.
LikeLike
Pingback: caught in the middle – are gender differences real? | violetwisp