ITT: Social Justice, #10

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1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

This is sort of an odd question, since ‘norms’ implies community standards rather than individual standards. Like, at the moment I’m in a rationalist-adjacent space, so those are the norms that are operating, right? So I’ll answer it both ways:

In terms of personal preferences, I guess I’m mostly just shy? Less so offline than on. Not ‘highly conscientious’ in the way that phrase is deployed around here, but I don’t naturally express myself very well, and when I do it’s pretty deliberate. (Thanks for actually asking for philosophical essays about social justice, by the way! If you hadn’t asked I probably never would have written out such an essay, let alone for public consumption.)

As far as the sort of community norms that I prefer, I’m pretty enchanted with the whole ‘competing access’ conversation that’s happening right now, and I hope that spreads. It’s sort of a meta-norm, of course, but it seems like an absolutely fabulous way to head off many of the most harmful collisions before they become a problem at all. I think the original example was between a religious and an atheist community- where doctrine can be a source of support and community for one person, but another (perhaps one who has a history of suffering spiritual abuse) would be harmed by that same community, and needs a space where they can make irreverent jokes and post that one cartoon about Wrfhf naq gur Ohqqun having gay sex.

That might also be a sort of answer to the second question of part one, which is a somewhat nuanced yes. Object-level norms can and should vary depending on the needs of the community, but it’s very interesting to think about a kind of ‘universal syntax’ that respects our differences and nurtures our self-expression while still allowing us to hear one another and seek one another out. In fact, I’d say that such a thing is necessary within any future that isn’t basically colonial in nature. If you can’t understand people on their own terms, you have no place else to go- either you stay trapped on your own small island of experience, or (if you have power) you expand your own borders by contorting the people around you into comprehensible shapes. Both leave you stuck. So a lot of what we mean by ‘progress’ is a matter of developing an increasingly flexible and useful language for expanding our circle of real empathy. Not for nothing is it called ‘The Discourse’.

2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

There are no good masters.

Most obviously true back when ‘master’ was used without pretense, of course. The legal mastery of men over women (‘mister’), the mastery of slaveowners over slaves. These institutions created (and still create) unimaginable volumes of suffering. But an important question is, why are these practices synonymous with the worst degrees of injustice? What about these practices makes it so easy to see the moral depravity?

And I think the answer comes down to the fact that in these situations, one person becomes the tool of another in a totally explicit way. They have a sharply reduced voice in their own futures, because their actions are externally mandated. But in the same way that you can only ever see half a sphere unless you’re inside it, ‘mastery’ must necessarily be limited by an outside perspective. Even when a master thinks of themselves as looking out for their property and doing what’s best for them, the choices they make about our future are less well informed than the choices we make ourselves.

This is true of any method of control. Street harassers sometimes say that they honestly think that they’re paying women a compliment, and maybe they genuinely think they’re acting for some specific or common good. So do the religious conservatives who tell gay people that they can’t get married, the employers who give employees a choice between paternity leave and access to healthcare, the psychiatrists who construct arbitrary barriers between trans people and hormone therapy, the ‘true fans’ who give themselves the right to decide who’s really a geek, the autocrats who build a wall across the southern border of Hungary or Texas, the professors who compliment a female student by saying she’s just ‘one of the boys’, the cop who points his gun at a child, the congresswoman who votes for a bill that denies bankruptcy for student loan debt, the doctor who denies reproductive care to women.

But there are no good masters.

3. Explain Gamergate.

Boy, I don’t even know at this point. A couple years ago I was more confident, basically working on the assumption that social media and Twitter are making previously hidden methods of gendered gatekeeping in geek spaces more obvious, allowing reactionary male gamers to coordinate more effective attacks while simultaneously making it easier for women/gnc gamers and their allies to publicize these attacks and get media attention. But that was before the whole thing started to ooze together with red pills and corporate feudalism into a persistent befrogged alt-right manosphere.

I mean, I think the general diagnosis is still true, but it’s clear that the whole thing is driving and driven by a sort of emerging language, one that shifts unpredictably between irony and honest fascism to preserve violent systems of power with plausible deniability in any given moment.

As for the original conflict, the emergence of women in previously male-dominated gaming spaces, I think a lot of the issue is that gamers weren’t playing the game they said (or maybe thought) they were. I have a few friends that used to play DOTA, for example, and in this game one element of the competition was the use of outrageous or uncomfortable names. A lot of the extremely violent and sexualized competitive trash talking has the same general structure. And so gamers often try to ‘win’ at DOTA not by having superior DOTA skills, but by creating an environment that is untenable (or at least a lot less fun) for people that have experienced, e.g., a history of sexual abuse. And sure enough, this narrows the competition and makes it easier to win. But this isn’t the game that most people want to play- they want to play DOTA. And enforcing community standards of decency around gaming can align the competition more closely around the actual game, which subjectively feels like changing the rules and making the previous ‘champions’ struggle to win.

ITT: Social Justice #9

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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!

1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

I am extremely accepting to other viewpoints. I try to ignore my own emotional responses for the comfort of the other person and for the sake of open, but I accept that I often fail. I respond respectfully, though perhaps condescendingly; the condescension is not on purpose. If I am upset, I will tend to simply not respond to the other person’s arguments or statements.

This is because I have had painful experiences with angry people and find that such discourse styles limit free thought and don’t allow for changing one’s mind.

I believe that everyone should attempt to obey this discourse norm so that others feel safe, though if they cannot I am willing to forgive them. I want to be able to change my mind or not change my mind without emotional pressure or social stakes, so I consequently would appreciate if others were unaggressive and polite. I accept that some people might have emotional responses due to personal connections of lived experiences, but that is no excuse for treating others disrespectfully, although ignoring or shunning others is of course acceptable on an individual level.

2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

Well:

Women’s Rights, Intra-societal Racial Issues
It’s wrong that people are treated unfairly, and it’s wrong that people’s autonomy is violated. I would be sad if I were a woman or a person of color or a female person of color who had been treated unfairly or abused due to my gender and/or race, so I must oppose patriarchy and white supremacy and support women’s rights and the rights of racial minorities. It is easy to imagine a likeable person of color and/or a likeable woman, and their needs are no less important than mine on a logical consequentialist level, so clearly it is important that they are treated well.

If women and people of color were shown to not be people with feelings (e.g. they were conclusively shown to be p-zombies), then I would change my opinion to place less priority on their “rights”. If women were shown to make suboptimal decisions that they later regretted, and paternal support altered their outcomes significantly in a way that made women happier, I would stop supporting women’s rights. If people of color were shown to a net bad effect – e.g., immigrants destroyed the economy, black people were all criminals – even without white supremacy in place, then I would alter my opinion thus.

Queer Rights
Almost all of my friends are sexuality-queer. I am bisexual. I would be upset if their love, and I suppose mine, were opposed or shamed or delegitimized due to gender.

I am bi-gender. I care deeply for my trans friends and I would defend them to the last drop of blood. I am saddened to see that they (and I suppose I’m included in this) would be disbelieved, hurt or discriminated against due to their genders. Cissexism and cisnormativity are both illogical and make no sense.

If there was clear evidence that the acceptance of non-straight sexuality resulted in unhappiness, inevitable painful dysfunction in life in general and in relationships even without homophobia and biphobia, or some kind of bizarre existential risk, like the invasion of aliens, and there was no plausible way to mitigate these results, then I would accept that my views were wrong.

If there were some evidence that transgenderism caused unhappiness, inevitable painful dysfunction in life in general and in relationships even without transphobia, or some kind of bizarre existential risk, and there were no plausible way to mitigate these risks, then I would accept that my views were wrong.

Imperialism and Colonialism
Imperialism is clearly wrong. It’s just plain mean, and it involves violating people’s autonomy and telling them what to do. Colonialism means stealing people’s land and destroying their culture. That’s not a good thing. I’m not really sure how else to articulate this, but it just seems like a mean thing to do and I would be emotionally upset if I saw something like this happening. In the present day, it’s important to make sure that imperial and colonial structures aren’t replicated or utilized because of the disastrous results in history.

If imperialism was shown to actually have better results, measured in happiness and unbiased opinion polls, than a lack of imperialism, then I would change my historical opinion. If taking people’s land arbitrarily was shown to have good effects in the long run, or was shown necessary to prevent atrocities such as the Holocaust, I would alter my historical opinion. If taking people’s land and exploiting them was shown to not only have a net positive result, but also to be better than all other options, then I would change my opinion of the present day.

Otherkin
We should be nice to people who aren’t hurting anyone and who seem to be doing what works for them.

If it were shown that being otherkin had deletorious effects, even with, say, a universal basic income or a solid community, then I would change my opinion.

Ableism
Disabled people are people, and if I were disabled I would want accommodations and validation and autonomy.

If it were shown that disabled people weren’t able to make good decisions and in fact did not benefit from accommodations on average, then I would change my opinion on this.

3. Explain Gamergate.

Anita Sarkeesian wanted to open up shop to criticize video games for sexism through Internet donations. She appeared to be criticizing video games from an outsider’s perspective, and so some noxious portions of the gamer community attacked her in a frankly misogynist fashion. She eventually went into hiding due to this sexism.

ITT: Social Justice #8

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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!

By popular demand, polls now include an option to indicate your pro-SJ or anti-SJ alignment. Those who do not consider themselves pro-SJ or anti-SJ should either vote with the one they’re closest to or alternate. (Sorry, guys, I’ve dealt with the LW survey results, I know you abuse the right to be special snowflakes.)

1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

The discourse norms I aim to follow balance several different forms of respect – respect for other people as individuals, respect for other opinions, respect for underprivileged groups, and respect for the truth. All of these are important, and none of them override the others in every circumstance.

Respect for other people as individuals means treating them with courtesy, regardless of disagreements. This is important for maintaining a polite, friendly and welcoming atmosphere. Spaces which lack this norm tend to become dominated by the loudest, most aggressive voices and drive people away. However, when this norm is raised above all others, it can be used to silence those experiencing genuine anger and injustice – women and minorities are often dismissed for being insufficiently polite.

Respect for other opinions is often referred to as freedom of speech. It means not silencing people simply because they hold an opinion you disagree with. This norm is important for maintaining an open dialogue and openness to criticism. Spaces which fail to follow this norm tend to become stifled by consensus and group-think. However, not all opinions need be permitted in all spaces. Subaltern groups – who are constantly subject to mainstream opinions which question their value or existence – should be able to create spaces where they do not have to be exposed to opinions they find distressing, and use those spaces to rest, retreat, and develop strategies and ideas without constantly refighting the same battles. In addition, some opinions are sufficiently abhorrent that they should be denied legitimacy. Institutions such as universities and media outlets should not be obligated to provide a platform for racist, homophobic, misogynist or transphobic views, and the people that support those institutions (students and customers) should be able to protest and boycott them.

Respect for the truth means arguing in good faith, avoiding lies, and supporting positions with evidence. This is important because misinformation and deliberate lies undermine the trust necessary for effective communication, and unwillingness to ground positions in evidence makes rational argument or decision making impossible. However, when this norm is overvalued and certain kinds of evidence privileged over others, it can be used to silence opponents while retaining the appearance of objectivity. For example, dismissing the lived experiences of subaltern groups while demanding excessive or inappropriate standards of empirical evidence for opposing arguments.

Respect for underprivileged groups means recognising that some groups are subject to systematic discrimination and silencing. For example, men tend to talk more than women but believe women are dominating the conversation when they have equal time. Consequently, male feminists have an obligation to support women when they speak and avoid monopolising the conversation – an obligation which does not need to be reciprocated. People from privileged groups should yield the floor to those less privileged where possible. When speaking on a specific topic – trans rights for instance, or racism – those directly effected should be given priority. When this norm is not followed, underprivileged or minority groups tend to be suppressed by the prioritisation of other speech norms – demands for politeness, balance, free speech or particular forms of evidence can all be used to erase their perspective.

Because all of these norms are important and they sometimes conflict with one another, it is necessary to use good judgement to understand what to say in a given situation. The appropriate balance between these norms varies depending on the nature of the space they are being applied to and the nature of the entity which enforces them. I will briefly lay out some possible spheres and what I consider the appropriate norms within them.

State Sphere: The state supplies the overarching rules for debate in society because it holds a monopoly on force and can silence speech through legislation and active censorship. As a consequence, the state should prioritise respect for a diversity of opinions. However, it is appropriate to use the power of the state to silence certain kinds of speech – slander (which falls under respect for the truth), incitement to violence, and harassment or abuse.

Public Sphere: The public sphere is where members of a society engage in political and social discussions about the nature and future of their shared world. In this arena it is important to balance all norms as evenly as possible so as to maximise the ability of every person to participate. This sphere is also the least subject to any form of control, so it is most incumbent on those who speak to consider whether their speech conforms to the principles.

Institutional Sphere: This is the domain of corporate (not necessarily private) entities such as schools and universities, government bureaucracies, and actual corporations. These institutions can have more restrictive rules governing allowable speech, and their first priority is usually the harmonious cooperation of their students or employees, and public relations. This means respect for individuals takes priority over respect for differing opinions. However, it is important that these organisations be aware of power dynamics which can be harmful to women or minorities within their organisation, so heightened respect for subaltern groups is appropriate.

Social Sphere: This is the space of non-political social interaction. In the social sphere, which involves frequent interaction with strangers, respect for others as individuals is paramount. However, attention must be paid to intentional and unintentional microaggressions which are often inflicted on members of subaltern groups in the process of routine social interaction – for example misgendering transgender people, asking women to smile, or asking visible minorities where they are from.

Counterpublic: Counterpublics are places for subaltern groups gather, retreat and organise. They are often referred to as safe spaces. In a counterpublic, the overriding priority should be the subaltern group which the space serves. Anger and generalisations about the dominant group are more acceptable here than elsewhere, and it is unnecessary to give a fair hearing to opinions which undermine the basic assumptions of the safe space. Counterpublics are necessary, but it is important not to let free expressions of anger degenerate into toxicity and domination by a clique.

2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

The underlying basis of my ideology is the recognition of entrenched, unjust power structures and the desire to dismantle them. The interlinked systems of race, class, gender, heteronormativity and ableism create hierarchies everywhere we turn and create a society characterised by domination and violence. It is our duty to dismantle these systems, to liberate ourselves and our fellow human beings (and ultimately animals as well).

Since the enlightenment progress has been made in recognising and dismantling these power structures and achieving formal legal equality, but they are too entrenched to be eliminated simply getting rid of explicitly discriminatory laws and hoping for the best. The myth of the level playing field only serves to disguise the reality of privilege. Hierarchies of domination and exploitation permeate our culture, our language and our social organisation. In order to dismantle them we must be critical of the state, but also of the way we speak, the media we consume, and the way we conduct ourselves. This, to me, is the essence of ‘social justice’.

If I could be convinced that these systematic injustices didn’t exist, or that they were changing on their own without the need for active criticism, or that attempts to change them were doing more harm than good, I would stop fighting for social justice.

3. Explain Gamergate.

Gamergate is a reactionary social movement opposed to the increasing visibility of subaltern groups in geek culture. Ostensibly focused on collusion between game developers and journalists, the rhetoric and targets of the movement betray it’s true nature.

Although the term was coined by Adam Baldwin to refer to the ‘Quinnspiracy’ surrounding Zoe Quinn and her alleged trading of sexual favours for favourable reviews, the movement really began in the opposition to Anita Sarkeesian’s ‘Tropes Against Women’ kickstarter., which aimed to apply cultural criticism to videogames in the same way it has been applied to other forms of media. Many of the same people who opposed Sarkeesian are at the center of Gamergate, and the movement finds it almost impossible not to target her.

There are three general groups within Gamergate as it exists now: Unreflective reactionaries and the alt-right. Unreflective reactionaries are the largest group. Mostly white men, they sense that their identity as gamers is somehow threatened but they do not have a detailed ideology to explain why. They sense that they are being scolded and looked down on by feminist critics and game journalists and are uncomfortable that games in styles they dislike (artsy indies, twine games and walking simulators for example) are being praised by those critics while games they do like are criticised for thing that seem unimportant or illusionary. In order to rationalise this discomfort they frame their distaste as a principled ethical opposition to collusion between games developers and games journalists, but when pressed or within the gamergate bubble on reddit or 8chan they reveal that the real target of their ire is feminism – this is also apparent in their choice of targets (Zoey Quin, Randi Harper, Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian and Leigh Alexander). They are not necessarily malicious or particularly right-wing and they might identify as left leaning or even feminist (although their favourite feminist is usually Christina Hoff Summers)

The second group, the alt-right, are only interested in games and gaming incidentally. Their aim is to use Gamergaters as footsoldiers in a culture war. They are fond of elaborate theories linking games developers and critics to the Frankfurt School and the conspiracy of international Jewry to undermine western civilisation. Their leaders include Milo Yiannopoulis and Weev (Andrew Auernheimer) and they like to hang around /pol on 4chan.

ITT: Social Justice #7

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What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

Discourse isn’t that hard.  Open your eyes and don’t be an asshole.  Does anybody disagree with that in theory?  Probably not, but in practice, some people need more, well, practice to see past their limitation.

Being open-eyed not-assholes shows up a couple ways in discourse.  First, you need to listen and care about people who are suffering.  Should someone who grew up under the weight of poverty, racism, or other discrimination be taunted with “well, if you just worked harder, everything would be OK for you?”  Of course not, because that’s both factually wrong and assholishly mean.  So don’t say it until you take spend some time listening to people who have been through that shit.

Second, you need to be aware of and challenge the system that creates suffering.  It’s easy to say “I worked for everything I got, and fuck everybody else” when you haven’t taken the time to realize how easy you had it.   And taking credit for something you didn’t earn?  That’s being an asshole.  Rubbing it in the face of someone the system keeps down for your benefit?  Asshole^2.  Instead, learn about the system and use that knowledge to confront the system and to open people’s minds.

So educate yourself before you talk, then use that knowledge to help people crushed by the system and to challenge the system itself.   And should everyone do it?  Duh, and yes.

What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

I believe what I believe because I’ve lived it, and because I know other people who have.  Sure, there’s plenty of science – I could point you to dozens of studies showing that women get interrupted or that people of color don’t get hired, or that asshole parents cause suicides, and that’s all fine, but at the end of the day, I’ve lived it, and my friends have lived it.

I don’t need a study because watched my friends collapse in agony telling how how they got talked over in class, I’ve seen my loved ones not get jobs or get stopped by the cops, and I’ve taken the ten minutes it takes to listen to people’s experiences. Sadly, as a white cismale, I’ve also lived the other side – I’ve heard dudes telling gay bashing jokes in the locker room, seen teachers call on me instead of on brilliant women of color sitting near me, and I’ve been able to walk through a store or down a sidewalk without getting harassed or catcalled.

What would it take to convince me that I’m wrong?  I guess the opposite of every fucking thing I’ve seen in my whole life.  Some more science to show that all those studies were wrong would be a bonus, but let’s start with repeated testimony from people of color, LGBTQ friends, etc. that everything is going great.  That would go a long way.

Explain Gamergate.

Gamergate is actually a great demonstration that white men just don’t know what it’s like not to be white men, and that they don’t know that they don’t know it.  They get hard ons from pretending to kill things on their computer, and when they think someone threatens their precious boners, they move on to pretending to be tough guys on 4chan, without taking the time to give a yoctoshit about somebody else.

Basically, Gamergate’s seeds were planted when a Youtuber started a popular series of video game criticism, pointing out some pretty obvious stuff like Super Mario makes Mario a hero with agency and Peach a prize to be won.  Instead of saying “duh, that’s something we should fix so everyone can enjoy videogames just like we do,” a group of 4chan white boys began to simmer with outrage that someone had a different opinion about their precious, especially an attractive woman with her own opinions.  Similarly, they were frustrated that some journalists writing about games were perceived as have a pro-SJ (in other words reality-based) position.

This outrage that someone dared to hurt white feelings boiled over when a feminist game designer’s boyfriend posted a tell-all piece that included an allegation that the designer slept with a gaming journalist.  (Not a journalist who then reviewed or reported on her games, mind you, just a gaming journalist).   Given the chance to slut-shame a feminist target, the dregs of the internet screamed and leapt, with personal attacks, doxxing, nude photos, death threats, and whatever else they could come up with.

This is probably the part that shows the privilege blindness most clearly.  Each time people tried to respond to Gamergate and point out that people were being harassed beyond all reason, Gamergaters punched back with thinnest of pretexts:

This journalist donated some money to a development project.  That journalist had a friend who developed games.  That other journalist over there wrote something mean about nerds.  The Gamergate advocates were being portrayed as exclusively white male when they were only mostly white male.

For all I know, each of these points might have had some merit in a normal civil discussion, but each “reasonable” Gamergater was accompanied by a bunch more engaged in the same vile harassment – outing trans people; doxxing; threatening, catcalling, gaslighting and the like.

I’d like to think that if the Gamergaters actually knew a few of the victims attacked by their fellow travellers, then they would have decided that that wasn’t the time to raise their debaters’ points – if anything, it was good time to let the “ethics in gaming journalism” debate rest for a few months and focus on, you know, not destroying people’s lives – by calling out the worst of the harassers, by expressing support for people who were being harassed, and whatever else they could do.  But instead, the Gamergaters just ignored the bodies piling up around them while they allegedly tried to discuss “ethics in gaming journalism.”

In the best case, carrying on the debate under those circumstances reflected white male privilege, where people being forced to flee from their homes and contemplate suicide weren’t perceived as real concerns because the primarily white men involved couldn’t imagine what it was like to be that injured by harassment, and in the worst case, it was a defensive reaction by a bunch of boys who felt threatened by feminism and were titillated by a chance to take an attractive woman down a peg by outing her sex life.  Eventually, everyone got tired and gave up.  The end, hopefully.

ITT: Social Justice #6

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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!

1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

I believe that discourse can only be productive when the parties share a certain baseline knowledge and certain terminal values.  If the parties disagree on basic points of fact or on basic points of right and wrong, further discussion is pointless until they get on the same page.  Often, someone looking for a debate will treat a rant as an invitation to have one.  This is a mistake, and in arguments that get heated, it’s the responsibility of the less emotionally-invested party to shrug and leave – they are sacrificing less by giving up the last word than the more emotionally-invested party would.  It is unreasonable to start a debate with someone who doesn’t want to have one, and it is on the same tack unreasonable to start a debate with someone you have no reason to believe wants to have one.  I think everyone would benefit from these discourse norms, but nobody is obligated to have them.  Disagreements over discourse norms simply bring about suffering.

2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

I do not like to see the strong taking advantage of the weak.  I do not like to be taken advantage of by those stronger than me.  And frankly?  I do like to take advantage of those weaker than me, at least in my id.  But I don’t like to take advantage nearly as much as I hate being taken advantage of, and I don’t think anyone does.  Oppression is, in my experience, a negative-sum enterprise.  Everyone is strong in some ways and weak in others.  Some people may effectively be more strong or more weak overall, but at least the vast majority of people fall somewhere in the middle.  No one is physically safe from being hurt by others, and no one is morally safe from hurting others.  I have been hurt many times, and have some idea of how awful it is, and I have hurt others, and deeply regret doing so and making the world a worse place.  I’m fairly certain that everyone else has had the same experience as me, and if they come out of it without apparently sharing my basic moral framework, I can’t help but assume on some level that they’ve faced a moral choice analogous to the one I’ve made and made a worse choice.  I only think I would change my object-level ideology if I became convinced that I was wrong about which side represented the strong and which side represented the weak.  I only think I would change my meta-level ideology if I discovered a positive-sum oppression, where a strong group takes advantage of a weak group and gains more than the weak group loses – but I find that very unlikely, as surely the strong group could return some portion of the good they gain to the people they took advantage of to gain it; such a scenario would be moral perpetual motion.

3. Explain Gamergate.

I’m not particularly familiar with Gamergate, so take this with a grain of salt, but my impression is that it was a dying gasp of an antisocial demographic that was increasingly finding that they were not tolerated.  Women were increasingly accepted in gaming circles, and male gamers who considered masculinity an important part of their identity took this as a threat to their local importance.  They attempted to establish their continued relevance and power by opportunistically seizing on the manifesto of feminist indie dev Zoe Quinn’s jilted ex-boyfriend, which alleged that Zoe Quinn had had sex with multiple men  (even if the allegations are true, the obsession with a woman’s sexual purity speaks volumes about the regressive ideology of those involved, and it is disgusting that Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend would share things he was told in confidence).  Zoe Quinn, it should be noted, is disabled (indeed, her most noted game, Depression Quest, is entirely inspired by her disability) in a way that made harassment even more awful for her than it would be for a neurotypical person; indeed, though the harassment aimed at feminist game analyst Anita Sarkeesian is certainly unacceptable, it is probably much harder for Zoe Quinn to bear her harassment.  Very quickly, though, it was blatantly obvious to any reasonable onlookers that Zoe was the victim and that the Gamergate movement had nothing to offer but misogyny.  Unfortunately, the media backlash against Gamergate was coordinated in such a way that the movement gained the opportunity to reframe it as being about corruption within the media.  Anyone who examines the issue in the slightest, however, will see that this framing is false.  Coordination between media figures is only an issue of professional honesty if they are colluding to hide something true or proclaim something false, and that’s inapplicable.  The anti-Gamergate columnists and writers only stated the very true and obvious thing that Gamergate was fundamentally about punishing a woman for fabricated accounts of what she might have done in her private sex life, and that it was most likely motivated by a desire to keep women out of gaming communities in general.  They didn’t “collude” to generate a false narrative to spread, and it would take an insane amount of conspiracy theory mentality to suppose that they did.  They merely collaborated to ensure that they all were aware of the issue and understood how serious it was.  Now, Gamergate is mostly forgotten by the public, and is mostly associated with particularly disgusting figures like Milo Yiannopoulos, the token gay alt-right troll who was finally kicked off of Twitter when he helped to spread leaked nude photographs of a moderately successful black actress who had become the latest victim of the reactionary online lynch mob.  That’s because we basically won – and we won because we were right and it was clear that we were right.

ITT: Social Justice #5

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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!

1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

If I am entering a new space, I respect the norms of those that have created that space. However, if I am able to I do work to increase the respect for all participants within that space. I work to set an example for newcomers and can instruct junior members of the community if needed.

2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

Like everyone else, I am the product of my upbringing, societal and economic forces, and the legacy of decisions of people that have come before me. But I am not a simple stimulus-response machine. If I see that my view of the world harms other people, I am able to change that. I like to think that I am both flexible enough and open enough to the truth that if someone can demonstrate where I am wrong, I could change my beliefs to make the world better.

3. Explain Gamergate.

Gamergate is nothing new. It’s about misogyny among disadvantaged males. When a man is unsuccessful according to the capitalist standard, he tries to regain status by emphasizing his place in the kyriarchy. In the case of the poor white southerner, he elevates himself by denigrating persons of color. In cases where race is not available to him, he elevates his status as a male be denigrating women. In the case of gamergate, non-traditionally- successful males created a male-only (or at least male-dominated) space around their hobbies where women were permitted mainly as decoration, fantasy object, or reward (compare with professional sports, where women are allowed only as cheerleaders or trophy wives). When women demanded access to their segregated space, the male feels threatened; he can’t have superiority if women are considered equals (or even worse superiors!) so he has to drive them out of his space. In the case of gamergate, this gender-cleansing takes the form of rape and death threats, and other gender-specific forms of harassment.

ITT: Social Justice #4

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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!

1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

Most of my discourse norms are not, I think, specific to the pro-SJ side of things? I mean, “on the subject of systemic oppression, listen to those it targets more carefully, as those it benefits are likely to be biased” seems to be SJ-specific or at least far more common among pro-SJ folk, but “don’t insist on ~debating~ people who actually didn’t sign up for a debate at all and don’t want to participate” and “don’t mock children if you’re an adult” are some rules I’d hope people would follow no matter what they believed about the existence of privilege or whatnot.

2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

The propositions “there is systemic inequality based on exploiting certain demographics for the benefit of not-those-demographics” and “that first proposition is a bad thing” (yes, apparently there are people who dispute that part specifically) seem to match reality as I have observed it. I know I can’t just believe things immutably, so there must be something that would convince me that the whole thing is wrong, but I’m having trouble actually imagining it. I guess if, somehow, I was shown that all the inequality I had observed in my life was closer to the total than the average? I’ll admit that’s a really high bar, but I’m having trouble even making up a smaller piece of evidence that would actually convince me it was all wrong. It’s not really one belief, after all, so much as a big web of connected beliefs.

3. Explain Gamergate.

… Okay, confession time. I read “the Zoe post” that started it all. Yet I have absolutely no idea what the connection is between that and the “ethics in game journalism”, “make companies stop pandering to SJW”, “video game censorship is basically the devil”, “beware dyed hair” movement Gamergate is now. I mean, the original post explicitly says he thinks Zoe didn’t trade sex for reviews of Depression Quest, and names her SJ-ness as a positive quality. And censorship didn’t even come up. … I hope the dyed hair thing is just an in-joke. I don’t get the whole thing, really, but I know it’s all very shouty and vitriolic, so I just stay the hell away.

ITT: Social Justice #3

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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!

NOTE: People have speculated that both of the previous posts were written by Scott Alexander. Sadly, Scott is not participating in the Intellectual Turing Test, and thus no posts are written by him.

1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

I err on the side of not commenting on issues I don’t think I could make a good contribution to, and when I make a serious contribution, as opposed to venting or telling jokes, I try to do it in a calm and charitable manner. Both of these things have to do with my non-confrontational personality, and do not necessarily generalize to everyone. I’m not even sure how productive the task of trying to come up with a fully general set of abstract “norms” for “discourse” is. It really depends on whether you think you or some interlocutor will change their minds during the course of discussion, whether you think your audience will, how sensitive your interlocutors and audience are, how sensitive you want to portray yourself as being, etc.

2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

I believe that there is a recurring pattern, which plays out in a lot of different ways, where some group of people has power over another and social structures are set up to advantage the powerful and disadvantage the less powerful, and I believe that a society . I believe this because the idea of oppressive power structures seems like the best way to model both things I’ve observed in my own life as an autistic trans woman and things I’ve heard of from others who experience other forms of oppression, as well as statistical disparities in life outcomes between different groups of people. If someone proposes a better model which is radically different to the point where someone following it would no longer be grouped into the category of “social justice”, and it is shown that it more parsimoniously explains what I’ve heard and seen, I’ll believe it. Conversely, if a large body of strong statistical evidence were presented that these patterns do not exist, along with a plausible reason why they would appear to exist in spite of this, I would definitely reconsider my position. Finally, if someone found some way of convincing me that explicitly striving for a more just society, with respect to various systems of oppression, is counterproductive, naturally I would stop advocating for social justice ideas.

3. Explain Gamergate.

Okay, without looking anything up, Eron Gjoni makes a post about his ex-girlfriend Zoe Quinn who cheated on him and did to him what some people have recognized as abuse, though he didn’t call it abuse in the post. That’s about to become irrelevant really fast. So after gathering dust for a bit, the post gets posted to 4chan or something and people start harassing Quinn, hanging onto one kind of misogynist line in the “Zoepost” where, when he finds out she slept with five other men, references the fast food chain “five guys burgers and fries”. They also latch on to the fact that she slept with a gaming journalist once, which, while it probably didn’t influence the reviews of her games much, was viewed as an example of corruption in the games journalism industry. So Gaming Youtuber Anita Sarkeesian also becomes a target of harassment because she, uhh, makes videos slowly?, a lot of people support the newly-christened #gamergate movement because they have grievences about ethics in gaming journalism, completely forgetting Gjoni and Quinn. A lot of female game people become targets, feminists take notice and defend them, now people who don’t even care that much about game reviews are supporting #gamergate because they oppose the feminist backlash against it, and feminists have a backlash against that, and the whole thing escalates until it gets taken as emblematic of online harrassment in general and Quinn and Sarkeesian speak before the UN about it.

ITT: Social Justice #2

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Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here! Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!

1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

Frankly, I think a lot of good discourse is just not being an asshole. Most people, if told they’re doing something that’s making other people uncomfortable, will knock it off—most of the time.

But some people fail to apply that rule if the thing that’s making other people uncomfortable involves their own privilege. Then, they’ll talk over the complaint, insist it was “no big deal”, or nitpick the complaint until the other person gives up from exhaustion. Much of the time, the counter arguments (if they go beyond “it’s no big deal because I said so”) amount to hearing about a friend’s house getting robbed and telling your friend, “Are you sure your house was robbed? Or do you mean to say it was burgled? Because there’s a difference you know. Legally speaking, the difference is that…”

Of course, the reason people act this way is because so much oppression is due to unconscious biases, so most people don’t realize it when they’re being racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or ableist. So part of good discourse is working to become aware of your own unconscious biases and correcting for them. This is something that privileged people can’t expect members of oppressed classes to do for them, it’s something the privileged need to do for themselves by spending lots of time listening to other people’s experiences of oppression—and I mean actually listening, not just waiting for the first excuse to dismiss everything they’re being told.

Sometimes people balk at this because they misunderstand that’s being asked. An analogy I like to use—and I wish I could remember who came up with it—is for privileged people to imagine they’re on a job internship. If you’re an intern, obviously you’re going to spend lots of time listening and asking questions, and you’re not going to presume you have the expertise to tell the company’s full-time employees everything they’re doing wrong. In discussions of oppression, it’s people who’ve experienced oppression their whole lives who are the experts on their own oppression. So shut up and listen to what they have to say.

2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

Uh, because the evidence of society’s oppressive power structures is literally everywhere? I don’t want to invoke Donald Trump lightly here, because whether or not he wins, the mere fact that his presidential campaign has gotten this far has already had direct consequences, particularly for women and people of color, in terms of normalizing bigotry. So I don’t want to say that his campaign has been a good thing, or that it will have been a good thing even if he loses. But I do think there’s a silver lining here in that given nearly half the country is willing to vote for this guy, it’s now impossible to deny that bigotry and oppression are still major problems that need to be combated. Not to mention the fact that main reason I can say “nearly half” is because of rich old white dudes who are fine with racism and misogyny, as long as it’s polite racism and misogyny, but faint at the thought of anyone being crass about it.

Speaking of the current election, there’s also no shortage of examples to prove that oppressive attitudes are rampant among “progressives” as well, but 2016 also conveniently gave us an especially easy-to-use example of this in the Bernie Bro phenomenon. So really 2016 is the year in which everybody stopped having any excuses.

As for what would change my mind—I don’t know, waking up from the Matrix and Morpheus telling me, “oh, by the way, for some reason the machines decided to create an alternate 21st century where racism and sexism continued existing after 1970, which is when they were completely eradicated in real-world history.” I’m not being sarcastic, I think that may actually be more plausible than imagining we discover an elaborate conspiracy to manufacture evidence of ongoing oppression. I mean, it’s easy to make fun of MRAs for ranting about the secret feminist conspiracy that’s supposed to be controlling the world—but how else do you explain away all the evidence of sexism in the modern world (not to mention all the other *-isms that still exist).

3. Explain Gamergate.

Gamergate is an internet harassment campaign that started out targeting women in the video game industry and appears to have expanded to anyone who the Gamergaters perceive as a threat to their fragile male egos (including some men, but the Gamergaters seem to find women especially threatening). Actually, I’m not sure I can explain all of it, like I can recite the “it’s about ethics in game journalism” narrative almost by heart by now, and in a sense it’s a coherent narrative, it just bears no relationship to any of the documented facts. Like, we have screenshots from the chatroom where the harassment campaign was originally organized! There are links to them on Wikipedia! So I know what happened but I’m totally confused about who the Gamergaters think they’re fooling. Not that I’m surprised by the misogyny—but you’d think eventually they’d come up with a new hashtag and agree to pretend it has nothing to do with the old one?

ITT: Social Justice #1

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It’s our first submission to the Intellectual Turing Test! (Confused about what an Intellectual Turing Test is? Click here!) Please read, then vote at the end of the post. Feel free to speculate in the comment section about this person’s identity!

1. What discourse norms do you tend to follow? Why? Do you think everyone else should follow them, and why?

I tend to mostly shut up and let others speak. This is because I am privileged in several ways, but also because I am a shy person and I don’t feel a lot of need to make myself heard all the time.

Of course everyone should use the same meta-norms of discourse. People are, in the abstract, equal: in the original position, everyone should have the same ability to affect the conversation. To suggest otherwise would be to create privilege. But meta-norms are not norms, and our (actual, real-world) norms should take account of existing privilege to achieve the meta-norm. People with privilege are inherently “louder” and should be working towards equalizing the conversation, which is to say, they need to step back, listen more, and let others lead.

2. What is the true reason, deep down, that you believe what you believe? What piece of evidence, test, or line of reasoning would convince you that you’re wrong about your ideology?

I am a liberal. I believe in human rights, which are the same for everyone because we are all equal. Everyone has the right to have a decent life. I also believe that every person can and must define what a decent life is for themself; nobody else can do that. And everyone else needs to create the space necessary for that, pay attention, and respect our choices.

What would convince me that people don’t have rights? Nothing, because that is a normative statement. People should have rights because we’re equally people.

3. Explain Gamergate.

Gamergate is a conflict about the content of games and the culture surrounding games. Should games contain so much graphic violence and misogyny as they do? How does such content affect our thinking? Questions like these are totally valid questions, which are being studied by a number of social scientists and others. A small but increasing set of game developers are trying to use such criticism to improve their games and make them more inclusive.

The conflict is also about women in gaming, and the gaming identity. Gaming is a very cismale dominated culture. Why aren’t there more women and LGBT gamers and game designers? What are games, gamers and/or game companies doing that causes this problem? Shouldn’t games allow the player the freedom to choose her identity, including race, sex, and sexual preference?

Some conservative gamers feel threatened by such inquiry, and they have banded together to try to prevent game magazines and game companies from paying attention to it. In addition, because of the controversy many other internet trolls have jumped in. They use many tactics, primarily anonymous threats but also consumer pressure, in the attempt to silence criticism. Their behavior has been particularly egregious towards women on the anti-Gamergate side.