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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!
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.
flockoflambs said:
I have to assume someone would not be this big an a****** when trying to convince people of their point of view.
As always, I really really like the answers to question #2. This whole exercise is worth it just for getting to ask lots of people that question.
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Anonymous said:
a****** is just a. Conjugation is an involution.
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Walter said:
If this is a counterfeit, it is perfect. Whatever the author believes, they’ve read enough social justice discourse to replicate the form without error. I have no reservations about voting SJ.
1: ASJ, certain
2: SJ, certain
3: SJ, unsure
4: SJ, unsure
5: ASJ, unsure
6: ASJ certain
7: SJ, certain
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sniffnoy said:
You’ve “watched [your] friends collapse in agony telling how how they got talked over in class”? Uh, something seems off there.
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sniffnoy said:
Oops, this was supposed to be a top-level comment.
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J. Goard said:
Off in terms of being true, yes. Off in terms of actual SJW rhetoric, no.
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sniffnoy said:
I agree, this is a very good mimic of your common SJer. But given where we are, I voted “anti”.
I think this may be showing a limitation of the test, honestly.
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CBA said:
Yeah this exercise has convinced me that ITTs are overrated, at least not without a better protocol. For example, “cismale” says “anti” to me because I only hear SJ types talk about “cis men”, not “cismales”. Does this mean I understand their position better? Not really.
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Walter said:
I’m presuming that people who are responding about their genuine beliefs aren’t trying to fool the test. They are trying to be recognized. Pro wants to be judged as Pro. Anti wants to be judged as Pro. Pro’s goal is not to fool the judges into voting anti with some sort of reverse play.
This looks (to me) exactly like the real thing. I think it is either a Pro speaking from the heart, or an Anti who has done enough work to deserve a pass.
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Dank said:
Anti
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Fisher said:
I am leaning more and more strongly towards “the first half of these are all anti-SJ”
Or there are far more tumblr-SJ folk people on here than I suspected.
i
In the name of charity, I’m voting fake.
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Susebron said:
“This isn’t your real beliefs” isn’t very charitable.
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liskantope said:
I voted “anti”, and I really hope I’m right.
I’m pretty sure that even the most over-the-top kind of pro-SJ writer doesn’t describe the effect of microaggressions this melodramatically.
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Fisher said:
Well… the atheism+ forums were exactly like this. But I agree that I think it’s a parody.
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ruadhan said:
You’d be surprised. Some of the things I’ve read made me roll my eyes so hard they nearly turned all the way back into my skull. Someone relatively sheltered (if this person really is the cis white male) who is sincere about wanting to do respect often errs on the side of “No, it genuinely is horribly awful, it’s not a small thing to be brushed off!”
Also, some people would do the “collapsing in agony” thing over not being called on to answer a question or having someone interrupt them in class because it’s tied up with “I have to always be The Bright Achiever who’s first with the right answer and they took that opportunity away from me” combined with “Why aren’t they letting me talk? My old teacher let us all talk in our turn!” and being young and taking themselves and what happens to them terribly, terribly seriously. A few more years under your belt, you get a thicker skin.
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ruadhan said:
No, I’m pretty sure this is the real deal. I suppose what sealed it for me is “my friends collapse in agony telling how they got talked over in class”. That’s the kind of thing that makes me go “On the one hand, yes, I see the point; on the other hand, if that’s all it takes to make you ‘collapse in agony’. you don’t have much to be fretting over, do you?”
I don’t think a faker would use that as it would seem too over the top, but someone genuine would honestly not see it as extreme.
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pansnarrans said:
I’m not convinced that someone who genuinely felt that way would be reading this blog in the first place. This sounds like a Facebook rant that you saw by chance. Which makes me suspect it’s written by an anti-SJ satirising Facebook posts.
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Treblato said:
This is the perfect epitome of the passive-aggressive nu-male the anti-SJs are obsessed with. Don’t be a dick rule, boys feeling threatened by powerful ladies, “brilliant women of colour”, it’s all too perfect.
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Anon. said:
First time I disagreed with the majority, I went pro on this one. Seems completely realistic. Certainly a bit melodramatic, but that’s hardly a point against it.
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John said:
Fake. Fake. Incredibly fake. Not even a good fake, not even if I pretend that I saw it on some random corner of the internet instead of this blog. Stresses the wrong points, is careless in the wrong places, and uses shibboleths with the approximate competence of a predictive text generator.
I voted anti-SJ.
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Fisher said:
I wonder if maybe my criterion of “sincere” or “faking” might not be the best way to judge an ITT. If it was instead “would this get posted on Everyday Feminism or Jezebel,” I’d have to flip most of my answers.
However, in the interest of consistency, I’ll keep my original schema.
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jossedley said:
Yeah, I have that problem too. I might buy this if I saw in on Tumblr (especially if the three essays were separate), but it’s over the top for this environment.
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jossedley said:
I think probably fake, but now I’m wondering if a certain segment of SJ tumblr is faking, or at least posing.
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Elzh said:
“I don’t need a study because watched my friends collapse in agony telling how how they got talked over in class”
This is definitely over-the-top dramatic. It reads as though an Anti-SJ is trying to think of an example of sexism and then only being able to come up with a disproportionately lame one.
The rest is pretty condescending to the white male gamers. The writer also seems to forget that they’ve claimed a white cismale identity, and starts to denounce white cismales for a lack of perspective:
“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. ”
I’d be very surprised of this was a pro-SJ due to these inconsistencies.
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jossedley said:
Agreed that collapsing over being talked over seems over the top, but for what it’s worth, my Facebook feed is full of white guys lecturing white people about how they don’t understand white privilege.
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Carl said:
I voted anti, but white cis males talking about how horrible white cis males are is probably the defining feature of SJ discourse. I see it all the time.
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liskantope said:
In my experience of SJ discourse, white males are perfectly happy to make generalizing statements about white males.
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Mark said:
I voted real, but good lord I hope I’m wrong. If it is real this doesn’t sound like a regular reader of Ozy or SSC.
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rlms said:
On reflection, I think I might be misjudging these. I’m working under the assumption that real SJ people trying win would attempt to seem reasonable, and therefore tone down hyperbole etc. But that isn’t necessarily the case; they might just be using the obvious strategy of writing answers as they normally would (without the Turing Test element present).
For this one I voted pro. It possibly gets a bit over-the-top as it goes along, but not to a ridiculous extent, and the sentiments expressed seem like genuine SJ. As has been said, the only bit that seems off is the “collapse in agony” bit.
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Linch said:
Right, or they might be one level off on the Keynesian Beauty contest, and assumed that if they were being too subtle people would mistake them as an Anti-SJ trying to be subtle.
FWIW, I voted “anti” here as well.
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天 (@sleepstarved) said:
Fake- the person rounds a mistrust of academia up to a general prioritization of anecdote over studies and evidence, which is a very common misconception of antis.
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John said:
Eh, I thought it was obviously fake, but this didn’t strike me as a tell. Unironic SJ often only supports studies and evidence that are designed to support their points, and their generic stance towards the scientific process is “oppressive malarkey that can’t compare with anecdotes”.
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Fisher said:
#ScienceMustFall
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dantobias (@dantobias) said:
I’d been saying about all the previous entries that they didn’t look like the stereotypical Tumblr SJ type, so now here’s one that fits that model perfectly… complete with starting right off by calling people assholes, and then going on to use lots more profanity (and I suspect the author would be screaming about “tone policing” if anybody objected to this). Too perfect, probably… I’m going to vote “anti” just because I think it’s been written to pander to this stereotype.
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jdbreck said:
I voted anti. Lots of the right elements, but the way they’re put together just seemed off somehow.
One notable tell in question 3 is citing catcalling as part of gamergate. That stuck out to me as someone from the outside grabbing a term they’ve seen and putting it in a different context where it doesn’t actually work.
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Daisy said:
You don’t have any way of measuring the beliefs of the voters, or do you? Based on these comments, it’s pretty easy for antiSJ people to fool other antiSJ people; they all believe in the same strawmen.
It seems like this isn’t a problem in practice, based on vote counts. But if your silent readers were representative of your comment section, I don’t see how these votes could tell anyone anything interesting. It would be interesting to get the alignments of the voters.
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Daniel said:
Can’t a single one of these ITTs explain GamerGate?
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Katelyn Ailuros said:
That would require Gamergate to be explicable.
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pansnarrans said:
This was the most difficult yet. It sounded heartfelt, which argues pro-SJ. But it also sounded absurdly hateful, which argues that this is an anti-SJ trying to fake it. I guessed anti, but I really have no idea. Either way I have to say the author comes off as someone who assumes their enemies must be bad human beings. I don’t like this post.
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Glen Raphael said:
“absurdly hateful” and “assumes their enemies must be bad human beings” are the main characteristic of the sort of SJ that makes it into my filter bubble. I voted pro precisely *because* of those characteristics.
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Katelyn Ailuros said:
This one was hard.
Well, they’re all hard for my autistic ass, but this one more than the rest.
I voted anti, but I’m only like 59% confident.
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argleblarglebarglebah said:
This seems a lot like #2. I voted pro for the same reason I voted pro there: it’s hard to fake this sort of sincerity.
That being said, if I had to pick one of the two as anti I would definitely pick this one, because it has some lines that are definitely off. I’m suspicious of the line about studies of asshole parents, and also the claim that this guy has “lived it” despite being a cismale. That sort of claim doesn’t usually go over well among SJs as doctrinaire as this guy seems to be. And everyone picked up the one about collapsing in class.
What this means is, I am significantly unsure, but I feel like it’s less likely that someone with the skill to impersonate the general tone correctly would make those sorts of mistakes instead of the author saying weird things he legitimately believes.
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Lawrence D'Anna said:
faaaaaake. This is as cringeworthy as #6.
The last one really got under my skin and made me mad but this one just makes me laugh.
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Tobias Gurl said:
I have no idea where those of you declaring this a strawman are getting that from. It might still be fake, but essays like this are the reason ‘Unfollow’ is my favorite button on Facebook.
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Autolykos said:
Comes off as rather angry, but that’s neither a solid point for, nor against it.
The amount of jargon/slang seems about right. Not squeezed into every place where it kinda fits if you force it enough, and not avoided like the plague, either. Maaybe used a bit inconsistently, but that’s expected from a writer who gets that emotional.
Reminds me a lot of what the XKCD forums have become. Voted pro.
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rash92 said:
voted anti but if it wasn’t in the context of ‘readers of ozy’s blog’ would have voted pro.
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Rowan said:
I don’t think this is an anti who’s faking it, but I really, really hope.
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challquist said:
At this point, the first thing I’m going to do with each of these entries is ctrl+f for “cismale” and vote “anti” if it shows up (unless it’s clearly talking about anti usage of that term).
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Gazeboist said:
I’m not voting anymore. I’m getting either getting Poe’d hard by these posts or declaring them unrepresentatively subtle.
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dndnrsn said:
I think it’s anti-SJ, but I will admit to metagaming. There certainly are people who would answer the questions this way – but I don’t think they’d end up on this blog. I also think that someone trying to present their own opinions for the ITT would play “I-know-that-they-know-that-I-know” etc and would adjust accordingly.
Additionally, the answer to #3 being the longest always seems dubious. GG’ers care far more about GG than most anti-GG’ers. It doesn’t make sense that people are giving relatively shorter answers to questions that boil down to “explain your theory of everything” versus the question of “explain this one thing”.
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Matt C said:
One thing that confused me from the beginning about these–if you are parodying, are you parodying the typical internet version of SJ/anti, or a version from the sort of person who’s likely to read Thing of Things?
(what dndnrsn said)
Seemed like everyone was going with #2. This person seems to be taking the other tack. I don’t believe it’s real, because we’re here, but for an SJ manifesto on the regular net it is right on target.
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Pingback: SJ and Anti-SJ ITT: The Results! | Thing of Things
jossedley said:
Author’s thoughts:
1) First, I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings. I ended up writing kind of a lightly concealed satire of an unhinged tumblr post, which was obviously a mistake, but I appreciate that most SJ-identified folks are not hateful.
2) My process was: I started out thinking of some positions that I thought fell within SJ opinions and that I could credibly articulate: (i) On discourse – that mainstream/default discourse silences oppressed voices and should adjust; (ii) on belief foundations – that while the author believes science supports SJ values, that he gives the greatest weight to testimony from oppressed people, which he believes near-universally supports his worldview; and (iii) that any meritorious claims by any sincere GG advocates were vastly outweighed by the harassment suffered by critics, and that the failure to recognize or respond to that was an example of privilege. Then I added profanity and anti white cis male bigotry.
3) In hindsight, that last part was where I went wrong. I actually toned the essay down significantly in rewrites, but I enjoyed the satire, so I probably stopped two rewrites short. I also made a mistake in working from generic tumblr as a model instead of thinking as an Ozy commenter.
4) There’s also an epistemic limitation problem. I read the most unhinged SJ posts from time to time, because they’re funny and get passed around, and I could tell you about shirtgate or nice shirt gate, or elevatorgate or whatever, but I don’t read middle of the road SJ posts because that’s not my thing. I’ll have to think about it.
5) Collapsing in agony was a big mistake. There are SJ writers who think that men interrupting women is a very big problem, and who think that microaggressions add up to the point where they are devastating, but I slipped into satire and got caught. It would have been much more charitable to say I had friends in tears after being ignored in class after class or seeing men they believe to be less accomplish held up for acclaim. (Which I do!)
6) I was a little sad that no one called out the middle-aged nerdisms like scream and leap, asshole^2, and yoctoshit, which I thought were kind of nice style, but so be it. (Scream and leap is a hidden ASJ signifier too. I was only thinking of Niven, but somebody (Glenn Reynolds?) used to accuse Brad Delong of doing it all the time).
7) One interesting detail: As I was writing the original, non-hateful, SJ version of question 3, I actually convinced myself that the GG advocates were privileged and wrong. Then I wrote my ASJ version and convinced myself that it’s an unknowable factual question – that there is no way to measure both sides’ harassment. But I’m not super confident about the answer anymore.
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Nita said:
Nice analysis.
I agree that it could have been a really convincing piece with a few more layers of satire peeled off.
The one underlying weakness, IMO, is that your “character” is a mashup of Someone Like Veronica (a straight-talking middle-aged nerd for whom social justice is a fight for survival) and Generic Overzealous White Cis Male Ally (a college-aged kid who’s trying to Be A Good Person and Make A Difference), and the two parts don’t quite gel in some places.
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