Tags
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?
I think the best any of us can hope for is to always remember that there are human beings on the other ends of these battlegrounds of ones and zeroes. They (and by “they” I mean “Them™,” as distinct from “Us™”) are human beings who have different stories and different circumstances.
Which is why my usual first goal in an internet argument is to find common ground, something we can agree on and work from there. If that doesn’t work, I at least try to see things from their perspective before flying off the handle at someone. I wish I could get more specific about discourse norms, but every situation is different and blanket one-size-fits-all rules rarely work.
One thing I think everyone could stand to focus more on? Replying to what the other person actually said, not just to something you once heard someone who loosely shares some political beliefs with the person you’re talking to say (one of the main reasons I abandoned SJ is because I was tired of people being treated as monoliths whose responsibility it was to answer for everything ever done by someone who shared a gender or melanin count or any Kevin-Bacon-degreed friends with them).
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 didn’t have one big huge revelatory moment, it was a gradual drift away from SJ for me. A lot of things kept happening, like (to pick some more recent examples) a Steven Universe fan artist getting bullied into a suicide attempt for drawing Rose Quartz too thin, and a guy who got paid to write thinkpieces about how nerds are evil and creepy turned out to actually be a sexual predator himself.
As for what could persuade me out of my beliefs, at least the ones regarding Social Justice? Well, I’d like to think I’m a perfectly open-minded person who adjusts opinions promptly based on new information, but to be honest the answer would probably involve living in a world where people didn’t have their lives ruined over out-of-context misquotes on the internet?
(I suppose it helps that, despite my leaving social justice in the dust, I’m still pretty far to the left politically)
Explain Gamergate.
Gamergate was an abrupt crystallization of a lot of long-simmering conflicts in geekdom, a poorly-maintained powder room ignited by a stray spark.
In the one corner, we had a bunch of people who were tired of being ordered to apologize for existing, tired of being blamed for things that weren’t their fault, and tired of being told that they were alternately incapable of emotions or had no right to express emotions when there were people with real problems out there. In the other corner, there were, well, the people who were doing that stuff, though also a lot of well-meaning and empathetic people caught in the crossfire.
But of course, a boxing ring has four corners. In the third corner were a bunch of social media platforms and news sites who bring in ad revenue by stoking conflicts, and so they built brands by publicly condemning the fallen state of geekdom while subtly encouraging the very rage they were mocking. They didn’t care who “won” or who “lost” so long as it brought in clicks. And in the fourth corner were a small but very vocal and active minority of sociopaths whose explicit goal is to deliberately escalate every conflict they can find, for no other reason than because they find it amusing to make others suffer.
Put all that together, and yeah, there’s gonna be a row, and a very disorganized one at that.
Thing of Things 
I’m quite convinced that this is a pro-SJ person. ‘Listen to different perspectives’ is just a typical SJ argument. The second answer uses recent, minor examples, which reeks of someone who doesn’t have a deep belief, but picks some recent examples that are fresh in memory. The GG answer is also just very neutral.
Overall, I just see very little actual anti-SJ beliefs here.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Wait, what? I thought SJers were the ones who wanted to ban all dissenting viewpoints from the internet.
LikeLike
The narrative I’ve heard quite a bit is that only the oppressor groups’ perspectives are heard and that it is time for the oppressed to have a voice.
Hence: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Safe_space
Anti-SJ’s generally see this as suppressing debate, but the advocates of these things see it as ‘unsilencing.’ Both groups could make a ‘listen to different perspectives’ argument, but they would mean different things by it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Aapje, I’m sure that having the voices of the oppressed be heard is a thing in SJ, but my understanding it that it’s a thing distinct from safe spaces (since the people in the safe space are speaking among themselves rather than to a wider audience). The wiki you linked to even says that any group can have a safe space.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The theory is that certain groups are marginalized in the ‘normal’ world. Basically, that white people / men are conditioned to dominate the debate and that black people / women don’t have the skills to deal with this (yet). Thus safe spaces need to be set up to allow the latter groups to have a voice and build up confidence, be able to discuss things without derailing, etc.
Men may theoretically be allowed to set up a space to discuss their issues, but I believe that this is conditional on being sufficiently marginalized. As most SJ theories judge men as not very marginalized at all, all actual attempts will be fought hard.
Note that this is not just a theoretical argument, I can give many examples of men’s issues people who tried to organize at colleges and elsewhere* and were fought by feminists. Things like these are a major reason why much of the MRM sees SJ as actively fighting against them.
* Technically not with safe spaces, as these groups don’t subscribe to the same theory and thus see no need to exclude women or certain topics.
LikeLike
Aapje, from my readings on the topic, that is not the purpose of a safe space (or of it is, it certainly seems to be a minor one).
And I’d guess that men already have safe spaces, locker rooms being one type.
LikeLike
Well, I think that there are multiple purposes. In an attempt to be charitable, I tried to make what I see as the best case.
But you are correct that one of these is that people want to maintain an exclusive space where limiting the group to a certain ethnicity/gender/etc, makes certain opinions so rare that they are no longer part of the Overton window (and other opinions that are normally too rare for the general Overton window become part of it).
This is also known as an echo chamber. Basing it on race or gender has big problems, which is why the left traditionally has opposed such things as ‘white only’ and ‘men only.’
You are correct that a locker rooms and restrooms provide a temporary gender separation, although these are a consequence of the preference that most people have to not have their bodies ogled by random people of the other gender. People generally don’t linger too much in these spaces beyond the time necessary for their purpose.
There is a big difference between this vs setting up spaces that seem intended to be echo chambers, where the latter is not done by individuals, but selectively done for some groups by government-funded entity.
LikeLike
Aapje, You seem pretty intent on proving that you are correct and in avoiding an understanding of safe spaces that in any way contradicts your current understanding. (In other words, a failure to update.) I am not sure what to do about this, and so have decided that the best thing to do is nothing. You are perfectly free to examine the issue further, or not, as you prefer. Over and out.
LikeLike
Well, nothing that we argued is really objectively provable, thus we can only make our best argument and hope it is convincing. I don’t fault you for not adopting my opinion and hope you won’t fault me for not adopting yours.
Ultimately, I see big issues with the assumption that separating people by race/gender/etc makes them more comfortable, as it is built on the assumption that people have strong shared culture/opinions/experiences by virtue of the race/gender/etc. My preference is breaking down barriers between people, not legitimizing and facilitating race/gender/etc separation.
LikeLike
Anyway, I suspect that your exasperation at my apparent inability to ‘get it’ reflects our different premises.
A major cultural difference between pro-SJ and anti-SJ is that the former tends to believe that there is a lack of accommodations for the sensitivities of certain groups, while that latter tend to believe that these groups should be made more resilient.
The clash over safe spaces, trigger warning, no-platforming, etc is because these are seen by many anti-SJs as counterproductive, as they are seen as creating fragility, over-sensitivity, etc rather than resilience.
Your article is unpersuasive to me because it claims without evidence that safe spaces improve the ability for students to engage in uncomfortable learning. My observation is that SJ policies tend to create bubbles that eliminate uncomfortable learning, rather than facilitate them. There is evidence that colleges are increasingly becoming mono-cultures, where expressing ‘incorrect’ opinions is punished, rather than debated.
If you want to persuade me, you need to provide actual evidence that this is not the case.
LikeLike
This is another one of those low-information ones. They don’t really say much, or take any controversial stands. But I guess that I guess It’s sincere.
LikeLike
The fanartist who got bullied was a woman with the handle Zamii. Who was the sexual predator who wrote thinkpieces?
LikeLiked by 2 people
It looks like they might be referring to Hugo Schwyzer? Not certain, but there was a big blowup about him a little while ago that seems to fit that description.
LikeLike
>a Steven Universe fan artist getting bullied into a suicide attempt for drawing Rose Quartz too thin
I believe she’s asked people to stop bringing her up as an argument.
(Now watch as both anti-SJ and pro-SJ people take the fact you did it anyway as evidence that you’re on the other side. You probably just didn’t know she said that, but they’ll either ignore that or cite it as the reason it qualifies as evidence.)
(… I think I’ve been spending too much time on Tumblr.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ll vote this one fake… its position could easily be classified as either direction.
LikeLike
This is the third time I’ve heard that Steven Universe thing come up, and I’ve never heard of it before. I blame everythingisproblematic for shutting down.
LikeLike
I voted fake, but I have again very little to go on except for the text being generally vague, lukewarm and carefully sidestepping any potential tells. If you want me to buy it, take some risks, dammit.
LikeLike
This is a tough one. (Sigh…they are all tough ones. It is just easy to sound ASJ, I think). I mean, if we buy the biographical “I was an SJ but drifted away” details, then this makes sense. But it could also totally be someone who is SJ but wishes that the movement would improve a bit.
I guess I’ll go off the “pretty far to the left politically”. It feels like if someone is on the left, but is ASJ, they’ll run afoul of the SJ crew pretty soon, and that will drive them out of the left. Obviously, not literally true, but there isn’t a lot to go on here.
Walter’s ASJ picks
#1: ASJ, unsure
#2: ASJ, certain
#3: ASJ, certain
#4: ASJ, unsure
#5: ASJ, certain
#6: SJ, certain
#7: ASJ, certain
#8: ASJ, certain
#9: SJ, certain
#10: SJ, unsure
#11: ASJ, unsure
#12: ASJ, certain
#13: SJ, certain
#14: SJ, unsure
LikeLike
Voted genuine anti again, but this was tougher than the previous one. Their #2 seems like odd reasoning to me, in particular. That said, this did also feel like it was written in a heartfelt manner that I would expect would be hard to fake, so I did vote genuine.
LikeLike
I voted genuine on this one, but with low certainty of my opinion on that. My gut feeling is the story of being SJ and then leaving over the issues cited is probably real.
LikeLike
Voting sincere, if for no other reason than “a boxing ring has four corners.”
LikeLike
Pingback: SJ and Anti-SJ ITT: The Results! | Thing of Things