Spez1alEd
24d ago
It seems obvious to me that even assuming WhiningCoil's claim is "true," in the sense that young black men commit more crime, and this is inherent to their biology, and we have countless studies to prove it, it is still perfectly valid to strongly object to describing them as an invasive species. To do so is a blatantly dehumanising use of language that I believe could easily prime those who engage in it to see such a group as less than human, and therefore to be dealt with in the manner you would deal with non-human pests. This isn't complicated, it would be clear to everyone if he were describing Jews in a manner that compared them to vermin. So it is with blacks or any other ethnic group.
To be clear, I'm not accusing him of personally wanting to genocide or start a race war against blacks or anything, nor is this about being squeamish and finding the language offensive. But I think when you normalise referring to groups in such blatantly dehumanising and contemptuous terms, there is a clear risk of it contributing to a culture that views violence against them as legitimate.
There is nothing about acknowledging HBD or even arguing for explicitly racist policy that requires you to engage in this sort of thing, and the only thing it accomplishes is to potentially egg on the next mass shooter and to turn the public against you because whatever points you may or may not have, they can clearly see that your position is rooted in seething hatred and malice.
Spez1alEd
6mo ago
I remember thinking all those years ago during the 'controversy' around KCD1 that they could've had a secretive, stigmatised gay option and a fish-out-of-water non-white character actually, and that would've been a means to include diversity and head off the complaints in a way that wouldn't have been obnoxious or out-of-place, although the developers certainly shouldn't be seen as obligated to include diversity or suspicious just for not doing so. So I'm not really against any of this in theory, but I don't like the idea they bowed to pressure and what I've seen of Musa's dialogue does suggest they didn't exactly handle it very carefully. But at the end of the day I guess the truth is I just find the people gloating about it a million times more insufferable than the chuds complaining, whatever disagreements I have with them.
Spez1alEd
7mo ago
Does Twitter even really lean right? Every left-leaning tweet I see gets an order of magnitude more likes than any right-leaning counterpart. People have claimed these are botted likes but that can't be the case for all of them.
Spez1alEd
8mo ago
I wasn't accusing you of saying all atrocities are committed by non-whites. Anyway, fair, there is a distinction in how white/Western countries respond to accusations of having committed atrocities and how non-white/Western countries do, whether that be due to the influence of the Enlightenment or Christianity or post-WWII guilt or whatever it may be, and it does have important implications for culture and politics.
I still think the distinction isn't a result of non-whites not feeling guilty over their actions, though, it's just a different and more covert way of dealing with guilt. Rather than accept the framing of these actions as evil and apologise, sometimes to the point of exaggerating the harm or self-flagellating, non-white countries engage in downplaying and denials, and the fact they do this indicates they do feel their actions are difficult to morally defend. If Japan for example said the Rape of Nanjing did happen and comfort women were coerced and abused, just the way Western or Chinese historians claim, but that it was either good or at least justified in service to the larger national wartime goals, this would indicate a genuine lack of guilt and shame.
When they instead deflect and say Nanjing was exaggerated, or the atrocities weren't authorised, and anyway the other armies were just as bad, and the comfort women were mostly just normal prostitutes, it shows they know they can't convincingly claim those events as described by mainstream historians were morally acceptable, so they have to twist and distort the facts. Unless it were the case that the Japanese accounts were actually more accurate, I suppose.
Spez1alEd
8mo ago
Turks take the attitude of 'it never happened and it was good that it did, Armenians are scum' when it comes to their misdeeds.
If you have to claim it never happened I think it does demonstrate that on some level you're either aware it's morally indefensible and do feel guilty over it, or you at least know it would look really bad if you tried to defend it as justified. Even if in the next breath you go on to imply the targeted group were scum who would've deserved it anyway, people are quite capable of this sort of doublethink. I definitely think this is what's happening in most cases of people denying atrocities, whether it be the Holocaust, Holodomor, Armenian genocide or Japanese war crimes: they know they can't defend those things so they deny or downplay them instead. Obviously you have some non-white/Western examples there.
So, I don't think it's true that non-white people just don't care about whether they're morally culpable for various atrocities groups they identify with have committed, because if they didn't care they wouldn't feel the need to deny or downplay them. They would either defend them or simply shrug.
Spez1alEd
8mo ago
The male/female dynamic to me appears to very closely mirror the adult/child dynamic and I'm not sure why more people don't frame it this way. Most norms or policies that are criticised as misogynistic are really more paternalistic in my estimation, based on the intuition that women aren't as strong, capable or accountable and so are in need of special protection and consideration from men, who might even be asked to sacrifice their lives, but on the flip side people traditionally see men as much more capable and agentic and independent and generally worth taking seriously.
Women benefit a lot from this dynamic obviously and it's even embedded in a lot of progressive ideas and campaigns if unwittingly, but you can see how it's not exactly as flattering to them as it might first appear, framing them as more of a beloved subordinate than a respected equal.
Spez1alEd
10mo ago
It doesn't have to be that sinister. Rather than explicitly forgoing profits in an effort to "punish" incels, it could be that the screenwriters felt upset or embarrassed about creating a movie that was alleged to appeal to incels or to legitimise their frustrations, even if unintentionally. So they made a push to move as far away from that as possible in the sequel to refute those allegations, and didn't see this as conflicting with their pursuit of profits.
Incidentally is there any reason to believe incels even particularly liked the first film or ever identified with the Joker? I feel as if that association was entirely made up by people parodying them, unless maybe it was a riff off the "clown world" idea that was popular in right-wing circles for a while.
Spez1alEd
11mo ago
Thank you as well, I was a little worried it'd come across as harsh. I do sympathise with the reservations many have about the trans issue obviously but the hysteria over trans people supposedly all being paedo groomers is really disgusting, and probably does more to move me in a more trans-friendly direction than any actual pro-trans argument. I'm sure many people feel the same way. All the best.
Spez1alEd
11mo ago
Apologies for the late reply. It's true of course that there are mixed-race people who pass as one side of their ancestry or another without controversy, but even in many trans-friendly spaces the notion that an unambiguously white man could become black or vice versa is very much not accepted. I think this indicates that for race at least people feel there is an essentialist component based on ancestry, just as many believe gender has an essentialist component based on sex, which is the sticking point.
I do agree that if people want to have surgery to look like another race or ethnicity, this should be allowed, but I wouldn't consider them to truly be of that ethnicity nor begrudge members of that ethnic group for not accepting them as such based on lack of ancestry or similar experiences, which I think is similar to the view many have on transgender issues, too. When you reject the need for sex as a component of gender, it can feel as if you're undermining a useful method of categorisation for distinguishing between materially different kinds of people, who have different needs based on that material distinction.
That said while I definitely believe private sex-segregated spaces should exist, I'm open to the idea that full medical transition may make it viable to segregate by gender instead in some cases, if the data shows it can mostly close the physical gaps between cis and trans people. Segregation is also based partly on cultural/psychological differences between men and women, though, and anecdotally it does appear as if many transwomen retain some masculine cultural/psychological traits. To be clear I don't think transwomen are any more perverted compared to cis men or anything like that, possibly less due to oestrogen's effect, but if they retain aspects of male sexuality and the male gaze you can see how women might object to that in changing rooms and the like.
For what it's worth I think the more moderate trans agenda you mention was one society was broadly on board with, but whatever your personal views we're obviously past that paradigm now, which has spurred a backlash. From what I recall about a decade ago there was a bit more casual transphobia, i.e. people would casually refer to transwomen as men, but many people didn't care a great deal about the issue and were willing to be basically tolerant. I don't know if you'd consider that better or worse than what we have today, with greater trans visibility alongside a larger culture war around the issue.
Spez1alEd
11mo ago
I look like a duck, I quack like a duck, why not just call me a duck?
If we were to follow this logic to its ultimate conclusion, seemingly it would mean we should consider anyone who mimics the outward appearance and behavioural standards of a group to be a part of that group. Is that something you'd endorse?
Correct me if I'm wrong though, but mainstream progressives don't appear to accept this line of argument in regards to any social construct besides gender. When white college professors are exposed as having falsely claimed to be Amerindian despite lacking any Native DNA or cultural background, they're typically considered to have committed a grave act of cultural appropriation and transgressed against a marginalised group, even though evidently they quacked and looked enough like a duck to convincingly pass as one for several years in some cases.
If we were to apply the current trans self-ID paradigm to the situation, they needn't even have done that; just claiming to be Native should have been enough for them to be considered valid, even if they made no changes to their appearance or behaviour at all. Likewise, an American weeb who claims to be Japanese shouldn't be a valid target of mockery, but every bit as Japanese as an actual born-and-raised Japanese, who has no right to object.
If we're going to so strictly police the boundaries of every other social construct, and say that there is an actual essentialist element or at least one of lived experience required to qualify as part of it, why are we expected to make an exception for gender?
Maybe you think mainstream progressives just don't go far enough and follow their logic to its conclusion here, or maybe the idea is that there are good political reasons to police the boundaries of race; in practice a white man who self-IDs as black isn't going to be perceived as such and so won't be subject to the same struggles actual black people face. But people who object to trans ideology might say the same, that the struggles of a transwoman are not those of a cis woman and so this is a valid reason to police the boundaries of womanhood, too.
That said, personally I am sympathetic to the idea that it may ultimately not matter much if transwomen are granted access to women's changing rooms, sports and prisons, provided they've undergone full medical transition at least. But if this is the reasoning as to why trans self-ID is valid, then fundamentally there is no philosophical reason full ethnic self-ID shouldn't be valid too; it's simply politically inconvenient currently where trans self-ID isn't.
Ultimately though I think if we take this radical self-ID paradigm seriously, it implies people should be able to adopt absolutely any identity they like and be considered valid immediately, no questions asked. But socially constructed identities are an extremely helpful method used to distinguish between categories of people who have salient material differences from one another, so we can't just cease to police all their boundaries.
Not necessarily The Motte specifically, but I'm talking about the phenomenon in general, wherever it might appear. I do think that the tendency of hard-right posters on places like /pol/ to casually and unironically refer to groups with names like mudslimes, shitskins, and so on contributes to the gradual dehumanisation of those groups in the users' minds, such that it becomes easier to justify indiscriminate violence against them. Obviously that also has to be combined with factors like anger at terror attacks or crime committed by members of the group, dismissal of concerns over it in the MSM and so on to produce that result.
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