I see why you would say this, but even with your edits you're still wrong. Your interpretation of why the mods do what they do should not be used as a basis for trying to define what "we fight against" here. One of the major things that "we" want is a diverse group of posters. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another. Don't claim it for anyone.
Edit: In particular, note that your reasoning here implies that the move from reddit means that we now all have values that mean we would fight against people who support "race swapping in .. remakes." Do you not want this to be a place where you can exchange views on equal terms with people who disagree with you on that issue, for example?
gemmaem
1yr ago
I'm really glad you commented, because I think you're right. There shouldn't be a specific thing that "we fight against" here, unless it's heat over light and the difficulty of finding places to usefully talk with people you disagree with.
We are all, to some extent, entitled to draw upon the cultural richness of the entire world.
There are caveats, here. If you're drawing on something sacred, or something that has a specific meaning, then part of respecting the culture you're working with can be not diluting that sacredness or meaning by repurposing it for other, more frivolous ends. And in general, especially if you're drawing on people less well known than you, I think there is a moral duty to give credit to the people you are drawing from. Both of these caveats are based on my view of the morality of the situation and you are entitled to reject them if you choose.
There is also the caveat that if the thing you are using is more recent, then it may be subject to copyright or trademark law.
Beyond that, though, I think it's good to use each other's stories. In the specific case of Ariel, I think (a) pretty much everyone is entitled to Hans Christian Andersen's work at this point, and, (b) Disney get to do what they want with their own IP, although I'm unimpressed by the cash-grabbing aspects of their recent spate of live-action remakes.
Disney is, at the very least, legally entitled to the work that they pay people to produce. They may not be morally entitled to do whatever they want with it, however. I, for one, would certainly hope that they would feel some duty to respect their employees' creative work, and would be open to arguments that cash-grabbing remakes fail in this duty.
I do not think that changing a white character to a black one in the course of those remakes is in any way outrageous, however, and it is certainly not more outrageous than the existence of the remake in the first place.
I was skeptical myself. This survey looked at three different locations in Australia, Singapore and Vietnam and asked parents to report whether different high calorie beverages (HCBs) had been introduced to their child:
HCBs, such as cordial, flavoured milk, 100% fruit juice, fruit drink, and non-caffeinated soft drinks ... were introduced at an early age in all localities, but more frequently in Vietnam. 36.9% of respondents in HCMC [Ho Chih Minh City, Vietnam] reported giving HCBs to children at six months or less, compared with 13.0% in Campbelltown [Australia] and 12.1% in Singapore. At one year, 72.6% of participants in HCMC had introduced HCBs, compared to 32.4% in Campbelltown and 36.3% in Singapore.
The most common high calorie beverage seems to be fruit juice. In Campbelltown and Singapore, soft drinks appear to be fairly uncommon before age 1 -- maybe around 5 percent in Singapore and well under that in Campbelltown.
I can't be sure what the numbers would be like in the USA, and they would probably vary by region.
Also, note that the numbers before 6 months are even smaller, and that 1 year olds are often not bottle fed any more, for what it's worth.
Edit: Actually, reading further, it appears that none of the parents in Singapore or Campbelltown gave their children soft drinks of any kind by 6 months:
Non-caffeinated soft-drinks (Fig. 8) were introduced by 2.4% of participants in HCMC by six months, but none were introduced in Campbelltown and Singapore. At one year, the rate rose to 11.9% of participants in HCMC, compared to 1.9% in Campbelltown and 5.5% in Singapore.
...
Caffeinated soft-drinks (Fig. 9) were introduced by six months by 3.6% of participants in HCMC, but by none in Campbelltown and Singapore. By one year, 9.5% of participants in HCMC had introduced caffeinated soft drinks, compared to 0.9% in Campbelltown, and 1.1% in Singapore.
This reinforces my skepticism about soft drink bottle feeding, I have to say.
gemmaem
1yr ago
I probably wouldn't apply "cultural appropriation" to either of those things. As I understand it, a kimono is not sacred and has no strong restrictions on when it can be worn, and people should go ahead and wear one if they want to. I'm less sanguine about "Redskins" but that's because the term is sometimes considered offensive, not because of appropriation. Different issue entirely.
gemmaem
1yr ago
"Demisexual" meaning someone who doesn't form attraction from mere physical observation but from getting to know someone deeply? My friend that used to just be called 'not being shallow.'
Really? I mean, maybe I'm just shallow, but I've always assumed that most people have the capacity to be attracted to someone within a short time of meeting them. I completely understand why some people would either want or need a longer acquaintance before actually having sex, but needing to know someone for years before you even understand that they could be attractive seems to me to be fairly unusual. Am I wrong? Perhaps I'm just falling prey to the fallacy of the typical mind.
gemmaem
1yr ago
To answer your first question, the "trans" in "non-binary trans femme" is using "trans" as an umbrella term, with "non-binary" as a subset of that.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Sometimes I wonder if a lot of the more creative gender descriptions are like a pearl around a bit of grit, you know? Like, here's this thing that keeps bothering me, let's turn it into a game, or an art, or something else like that. I don't think it does any harm, at any rate.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Yeah. Most of the demisexuals whom I have seen describing their sexual orientation have been at pains to explain that the simple "ooh, pretty" does not kick in for them under ordinary circumstances, except in the disinterested aesthetic sense.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Do you think that asexuals exist? That is, people who do not feel sexual attraction at all? If so, I think the existence of genuine demisexuals, in the sense of "almost never feels sexual attraction," isn't really so hard to believe. I see no good reason to think that most of the people who describe themselves in this way are lying.
With that said, the misapprehension that demisexuals merely do not desire to have sex in the absense of an emotional bond is common enough that it is also very plausible that some of the people who call themselves "demisexual" are themselves misunderstanding the term.
gemmaem
1yr ago
The onus is on the winner to prove they won fair and square...
What sort of proof would you suggest? You're asking the winner of every election -- regardless of party -- to prove that voter fraud didn't happen. So, for example, what should Donald Trump have had to do after the 2016 election to justify taking power?
gemmaem
1yr ago
It might depend who you are trying to annoy. I think I'd find that kind of charming, honestly.
On the other hand, if you were to, say, use "phased" instead of "fazed" ... ooh, how about using "could care less" in one place and "couldn't care less" in another place? That should catch everybody.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Depends what kind of concentration issues you're talking about. I don't use stimulants, but I have a number of coping mechanisms, myself. Listening to music helps if I am becoming distracted due to boredom because I'm at a stage that doesn't require much thought. Breaking the task down so far that every step is stupidly easy helps if I need to reach a stage that doesn't require much thought. Shortcuts are useful for getting between tasks -- I miss having an "Open Terminal Here" extension on my code editor because I do sometimes get distracted on the way to navigating to the right folder; I should probably put that back in on my new machine. Writing down my thoughts helps stop me from forgetting what I was doing in the middle of it.
None of these is foolproof. I take it for granted that there will be good days and bad days, and that I do better when I've had some warm-up time to get my head in the right space. But I also think it's okay to just bring my own unmedicated human capabilities to the job. I do what I can; sometimes that turns out to be quite a lot.
gemmaem
1yr ago
At least some of them had it in writing:
Terry Hubbard, who was convicted in 1989 of sexual battery of a victim under 12 years old, told law enforcement that he registered to vote at the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office. Afterward, he was sent "a ballot and a letter in the mail stating he was eligible to vote," according to court documents. The 64-year-old then returned the mail ballot.
gemmaem
1yr ago
This wasn't an issue of ID, and these people were registered. That's why we have advocates saying things like:
[V]oters should also be able to trust the state when they are issued a voter registration card. "It leads to the question of, if you can't count on the government to tell you if you are eligible to vote, then who can you count on?"
gemmaem
1yr ago
Depends on the wording of the law. From what @ymeshkout was saying above I surmise that this law specifies that it's only "fraud" if you know you're not eligible and vote anyway.
gemmaem
1yr ago
By this reasoning, new voter ID laws would be just as illegitimate, since these also change the rules. Is that a conclusion you're comfortable with?
This is of course even more true if the voter ID laws are deliberately written so as to include forms of ID that Republicans are likely to have (such as gun licenses) and exclude forms of ID that Democrats are likely to have (such as student ID).
gemmaem
1yr ago
This is one of half a dozen comments in this thread where the boring but absolutely correct answer is "One of these things meets the legal standard for defamation and the other, transparently and obviously, does not."
gemmaem
1yr ago
Then by all means make a comparison with something that actually does meet the legal standard for defamation!
gemmaem
1yr ago
Here's the BBC on the subject.
When Diddy asked him again to stop [selling 'white lives matter' shirts], West replied: "Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me."
...
He followed up with a message saying: "I'm a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I'm going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can't be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also.
"You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda," he added.
It's classic anti-Semitism, not disguised and not any sort of edge case.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Most people who suffer gender dysphoria desist but the study on those on puberty blockers showed that nearly everyone persisted in the new identity.
This is comparing apples to oranges. Studies showing high levels of desistance often include children who are "subthreshold" for diagnosis. By contrast, children who actually go on puberty blockers are subject to stronger constraints on access.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Citation needed. The usual requirement for child diagnosis of gender dysphoria is that the claim to be the other gender is "insistent, consistent and persistent." Your claim that merely saying the words "I am a girl" is taken to imply a stable and permanent identity is contrary to the facts. You are straw-manning your outgroup here.
I wrote it.
Mind you, I had help -- most of the wording that you're praising here is either directly borrowed from, or somewhat downstream of, this post from /u/Obsidian and this post from reddit user Bakkot. Which is to say that much of what I was articulating was developed by the original moderators of /r/slatestarcodex, back when the Motte was the Culture War Thread. Their achievement is indeed impressive.
For my part, I've got a long standing interest in discussion norms that includes a couple of blog posts that are relevant to your comments above. My post on pluralist civility grew out of me trying to justify to myself as to why this community is worth engaging with. And my much more recent post on ideological diversity and nonreciprocated virtue is quite relevant to your discussion of the value of having principles -- I approach it from a virtue ethical perspective rather than from the perspective of articulated principles, but it's covering the same sort of ground.
On the whole, I find the virtue ethical perspective on tolerance and civility to be a particularly useful one. I think pretty much all people have speech that they would respond to punitively in one way or another, whether by vociferous denunciation or shaming, or ceasing contact with that person, or stronger varieties of cancellation. You can't actually ask everyone to outlaw all of this on principle without infringing on rights of speech or of freedom to choose who to associate with.
Productive discussion with people whose views are different to yours will always be something of an art. Rules can help, but rules will never be the heart of it. Ultimately, tolerance is not adherence to a simple rule. It's a learned virtue.
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