naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
The whole discussion in the OP is about whether Drag is sexual, and whether that sexuality makes it inappropriate for children.
This is not how I understood the question, or how I approached it. I took the question on its face:
Is dressing in drag (that is, a man dressing like a woman potentially with makeup and so on) an inherently sexual act?
OP goes on to suggest that this is at the real center of debates about "Drag Queen Story Hour" and so forth, so presumably if we can reach agreement on this question, then we could reach agreement on the latter question. This may or may not be so, but my impression of this framing is that it is a way of trying to get clear about a less-obviously-charged question before worrying about the details of a more obviously charged question. Maybe I'm the one who misunderstood the OP, but I read your leaping straight to "and is this appropriate for children" as missing the point of the discussion.
Your little syllogism of "JP/Feminists say Makeup is sexual >> Drag Queens wear makeup >> Drag queens are sexual >> sexual things are inappropriate for children >> Drag queens are inappropriate for children"
I have never said "therefore drag queens are inappropriate for children" in this thread. I have explained why it seems clear to me that "drag" is inherently sexual, and you have said nothing to demonstrate otherwise, so if you want to have an argument with someone who is saying the things you're saying I'm saying, you're going to need to find someone else to argue with.
you shift that definition to "too prurient for children"
Again--which of my responses to Gillitrut or Gemma are you getting this from?
I feel like you're just spoiling for a fight. I was responding to Gillitrut in an analytic way, describing what comes to my mind when I hear "drag," and also pointing out that I am hesitant to do even this since of course there are many kinds of drag, and edge cases, and etc. I think my analysis is good in part because it also captures the discomfort people often feel in other situations unrelated to drag queens. Others have been quite civil in pointing to counterexamples, and I think in general the question "is drag inherently sexual" is an interesting one for reasons that have nothing at all to do with children. It's not that far from other arguments people have about e.g. whether breasts are "inherently sexual." Personally, I think lots of stuff is inherently sexual, to greater and lesser degrees, and I think that if we were Puritanical or Victorian about those things, I wouldn't personally like it but I would understand the argument.
Sexualized drag shows are inappropriate for children due to content, not because you can point to some banal element of drag as inherently sexual.
Sure, fine, whatever, you don't think drag is inherently sexual, I get it. I disagree, for all the reasons I've cited, none of which you've provided any plausible pushback against, because you're too busy focusing on shit I didn't say.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
You've brought too much heat and too little light, here. You're also not writing to include everyone in the conversation. To refer to an entire group, the majority of whom are not criminals, as a "criminal underclass" is clearly inflammatory. The rules do not forbid inflammatory claims; what they forbid is claims that are not also proportionally effortful, bringing argument and evidence (and kindness and charity!) to bear.
And I'd leave it at that, but in the short time we've been on this site, you've managed to accumulate a ban from Zorba, a ban from Amadanb, and five other warnings besides! Take two weeks off this time. You do not seem interested, at present, in the project of making this place a fruitful discussion ground. If you continue to show that unwillingness, your bans will only continue to grow.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
Way too antagonistic, dude. You've been warned about this before. Banned for a week.
naraburns
nihil supernum
9mo ago
While @yofuckreddit would probably have been better off making their post a bit less rant-y, sneering at them does not help matters. Please avoid this level of antagonism in the future.
naraburns
nihil supernum
11mo ago
The 'elites' in Europe are so braindead and so feckless
Please post about specific rather than general groups to the extent possible. Please provide effortful argument and evidence in proportion with how partisan or inflammatory your claims might be.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
I have asked what is so special about a particular minority -- rural voters -- that they have a right to be given extra votes and a veto, as was the case in the past.
Calling them "extra votes and a veto, as was the case in the past" continues to beg the question, as you have done from the moment you joined this conversation. They weren't "extra" votes, it was the way the system was set up to protect certain minority interests from mob rule. If you prefer mob rule, like--I doubt I'm in any position to talk you out of that.
Most of what you're writing now suggests that you are either unwilling or unable to understand the answers I've already given you, so I should probably just leave it at that.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
You are being excessively literal in a way which is the scourge of rationalists.
I'm never going to apologize for seeking clarity. Or maybe put a little differently: if I'm an autist at heart, then telling me I'm being too autistic is like telling a bird it is being too feathery. Like, look around you. If you have a problem with rationalists, you've come to a funny part of town...
"Why should anyone care" means "why should people other than the ones central to the situation care", not literally "why should any human being care".
Looks like a motte-and-bailey to me. "What? No! I just meant me, personally--I don't mean literally no one should care about the outgroup I'm railing against and weak-manning right here in the thread. What kind of monster do you take me for?" Uh huh. Try pulling the other one.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
but when I'm replying to someone who says something broad like 'The memes are turning out to be correct' without being specific as to which ones, I'm required to take a bit of a leap if my comment is to be something other than "Please post some clear sources so that I may engage with what you said."
If you're "required to take a bit of a leap" you'll often be better off just not. If you decide to take that leap anyway, then you need to come with the most charitable and steelmanned take you can muster. If someone else in the thread is giving a worse take, then take it up with them.
Really this a good illustration of why we have the rules that we have, and why in general the best approach to rule-breakers is to not respond to them. The comment you responded to really needed more, but taking "a bit of a leap" instead of just asking for more was actually a worse violation of the rules than the low effort comment itself. These things have a way of spiraling rather quickly out of control--one person keeps to the letter of the law, but violates the spirit, the next person crosses the bright line, but only slightly, this makes someone else feel like they are being good community police by slapping them down... and pretty soon we're 15 comments deep into a snarky back-and-forth.
Remember that the goal here is to engage with the best ideas of people with whom you disagree. If someone says something genuinely bad, there's a certain extent to which the mod team will interpret that as offering their own shady thinking up for examination and critique! But when you take it on yourself to impute a certain view to others, you need to do better than you managed this time.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
There is not nearly enough effort backing up your substantive point, here. Please engage with effort, charity, and an eye toward writing like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Why shouldn't I just assume that you're some basket-weaver taking a shit on the streets of Calcutta, or fresh from participating in a gang rape in some rural village?
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Hard to say. Maybe?
The decision to drop an official warning is not made on the basis of any hard-and-fast criteria. We let, honestly, a lot slide. There's only so much time in the day, and depending on what else is in the mod queue, the applicable standards may flex. Our approach is, in other words, inescapably conditional, adaptive, and imperfect.
Ultimately, if you're trying to get away with just enough badness in a post that you won't get called on it... odds are pretty good you won't get called on it. Until, of course, you do. Like driving over the speed limit, most of the time you'll get away with it, but if you do it a lot, you raise the odds of facing consequences for that.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
Low effort swipes at your outgroup are not permitted. Don't post like this please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
By the only metric you seem to care about
In context this appears to be, at best, an incredibly hostile non sequitur. Too antagonistic, don't do this please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
This seems unnecessarily heated and low effort. Please don't post like this.
naraburns
nihil supernum
10mo ago
Having sex with animals or black people. You know, comparable examples of "extraordinary" deviance.
This is uncharitable. OP discusses "racial insecurity" as a factor in interracial cuckolding and @Sloot's comment can easily be read as a callback to that. Cuckolding and bestiality are both examples of fairly extraordinary deviance from baseline human sexual behavior, as far as I know. Jumping straight to "this must be racism" is all heat and no light. Don't do this.
Here’s my summary of your posts.
You know we have a rule where you're supposed to respond (at least, first) to the things other people have actually said, before trying to impute things to them.
Looking over your user history, I want to think that someone who has received warnings against low effort posting from Zorba, Amadan, and myself, then been banned by both Amadan and myself for continuing to make low effort posts, might stop making low effort posts.
If you can think of a way to encourage yourself to not make low effort posts, please share it with us when you return from your two week ban. Others should note that the length of this ban is a question of steady escalation for repeat behavior, not a comment on how bad this particular comment is in comparative terms.
Yes, we should leave it at that, because, yet again, you have failed to explain why this one specific numerical minority must be protected from "mob rule" and others don't
What reason would I have to explain that? I have explicitly stated my position upthread that rural voters are not the only "numerical minority" that must be protected from mob rule. Let's have a look at just one recent example:
And, there are lots of groups in the numerical minority; bookkeepers are a minority of voters; do they get a veto?
Well, yes!
Where I said "I should probably leave it at that" in my previous post, I first deleted a paragraph where I laid out an argument that you are either being disingenuous, or have a serious reading comprehension issue. Then I thought--no, that's too much heat, not enough light, I'm just going to drop it.
With this comment, though, I just don't see any totally non-antagonistic way to describe your persistent and repeated mischaracterization of my view. I get that the thread is unwieldy, and you and I are both getting a lot of comments from a variety of people. So I want to be charitable about this, but like--if you're going to whine that I've "failed to explain" some position, you should probably be pretty confident that it's my actual position, and not a position I have repeatedly stated that I do not hold, right here in this thread! But no--here you are, arguing against some imaginary version of me you've concocted in your head.
Speaking of which--
I am willing to bet that I am far more opposed to mob rule than you are, because I have never seen you stand up for the rights of those you disagree with, which is something I do routinely.
If there were any plausible way to take that bet, I'd certainly do so--not least because I'd be shocked if you could personally identify the class of "people I disagree with" to even 50% accuracy. Conversely, I would not deign to comment on how often you stand up for the rights of people you disagree with, because I don't know you, and it would be idiotic to think that just because someone is (say) colossally disingenuous and reliably partisan in an online forum, that must be their whole personality.
Furthermore, probably most of us are bad at tracking good deeds, unless they are really substantial. My honest inclination is to say "I've never seen you actually demonstrate real care about civil liberties in ways that might undermine your apparent politics," but the truth is, if I had seen you do that, I probably wouldn't remember. There are too many users here for me to reliably remember each one's quirks and hangups, so I try to just approach every discussion with fresh eyes. Still, for whatever it's worth: you've never given me the impression that you are the tiniest bit interested in defending civil liberties in any broadly principled way.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Lesbianism is more political than biological anyway.
Your comment is a bit... curt, I guess I want to say, given the strength of its claims. To much heat, not enough light. Which is not to say there's no light there, but if you're going to assert that lesbianism is "more political than biological," that seems like the sort of thing you should say with evidence, at least a bit. You didn't even hyperlink the idiom--some amount of shibboleth-slinging is bound to crop up in any community, but still it would be better to speak a bit more plainly.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
If it's your intention to discourage people from giving viewpoints you disagree with that's fine, just say so.
This is not my intent, and by suggesting that it is my intent, you are actually breaking the same rule I just warned you against breaking. This is the absolutely predictable refrain of people who do not want to accept that they have broken the rules: "Oh, the mod is just biased against my views." Don't do this; it's not just uncharitable, it's almost comically boring.
it seems that the low-effort comment which I "should've ignored" was expressing a genuine sentiment that lots of people see reflected as true and impactful
Then take it up with them. I don't know how to be clearer about this. You explicitly tagged the fact that you were making assumptions about what anti_dan meant by "the meme" and you also tagged your own assumptions as tracking "very outlandish." The way you responded tells me that you were being uncharitable, and further suggest that at some level you even knew that you were being uncharitable.
And the thing is--for all I know, anti_dan believes exactly what you said. The problem here is not about substance. It's about approach. Generally speaking, just don't put words in people's mouths. No, not even if you think it's necessary; better to shut your own mouth than put words into someone else's. But in those cases where it really does just seem unavoidable, well, then--you need to do a better job attributing beliefs to people in ways that do not strike you as outlandish. You need to steelman their position. If you're not going to do that, then you just don't get to put words in people's mouths.
As for any other people who might actually be taking outlandish positions explicitly, like--okay! They've painted the target on their own backs. So take it up with them.
I'm not "remembering" anything, much less misremembering--I literally just went and checked, because your claim seemed plausible to me, but proved on examination to be wrong. You said:
Had it been CWR that opened first after the Culture War got booted off of SSC, it'd be the big dog.
My first thought was to check the subreddit creation dates. But as you suggest, it occurred to me that a subreddit may be created but not "opened." So I went looking for the original roundup dates, and CWR "opened" and was running CW threads basically immediately when SSC started having conversations about the split. It opened first, several months before TheMotte. When the roundup was "booted," CWR was already open and running, for the express purpose of being the new location. Everyone could have gone there.
Everyone didn't. The vast majority followed Zorba's team.
And it doesn't really matter very much to me who was first, or why people ultimately moved, beyond the claims I've already made and against which you have presented no counterevidence (only speculation). But it does seriously damage your credibility, in my view, to maintain your position here, in the face of strictly factual evidence against your claim. It's okay to be wrong, everyone's wrong sometimes. But not everyone is rational enough to update their beliefs in the light of contradictory evidence.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
CWR and The Schism aren't the dominant forums because they came after in response to specific complaints. Had it been CWR that opened first after the Culture War got booted off of SSC, it'd be the big dog.
That's an interesting claim. Are you aware that /r/CultureWarRoundup was created five years ago, while /r/TheMotte was only created three years ago? Perhaps more importantly, the earliest thread on /r/CultureWarRoundup is dated to the "Week of November 19, 2018." I am less sure about this, but as far as I can tell the earliest CW thread on /r/TheMotte is dated to the "Week of February 11, 2019."
In other words, the calendar says your explanation fails. What do you suppose explains your mistake?
I agree that the community matters, network effects matter, and not everyone followed Zorba (or baj, or Cheeze) specifically--but the community clearly had the choice between CWR and TheMotte from the inception of the Motte at latest, and the community mostly chose the one with Zorba at the helm. The Schism is... something else, really, but if we treat it as the post to CWR's pre, then the Zorba-maintained Motte is neither the oldest nor the newest iteration of the post-r/SSC culture war community. It's just the biggest.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
aren't those scriptures referring to if your family denies the truth of the Lord? Not just like, in general?
I am very much not a theologian, but a plain reading of the New Testament verse (as well as the Genesis verse it derives from) appears to suggest that a family unit is comprised of a husband and wife plus children--but the children are expected to eventually grow up and leave to form their own families, which become their first priority.
The Psalm is less clear to me, maybe because Christians gloss it with the bride-and-bridegroom thing that the New Testament does with Christ and the Church. But on a plain reading, the Psalm again seems to suggest that when the bride goes to marry the king, she's supposed to focus all her energies on him instead of on her family, because the king is super cool. Assuming the psalmist is David, though, it kinda reads like he's being a judge in his own cause...
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
They would take the lives of 1000 innocents in the most torturous way possible to save a single one of theirs.
Most of your comment falls on the wrong side of the rules, I think, but this line in particular seems like standard-issue hyperbolic propaganda. Like, show me one instance where this looks literally true, a single instance of Israel selecting "the most torturous way possible" to kill "1000 innocents" for any reason at all, much less to "save a single one of theirs."
This is (apparently!) a hotly contested issue, so I was feeling mildly reluctant to moderate you in spite of the overall badness of the comment, but that sentence in particular just struck me as entirely too much heat, directed toward your outgroup, for what looks like no light at all.
Yes, it was. You left entirely too much to the imagination of your readers.
It's not about whether I think you're incorrect. It's about whether you put sufficient effort into being understood. I gave you the benefit of the doubt (and moderated someone who did not) and so did not moderate you. But given your low-key antagonism here: consider yourself officially warned.
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