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I have some trans friends (who I love dearly) and they are offended by some of J.K. Rowling's remarks and beliefs. When they see Harry Potter content (including streams and clips of the new Harry Potter game), it can be offensive and threatening for them.
Growing up, I had a fondness for Harry Potter. I read all the books, watched all the movies, and to this day I have a deep nostalgic attachment to the franchise. I don't personally have an issue with Harry Potter, and all I have seen in terms of criticism of J.K. Rowling was Dave Chapelle's stand-up special (not particularly critical) and a blog post about an inflammatory tweet J.K. Rowling made about a male rapist transitioning and asking for internment in a women's prison (this seems like the edgiest of all edge cases and only useful as an inflammatory wedge).
I believe that my trans friends should be able to browse the internet without seeing content they deem hateful/disturbing (like harry potter content). But I also sympathize with people who want to play the new Harry Potter game or watch their favorite streamer play the new game.
Furthermore, there's an issue where if a streamer has trans viewers (I'd imagine most of the top 100 streamers have at least a couple, and the top 10 streamers in any channel have many trans viewers), by playing the new Harry Potter game the streamer is knowingly streaming content that will offend (some of) those trans viewers (admittedly not all trans people will be offended by the Harry Potter stuff).
My current position is that I hope the hubbub and streamer playthroughs of the game will subside in a week or two and we can just forget the whole thing. But I think this kind of tension will come up a lot. Like the next time Dave Chappelle releases a special. I will want to watch it.
How can I support my trans friends while also being okay with people enjoying the new Harry Potter game?
How should I feel about streamers who choose to play the new Harry Potter game on stream? In some sense they have disregarded my friends' feelings and excluded them from their community!
Any response is much appreciated.
Oh come on. I mean, if they would find themselves locked in a room with JKR holding a gun, that maybe would qualify as somewhat threatening - even though as far as we know there's zero evidence of JKR being prone to violence, so it wouldn't be really threatening either. Witnessing content produced by a person whose views you hate is not "threatening". It can be upsetting. It can be infuriating that a person who is literally Hitler still allowed to parade around and express their opinions and release games and profit. I get it. I can also be upset when I see a person who I think is a complete asshole - or even criminal, or even a genocidal maniac - prosper and not being punished. It is a natural feeling, and it happens to pretty much everybody.
What it isn't however is "threatening". Just stop abusing language this way. Existence of Harry Potter games is not "threatening" anybody, and being upset is not the same as being attacked. At best, it's self-harmful, since living in constant panic over things that aren't threatening you is bad for you mental health. At worst, it is a cynical manipulation, trying to weaponize everybody's sense of fairness and protectiveness to aim it at attacking somebody you disagree with.
Example: being a female locked up 24/7 with a violent rapist who has bodily strength advantage and all the sexual equipment and desires of a male - this is what one would properly call "threatening". Of course, female inmates forced to live with this treat aren't likely your friends. But you may want to take time and think why you are so upset by a prospect of somebody encountering a mention of a game and not upset at all and in fact completely dismissive of a prospect of somebody being raped. I think friendship alone is not enough for such difference.
No they shouldn't. What they should be able is to choose which parts of the internet to browse, and whether or not to feel offended. They don't own the internet, and they don't own the minds of other people. Nobody has the right to claim that everybody else in the world should behave in ways that would never disturb you. They can take measures to limit their browsing in ways that would be less disturbing to them - and you, as a good friend, should help them, either by disabusing them of the notion that Harry Potter games "threaten" them, or by helping them browse only in places where they won't be upset by mentioning it. What neither you nor your friends have is the right to control other people's thoughts and expressions so that they would never upset you. This is totalitarian dictatorship stuff, you should not go there.
Try to explain to them that people have different opinions, and that doesn't mean they are "threatening" them. If that proves impossible, then you'd have to choose whether you never mention anything related to topics that upset them in their company ever again, or suffer the consequences.
No, your friends excluded themselves from the community by choosing to feel upset about the game which in no way does them any harm. It is certainly their right and privilege to do so - everybody has a choice of communities to which attach or detach. But it's also their choice. Which can they change at any moment they'd like to. What they can't is to seek totalitarian control over every community by threatening to feel excluded if everybody doesn't behave according to their liking.
I'm okay if you read my use of the word "threatening" as "upsetting," that gets my point across, even though it's not quite the same. You could argue that I'm a rhetorical charlatan for using the word and I would see how you got there. But it's fair to assume that someone who feels vulnerable about their trans identity could feel threatened by some of the stuff J.K. Rowling says, and be reminded of it when they get served Harry Potter content on the internet, thereby feeling threatened. But I'd be willing to compromise and use the word "upsetting" if you're okay with that, either one serves to help illustrate the problem I'm having.
This is getting off track-- I made this post because I didn't come clean to my friend about my feelings and beliefs, and I want to be sensitive to their feelings and beliefs. I am seeking advice for how to handle the issue. What's a contentious issue between you and your friends? How would you handle it if it came up in conversation? Would you avoid it?
I am dismissive of the rapist tweet because:
Most trans people don't become trans because they want to rape people (I believe the numbers of fradulent trans people are on the order of 1 per 1 million, but even if it's 1 per 1000 how many fraudulent trans people are also rapists?).
The tiny minority of fraudulent trans people (like, for example, rapists who want to go to a women's prison) will get extra scrutiny and be dealt with accordingly.
If the rapist who became trans wants to rape people, they shouldn't be allowed to do so in any prison, let alone a women's prison.
It's a tweet, and it's ridiculous
I think the argument that people have different opinions (and that sometimes their opinions are dumb and/or offensive, or in the case of J.K. Rowling driven by their life experiences) is a good one to use. I may incorporate this into how I handle the topic if it comes up in conversation again.
It's not like you are making a favor to me because I'm dumb and can't understand it otherwise. It like using this term is abusing the language and we all need to stop doing it. Moreover, you are abusing it in a way that is also used by people to do very bad things. I do not say your goals are also bad, I am completely willing to accept it's an innocent mistake driven, but I am saying staying away from such abuse is not some negligible concession to just get people to understand you better. It's a very important principle and should be done because it's the right thing to do.
Their feeling would be wrong. If they are your friends, you will be doing them a service correcting their picture of reality to match the actual reality. Believing in false things is very rarely good for you. If somebody feels the TV is giving them orders coming from Alfa Centauri, they need help. If they feel a game is threatening their existence, they need help. If Rowling advocated, say, for putting trans people into camps or sending them off to Australia, then that may be thought of as threatening, but she never did that, did she? And neither does the game include any elements that promote such actions, right? So I don't see anything threatening.
If you mean that Rowling words may cause them doubting their identity - well, if their identity is so unclear to them that a word of a random person can change it, maybe it's a good thing they hear those words? Unless being trans carries some value to them and they are actually scared that it may be revealed to them that they aren't actually trans and thus lose this value and become ordinary boring people, like the rest of us? I certainly hope that's not the case.
The females in that prison won't be locked together with "most trans people". They will be locked with the specific rapist, who we know raped people because that's the reason he's in prison. And he somehow "discovered" he's "transgender" only after being convicted.
If I see no chance to change my friend's mind or if I feel trying to do so will hurt them emotionally - yes, I'd avoid that. If I can't avoid it, I'd tell them that I am their friend and I value their friendship, but I think they are wrong here, and explain why.
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Teach them that uBlock is not just an adblocker, and that they can use it to hide any youtube videos with specific words or phrases in the title, by adding a rule that looks like
I think "trans people should be able to browse the internet without seeing content that disturbs them" is a perfectly reasonable opinion. I think the best way to achieve that is to teach them how to filter out the bits of the internet that disturb them on their end, rather than trying to change the internet as a whole so that an unfiltered stream is not disturbing.
This is cool, I will keep it in mind and recommend it if the opportunity arises. Thanks!
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To me this seems like the error. Rather, it is your friends' responsibility to avoid content they find offensive, and when they do encounter it, control themselves like adults and promptly move on to look at stuff they do like without losing their shit. This is the strategy I employ.
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If your friends weaponize their own discomfort and suffering to control your behaviour, they are being manipulative. Under any other circumstance, 'you must agree with me or you hate me and want me to die' is emotional manipulation, plain and simple.
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Is this a troll? Are streamers not supposed to ever mentiom eating pork or beef because they could offend hindus and Muslims.
Its not like your friend will die an anxiety filled death if they see the harry potter game for 2 seconds on a stream and just go ahead and close the stream. Fucking ridiculous levels of sensitivity. They would get hurt by seeing a third party art of someone who doesnt like their general group? How mentally fragile can you get?
They can just install a browser extension and block harry potter keywords for life.
Would hindus and muslims object to content creators eating beef/pork? I don't know from experience if this is true or not, I will defer to you here. My guess is that they wouldn't mind, based on my Jewish friends not caring if the content creators they watch eat kosher.
I think a better analogy would be something like if J.K. Rowling were to depict the prophet Mohommad like Charlie Hebdo did. I personally am okay with Charlie Hebdo publishing pictures of the prophet, but I understand that this offended and upset many muslims (I don't condone any of the violent responses).
To Muslims (I gather this from media, etc, I am not muslim), depictions of the prophet Mohommad without the proper ritual are super offensive, to trans people, some of the shit that J.K. Rowling (and Dave Chappelle) say is super offensive. Like, that seems okay (that they are offended), right? Are trans people suggesting that they will feel an anxiety-filled death if they see harry potter content? I think that's not fair. In my experience trans people fought for a boycott (valid choice for activist action) and criticized people who didn't boycott (also a valid choice for activists), is that crazy?
Edit: forgot pork
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Your friends are being ridiculous; the proper response is ridicule. This will help your friends better understand that such tremulous, pathetic behavior is unbecoming of anyone past the "learning to walk" stage of development. It will also encourage them to grow as individuals until they perhaps can endure even greater trials than the existence of a video game that is licensed from an IP by a woman who only 98% agrees with their politics.
Based on all prior experience, you will likely have to choose between enthusiastically validating this ridiculous behavior or facing the fact that your beloved friends have become unhinged lunatics.
Why is ridicule an appropriate reaction in this case and not civil discourse? (this is an earnest question, not rhetorical. Would you lay out the case for this approach?)
Edit: clarify earnest-ness
A decade ago, a close friend and his baby mama invited me to their home under the pretense of a cookout, then proceeded to defile the ancient compact of guest right by disingenuously feeding me turkey burgers, and allowing the baby mama two hours to lecture me about how vaccines cause autism. This girl was the sort of person who was totally confident that she could have been a scientific researcher if she hadn't been too busy railing against her mildly right-wing mother. The arguments she made during that lecture were deeply ignorant. Things like "complaining about the wrong type of mercury" or "describing the mechanism in a way that chelation therapy really ought to cure autism and failing to notice that no one was using chelation therapy to cure autism". For the sake of social cohesion, and the tattered dignity of my clearly shameful friend, I held my tongue and politely thanked her for her concern, and she continued threatening his child with her malignant idiocy for a few more years.
You see, back in the Oughts, being anti-vax was a left-wing phenomenon, associated with the hippie, "granola girl" subset of left-wingers. They disliked vaccines for being "unnatural", and eagerly lapped up misinformation on social media about the superiority of natural/homeopathic/homemade alternatives. Then, repressed diseases like measles started outbreaking in exactly those progressive communities in places like California. I remember one researcher darkly quipping that you could model the locations by looking at a map of Whole Foods stores.
That dangerous tendency was brutally stamped out by saner members of those communities, not by civil discourse, but by relentless, cruel "dead unvaxxed kid" memes. Being anti-vax was subjected to vicious mockery, and the granola girls quickly dropped it because it was too uncomfortable to be ruthlessly pilloried for being dangerously fucking stupid.
This was the right move, tactically speaking. Rational arguments against the vaccine-autism link had been available the whole time. For most of those people, it was an ego/status thing. As the saying goes, you can't reason someone out of the position they didn't reason themselves into. You definitely can, however, shame them for being low-status losers until they rationalize themselves out of their stupid beliefs and get their kid fucking vaccinated.
And back to your specific situation, I have never, ever, ever, ever seen trans ideologues ever respond positively to civil discourse. I am not saying this about "all trans people". I have encountered plenty of them over the years who seem psychologically normal for whatever community we were in. But of the subset of trans people who are politically activated about the topic, the co-morbidity of serious, delusional derangement seems to be approximately 100%.
If your friends are the sort of people who are deeply upset about JK Rowling in general, I think attempting civil discourse is almost certainly a waste of time at best. I encourage you to try it anyway, for the same reason I encourage leftists to attend DSA meetings - I expect nothing will blackpill you faster, though that will probably burn the relationship. Ridicule will be healthier for your own mental state, and has a better (i.e.non-zero) chance of manipulating those friends into less stupid and contemptible behavior.
Shaming doesn't work very well when the shame-ee has a bunch of people who will promptly reassure him/her that it was all bullshit and also the person who shamed him/her is evil (a.k.a. a safe space). There are lots of safe spaces for transfolk - indeed, there has been quite the deliberate effort to install them everywhere. Vaccines are not a great analogy here (assuming for the sake of argument that your story is correct) because being anti-vax was always low-status and had few safe spaces.
Also, in general I think there are points to be won for not being the first to turn hostile, particularly between scrupulous people. If the other person pulls the trigger, there's no niggling doubt about "what if I hadn't done it".
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So, I appreciate the case you've made (and the story), but I got to thinking:
Are you sure the memes and shaming are what caused the change in behavior? Wouldn't the simpler, more likely reality be that when kids started dying and getting really sick, enough people changed their minds and herd immunity got better and the status race around anti-vaxxing waned in popularity?
Like, I vaguely recall hearing that the DARE (anti-drug-use-amongst-kids program in the United States a few decades ago) initiative, despite its intention had no effect or the opposite of its intended effect. Isn't that true of many of those public awareness campaigns (and today many of them use coopted memes?) Are you sure that isn't the case with the SoCal anti-vax stuff?
I'm open to the idea that civil arguments aren't always the right approach. I do want to at least have a rationalization for my position, then I can start making convincing arguments and poking fun (ridiculing?).
Do you have any particularly good zingers you would use to ridicule someone who is complaining about the harry potter stuff? (I realize this sounds insensitive, but I would imagine there are some good ones, and the likelihood that I will use them against my friend(s) is low. It's possible that some of the zingers might have kernels of interesting arguments)
I'll admit I'm not omnisciently certain about that version of history I relayed. But the problem with DARE is that it told people wildly exaggerated lies, from a position of authority. Then people tried some pot, realized they didn't kill their friends and destroy their life, and figured that heroin was probably fine too. The anti-vax stuff was also fairly exaggerated, but in a more defensible, joking manner. Also, it was coming from a stance of higher status, well-off STEMlords ripping into their friend's housewives for being gullible and negligent. Basically, I think in those situations, mean girl tactics worked better at manipulating behavior than out-of-touch lectures from the principal.
I might go with variations on the Read Another Book memes. Treat caring about Harry Potter at all as low-status and childish.
I wish you the best of luck. If you have any success, with any approach, please let us know.
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This is great advice, thanks for the suggestions and the story.
I’ll consider this approach.
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Do you think that it is healthy for them to be so easily offended by things? Do you think it is in their best interests to feel threatened by things that cannot harm them? Aristotle defines friendship as a mutual feeling of goodwill, of wanting what is best for one another; are your friends as anxious for the world to be as you wish it to be, as you are for the world to be as they wish it to be?
J.K. Rowling appears to be as trans-positive as it is possible to be without accepting outright falsehoods or social policies that literally and demonstrably endanger women. People who feel "threatened" by her work are either engaged in performative displays of virtue signalling, or have internalized falsehoods. Trans people who feel "threatened" by work that draws inspiration from her work, created by people who actively disagree with her on trans issues, take a further step away from reality, stringing the causal chain out into absurdity.
It would be healthy and wise for your friends to be better people, and you should want that for them. Indulging their anxiety-spiraling flights of fancy is not goodwill, but--at best--a kind of pity. This is a distortion of the virtue of friendship.
This is just incompatible with the internet being a place that everyone gets to use to their liking. If you don't like Harry Potter content, don't seek out Harry Potter content. If your favorite streamer is streaming Harry Potter content, you have a choice: stop watching their stream, or get over yourself.
If they're really your friends, it won't hurt them that you enjoy Hogwarts Legacy; they have no reason to think it will hurt you. I have many friends who believe things I find incorrect or even abhorrent. I do my best to function as a moral exemplar to them, and I like to think they are doing their best to do the same for me. Our disagreement does not preclude any of that. By contrast, someone whose every whim I must indulge is not my friend, but my master.
In no plausible sense have they disregarded your friends' feelings (how could they even be aware of your specific individual feelings?) or excluded anyone from their "community." For one thing, it's not really a community, it's a parasocial bit of internet media. For another, if they play boring games instead of offensive ones, does that "exclude" people? If they express political beliefs explicitly, does that "exclude" people? There was a joke back in the 1990s that the only people who listened to Rush Limbaugh were "liberals" looking for something to complain about--which was why he had an audience of millions!
To be quite honest, part of me seriously wonders whether your post can possibly have been written in earnest, rather than as a troll, or a bit of bait for confirming your own priors, or something. It all sounds a bit too convenient to me. But I have to admit that Poe's law may well apply here, so I have responded to the best of my ability. If these Rowling-phobic trans friends of yours are earnestly afraid, then obviously it would be polite of you to not play Hogwarts Legacy in front of them, or invite theme to a Dave Chappelle viewing party. But you've absolutely no reason at all to fault others for playing Hogwarts Legacy or streaming it. And if your trans friends think less of you for being insufficiently enraged by their own pet neurosis, well, then they are not very good friends.
This seems like a stretch, can you elaborate here? Like the thing about a rapist asking to be imprisoned with women is hardly evidence that women in general are in danger (I'll admit maybe I'm just ignorant here). It's a cherry-picked example of an extreme edge case that's easily handled on a case-by-case basis.
This seems disingenuous (although it's poetic), I don't think anyone's under the illusion that it will hurt me-- isn't it about politics or something?
How do you address topics with your friends that you know you disagree on? Can you give an example? Especially when they come up organically, in the course of regular conversation? This happened to me today, and I avoided the subject.
This isn't quite correct-- literally no one was surprised (that's hyperbole, sorry, but you get the point) that there was a boycott of the game and loud pushback.
So to go back to the specific example that prompted my post, the friend I was talking with today didn't behave that way-- when the issue came up in conversation and I kind of side-stepped, she did as well and we didn't speak of it again. I didn't feel good about it for a few reasons, one of which was I wasn't totally sure how I felt about the issue. I'm hoping to get some more clarity and then either destroy her with facts and logic or live and let live (or maybe a wild third option I hadn't considered yet).
As far as I have seen, the "extreme edge case[s] . . . easily handled on a case-by-case basis" are the sum total of Rowling's putative "transphobia." She explicitly believes that transsexuals/transgendered/etc. should be treated with courtesy, referred to by their preferred pronouns, included in polite society--except she strongly opposes their participation in spaces that specifically exist to protect females from males. Sex-segregated spaces like prisons or women's shelters have historically been sex-segregated for good reason--because women are characteristically vulnerable to men in certain specific ways. You can't say "that's a cherry-picked case" while also maintaining that Rowling is somehow transphobic; her opposition to the statement "trans women are women" extends only and exactly to the cases that are so obvious, your instinct is to call them "cherry-picked."
There's certainly nothing wrong with avoiding the subject, but it would be nice of your friend to notice that you avoid the subject and intuit that they should drop it.
For me, how I act depends on the subject, and on the friend, and on the occasion! Usually I just say what I believe. If they say something I disagree with, I usually say something like, "Hmm, I disagree, because..." and then I tell them why. Then I listen patiently while they destroy me with facts and logic, and either I change my mind or I don't, and we get back to doing more important things, like playing games or complimenting one another's taste in clothing. Sometimes they say things I disagree with, but it seems unimportant or like a bad time to disagree, so I might say, "I'm not so sure about that, but it's complicated, so for purposes of this discussion let's assume that's right." And sometimes I just let it pass because I've got other priorities in the conversation than making my views maximally clear. I am more willing to be blunt and offensive in my own house than in other people's houses. I am more willing to be blunt and offensive at casual occasions than at major social events (weddings, christenings, etc.). Just not making my political identity my whole identity goes a long, long way in these matters.
But admittedly I am older than the modal mottizen, and worry much less about social standing than most people do. I have definitely had people I thought were my friends cut me out of their life because I was honest about my beliefs, and willing to defend them. I am sorry about that, but I have many other friends who appreciate my candor and effort even when we disagree, and I would probably not be such good friends with them if they didn't appreciate me in this way.
Right, because trans-Twitter is extremely predictable in this regard. But doing things that you know some group will be upset about is not much of a reason to not do those things. It's important for you to consider the feelings of your friends (and for them to be considerate of yours), but you have no reason at all to worry what a stranger is going to think of you, no matter how loudly they complain about it.
FWIW, this sentence substantially increases my suspicion that you are trolling. If you're looking for ways to "destroy her with facts and logic" then you're being a pretty shitty friend. But if she is constantly making you feel uncomfortable with demands for allegiance to her pet cause, she's being a pretty shitty friend. And really--if she's a decent friend, you saying "I think you're great and I like your company, but I just disagree with you about some of these things and I'm worried that our friendship might not survive our disagreement," I would expect her to at minimum just avoid the topic with you in the future. She may even appreciate that you took the time to inform her of your feelings so she had a chance to save the friendship.
Or in the alternative she may blow up at you and/or cut you out of her life, but like--that would tell you far more about your value to them, than your decision to watch Chappelle could possibly say about their value to you.
I should have done this to begin with, but I read through some of the stuff that J.K. Rowling is being pilloried for (by some). I didn't really care all that much beforehand, just saw the memes, etc.
I read this article which summarizes her essay, includes some tweets, and includes quotes from a few of celebrities.
I read her essay from 2020
There's not that much in there that I take all that much issue with. I think fearmongering about people fraudulently changing gender to predate women isn't much of a real concern (though I can see how survivors/victims of assault, etc would feel that way). It probably happens but not often. Prisons and shelters already have systems in place already for preventing inmate-on-inmate violence/assault, and clear cases of fraud can be caught (isn't there still tons of inmate-on-inmate violence in prisons anyways? Is the sex of inmates really the issue there?). Could probably make a utilitarian argument that allowing gender change is good enough and improves lives for enough people that 1-in-a-million (this number isn't really fair, maybe it's one in 10,000 or 1 in 1000) cases of fraud are fine.
But I think what you're saying is that even if you don't believe that the trans-in-women's-spaces issue matters, that's the worst of what J.K. Rowling has said, and this can't be construed in good faith as transphobic. Is that right? I don't think transphobic is a good word to describe J.K. Rowling, but I think some of what she said can easily be construed as offensive or threatening.
The reason I say this is cherry-picked is because it's not relevant to the reality of the debate-- it's such a rare example that it's mostly useful for rabble-rousing.
This doesn't necessarily follow. Sometimes a good debate amongst friends is fun. I'll admit that in this instance I was being flippant and making a cultural reference, and that "destroying her with facts and logic" would not be a good approach. What I meant by this was "One approach I am considering is disclosing my true position to her and laying out a reasoned, rational case for why I feel that way."
This is good advice, I am thankful for your responses here. I might try something like "I support you in any of your efforts to boycott the new Harry Potter game. Someone recommended me this cool adblocker that can do keyword filtering on YouTube. [provide reference to uBlocker]. I need to confess that I am not personally offended by Harry Potter content and won't be filtering it out of my own internet experience. I understand that this might offend you, but I value our friendship and want to be honest about my personal and political views. [hopefully this leads to a good discussion about why she feels so offended by J.K. Rowling and the new Harry Potter game and I can further refine my position].
In hindsight this approach would have been preferable to avoiding the subject, if the opportunity presents itself I will give it a try and report back.
Part of the problem is that some of my trans friends have expressed that they don't feel like pushing their views on other people, they would just rather avoid the issue entirely. So I want to be careful about bringing it up to be sensitive to their expressed desires (back to that filtering out offensive shit idea).
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Looking at your friends' social media, do they treat other people with this level of respect? Because my experience with that sort of person is that demands for comfort are often combined with constant bullying intended to make other people uncomfortable. Pic related.
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In fact the demands for comfort are often part of that strategy: forcing "friends and allies" to constantly debase themselves obsequiously following every new demand without question. Not to mention isolating "friends" by forcing them to cut ties with anyone outside the radicalized community. That is cult behavior.
At some point you will have to choose between obedience and self-respect.
Good question, to be honest I exclusively interact with them in private spheres. I would hope my friends treat others with respect, and I'd be willing to forgive some transgressions.
I don't quite get this one-- is the post quoting an extreme tweet and then providing commentary? I read this as "I'm going to go annoy some people who don't really deserve it," which sounds annoying. Maybe in some contexts that sentiment would be justified (though not necessarily the action), like if they were implying "some people annoyed me, so I'm going to go annoy them back." Not saying that's what's happening there, just a little confused at what that post is saying.
That's an interesting tweet-- in a vacuum (without the culture-war context) that would be the perfect algorithm for updating prior beliefs, if the last step included some wiggle room for the alternative conclusion. That said, most would read that tweet within the culture-war context, in which it's arguably kind of offensive, because it assumes the poster is always right.
I appreciate the advice, I will consider this.
Edit: punctuation
Yes, that's exactly it. I have personally left (and feel driven out of) many hobbyist spaces thanks to coordinated groups of queer people of some type or other showing up and being aggressively sexual. I don't want to hear about how their hormones make them feel euphoric, I don't want to hear about "lol sex act joke", I want to go back to talking about X.
Ahhh, they are actually talking about ham radio-- I thought that was a euphemism. That's hilarious, imagine spamming ham radio with queer propoganda! There is additional irony because in the US AM radio (admittedly different from ham radio) is considered to be almost exclusively "Red Tribe" or US right-wing. I've heard US left-wing people complain about it.
The behavior you're describing (talking/being sexual) isn't limited to trans (or even queer) people, I've been in all-male workplaces where talking about sex and sex acts was commonplace (there were porno magazines in the break room). That isn't to say that the behavior is appropriate, though.
It seems like what you're describing is the same thing my trans friends are describing with regard to Harry Potter content? Am I wrong there? Like you don't want to see/hear offensive content in those hobbyist spaces and want to filter it? Thankfully the internet can maybe one day provide this functionality in a way that ham radio cannot.
This is exactly what the linked twitter post is pointing at: thinking it not just funny, but hilarious, to have another political tribe turn up and run roughshod over existing members and culture. I imagine that you don't really see the existing members as "people" if you think it's that funny. Potential further reading: Status 451 on Social Gentrification.
Me too, but not to that level. And yes, it's just as inappropriate and I don't like it.
No, I see important differences:
It's an explicit attempt to take over and change norms of a group and amp up the sexual content therein. A topic ban doesn't fix that.
Video game streamers are expected to talk about the latest video game. People are expected to avoid movie forums if they're trying to see the latest blockbuster without spoilers. They don't get to demand the entire internet censors itself for their sensibilities. Same principle here.
It is Not Allowed to push back against trans anything, and saying "please stop turning this technical discussion space into your transition support group" reliably gets one accused of being hateful or phobic.
Right, right, it's obviously offensive, but you have to admit there's a joke there, the stereotype of ham radio is super-nerdy/technical which is a stark contrast to the (stereotypical) queer propoganda.
Sure, to be fair to you it sounds like you have had some bad experiences before, and that sucks, honestly. And it sounds like the strategy you used was to withdraw from those communities. If you had a second chance, would you do the same thing again?
What would you say to my trans friends if you were having lunch with them and they brought up the Harry Potter issue?
edit: clarification
I would gently but seriously encourage them to see a psychologist, because that level of fragility is not healthy,
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Did the developers of the Harry Potter game deliberately set out to find a niche of the trans community, to spam it with JK Rowling content, in order to make trans people as uncomfortable as possible?
If your reaction to that tweet is "that's hilarious", shouldn't making trans people uncomfortable also be hilarious?
The tweet about spamming ham radio with queer chatter is not a productive analogy. It's funny but clearly inflammatory and uncivil.
I think the better analogy is queer people talking about queer things in the context of a hobbyist space that isn't coded queer. The queer people didn't seek to make anyone uncomfortable, but KingOfTheBailey was offended, threatened, and ended up being excluded as a result. That is a different scenario than what I described but a better analogue.
Yeah, 100%, but the asymmetry in the provided examples is the entire issue. If we lived in the world where your analogy was more representative of right-wing complaints, we could find a compromise "I won't talk about X, if you won't talk about Y", or "how about we cut all the talk around sex, whether it's straight or queer, and just focus on our love for the hobby we've gathered around", but if one side gets to demand offensive content be taken down, while actively plotting to offend others, there's not going to be a way forward.
I think we're getting a little bit off-track here, I am sympathetic to the idea that demanding to take down objectionable content only leads to taking down other less-objectionable content in the long-run. For the sake of argument let's say my trans friends aren't planning on harassing anyone (I believe this to be true, but could be wrong).
Imagine you had a friend who was upset about getting served Harry Potter content and one of their favorite streamers had streamed the new game despite it being clear that some of the trans folks in her community were against it. What would you say to them? Would you avoid the subject?
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I think you need to rethink what you are saying here. If you mean that literally, then obviously Harry Potter and JK Rowling (just for a start) would have to be scrubbed off the Internet.
I would also ask if anyone else should be able to browse the Internet without seeing content they deem hateful/disturbing. Radical feminists? Muslims? White nationalists? Surely you can see the problem here.
No offense, but you very much sound like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to be a good ally to all your trans friends who are telling you that anyone who plays the Harry Potter game or watches Dave Chappelle is hurting them, but you also want to play the Harry Potter game and watch Dave Chappelle.
"I hope this all goes away soon" is not going to resolve this dilemma for you, I'm afraid.
Wait, that doesn't necessarily follow-- the idea is that we can tailor our media experiences to see the content that we want to see right? And filter out content that we don't? This could be through features on our social media or regular media websites or by choosing what content delivery channels to consume, right?
Same idea here, isn't that what we do already by choosing where to spend our time on the internet and with human and automated moderation?
None taken, and I don't think ally is what I'm going for here, just a good friend. Like, what would you do in my position? Do you have any advice? Based on your reply, I would guess you might try to talk through the issue with them? Try to convince them to play the Harry Potter game? Thus far I have just avoided the subject.
For the record, I would like to watch Dave Chappelle again, don't care if I play the Harry Potter game.
If you are just talking about personally curating what you see, sure.
Tell my trans friends that I won't submit to emotional blackmail, or let other people be the arbiters of what media I should consume, and accept that I will probably lose some of them as friends.
No, why would I do that?
If I thought they were open to discussion on the subject, I would talk about what JK Rowling has actually said and the claims made about the game, and why I don't think the transphobia charges have merit.
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