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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38704 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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but I've always had the feeling that if there's any big psychological pain point I have (for example, I am really squeamish about injuries or gore) it is my own responsibility to deal with it rather than want other people to change to accommodate me.

TBH I'm not even against the claim that we should accommodate people somewhat.

What I do utterly reject is this weird mix of anti-collectivist collectivism where we demand that people cater to our every whim in the name of social harmony and, instead of recognizing that society is a give and take and that you don't get to unilaterally control your own identity let alone how people refer to you, we ground these demands in first ludicrous claims of human rights and then exaggerated claims of risk of death and danger.

It's created a perfect machine for teaching narcissism:

  1. Tell people they have the right to control other people's speech even when they are not there, leading to endless rumination on how others see them.

  2. Tell them that refusal to do so is either malicious or poses a threat to their safety or dignity as humans.

  3. Enjoy the resulting narcissistic rage when someone, anywhere doesn't play along.

IIRC trans people are actually at risk of comorbidities like narcissism, so this isn't totally surprising. What's interesting is that it has now become a self-perpetuating ideology even for those who do not have those personality disorders so this problem can spread far past the .5% of the populace with these issues (as with the general issue of being "trans" itself)

It seems like this misgendering thing is a confluence of liberal/progressive flaws- the inability to distinguish when a risk is trivial or easily mitigated by the one bearing it, unwillingness to acknowledge any individual responsibility, and complete centering of the individual will. It has predictable results.

It seems like this misgendering thing is a confluence of liberal/progressive flaws-

Cataloging a list of your outgroup's flaws which basically consists of maximally uncharitable takes like "unwillingness to acknowledge any individual responsibility" is still against the rules here.

The counter of course will be that using pronouns is also trivial or easily mitigated, but I think that fails to appreciate that that tiny annoyance will be multiplied by being replicated across the entire population of people who interact with that individual (and so from a utilitarian perspective, cause much more annoyance than one person being misgendered) and be further multiplied by however many people with special pronouns there are -- of which there will be even more if the practice is normalised (adding a sort of additional negative incentive).

Not to mention many people struggle with names alone, asking them to shoulder the burden of remembering an additional set of unique appellations for potentially every person they meet is just setting those people up for more awkwardness.

Sure is convenient that your outgroup is not only stupid, but also negligent and selfish.

Show some charity.

And of course the idea that we must all cater to "victims" and "oppressed people" even if the demands and implications are absurd. This element is particularly important here cause, otherwise, the individual will of people who don't want to bother to do this stuff (or even the collective will of the groups that don't want to lose privileges like women with women-only spaces) would have nipped this in the bud.

This was one thing with stable "victim" groups. Now that we have utterly synthetic victim groups that anyone can claim at anytime...

TBH I'm not even against the claim that we should accommodate people somewhat.

Oh, of course. I (try to) ask for much less than I am willing to extend to others. It occurs to me for what may possibly be a similar idea to what I was objecting to here: the idea that I don't know what's going on inside them, so I'd better be considerate in the worst (reasonable) case.

Pan metron ariston, after all.

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