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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38209 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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So the Canadian Green Party had a meltdown over "misgendering". . No good deed goes unpunished in the land of fringe party circular firing squads; their attempt to be inclusive by having pronouns (but mistakenly picking the wrong ones) has become a firestorm.

It all started at a Sept. 3 media event in Vancouver kicking off the party’s leadership contest. In a Zoom appearance, Interim Leader Amita Kuttner was identified using a caption bearing the pronouns “she/elle.”

Of course, there is the standard "it made me feel unsafe" stuff. All of the leadership came together to harshly criticize this and the President - a volunteer- resigned cause she felt scapegoated, regardless of the apology.

The statement from the leadership candidates:

“The September 3 incident was but the latest in a number of similar behavioural patterns that Dr. Kuttner has faced throughout their tenure,” it read.

I'm sort of bemused how they frame this as some sort of pattern of racism, like calling a black person a slur or making jokes about women coders (they even use the term "harassment" at one point)

When the reality is that this person has deliberately chosen an atypical set of pronouns that will naturally cut against how most people over 5 have learned to use those things and so will naturally get misgendered sometimes.

This just solidifies in my mind that this entire thing will generally breed confusion and then conflict. That may even the point.

Of course, the political opportunism immediately follows:

Amidst all this, Kuttner launched a fundraiser last Wednesday intending to spite Jonathan Kay, an editor with Quillette and occasional National Post columnist. Kay had tweeted that the misgendering controversy sounded “exactly like satire,” prompting Kuttner to ask supporters to donate $68,000 to counter Kay’s “hate.”

As of press time, the fundraiser has pulled in $226.69, $10 of which was donated by Kay himself.

The President laments not only not being able to get anything done to the hysterical claims of harm but it being used to basically marginalize and remove her and other party figures:

Despite my best efforts to take us forward and find solutions, I am constantly distracted by claims of harm. I have spent much time trying to work beyond naming, blaming and shaming, and have called for restorative processes – yet these things continue to evade me because I find resistance to change.

Claims of harm have been weaponized in political attempts to remove people from the party. That is the truth of it. Federal Council was told that I caused harm to the interim- Leader. There was no evidence presented. I was excluded from Executive Council meetings that were organized without my knowledge. Briefly I was subjected to much harm and disrespect, and in the interest of the GPC I chose to not make this public to avoid harm or disrepute from coming to the GPC. This is evident in all our recorded meetings.

Reminds me of that article recently about how charities and organizations can't get work done with woke employees who are constantly attacking each other.

TBH, the Green Party - despite what some people want it to be - is an utter mess and small party nonsense like this isn't surprising.

The problem is that it's unclear it'll stay small party nonsense. The problem is not just this norm being spread, but that it is being enforced by both hate speech and discrimination law (probably why "safety" and "harassment"* have been so emphasized)

* BTW: I recall Jordan Peterson argued that we would end up in a place where misgendering would lead to these sorts of claims. He was told it would never happen because it was about continued misgendering. To that I say: that's bad enough + this case doesn't bode well for that position. It was a single incident, there was an immediate apology and it still became a huge fracas. Dreher's Law of Merited Impossibility hasn't struck yet, but it's looming.

You know, maybe this is just my privilege speaking, 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. Is this better or worse than trying to get myself accommodated? I can't say for sure, but I do think that just striving for resilience seems more likely to be good for me, especially to the extent I succeed.

Of course, I expect the reply to that would amount to “how dare you compare your trivial discomforts to the serious oppressions that these people face!” To which all I can say is that I can only use the information available to me; I can only look at what's going on outside and measure things that way.

The claim then tends to run (see: standpoint theory, Hegelian master/slave dialectic) that a privileged person like me can never possibly understand the experience of an oppressed person; that I am, for my privilege, the most stunted and insensate type of human who can exist, blind to everyone else's experience whereas everybody else can see right through my own. If that's true, well then – there really is nothing I can do.

But to the extent I have any valid judgment of my own, I note that this seems to violate all notions of “people are [anything] like each other inside” and seems to be a claim that belonging to an oppressed category makes a person a utility monster. And at some point, I have to ask which is more likely: that I cannot possibly see the truth, or that I am being told a lie that would advantage the people telling it to me.

I'm told it's an utter failure of empathy on my part, but I think I'll choose the side that says that empathy isn't impossible for me.

No, it's not unreasonable to ask people to use content warnings. Ousting people for having sensitivities is what purity spiralers do. I'm particularly thinking of this effect in """right""" wing communities where there will be extremely vocal people who insist on spamming NIGGER at every opportunity, despite the fact that this type of user doesn't make original content, doesn't contribute to the codebase, doesn't effortpost, and refuses to be nice to people who do. They end up chasing off everyone else and cutting off the fresh flow of content. Any online community is 100% better off without these types of people. It's perfectly reasonable to ask people to spoiler-ize sensitive content. Not everyone wants to see gore, porn, or whatever, and that's OK.

Sure, SJWs say something that sounds similar, but SJW types practice their own forms of purity spiraling. If you don't post a black square, you can't be in the group. If you don't allow me to inject my political views into every topic, we can't be friends.

No, it's not unreasonable to ask people to use content warnings.

Since "ask" here is a euphemism for "demand", it certainly is. It allows the most "sensitive" person to control the content of the conversation.

Ousting people for having sensitivities is what purity spiralers do.

Ousting people for being insensitive is what purity spiralers do. There's no need to oust anyone for having sensitivities; if you merely refuse to accommodate them, they'll remove themselves.

There's no need to oust anyone for having sensitivities; if you merely refuse to accommodate them, they'll remove themselves.

Or they'll deal with it, and grow as a person. Which is the optimal outcome.

Content warnings by definition don't control content. You may assume that whoever demands content warnings will also demand you to not include certain kinds of content at all, but that assumption does not hold everywhere.

The rules of this very community make a lot more demands. You can't just go "cw: low effort, personal attacks: fuck off [slur]" that would be in bounds of the content warning model.

Content warnings by definition don't control content.

Contexualization alters the perception of content. It puts the idea into the readers head that whatever is warned about is important enough to mention and also bad enough to merit prior notice.

It also makes it a real pain in the ass to write about certain subjects, because you need the warning. "Beware trivial inconveniences" and all that. And it makes anything near that subject a land mine because you can be dinged for not warning.

Contexualization alters the perception of content.

This particular contextualization is less intrusive on the body of content than many other kinds of contextualization employed here among other places, then.

Since "ask" here is a euphemism for "demand", it certainly is. It allows the most "sensitive" person to control the content of the conversation.

This is exactly what happened with "trigger warnings".

The scientific evidence for their value has been undermined but they still served the role of enshrining the ability of any "victim" or crybully to control everyone's speech.

In spherical cow-land you can imagine these content warnings not spilling over into actual discouragement and suppression (like say...MPA age ratings).

In reality the impulse to censorship seems strong, the slippery slope is real so best to nip it in the bud.

Okay, but what if you don’t want them to leave?

Take the slur-spammer example. I don’t care if he’s within his natural rights—I would rather talk to a person with “common decency” rather than talk around a flood of slurs. The community can demand that he stop in the interests of the larger group.

Ousting for being insensitive is what purity spiralers do, and it’s also what functional communities do. It’s setting the boundary at the right place (and enforcing it fairly) that is contentious.

Okay, but what if you don’t want them to leave?

Choose. You can either accommodate them to the detriment of everyone else, or fail to accommodate them and they leave. There is often an implicit and sometimes explicit assumption that such accommodation is a moral requirement; I say it is not.

I would rather talk to a person with “common decency” rather than talk around a flood of slurs.

I would rather talk to someone with a potty mouth than someone who is going to "correct" my speech every three words, or demand some authority do the same. Yes, there is some theoretical medium, but in practice attempting to accommodate the "sensitive" ends up in a spiral... which is why we're no longer on Reddit.

Yes, there is some theoretical medium, but in practice attempting to accommodate the "sensitive" ends up in a spiral... which is why we're no longer on Reddit.

It is a very "don't negotiate with terrorists" situation. Once you show that you're willing to fold once, you'll be inundated with requests, and every one will cite your previous accommodation as precedent.

Unlike terrorism, there is no cost to you when they try and you refuse/ignore.

Except the cost of a twitter hate campaign, possibly losing your account, hosting, network connectivity, payment processing, or whatever else it is you need to communicate.

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With all due respect, that sounds like a shithole.

It is perfectly reasonable to make following certain rules a condition of participation. Rules on speech norms are fair game. Like all rules, they ought to be enforced transparently and fairly, which is the real reason we’re off reddit. And the mods are still banning spammers and trolls, “correcting” their transgressions most dramatically. As they should be.

This is accommodating the the “sensitives,” and it’s also benefiting the community.

The choice is a shithole with offensive speech or a shithole run for the benefit of the sensitive. The center is unstable. Which may be why this group keeps having to move.

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