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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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
If you already face all that when you refuse immediately, I'm not convinced that it's somehow worse if you refuse only on the second iteration.
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