The Witch Trials, anyone else?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

No, this really isn't true.  The extremists on the left may have a disproportionate influence on social media.  But please cite any federally elected official that truly represents this.  Closest you can get is the squad, and frankly it's hard to find much of a problem with any of them from a genuinely "moderate" perspective.  Maybe a bit, but it clearly pales in comparison to the 45-member "Freedom Caucus" in the House and likewise crazies in the Senate on the right.

You seem to concede my point here, but are quibbling about what constitutes power. The comment you're responding to is not focused on political power. it was about online presence and influence in the national dialectic, and/or toxic clusterfuck of ideas.

If you're interested in my take on why the left tends to suck at amassing real political power, I have shared my thoughts elsewhere. TLDR: The left doesn't care about persuasion anymore. (but also: the right wing is really good at storytelling, and also really good at effective fearmongering. And despite their nuttery and weird hats the right wing hoi polloi are really good at organizing for action). 

 

 

[Heartofice]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

No, this really isn't true.  The extremists on the left may have a disproportionate influence on social media.  But please cite any federally elected official that truly represents this.  Closest you can get is the squad, and frankly it's hard to find much of a problem with any of them from a genuinely "moderate" perspective.  Maybe a bit, but it clearly pales in comparison to the 45-member "Freedom Caucus" in the House and likewise crazies in the Senate on the right.

Can't talk about the US, but certainly in the UK the SNP were pretty much signed up members of everything the gender ideology side were asking for. On top of that I think essentially we've had a creeping movement over the past few years to the point where things like gender self ID and the concept that trans people are the sex they identify as, are accepted by most major organisations. In part this is due to undue influence by trans lobby groups like Stonewall. We've seen clinics like the Tavistock where only now are we finding out the extent of how much many of the practioners there bought into the ideology and shut down dissent. 

I think what we are seeing now is push back to years of basically unchallenged power creep by one side. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 minute ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

You seem to concede my point here, but are quibbling about what constitutes power. The comment you're responding to is not focused on political power. it was about online presence and influence in the national dialectic, and/or toxic clusterfuck of ideas.

If you're interested in my take on why the left tends to suck at amassing real political power, I have shared my thoughts elsewhere. TLDR: The left doesn't care about persuasion anymore. (but also: the right wing is really good at storytelling, and also really good at effective fearmongering. And despite their nuttery and weird hats the right wing hoi polloi are really good at organizing for action). 

 

 

Screaming into the void online isn't power either.  If it was, we'd be in a socialist furrytopia with people injecting marijuana into our post-structuralist veins in the streets while we all have free abortions.  

 

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

The comment you're responding to is not focused on political power. it was about online presence and influence in the national dialectic, and/or toxic clusterfuck of ideas.

K.  I really don't think "online" power equates to any real power if they don't hold elected or appointed office.  Indeed, it literally doesn't.  When you talk about "power" in terms of political debate, inherently the only thing that matters is political power.  

5 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I think essentially we've had a creeping movement over the past few years to the point where things like gender self ID and the concept that trans people are the sex they identify as, are accepted by most major organisations.

Yeah I don't see a problem with that at all.

[Martell Spy]

3 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Screaming into the void online isn't power either.  If it was, we'd be in a socialist furrytopia with people injecting marijuana into our post-structuralist veins in the streets while we all have free abortions.  

 

It's a great way to distract from actual power though to point out some really loud person online.

Man, first thing I'm signing up for when the Great Leftist Utopia gets here is the free abortions. I just hate babies that much, especially the Yodas.

 

[TrackerNeil]

15 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

It's a great way to distract from actual power though to point out some really loud person online.

I don't know that Phylum is trying to distract anyone here.

25 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

TLDR: The left doesn't care about persuasion anymore. (but also: the right wing is really good at storytelling, and also really good at effective fearmongering. And despite their nuttery and weird hats the right wing hoi polloi are really good at organizing for action). 

I've heard it said that Democrats tell facts, and Republicans tell stories, and I think there's something to that. It's a significant difference; humans love stories, which IMO is one of the reasons news media sometimes do shitty reporting. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

15 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Screaming into the void online isn't power either.  If it was, we'd be in a socialist furrytopia with people injecting marijuana into our post-structuralist veins in the streets while we all have free abortions.  

 

As long as we don’t have to smell it…  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 minutes ago, DMC said:

K.  I really don't think "online" power equates to any real power if they don't hold elected or appointed office.  Indeed, it literally doesn't.  When you talk about "power" in terms of political debate, inherently the only thing that matters is political power.  

I don’t think it always translates into political power… but it can.  MTG translated her online power into real political power… 

[TrackerNeil]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don’t think it always translates into political power… but it can.  MTG translated her online power into real political power… 

And let's not forget that online power can have real-life affects on people. Read the story of Adria Richards to learn that. She screamed online, but it wasn't into a void. And she wrecked two lives over it, one of which being her own.

Personally, I think we'd all do better if Twitter were destroyed and the Internet shut down for 3 hours each afternoon, but since neither is likely soon, I think we need to acknowledge that what happens online doesn't necessarily stay online.

[Larry of the Lawn]

17 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don’t think it always translates into political power… but it can.  MTG translated her online power into real political power… 

Accepting that this is true, is there some Extreme Left Online activist who has done the same?  

More broadly, to everyone warning us about extreme left radicals... What are they doing or advocating for that is so dangerous?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

23 minutes ago, DMC said:

K.  I really don't think "online" power equates to any real power if they don't hold elected or appointed office.  Indeed, it literally doesn't.  When you talk about "power" in terms of political debate, inherently the only thing that matters is political power

Again, not interested in semantic quibbling about power, given that the comment was primarily talking about the confusion and bickering in threads like these that results from all of the factors that I laid out. I have stated my views on political power differences elsewhere.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Accepting that this is true, is there some Extrem Left Online activist who has done the same?  

More broadly, to everyone warning us about extreme left radicals... What are they doing or advocating for that is so dangerous?

I’m not aware of any off the top of my head.  But if you are claiming MTG is capable of things those on the left are not… is that really what you want to suggest?

[Larry of the Lawn]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m not aware of any off the top of my head.  But if you are claiming MTG is capable of things those on the left are not… is that really what you want to suggest?

I'm not claiming that.  I actually dispute the idea that MTG is a product of the internet.  She's a product of the same white supremacy, know-nothingism, and anti-Semitism that has been an established part of the US political tradition for generations.  These people and their ideas would still exist without the internet. 

I'm wondering, I guess, how someone calling JK Rowling a bigot online is in any way comparable to MTG.  

[TrackerNeil]

13 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

More broadly, to everyone warning us about extreme left radicals... What are they doing or advocating for that is so dangerous?

This isn't something I can address, but I don't think "extreme left radicals" are necessarily the problem. I think the problem is with extremely tribal, intolerant lefties, which is not the same thing. Clementine Morrigan is an example of a fairly extreme leftie who is neither overly tribal nor intolerant, and while I don't always agree with her opinions, I respect her viewpoints.

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Yeah I don't see a problem with that at all.

We desperately need to get our language straight if this debate has any hope at all. HoI specifically used the word ‘sex’ instead of ‘gender’, it was my understanding that this was the agreed upon term for differentiating the biological aspects (sex) with the mental ones (gender). 

It’s depressingly common to see this interchange, in which someone is challenged “do you believe trans women are women?”, and if someone equivocates at all, they’re a bigot. The challenger leaves convinced they’ve unearthed a bigot, and the challenged leaves convinced that the other had lost the plot and demanded a lie from them. All of which would have been cleared up if it’d just been agreed that ‘women’ is a gendered term and ‘female’ a sexed one, in which case the challenge becomes entirely mundane; trans women are by definition women. Glacier cherries are cherries, blood oranges are oranges, all highly uninteresting.

Which is why I find ‘trans women are women’ as a rallying cry a little daft; to those who already agree, it doesn’t mean anything. To those who don’t, it just comes across as ‘capitulate to our definitions’, which is no way to persuade anyone. It seems like the majority of online vitriol around the topic would be de-fanged if everyone had to first mutually agree to shared definitions.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

5 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

It seems like the majority of online vitriol around the topic would be de-fanged if everyone had to first mutually agree to shared definitions.

Bingo. And yet, this seems in practice to be extremely hard to do, perhaps given all of the different hot takes flying by, and reciprocal bad faith takedowns. Agreeing to terms on social media is like asking a tornado to blow only to the east.

[Heartofice]

44 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Which is why I find ‘trans women are women’ as a rallying cry a little daft; to those who already agree, it doesn’t mean anything. To those who don’t, it just comes across as ‘capitulate to our definitions’, which is no way to persuade anyone. It seems like the majority of online vitriol around the topic would be de-fanged if everyone had to first mutually agree to shared definitions.

I don’t see how the two sides could ever agree on that definition in its current state. The idea of ‘transwomen are women’ is really just the suggestion that trans women are women who are trapped in a male body and that the only important factor to determine whether someone is a woman is their gender. Gender being their own internal feeling of who they are.

The reason that ‘sex is real’ is then criticised as transphobic is because it’s in direct opposition to that theory, stating that your internal understanding of your gender does not make you a woman and that biology is important. 
 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I don’t see how the two sides could ever agree on that definition in its current state. The idea of ‘transwomen are women’ is really just the suggestion that trans women are women who are trapped in a male body and that the only important factor to determine whether someone is a woman is their gender. Gender being their own internal feeling of who they are.

The reason that ‘sex is real’ is then criticised as transphobic is because it’s in direct opposition to that theory, stating that your internal understanding of your gender does not make you a woman and that biology is important. 
 

 

What are the two sides here?

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

What are the two sides here?

I could say gender ideologists and gender critics? 

[Kalbear]

Lots of action since I replied, but instead I'm gonna repeat something I saw on my feed at work that I thought was important.

Quote

 

Whenever we choose to take action as allies, the first thing we should be doing is looking to see if there is active harm that needs to be interrupted. If for example someone is using racial slurs in a meeting or yelling at another co-worker, that is not a moment for debating the merits of yelling or whether a word should be considered a slur. We stand up in those moments that matter and interrupt that harmful behavior. We may pull that person aside afterwards for a conversation to see if they have stressors or factors in their life that led to that mistake and be an ally to them as well, but we don't invite debate with them in the moment. We don't turn to a person of color and ask them to engage in a debate about racial slurs to convince someone they shouldn't be used. We don't ask someone who is being verbally berated to engage in a calm and collected discussion about the merits of yelling as a tool for impact at work to convince the person yelling to stop doing so. 

 

If we bubble this idea up to matters of bigger scope than words in a meeting, say attempting to legislate trans people out of existence and denying their access to life saving healthcare, we see another situation where there is imminent harm happening and as allies we should prioritize interrupting the harm over high minded philosophical debates. This doesn't mean there aren't things worth discussing when it comes to how to best be inclusive of trans people in society, but their safety and access to health care isn't one of them. Turning to trans people, or any marginalized group for that matter, and asking them to calmly discuss why they deserve to exist prioritizes the feelings and perspectives of people who are likely a source of uninclusive behavior, similar to the person using slurs in a meeting. It is unreasonable to expect someone who's core human needs are under threat to overcome strong human emotions and be completely polite and civil. Their unwillingness to debate their core needs as humans is not a source of polarization.