If you’ve spent any time talking about social issues online, somebody will have told you that you "just don’t get it". That you’re too “white” or “black” or “straight” or “male” or “female” (or heaven forbid, some combination of these characteristics) to understand. You’ll have been told that this one person’s “lived experience” trumps any amount of logic or reason or evidence you might have. You’ll have been told that no amount of empathy or compassion can bridge the divide between your different circumstances. You’ll have been told, in short, to “stay in your lane.”
JK Rowling is talking about women’s sex-based oppression and rights. How have we gotten to the point in this discourse where the ONLY people who have the right to an opinion about women’s sex-based oppression are trans people?
100%. Not only that, but women who dare express the "wrong opinion" about their sex-based rights are subjected to torrents of misogynistic abuse by the people demanding access to their spaces. It's absolutely insane.
Imagine if these people used that logic for the ‘lived realities’ of say the Tea Party movement or QAnon. Afterall, they have a deeply held set of grievances too and they could - using her logic - say that we can’t possibly understand their grievances against ‘Progressives’ because we’re not white, rural and Christian. Wouldn’t that be valid. To reappropriate Melissa’s phrase:
“Once again, I am begging non-rural white people to stop telling us what is and is not against the values and culture of rural white people.”
But hang on, if we used the same logic for them, we’d have to stop fighting a dumb Culture War because every identity group would be equally beyond reproach for their views, because their ‘lived realities’ would be untouchable.
So massive respect to Melissa for inadvertently ending the Culture War 🙌🏻
"But hang on, if we used the same logic for them, we’d have to stop fighting a dumb Culture War because every identity group would be equally beyond reproach for their views, because their ‘lived realities’ would be untouchable."
No, no, it's only when the people on "our side" hide behind "lived experience" that we're expected to listen. What harm could possibly come from having one rule for us and anther for everybody with different immutable traits? After all, our side is always right, remember?😉
It's a common theme already. Reframe something as racism (or another demonizing word) and then say "there's no two sides to racism!". I mean, you don't have a debate with Hitler, after all.
It's a fairly common tactic. Of course what it deliberately omits it that there may be two sides to the question of whether something actually IS racism, and thus can be deemed to have only "one possible side" for any decent person worth the oxygen they consume.
“It’s genuinely maddening (though sadly no longer surprising) that the moment I ask for an honest, open conversation is so often the moment where the other person stops responding.”
That’s because they were never interested in a conversation in the first place. A conversation is a two-way street: it involves listening as well as speaking, and responding to the other person’s views instead of just proclaiming your own. When people tell you “we need to have a conversation about [name your issue],” too often what they really mean is “I want you to shut up and listen while I hold forth on [issue].” Our public “conversation” consists of everybody talking and nobody listening.
"We may not always agree, we may not perfectly understand each other, we may not even like each other. But we do have to live with each other. And that means we can’t afford to think of issues as somebody else’s problem. That means talking. Especially when we disagree."
This.
I've long ago lost count of the times when I had characterized someone as on the opposite side of some divide from me, one of "them," and later actually discussed and managed to find some common ground.
It happened yesterday. I'm on an IT freelancing site that isn't getting many people jobs but spends all its time cultivating a sense of community, with a forced toxic positivity with tons of smiley emoji and that ghastly therapy-speak. There was one guy on there whom I had taken a dislike to for a number of reasons; he asked for a private chat. I was expecting him to tell me to get off the platform because my frustration with Nothing Happening Here was injecting "negativity." I was expecting a lot of sycophantic blather; turns out he's as frustrated as I am.
What you said about not even reading Rowling's remarks. I have read them; they're pretty mild. And anyway she is an author of children's books, not someone people turn to for what attitudes are permitted.
As we've discussed before there are a lot of people who get some validation out of seeing themselves as persecuted. The intermediate-gender folk view someone 99% supportive as a hardened enemy. I refuse to use "they" as a singular and I am reported as some sort of murderous sadist.
I'm often accused of making generalizations. Well, generalization is the most powerful logical tool we have. People put a lot of effort into conforming to human taxonomies.
"I was expecting him to tell me to get off the platform because my frustration with Nothing Happening Here was injecting "negativity." I was expecting a lot of sycophantic blather; turns out he's as frustrated as I am."
Good for you! Yeah, this is often a struggle for me too. It's so easy to pick up on a few markers of behaviour and fill in the gaps from there. I really consider myself to be fortunate that I have so many conversations with such a variety of people, that I'm constantly reminded that people are usually more reasonable than they appear if you interact with them in a non-confrontational way.
Some people are beyond hope of course,😅 But most aren't.
And yes, there's room to disagree with Rowling's tweets or even to claim her fears are overblown (I don't think they are). But to act as if she's some kind of icon of transphobia is absolutely preposterous.
I'm with Steve on this. I think that if Person A isn't interested in hearing Person B's opinion, the solution is not for Person B to be silenced, but for Person A to simply not listen -- that's their prerogative but they don't get to shut other peope up.
Crazy how this is a somewhat controversial opinion nowadays. We're truly lost of we accept the idea that people should be shielded from challenging ideas.
This is one area where I find myself more aligned with conservatives who decry "safetyism" although ironically, the whole anti-CRT movement is a right-wing version of safetyism IMO -- the idea that teachers cannot present students with ideas that might make them feel negative emotions. You're right Steve, we're truly lost...
"the idea that teachers cannot present students with ideas that might make them feel negative emotions"
I'm not sure this is true. Or at least, I'm not sure this is how it started. I think the issue with CRT, which is far from just a right-wing issue, is the message of disempowerment and collective guilt that some teachers are so careless about.
Plenty of black parents object because they see how it makes their children feel as if the world is eternally against them. Plenty of white parents object because they don't want their children taught they're complicit in evil things that happened before they were born.
I firmly believe it's possible to teach children history fully and honestly without making them feel bad.
"I firmly believe it's possible to teach children history fully and honestly without making them feel bad."
I might slightly reframe this, as I don't think we can competely avoid anybody feeling bad; it's part of life.
I'd say "it's possible to teach children history without intentionally making them personally responsible for it, or deliberately making them feel guilty or resentful". The neo-progressive playbook feels that inculcating those emotions and attitudes into the next generation is the path to equity; they WANT this kids to feel guilty or resentful, depending on the race of the child. It's not a side effect, but a purpose.
I agree with your last sentence. I also agree that some parents are objecting b/c there are some aspects of high school ethnic studies or history curricula that are inflected with Affropessism, white guilt and other bizarre and counterproductive concepts like "white supremacy culture." I totally get parents objecting to that. What I think is also happening is that there are right-wing people, some of them ethno-nationalists, who are using the extreme examples in order to try to tamp down on teaching anything that departs from the American exceptionalism narrative, city on a shining hill, beacon of democracy, yada yada. B/c there are so obviously parts of American history (and contemporary events) that paint the US in a negative light, they've inserted language into some of the bills that bans material that would/could/might make a student feel uncomfortable, resentful or guilty as a way of sidelining or minimizing the teaching of those inconvenient truths. I see this type of language as an incredibly broad overreach that will have a chilling effect on teachers and school boards afraid of getting sued. There are gonna be so many lawsuits these next few years as these CRT bans get implemented (or not implemented).
I have a simple question: have you read the actual text of the bills?
I ask because a centrist youtuber (alas, I've forgotten who) I watched said that he had slogged through the actual texts of all the bills submitted to the state legislatures (at that time). He said that of all the bills, the only one that explicitly mentioned CRT was Idaho's and it was not a prominent focus. Perhaps he was lying, and certainly it's likely that bills have been amended or new ones introduced since then. I'm not asking you to take my word on this, I'm just introducing a point...
Very frequently if I take the time to investigate deeper, the story in the mainstream and/or liberal press on neo-progressive issues tends to be mis-reported to significant degree. For example, EVERYTHING in the current round of bills about voting are being portrayed as going back to Jim Crow, but many of the bills do appear to be less drastic than portrayed. Studies show that the "voter suppression" tactics make very little different in the outcomes, but they are being portrayed as the end of democracy in America.
(The biggest real concern is about the ones which could give leverage for corrupting the electoral college system, and there is bipartisan support for some change in the Congress in regard to that, regarding the 1976 counting act, but that's an aside).
Anyway - until I see the various texts or an impartial analysis of them, I'm going to be wary of trusting a neo-progressive partisan's description of what's in them. I'm tired of being stampeded by distorted information. In this polarized country, we cannot trust any side to accurately portray legislation of the other side.
All that said, I don't agree with trying to prohibit schools from teaching something; we need more to empower parents rather than impose a form of censorship by state government. But I'd have to know more about the text to comment meaningfully on any particular bill. (And to be honest, this may not rise to the top of my todo list - there are so many other things I want to read or digest).
I share your critique of how MSM has presented a lot of this stuff. The person I've been following on the "anti-CRT" bills is Jeff Sachs who does a very objective deep-dive IMO. See https://pen.org/steep-rise-gag-orders-many-sloppily-drafted/
Melissa probably isn't meeting too many transfolk who are okay with JK Rowling *because they're afraid to speak up*. The transgender movement is, IMO, *the* most brutal when it comes to dealing with heretics. I've seen transfolk defend Rowling but daring to challenge your community on the left is dangerous: They will flame you, shame you, flay you and slay you publicly. Racist 'antiracists' and 'feminists' go after their own heretics, but none are as brutal as the trans movement, which is when so-called 'women' start fantasizing about the violent, misogynist ways they'd like to treat natal women who dare to challenge them. (Nothing says, "I'm an angry male chick with a dick" quite like expressing the desire to cut up a woman who has just challenged him. I might be able to dig up this reference but I'm not sure the article is still online.) My operating theory is that transwomen still retain their male brains. Our brains *are* different and they *are* impacted by culture, environment, and family, but boy oh boy, nothing brings out misogyny quite like challenging a trans 'woman' like a natal woman, and you start seeing that old-time traditional, narcissistic, cis-het entitled male misogyny (especially if they've still got The Dangler, as a transwoman I was friendly with before it was cool used to put it back in the '90s).
Melissa doesn't strike me as misogynist, but she's drunk the trans Koolaid. Biology is real, which is all Rowling truly asserts. Just an hour ago while reading Cynical Theories before I got out of bed, it noted how critical theorists are quick to throw women under the bus when it comes to defending human rights abuses. They'll damn any abuse perpetuated by white Western men but turn mum when black and brown women in other countries beg for their help in putting an end to human rights abuses against women and children these so-called 'liberals' would never tolerate in their own countries. Boy oh boy are natal women getting thrown under the bus in the trans movement, and it's amazing how quickly the most feminist-seeming women (think E.B. on Medium, Steve) turn into good, compliant little girls as soon as chicks with dicks tell them how to think. It's no surprise to me that trans'women' (I don't always use the quotes, only when I question their commitment to womanhood) are the loudest voices of all - chicks with male brains who still haven't gotten over the idea that the world no longer revolves around them anymore, with or without The Dangler.
It's not all inherent misogyny - Cynical Theories explains the fundamentals of post-modernist thinking and how it began to change in the '60s (the decade responsible for everything lol) and how critical theory emerged and then turned fundamentalist and dogmatic. There's a strain of toxic anti-intellectual thought that's been there for decades, but the trans movement has really crushed it like OJ crushed Nicole.
So it's sad that Melissa couldn't handle your perfectly valid logical points against her, but I say this very sincerely: At least she didn't act like an entitled dickwad like others would have done.
"Melissa probably isn't meeting too many transfolk who are okay with JK Rowling *because they're afraid to speak up*."
Yeah, "wrong think" definitely definitely isn't tolerated in some trans communities. There's also just the fact of what an echo chamber the trans community is online. Most people think exactly the same thing because they're trapped in the same algorithm as all of their friends who get all of their information from the same few, incredibly biased and unscrupulous sources.
Melissa blocked me after this exchange 😅 But yes, at least she wasn't as nasty as many of the other commenters I've come across on trans issues.
Oh my God! That's awful! It's astonishing how toxic some people in the online trans community are whilst simultaneously claiming that they're the victims.
This is toxic masculinity, plain and simple. This is the violent misogynist language women are quite familiar with: The angry male challenged by a female.
Steve, I don't know if you ever knew of a writer named Jenny Asenscio on Medium, I got friendly with her when I first joined because like me, she had a power feminist attitude and shared my dislike of whiny-ass, chronically victimized Jessica Valenti, arguably Medium's most popular 'feminist' writer, although she was never very prolific, although I encouraged her to write more to counter the perma-victim mentality of so much of Medium's 'feminist' writers. Jenny became Ian last year when she became the highly unusual case of an older person (mid forties) 'coming out' as a man. Yet he still retains his power feminist views and has spoken out (rather like a woman ;) ) decrying transwomen with dicks pressuring lesbians to have sex with them and claiming they're 'transphobic' if they don't - ignoring the fact that lesbians *aren't attracted to penises*. I note that that sounds remarkably like the way women have been traditionally been pressured by men to have sex: "If you don't want to have sex with me you must be a lesbian! Oh you're not? Well *prove it*!"
When a 'woman' uses a penis or a penile symbol to threaten natal women, it's a giant red flag that they're a 'woman' in name only.
"Steve, I don't know if you ever knew of a writer named Jenny Asenscio"
Yep, Jenny is fantastic. So feisty! And I love how I can absolutely depend on him to call out trans activists who use intersex people as a talking point to support nonsensical claims. I see him in my comments fairly frequently when I write about trans issues.
I am, in general, very skeptical of many versions of the Privilege Narrative. Not denying that anything exists, but I question the utility and applicability of the exaggerated narratives built on that foundation. We can nuance that more some other time.
I just have to say that the behavior of some MtF trans rights activists is among the strongest examples which cause me to give some more credit to the "male privilege" perspective. It seems more nakedly portrayed than usual. Asserting that one has a woman's brain and soul, while treating biological women and their concerns with so much disrespect - ouch!
And this does not characterize all trans people by any means; only some trans rights activists. I have known trans women who were very respectful of women's rights, and I hope they don't get caught in a backlash to the more extreme activists. I do not consider all trans people to having the same viewpoint! (Nor any other identity group).
I'm with you on that one. Privilege exists, but we pay oversized attention to some and not so much to others like wealth privilege, or 'green' as Steve called it awhile back. Not to mention when it's combined with celebrity privilege, which is how OJ Simpson got away with murdering his wife, Kobe Bryant got away with raping a woman, and I strongly suspect how Bill Cosby got away with raping white women as far back in the day when a lynching wouldn't have been entirely out of the question had he been accused (it's interesting how many white women with a LOT more power over black men back then never told.) Cosby's career would have been over and he never would have been able to venture south of the Mason-Dixon).
“...critical theorists are quick to throw women under the bus when it comes to defending human rights abuses.” Yes, just ask Scott Smith's daughter. I can't believe what the system did to this man and his family all in the name of protecting trans rights. I deeply believe that trans persons deserve all the civil and humans rights protections afforded anyone else in our society. But this is beyond the pale...
Actually, that story ended a bit differently than the way it initially played out. As it turned out, the boy was wearing a skirt but wasn't 'trans', and he came to the bathroom the girl chose expecting sex because he had consensual sex twice with this girl. She said she had only wanted to talk, this guy expected sex and he forced her. But, they weren't gender-neutral bathrooms, the incident happened *before* the school's bathrooms changed the policy.
So, the girl got raped by the guy, but it wasn't the trans horror the right wing made it out to be.
Can't say it hasn't happened elsewhere, and it's sure as hell going on in prisons where 'trans' women with dicks and a long list of sex offenses are allowed into women's prisons, but that's a rant for another day.
I see. I hadn't caught this. It was presumed, at the beginning at least, that (s)he was trans. Even the recent article I read on WaPo regarding the conviction used the pronoun she/her to describe the gender fluid boy. So I misunderstood and stand corrected. Sounds like he is/was a very confused human being regardless and the sex does appear to have been coerced.
The mother of the "young man"?, "young person"? said he had been experimenting with different styles of clothing: “He was trying to find himself and that involved all kinds of styles. I believe he was doing it because it gave him attention he desperately needed and sought.” Which brings up another concern of mine. How many of these youth asserting that they are gender fluid or trans are just seeking attention due to poor parenting? And what are their false assertions doing to the poor kids who actually are trans? What a mess...
This one was a slippery one. I only know about it because I got into a debate about it with someone elsewhere and I wondered, "Did this really happen?" and when I started looking at news sources I found it, not surprisingly, in the right wing media, particularly questionable sources like the Daily Caller and the UK's Daily Mail, both notoriously right-biased and footloose with the facts. I don't care as much about bias if the essential facts are correct but neither of these can ever pass muster in Media Bias Fact Check. So, just make a mental note: Right now there's not a lot of evidence for sexual assaults in bathrooms, so allegations may well come from the right wing media. OTOH, the left wing media is NOT reporting prison rapes so I can't say they're not happening, and it's not terribly radical to say don't believe everything the media says. I'm not anti-MSM, but I've watched journalistic standards slip over the decades.
Remember the Matthew Sheperd case, the alleged anti-gay 'hate crime'? (The kid beaten up and tied to a fence in a field and left to die in Wyoming). Next up on my reading list is The Book of Matt, making, from what I've read from reliable reviews, a very good case for how it was actually a drug deal gone bad, that it had nothing to do with his homosexuality, and how the media turned it into a 'hate crime'.
Then there was Tawana Brawley, who I call the Crystal Smollett of hate crimes. Jussie Smollett lied about a racist attack, Crystal Jackson lied about a rape (the Duke University lacrosse team case). Tawana Brawley lied about *both*, but boy oh boy did the media go to town on how it was a racist case without delving too deeply into some disturbing details questioning her story, and then it all came out - the bitch lied!!! One of her accused even successfully sued her for defamation (although I don't know that the bitch ever paid up).
Yes, I ran across the real story of Mathew Shepard more recently and was very disappointed, because I had believed the mainstream report that it was flagrant homophobia for a long time. When you read the details, not it was not. (One of the killers was one of his lovers, even; homosexuality was not an issue in his circle or his death, drugs and drug money was).
I've since come across more info on the George Zimmerman / Treyvon Martin case, and we were sold a buil of goods there too. The media failed to note that Zimmerman was a Hispanic Democrat who voted for Obama, was mentoring two Black kids, and had gone to bat for a Black person killed by an officer's son. Not to mention that all of the forensic evidence and the eye witness accounts are consistent with Zimmerman's story - that he was attacked by Martin, who was on top of him beating him and slamming his head into the pavement, so Zimmerman remembered that he had a gun and shot Martin from below. What we heard was grossly distorted to fit an agenda.
Then I read through the Justice Department's report on the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson - they were really out to go after the officer, but the evidence was quite strong that Michael Brown was charging the officer and the officer was shooting in self defense; the Obama administration reluctantly had to clear him. All the stuff about "hands up, don't shoot" was a false invention.
I've looked into several other such things, and there is a dismaying amount of misrepresentation to "Reinforce the (Oppression) Narrative".
Of course there ARE real cases of abuse, but we cannot trust the media to be accurate in telling us which is which. At this point, I have zero automatic trust in the stories from any side, in any American media; everything must be checked before belief. It's not all false, but enough of it is false or misleading that I've lost any automatic trust in any source. Alas, at this point I think the situation has deteriorated beyond just a slip in journalistic standards, but form your own opinion as you continue to learn more about how deep the rot goes.
Obviously, I'm including Fox News and conservative media in my skepticism, as I always have - what's more recent is that my distrust now incudes most liberal or "mainstream" news as well.
I have not yet read "Hate Crime Hoaxes" by Wilfred Reilly but I gather it records a number of other cases.
If you have doubts about the Michael Brown case, check the DOJ final report. There is another book about the Treyvon Martin case.
Thanks for the heads up about these! I didn't know a lot of these details, although I do remember public discussion about Zimmerman's Hispanic origins and whether that constituted 'white' or not (because, it's a slightly less horrible tragedy if he's a browner shade of pale?). I know he was Democrat, can't remember if I ever knew he voted for Obama. I didn't know about the other stuff, but I can be accused of not following it all that closely.
I aspired to journalism when I was in college (forty years ago) and we learned how to always strive for objectivity and keep our own personal opinions. Most importantly, we learned not to publish *anything* unless we got confirmation or evidence from *three* reliable sources. I thought about that rather a lot when the media's standards really started slipping in the '90s and stuff about Clinton was being alleged just on say-so. Was he really smuggled out of the White House under blankets by the Secret Service for assignations with other women (pre-Monica playing his harmonica)? The media reported this even though no evidence of it or reliable eyewitnesses could verify it. People are wise not to trust the mainstream media anymore, and not getting to the bottom of what *really* happened to anyone which might not suit the prevailing narrative (Trayvon Martin was a thug, Bill Clinton was a slut - well, he *was*, but the blanket story is bullshit) has a lot to do with it. Along with overall shoddy reporting and no effort to keep personal opinion out of it.
Thanks for the mention on the book. Going to put it on my Amazon wish list now, which is where I keep my 2-read list.
Yes, I was aware of the Matthew Sheperd case and the others. And, yes, media standards are slipping. I am far more cynical than you about MSM and avoid them like the plague. I abhor people who misuse their authority. NOT cool. A lie is a lie. The ends do NOT justify the means and real people are getting hurt with their propaganda campaign.
"We may not always agree, we may not perfectly understand each other, we may not even like each other. But we do have to live with each other. And that means we can’t afford to think of issues as somebody else’s problem. That means talking. Especially when we disagree."
Yet another 'Amen'. (from a non-religious person!)
I want to note that a large portion of the prescriptions of neo-progressivism would quickly become chaotic if applied reciprocally. They are not advocated as universal or reciprocal, butas unilateral. If a non-trans person told a trans person to stay in their own lane, that would be considered an outrage, but a trans person should praised for telling a non-trans person to stay in their own lane. (Likewise for lived experience trumping evidence, 'impact trumps intention', cultural appropriation, and stereotyping among many others)
I see two roots to this asymmetry. One is a genuine concern about minority voices having traditionally been under-represented (note 1), but overshoots to giving a minority voice control of the conversation. The other is a type of compensatory privilege - in compensation for past and ongoing inequities in one realm, marginalized folks are supposed to have unequal and superior benefits in a different realm. Like "people in some population group have less household wealth on average than another group, so we will give them the high moral ground in any argument they make and suppress differing views". That doesn't fix the original issue, but it makes the balance of advantages between groups vary depending on the context.
There are big problems with this latter in particular. Instead of one group feeling put upon, it causes many folks on both sides to feel mistreated. People mostly ignore the context where they may have an advantage, and focus on the context where they feel mistreated, so both sides are resentful. All the while - the original inequality is not being fixed by this. We've just added a new problem, not reducing the original problem.
In fact, one could be suspicious that that is sometimes the point - a liberal white professional woman attends a DiAngelo training and goes into full self-abasement mode thereafter, always deferring to people of color intellectually and putting her own critical thinking in suspension - but conveniently gives up zero of her economic advantages. She may profess that she didn't earn her job but received it as unearned privilege of whiteness - but she doesn't quit to allow a marginalized person to fill it instead, or donate all the equity in her house to Black people.
Since this doesn't really move the needle on improving the original complaint, frustration grows and the only tool they have is to double down on the original strategy - apply more guilt and resentment, increase the compensatory privilege, punish anybody not buying into the strategy more severely.
Meanwhile, some people on the other side are also becoming resentful - eg: being told that an analysis which they spent a long time synthesizing from many sources is totally worthless compared to the subjective lived experience of somebody else. We can never count on a seamless guilt trip to over-ride all people's awareness of this asymmetry or their critical thinking - there will be many who do not buy in. This does not win support for strategies which might actually have some positive impact on the original issue.
Balancing unfairness in one domain by creating countervaling unfairness in another domain, just creates escalating polarization, not solutions.
I have mixed thoughts in positive discrimination in employment (in the US this is usually referred to as 'affirmative action'). There can be positives, but there are also negatives to consider. But at least it's a countervailing discrimination which is closer to the same domain as the original perceived unfairness. If it was successful, it could mitigate the original issue which stimulated it.
In the case of something like trans rights, the "balance" is often something like:
- I am discriminated against by some employers
- If I I call some viewpoint or person "transphobic", no non-trans person is allowed to disagree
I hope it's obvious that this compensatory unfairness in different domains is a dysfunctional strategy, when seen clearly. But a person who might have supported protection from employment discrimination may instead become more oppositional to that if they encounter the latter experience and build resentment against trans activist applying that technique to rhetorically "win" all arguments about sports and spas.
As Steve notes, it's actually worse than that. If a trans person has not even read what JK Rowling has written in full context, but they express an opinion that Rowling is a raging transphobe - that ungrounded personal opinion is supposed to trump any reasoning or evidence presented by a non-trans person. That is, non-oppressed people are supposed to defer to the moral superiority of a member of a marginalized group, EVEN WHEN the latter can be shown to be objectively ill informed and basing their opinion on a false narrative. This dynamic not only sows polarization, it fosters counter-productive strategies which proceed only because no reasoned pushback is allowed, even from those who might support the goals if not the strategies.
(Note 1: there is a whole 'nother issue regarding whether opinions should be represented proportionally or equally)
"I want to note that a large portion of the prescriptions of neo-progressivism would quickly become chaotic if applied reciprocally. They are not advocated as universal or reciprocal, but as unilateral."
Absolutely. As T. Blood points out above, this would very quickly fall apart of other groups tried to use the same trick.
As you say, minority groups *do* need a degree of special attention because their problems, by definition, are not seen or widely understood by the majority. But there's a difference between listening carefully to somebody else's experience and accepting what they say uncritically because they happen to be a member of a particular group. The former is vital to productive discourse, the latter is fatal.
A person can simultaneously hold two opposing views of something without cognitive dissonance, and that's a good thing because the opposing sides will usually contain some truth. I sometimes express a thought (opinion) that I have an opposing thought about without expressing it too. I ramble too much already without adding all that.
We all have our own lived experience and it's true that some won't be able to understand your views because their world is and has been a different one. When someone tells me about their lived experience, I try to use that to help understand their views. That doesn't necessarily cause me to agree with them, but it helps me to not demonize them. I'm known to tell my stories in hopes that it will have that affect upon others. It doesn't always work. Life as it is.
Diverting a bit, the accusation of "phobic" often is misplaced. I used the word "hoplophobia" in a conversation here on The Commentary. My apologies, I shouldn't have. We all have opinions, and they aren't necessarily fear based, but they could be. I can't read minds.
The economist and political commentator, Walter Williams, once said, "When I was looking for a Mrs. Williams, white women need not apply." A black man who had a preference for a black woman for a life partner. I don't see it as racist or phobic to express the fact that he had a race-based preference just because I didn't/don't.
Social activities are a different thing from dating, a thing that can lead to sexual activities. I have no problem with social engagement with trans people or flaming gay people, but if I was single and dating, I wouldn't choose to date either. Two people enjoying an activity together isn't a date by default. The friend zone. Does that make me transphobic? I don't think so.
I've been told to stay in my lane, along with some defamation which was more objectionable. As Steve says, it is worthwhile to listen to others, they might have something to say that could even change your mind if you are seeking truth, rather than just "winning" a debate. Ignoring something worthwhile because you don't like it isn't winning.
"A black man who had a preference for a black woman for a life partner. I don't see it as racist or phobic to express the fact that he had a race-based preference just because I didn't/don't."
Hmm, interesting. I definitely see this as racist. Just as I would if a white person said it about black women. This isn't about preferences to me, I'm not saying it's racist to have a preference for certain body types of features or even skin tones. But to completely write off an entire group of millions of people, within which there's enormous variation in appearance, is more than just preference to my mind.
I have my sexual preferences when it comes to body type and complexion, but there are extraordinarily attractive women of all colours and shapes. And, of course, there's an awful lot more to a potential wife than how they look.
"I have my sexual preferences when it comes to body type and complexion, but there are extraordinarily attractive women of all colours and shapes. And, of course, there's an awful lot more to a potential wife than how they look."
I obviously agree since I married a woman of different race and culture. I have more friends, not just acquaintances, who are married outside their race than same race. Birds of a feather flock together. Interestingly, white men with Asian wives and black men with white wives. Was race a factor in their choices? I don't know.
I don't condemn the man. He didn't state his reasons. The thing with race bias is that it can motivate bad things directed at others or can be denying yourself possibilities, which he did. He is also older than me. He died at the age of 84 in 2020. When I got married in 1970, interracial marriage was not common like it is today, and we did encounter racist attitudes and actions. For him, it may have still been illegal in many states when he married. It was 1967 when the Supreme Court ruled against laws against interracial marriage. Today, few bat an eye about it, but it hasn't always been that way in my lifetime, and certainly not in his.
In about 1980, in Georgia, we were to go out as a double with a couple who were black people. At the last minute, he couldn't go so we went as a threesome. A nightclub that had two bands that night, one white and one black. When the white band played its last set, all the white people left, except me. I didn't really notice until I was on the dance floor with Suzie and realized that I was a white man dancing with a black woman in a club with no other white people. It was fine, but it wouldn't have been fine if the races were all reversed. The bad old days. Yes, in those day I was called a "N" lover by some racist white people, but I didn't share the same risk for violence (mostly) as a black man.
In the end, I must agree with you that his attitude seemed racist, but thinking of the times, and the big picture, I give him a pass.
"In the end, I must agree with you that his attitude seemed racist, but thinking of the times, and the big picture, I give him a pass."
Oh yeah, absolutely. I think one of the biggest problems with discourse today is that people refuse to acknowledge that standards change and that something that was broadly acceptable even 10 years ago is considered offensive today.
I still think what he said was racist, but as you say, in the context of the time he said it, racist attitudes were far less surprising or unusual.
Um, it would actually be helpful if you could explain whether you were making a response to Steve's article, or just randomly posting. That's not to control your behaviour, just attempting to engage you in discussion so we might better understand any point you wish to make.
JK Rowling is talking about women’s sex-based oppression and rights. How have we gotten to the point in this discourse where the ONLY people who have the right to an opinion about women’s sex-based oppression are trans people?
100%. Not only that, but women who dare express the "wrong opinion" about their sex-based rights are subjected to torrents of misogynistic abuse by the people demanding access to their spaces. It's absolutely insane.
Through the peddling of a hysterical narrative designed to scapegoat and shame people into submission. That's how.
Mostly, ex-men?
So glad you said this
Imagine if these people used that logic for the ‘lived realities’ of say the Tea Party movement or QAnon. Afterall, they have a deeply held set of grievances too and they could - using her logic - say that we can’t possibly understand their grievances against ‘Progressives’ because we’re not white, rural and Christian. Wouldn’t that be valid. To reappropriate Melissa’s phrase:
“Once again, I am begging non-rural white people to stop telling us what is and is not against the values and culture of rural white people.”
But hang on, if we used the same logic for them, we’d have to stop fighting a dumb Culture War because every identity group would be equally beyond reproach for their views, because their ‘lived realities’ would be untouchable.
So massive respect to Melissa for inadvertently ending the Culture War 🙌🏻
"But hang on, if we used the same logic for them, we’d have to stop fighting a dumb Culture War because every identity group would be equally beyond reproach for their views, because their ‘lived realities’ would be untouchable."
No, no, it's only when the people on "our side" hide behind "lived experience" that we're expected to listen. What harm could possibly come from having one rule for us and anther for everybody with different immutable traits? After all, our side is always right, remember?😉
Right, in fact I can see ‘there’s one side to every story’ really taking off as a phrase. Watch this space…
😄
It's a common theme already. Reframe something as racism (or another demonizing word) and then say "there's no two sides to racism!". I mean, you don't have a debate with Hitler, after all.
It's a fairly common tactic. Of course what it deliberately omits it that there may be two sides to the question of whether something actually IS racism, and thus can be deemed to have only "one possible side" for any decent person worth the oxygen they consume.
As Thomas Sowell puts it “…those who see themselves as fighting on the side of the angels against the forces of evil.”
“It’s genuinely maddening (though sadly no longer surprising) that the moment I ask for an honest, open conversation is so often the moment where the other person stops responding.”
That’s because they were never interested in a conversation in the first place. A conversation is a two-way street: it involves listening as well as speaking, and responding to the other person’s views instead of just proclaiming your own. When people tell you “we need to have a conversation about [name your issue],” too often what they really mean is “I want you to shut up and listen while I hold forth on [issue].” Our public “conversation” consists of everybody talking and nobody listening.
"That’s because they were never interested in a conversation in the first place"
Yeah, absolutely. This, sadly, nails it.
"We may not always agree, we may not perfectly understand each other, we may not even like each other. But we do have to live with each other. And that means we can’t afford to think of issues as somebody else’s problem. That means talking. Especially when we disagree."
This.
I've long ago lost count of the times when I had characterized someone as on the opposite side of some divide from me, one of "them," and later actually discussed and managed to find some common ground.
It happened yesterday. I'm on an IT freelancing site that isn't getting many people jobs but spends all its time cultivating a sense of community, with a forced toxic positivity with tons of smiley emoji and that ghastly therapy-speak. There was one guy on there whom I had taken a dislike to for a number of reasons; he asked for a private chat. I was expecting him to tell me to get off the platform because my frustration with Nothing Happening Here was injecting "negativity." I was expecting a lot of sycophantic blather; turns out he's as frustrated as I am.
What you said about not even reading Rowling's remarks. I have read them; they're pretty mild. And anyway she is an author of children's books, not someone people turn to for what attitudes are permitted.
As we've discussed before there are a lot of people who get some validation out of seeing themselves as persecuted. The intermediate-gender folk view someone 99% supportive as a hardened enemy. I refuse to use "they" as a singular and I am reported as some sort of murderous sadist.
I'm often accused of making generalizations. Well, generalization is the most powerful logical tool we have. People put a lot of effort into conforming to human taxonomies.
"I was expecting him to tell me to get off the platform because my frustration with Nothing Happening Here was injecting "negativity." I was expecting a lot of sycophantic blather; turns out he's as frustrated as I am."
Good for you! Yeah, this is often a struggle for me too. It's so easy to pick up on a few markers of behaviour and fill in the gaps from there. I really consider myself to be fortunate that I have so many conversations with such a variety of people, that I'm constantly reminded that people are usually more reasonable than they appear if you interact with them in a non-confrontational way.
Some people are beyond hope of course,😅 But most aren't.
And yes, there's room to disagree with Rowling's tweets or even to claim her fears are overblown (I don't think they are). But to act as if she's some kind of icon of transphobia is absolutely preposterous.
I'm with Steve on this. I think that if Person A isn't interested in hearing Person B's opinion, the solution is not for Person B to be silenced, but for Person A to simply not listen -- that's their prerogative but they don't get to shut other peope up.
Crazy how this is a somewhat controversial opinion nowadays. We're truly lost of we accept the idea that people should be shielded from challenging ideas.
This is one area where I find myself more aligned with conservatives who decry "safetyism" although ironically, the whole anti-CRT movement is a right-wing version of safetyism IMO -- the idea that teachers cannot present students with ideas that might make them feel negative emotions. You're right Steve, we're truly lost...
"the idea that teachers cannot present students with ideas that might make them feel negative emotions"
I'm not sure this is true. Or at least, I'm not sure this is how it started. I think the issue with CRT, which is far from just a right-wing issue, is the message of disempowerment and collective guilt that some teachers are so careless about.
Plenty of black parents object because they see how it makes their children feel as if the world is eternally against them. Plenty of white parents object because they don't want their children taught they're complicit in evil things that happened before they were born.
I firmly believe it's possible to teach children history fully and honestly without making them feel bad.
"I firmly believe it's possible to teach children history fully and honestly without making them feel bad."
I might slightly reframe this, as I don't think we can competely avoid anybody feeling bad; it's part of life.
I'd say "it's possible to teach children history without intentionally making them personally responsible for it, or deliberately making them feel guilty or resentful". The neo-progressive playbook feels that inculcating those emotions and attitudes into the next generation is the path to equity; they WANT this kids to feel guilty or resentful, depending on the race of the child. It's not a side effect, but a purpose.
I agree with your last sentence. I also agree that some parents are objecting b/c there are some aspects of high school ethnic studies or history curricula that are inflected with Affropessism, white guilt and other bizarre and counterproductive concepts like "white supremacy culture." I totally get parents objecting to that. What I think is also happening is that there are right-wing people, some of them ethno-nationalists, who are using the extreme examples in order to try to tamp down on teaching anything that departs from the American exceptionalism narrative, city on a shining hill, beacon of democracy, yada yada. B/c there are so obviously parts of American history (and contemporary events) that paint the US in a negative light, they've inserted language into some of the bills that bans material that would/could/might make a student feel uncomfortable, resentful or guilty as a way of sidelining or minimizing the teaching of those inconvenient truths. I see this type of language as an incredibly broad overreach that will have a chilling effect on teachers and school boards afraid of getting sued. There are gonna be so many lawsuits these next few years as these CRT bans get implemented (or not implemented).
I have a simple question: have you read the actual text of the bills?
I ask because a centrist youtuber (alas, I've forgotten who) I watched said that he had slogged through the actual texts of all the bills submitted to the state legislatures (at that time). He said that of all the bills, the only one that explicitly mentioned CRT was Idaho's and it was not a prominent focus. Perhaps he was lying, and certainly it's likely that bills have been amended or new ones introduced since then. I'm not asking you to take my word on this, I'm just introducing a point...
Very frequently if I take the time to investigate deeper, the story in the mainstream and/or liberal press on neo-progressive issues tends to be mis-reported to significant degree. For example, EVERYTHING in the current round of bills about voting are being portrayed as going back to Jim Crow, but many of the bills do appear to be less drastic than portrayed. Studies show that the "voter suppression" tactics make very little different in the outcomes, but they are being portrayed as the end of democracy in America.
(The biggest real concern is about the ones which could give leverage for corrupting the electoral college system, and there is bipartisan support for some change in the Congress in regard to that, regarding the 1976 counting act, but that's an aside).
Anyway - until I see the various texts or an impartial analysis of them, I'm going to be wary of trusting a neo-progressive partisan's description of what's in them. I'm tired of being stampeded by distorted information. In this polarized country, we cannot trust any side to accurately portray legislation of the other side.
All that said, I don't agree with trying to prohibit schools from teaching something; we need more to empower parents rather than impose a form of censorship by state government. But I'd have to know more about the text to comment meaningfully on any particular bill. (And to be honest, this may not rise to the top of my todo list - there are so many other things I want to read or digest).
I share your critique of how MSM has presented a lot of this stuff. The person I've been following on the "anti-CRT" bills is Jeff Sachs who does a very objective deep-dive IMO. See https://pen.org/steep-rise-gag-orders-many-sloppily-drafted/
Melissa probably isn't meeting too many transfolk who are okay with JK Rowling *because they're afraid to speak up*. The transgender movement is, IMO, *the* most brutal when it comes to dealing with heretics. I've seen transfolk defend Rowling but daring to challenge your community on the left is dangerous: They will flame you, shame you, flay you and slay you publicly. Racist 'antiracists' and 'feminists' go after their own heretics, but none are as brutal as the trans movement, which is when so-called 'women' start fantasizing about the violent, misogynist ways they'd like to treat natal women who dare to challenge them. (Nothing says, "I'm an angry male chick with a dick" quite like expressing the desire to cut up a woman who has just challenged him. I might be able to dig up this reference but I'm not sure the article is still online.) My operating theory is that transwomen still retain their male brains. Our brains *are* different and they *are* impacted by culture, environment, and family, but boy oh boy, nothing brings out misogyny quite like challenging a trans 'woman' like a natal woman, and you start seeing that old-time traditional, narcissistic, cis-het entitled male misogyny (especially if they've still got The Dangler, as a transwoman I was friendly with before it was cool used to put it back in the '90s).
Melissa doesn't strike me as misogynist, but she's drunk the trans Koolaid. Biology is real, which is all Rowling truly asserts. Just an hour ago while reading Cynical Theories before I got out of bed, it noted how critical theorists are quick to throw women under the bus when it comes to defending human rights abuses. They'll damn any abuse perpetuated by white Western men but turn mum when black and brown women in other countries beg for their help in putting an end to human rights abuses against women and children these so-called 'liberals' would never tolerate in their own countries. Boy oh boy are natal women getting thrown under the bus in the trans movement, and it's amazing how quickly the most feminist-seeming women (think E.B. on Medium, Steve) turn into good, compliant little girls as soon as chicks with dicks tell them how to think. It's no surprise to me that trans'women' (I don't always use the quotes, only when I question their commitment to womanhood) are the loudest voices of all - chicks with male brains who still haven't gotten over the idea that the world no longer revolves around them anymore, with or without The Dangler.
It's not all inherent misogyny - Cynical Theories explains the fundamentals of post-modernist thinking and how it began to change in the '60s (the decade responsible for everything lol) and how critical theory emerged and then turned fundamentalist and dogmatic. There's a strain of toxic anti-intellectual thought that's been there for decades, but the trans movement has really crushed it like OJ crushed Nicole.
So it's sad that Melissa couldn't handle your perfectly valid logical points against her, but I say this very sincerely: At least she didn't act like an entitled dickwad like others would have done.
"Melissa probably isn't meeting too many transfolk who are okay with JK Rowling *because they're afraid to speak up*."
Yeah, "wrong think" definitely definitely isn't tolerated in some trans communities. There's also just the fact of what an echo chamber the trans community is online. Most people think exactly the same thing because they're trapped in the same algorithm as all of their friends who get all of their information from the same few, incredibly biased and unscrupulous sources.
Melissa blocked me after this exchange 😅 But yes, at least she wasn't as nasty as many of the other commenters I've come across on trans issues.
It's because you're transphobic, you TERF :)
Right?! Send me to the gulag immediately for wanting to have an honest conversation.
I had a trans woman say they wanted to rape me with a chainsaw. This is pretty common language if they perceive you as not 100% supportive of them.
Oh my God! That's awful! It's astonishing how toxic some people in the online trans community are whilst simultaneously claiming that they're the victims.
This is toxic masculinity, plain and simple. This is the violent misogynist language women are quite familiar with: The angry male challenged by a female.
Steve, I don't know if you ever knew of a writer named Jenny Asenscio on Medium, I got friendly with her when I first joined because like me, she had a power feminist attitude and shared my dislike of whiny-ass, chronically victimized Jessica Valenti, arguably Medium's most popular 'feminist' writer, although she was never very prolific, although I encouraged her to write more to counter the perma-victim mentality of so much of Medium's 'feminist' writers. Jenny became Ian last year when she became the highly unusual case of an older person (mid forties) 'coming out' as a man. Yet he still retains his power feminist views and has spoken out (rather like a woman ;) ) decrying transwomen with dicks pressuring lesbians to have sex with them and claiming they're 'transphobic' if they don't - ignoring the fact that lesbians *aren't attracted to penises*. I note that that sounds remarkably like the way women have been traditionally been pressured by men to have sex: "If you don't want to have sex with me you must be a lesbian! Oh you're not? Well *prove it*!"
When a 'woman' uses a penis or a penile symbol to threaten natal women, it's a giant red flag that they're a 'woman' in name only.
"Steve, I don't know if you ever knew of a writer named Jenny Asenscio"
Yep, Jenny is fantastic. So feisty! And I love how I can absolutely depend on him to call out trans activists who use intersex people as a talking point to support nonsensical claims. I see him in my comments fairly frequently when I write about trans issues.
I am, in general, very skeptical of many versions of the Privilege Narrative. Not denying that anything exists, but I question the utility and applicability of the exaggerated narratives built on that foundation. We can nuance that more some other time.
I just have to say that the behavior of some MtF trans rights activists is among the strongest examples which cause me to give some more credit to the "male privilege" perspective. It seems more nakedly portrayed than usual. Asserting that one has a woman's brain and soul, while treating biological women and their concerns with so much disrespect - ouch!
And this does not characterize all trans people by any means; only some trans rights activists. I have known trans women who were very respectful of women's rights, and I hope they don't get caught in a backlash to the more extreme activists. I do not consider all trans people to having the same viewpoint! (Nor any other identity group).
I'm with you on that one. Privilege exists, but we pay oversized attention to some and not so much to others like wealth privilege, or 'green' as Steve called it awhile back. Not to mention when it's combined with celebrity privilege, which is how OJ Simpson got away with murdering his wife, Kobe Bryant got away with raping a woman, and I strongly suspect how Bill Cosby got away with raping white women as far back in the day when a lynching wouldn't have been entirely out of the question had he been accused (it's interesting how many white women with a LOT more power over black men back then never told.) Cosby's career would have been over and he never would have been able to venture south of the Mason-Dixon).
It's the Golden Rule...The one with the gold....
“...critical theorists are quick to throw women under the bus when it comes to defending human rights abuses.” Yes, just ask Scott Smith's daughter. I can't believe what the system did to this man and his family all in the name of protecting trans rights. I deeply believe that trans persons deserve all the civil and humans rights protections afforded anyone else in our society. But this is beyond the pale...
Actually, that story ended a bit differently than the way it initially played out. As it turned out, the boy was wearing a skirt but wasn't 'trans', and he came to the bathroom the girl chose expecting sex because he had consensual sex twice with this girl. She said she had only wanted to talk, this guy expected sex and he forced her. But, they weren't gender-neutral bathrooms, the incident happened *before* the school's bathrooms changed the policy.
So, the girl got raped by the guy, but it wasn't the trans horror the right wing made it out to be.
Can't say it hasn't happened elsewhere, and it's sure as hell going on in prisons where 'trans' women with dicks and a long list of sex offenses are allowed into women's prisons, but that's a rant for another day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/opinion/loudoun-county-trans.html
I see. I hadn't caught this. It was presumed, at the beginning at least, that (s)he was trans. Even the recent article I read on WaPo regarding the conviction used the pronoun she/her to describe the gender fluid boy. So I misunderstood and stand corrected. Sounds like he is/was a very confused human being regardless and the sex does appear to have been coerced.
The mother of the "young man"?, "young person"? said he had been experimenting with different styles of clothing: “He was trying to find himself and that involved all kinds of styles. I believe he was doing it because it gave him attention he desperately needed and sought.” Which brings up another concern of mine. How many of these youth asserting that they are gender fluid or trans are just seeking attention due to poor parenting? And what are their false assertions doing to the poor kids who actually are trans? What a mess...
This one was a slippery one. I only know about it because I got into a debate about it with someone elsewhere and I wondered, "Did this really happen?" and when I started looking at news sources I found it, not surprisingly, in the right wing media, particularly questionable sources like the Daily Caller and the UK's Daily Mail, both notoriously right-biased and footloose with the facts. I don't care as much about bias if the essential facts are correct but neither of these can ever pass muster in Media Bias Fact Check. So, just make a mental note: Right now there's not a lot of evidence for sexual assaults in bathrooms, so allegations may well come from the right wing media. OTOH, the left wing media is NOT reporting prison rapes so I can't say they're not happening, and it's not terribly radical to say don't believe everything the media says. I'm not anti-MSM, but I've watched journalistic standards slip over the decades.
Remember the Matthew Sheperd case, the alleged anti-gay 'hate crime'? (The kid beaten up and tied to a fence in a field and left to die in Wyoming). Next up on my reading list is The Book of Matt, making, from what I've read from reliable reviews, a very good case for how it was actually a drug deal gone bad, that it had nothing to do with his homosexuality, and how the media turned it into a 'hate crime'.
Then there was Tawana Brawley, who I call the Crystal Smollett of hate crimes. Jussie Smollett lied about a racist attack, Crystal Jackson lied about a rape (the Duke University lacrosse team case). Tawana Brawley lied about *both*, but boy oh boy did the media go to town on how it was a racist case without delving too deeply into some disturbing details questioning her story, and then it all came out - the bitch lied!!! One of her accused even successfully sued her for defamation (although I don't know that the bitch ever paid up).
Yes, I ran across the real story of Mathew Shepard more recently and was very disappointed, because I had believed the mainstream report that it was flagrant homophobia for a long time. When you read the details, not it was not. (One of the killers was one of his lovers, even; homosexuality was not an issue in his circle or his death, drugs and drug money was).
I've since come across more info on the George Zimmerman / Treyvon Martin case, and we were sold a buil of goods there too. The media failed to note that Zimmerman was a Hispanic Democrat who voted for Obama, was mentoring two Black kids, and had gone to bat for a Black person killed by an officer's son. Not to mention that all of the forensic evidence and the eye witness accounts are consistent with Zimmerman's story - that he was attacked by Martin, who was on top of him beating him and slamming his head into the pavement, so Zimmerman remembered that he had a gun and shot Martin from below. What we heard was grossly distorted to fit an agenda.
Then I read through the Justice Department's report on the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson - they were really out to go after the officer, but the evidence was quite strong that Michael Brown was charging the officer and the officer was shooting in self defense; the Obama administration reluctantly had to clear him. All the stuff about "hands up, don't shoot" was a false invention.
I've looked into several other such things, and there is a dismaying amount of misrepresentation to "Reinforce the (Oppression) Narrative".
Of course there ARE real cases of abuse, but we cannot trust the media to be accurate in telling us which is which. At this point, I have zero automatic trust in the stories from any side, in any American media; everything must be checked before belief. It's not all false, but enough of it is false or misleading that I've lost any automatic trust in any source. Alas, at this point I think the situation has deteriorated beyond just a slip in journalistic standards, but form your own opinion as you continue to learn more about how deep the rot goes.
Obviously, I'm including Fox News and conservative media in my skepticism, as I always have - what's more recent is that my distrust now incudes most liberal or "mainstream" news as well.
I have not yet read "Hate Crime Hoaxes" by Wilfred Reilly but I gather it records a number of other cases.
If you have doubts about the Michael Brown case, check the DOJ final report. There is another book about the Treyvon Martin case.
Thanks for the heads up about these! I didn't know a lot of these details, although I do remember public discussion about Zimmerman's Hispanic origins and whether that constituted 'white' or not (because, it's a slightly less horrible tragedy if he's a browner shade of pale?). I know he was Democrat, can't remember if I ever knew he voted for Obama. I didn't know about the other stuff, but I can be accused of not following it all that closely.
I aspired to journalism when I was in college (forty years ago) and we learned how to always strive for objectivity and keep our own personal opinions. Most importantly, we learned not to publish *anything* unless we got confirmation or evidence from *three* reliable sources. I thought about that rather a lot when the media's standards really started slipping in the '90s and stuff about Clinton was being alleged just on say-so. Was he really smuggled out of the White House under blankets by the Secret Service for assignations with other women (pre-Monica playing his harmonica)? The media reported this even though no evidence of it or reliable eyewitnesses could verify it. People are wise not to trust the mainstream media anymore, and not getting to the bottom of what *really* happened to anyone which might not suit the prevailing narrative (Trayvon Martin was a thug, Bill Clinton was a slut - well, he *was*, but the blanket story is bullshit) has a lot to do with it. Along with overall shoddy reporting and no effort to keep personal opinion out of it.
Thanks for the mention on the book. Going to put it on my Amazon wish list now, which is where I keep my 2-read list.
Yes, I was aware of the Matthew Sheperd case and the others. And, yes, media standards are slipping. I am far more cynical than you about MSM and avoid them like the plague. I abhor people who misuse their authority. NOT cool. A lie is a lie. The ends do NOT justify the means and real people are getting hurt with their propaganda campaign.
Spot on, as your pieces so often are!
"We may not always agree, we may not perfectly understand each other, we may not even like each other. But we do have to live with each other. And that means we can’t afford to think of issues as somebody else’s problem. That means talking. Especially when we disagree."
Yet another 'Amen'. (from a non-religious person!)
You're right on (again), Steve.
I want to note that a large portion of the prescriptions of neo-progressivism would quickly become chaotic if applied reciprocally. They are not advocated as universal or reciprocal, butas unilateral. If a non-trans person told a trans person to stay in their own lane, that would be considered an outrage, but a trans person should praised for telling a non-trans person to stay in their own lane. (Likewise for lived experience trumping evidence, 'impact trumps intention', cultural appropriation, and stereotyping among many others)
I see two roots to this asymmetry. One is a genuine concern about minority voices having traditionally been under-represented (note 1), but overshoots to giving a minority voice control of the conversation. The other is a type of compensatory privilege - in compensation for past and ongoing inequities in one realm, marginalized folks are supposed to have unequal and superior benefits in a different realm. Like "people in some population group have less household wealth on average than another group, so we will give them the high moral ground in any argument they make and suppress differing views". That doesn't fix the original issue, but it makes the balance of advantages between groups vary depending on the context.
There are big problems with this latter in particular. Instead of one group feeling put upon, it causes many folks on both sides to feel mistreated. People mostly ignore the context where they may have an advantage, and focus on the context where they feel mistreated, so both sides are resentful. All the while - the original inequality is not being fixed by this. We've just added a new problem, not reducing the original problem.
In fact, one could be suspicious that that is sometimes the point - a liberal white professional woman attends a DiAngelo training and goes into full self-abasement mode thereafter, always deferring to people of color intellectually and putting her own critical thinking in suspension - but conveniently gives up zero of her economic advantages. She may profess that she didn't earn her job but received it as unearned privilege of whiteness - but she doesn't quit to allow a marginalized person to fill it instead, or donate all the equity in her house to Black people.
Since this doesn't really move the needle on improving the original complaint, frustration grows and the only tool they have is to double down on the original strategy - apply more guilt and resentment, increase the compensatory privilege, punish anybody not buying into the strategy more severely.
Meanwhile, some people on the other side are also becoming resentful - eg: being told that an analysis which they spent a long time synthesizing from many sources is totally worthless compared to the subjective lived experience of somebody else. We can never count on a seamless guilt trip to over-ride all people's awareness of this asymmetry or their critical thinking - there will be many who do not buy in. This does not win support for strategies which might actually have some positive impact on the original issue.
Balancing unfairness in one domain by creating countervaling unfairness in another domain, just creates escalating polarization, not solutions.
I have mixed thoughts in positive discrimination in employment (in the US this is usually referred to as 'affirmative action'). There can be positives, but there are also negatives to consider. But at least it's a countervailing discrimination which is closer to the same domain as the original perceived unfairness. If it was successful, it could mitigate the original issue which stimulated it.
In the case of something like trans rights, the "balance" is often something like:
- I am discriminated against by some employers
- If I I call some viewpoint or person "transphobic", no non-trans person is allowed to disagree
I hope it's obvious that this compensatory unfairness in different domains is a dysfunctional strategy, when seen clearly. But a person who might have supported protection from employment discrimination may instead become more oppositional to that if they encounter the latter experience and build resentment against trans activist applying that technique to rhetorically "win" all arguments about sports and spas.
As Steve notes, it's actually worse than that. If a trans person has not even read what JK Rowling has written in full context, but they express an opinion that Rowling is a raging transphobe - that ungrounded personal opinion is supposed to trump any reasoning or evidence presented by a non-trans person. That is, non-oppressed people are supposed to defer to the moral superiority of a member of a marginalized group, EVEN WHEN the latter can be shown to be objectively ill informed and basing their opinion on a false narrative. This dynamic not only sows polarization, it fosters counter-productive strategies which proceed only because no reasoned pushback is allowed, even from those who might support the goals if not the strategies.
(Note 1: there is a whole 'nother issue regarding whether opinions should be represented proportionally or equally)
"I want to note that a large portion of the prescriptions of neo-progressivism would quickly become chaotic if applied reciprocally. They are not advocated as universal or reciprocal, but as unilateral."
Absolutely. As T. Blood points out above, this would very quickly fall apart of other groups tried to use the same trick.
As you say, minority groups *do* need a degree of special attention because their problems, by definition, are not seen or widely understood by the majority. But there's a difference between listening carefully to somebody else's experience and accepting what they say uncritically because they happen to be a member of a particular group. The former is vital to productive discourse, the latter is fatal.
Exactly.
A person can simultaneously hold two opposing views of something without cognitive dissonance, and that's a good thing because the opposing sides will usually contain some truth. I sometimes express a thought (opinion) that I have an opposing thought about without expressing it too. I ramble too much already without adding all that.
We all have our own lived experience and it's true that some won't be able to understand your views because their world is and has been a different one. When someone tells me about their lived experience, I try to use that to help understand their views. That doesn't necessarily cause me to agree with them, but it helps me to not demonize them. I'm known to tell my stories in hopes that it will have that affect upon others. It doesn't always work. Life as it is.
Diverting a bit, the accusation of "phobic" often is misplaced. I used the word "hoplophobia" in a conversation here on The Commentary. My apologies, I shouldn't have. We all have opinions, and they aren't necessarily fear based, but they could be. I can't read minds.
The economist and political commentator, Walter Williams, once said, "When I was looking for a Mrs. Williams, white women need not apply." A black man who had a preference for a black woman for a life partner. I don't see it as racist or phobic to express the fact that he had a race-based preference just because I didn't/don't.
Social activities are a different thing from dating, a thing that can lead to sexual activities. I have no problem with social engagement with trans people or flaming gay people, but if I was single and dating, I wouldn't choose to date either. Two people enjoying an activity together isn't a date by default. The friend zone. Does that make me transphobic? I don't think so.
I've been told to stay in my lane, along with some defamation which was more objectionable. As Steve says, it is worthwhile to listen to others, they might have something to say that could even change your mind if you are seeking truth, rather than just "winning" a debate. Ignoring something worthwhile because you don't like it isn't winning.
"A black man who had a preference for a black woman for a life partner. I don't see it as racist or phobic to express the fact that he had a race-based preference just because I didn't/don't."
Hmm, interesting. I definitely see this as racist. Just as I would if a white person said it about black women. This isn't about preferences to me, I'm not saying it's racist to have a preference for certain body types of features or even skin tones. But to completely write off an entire group of millions of people, within which there's enormous variation in appearance, is more than just preference to my mind.
I have my sexual preferences when it comes to body type and complexion, but there are extraordinarily attractive women of all colours and shapes. And, of course, there's an awful lot more to a potential wife than how they look.
"I have my sexual preferences when it comes to body type and complexion, but there are extraordinarily attractive women of all colours and shapes. And, of course, there's an awful lot more to a potential wife than how they look."
I obviously agree since I married a woman of different race and culture. I have more friends, not just acquaintances, who are married outside their race than same race. Birds of a feather flock together. Interestingly, white men with Asian wives and black men with white wives. Was race a factor in their choices? I don't know.
I don't condemn the man. He didn't state his reasons. The thing with race bias is that it can motivate bad things directed at others or can be denying yourself possibilities, which he did. He is also older than me. He died at the age of 84 in 2020. When I got married in 1970, interracial marriage was not common like it is today, and we did encounter racist attitudes and actions. For him, it may have still been illegal in many states when he married. It was 1967 when the Supreme Court ruled against laws against interracial marriage. Today, few bat an eye about it, but it hasn't always been that way in my lifetime, and certainly not in his.
In about 1980, in Georgia, we were to go out as a double with a couple who were black people. At the last minute, he couldn't go so we went as a threesome. A nightclub that had two bands that night, one white and one black. When the white band played its last set, all the white people left, except me. I didn't really notice until I was on the dance floor with Suzie and realized that I was a white man dancing with a black woman in a club with no other white people. It was fine, but it wouldn't have been fine if the races were all reversed. The bad old days. Yes, in those day I was called a "N" lover by some racist white people, but I didn't share the same risk for violence (mostly) as a black man.
In the end, I must agree with you that his attitude seemed racist, but thinking of the times, and the big picture, I give him a pass.
"In the end, I must agree with you that his attitude seemed racist, but thinking of the times, and the big picture, I give him a pass."
Oh yeah, absolutely. I think one of the biggest problems with discourse today is that people refuse to acknowledge that standards change and that something that was broadly acceptable even 10 years ago is considered offensive today.
I still think what he said was racist, but as you say, in the context of the time he said it, racist attitudes were far less surprising or unusual.
This was only 65 years ago.
https://www.upworthy.com/elizabeth-eckford-civil-rights-movement?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
And?
And this would be unthinkable now, even in Little Rock. We've come a long way since integration could only come with armed protection.
We still have long way to go.
But what’s that got to do with Steve’s article ?
So are you the local topic cop?
Um, it would actually be helpful if you could explain whether you were making a response to Steve's article, or just randomly posting. That's not to control your behaviour, just attempting to engage you in discussion so we might better understand any point you wish to make.