Because running in the oppression olympics is the easiest way to gain status in most western societies. Looks like even children are starting to realise that, or maybe they’re being indoctrinated to do so in other classes or at home.
I would like to point out that this is the only comment in the thread that doesn’t assume that this behavior is culturally invariant, and suggest that the rest of LW think about that for a while.
I think the term “oppression olympics” is needlessly charged.
But it is a good question: Under what conditions will someone voice a complaint, and about what?
We learn early on that voicing certain complaints results in social punishment, even when those complaints are “valid” according to the stated moral aspirations of the community. If memory holds, the process of learning which complaints can be voiced is painful.
But at the same time, not all superficially negative self-disclosures are a true social loss: Signaling affliction seems to have been a subcultural strategy for quite a while, nowadays in teenagers, but we also have famous references to the over-the-top displays of grief and penitence from ancient (Judeo-Christian) cultures. And of course, complaints can also result in support, or can play a role in political games.
So there’s a cost-benefit happening somewhere in the system, which we might hope to be reasonably specific about.
To touch on some controversies: There’s a big push to reduce the dissonance between what we publicly accept as grounds for complaint and what we actually punish people for complaining about. Accepting for the moment that our stated principles are okay (which is where I expect you might disagree), this can still go wrong several ways:
People may mistake the aspiration for reality e.g. we tell kids they should complain about bullying and feel like we’re making progress, but then we allow the system to punish kids just as harshly as ever after their disclosure, because we can’t or won’t change it.
Or we feel that offering non-complaint-based advice is perpetuating or accepting a discrepancy between “valid complaints” and “effective complaints”, e.g. the outcry when someone suggests a concrete way to avoid being sexually assaulted, or voices a concern about “victim mentality” (the mistake of thinking that complaining is more effective than it really is, often because everyone is only pretending that we are going to take complaints more seriously now)
The project is eaten by political concerns e.g. we find ourselves debating exactly which groups get to participate in the new glasnost of complaining about complaint-hypocrisy.
A group becomes unable to exclude to bad actors who cloak themselves in the new language of moral progress. Social justice groups, who are very concerned with unfair exclusion, have this problem to a non-trivial degree.
The “Oppression olympics” is mostly point 3, with a bit of point 4. I’m actually far more concerned with points 1 and 2.
Accepting for the moment that our stated principles are okay (which is where I expect you might disagree)
This is not a good thing to accept, since the stated principals are themselves subject to change. Hence
5. Once society starts taking complaint X seriously enough to punish the perpetrator, people start making (weaker) complaint X’. Once society takes that complaint seriously people start making complaint X″, etc.
I would argue that long term 5. is actually the biggest problem.
I think we need to separate complaints of the “what you did was not against the rules but it still hurt me” and “you violated the rules, and hurt me through that”.
The second complaint is very powerful. The first one requires high amounts of compassion in the other person to work.
I mean, extrinsic motivation replaces intrinsic motivation. This means, while with a complete lack of rules people may—may—be compassionate, if Behavior No. 11 is forbidden under threat of punishment because it hurts others, then people will care more about that it is forbidden and they can get punished for, rather than about the hurt it causes to others. For example the fact that rape carries heavy prison sentences reduces compassion for rape victims: see victim-blaming and related behaviors. It simply turns the discussion away from “Does Jill feel hurt from what John did?” towards “Is John really evil enough for five years in prison?” and then if not, then it is so easy write off Jill’s hurt.
But the catch is, if Behavior No. 11b is sufficiently similar but not expressly forbidden, the rule and punishment for Behavior No. 11 may still prevent compassion towards its victims, even in people who would have compassion towards the victims of behavior that are entirely unregulated.
And that is how it requires extraordinary compassion to give a damn about “what you did was not against the rules but still it hurt me”. Modern societies are so strongly regulated by both law and social pressure that almost any kind of hurt will at least resemble a different hurt that is forbidden hence the intrinsic compassionate motivation lost.
And that is why people who are not extremely compassionate give no damn about e.g. accusations of misgendering. It sounds roughly like the rules of politeness learned in childhood i.e. you will address the neighbor as “good morning Mr. Smith” not “hi old fart” or get punished. Since this sounds similar, but there is no such actual rule that is enforced, not extremely compassionate people do not care much.
It simply turns the discussion away from “Does Jill feel hurt from what John did?”
How about the question “Is it reasonable for Jill to fill hurt from what John did?”, otherwise you’re motivating Jill to self-modify into a negative utility monster.
This sounds simple enough, but I think this is actually a huge box of yet unresolved complexities.
A few generations ago where formal politeness and etiquette was more socially mandatory, the idea was that the rules go both ways: they forbid ways of speaking many people would feel offended by, on the other hand, if people still feel offended by approved forms of speaking, it is basically their problem. So people were expected to work on what they give and what they receive (i.e. toughen up to be able to deal with socially approved forms of offense): this is very similar how programmers define interface / data exchange standards like TCP/IP. Programmers have a rule of be conservative in what you send and be liberal in what you accept / receive (i.e. 2015-03-27 is the accepted XML date format and always send this, but if your customers are mainly Americans better accept 03-27-2015 too, just in case) and this too is how formal etiquette worked.
As you can sense, I highly approve of formal etiquette although I don’t actually use it on forums like this as it would make look like a grandpa.
I think a formal, rules-based, etiquette oriented world was far more autism-spectrum friendly than todays unspoken-rules world. I also think todays “creep epidemic” (i.e. lot of women complaining about creeps) is due to the lack of formal courting rules making men on the spectrum awkward. Back then when womanizing was all about dancing waltzers on balls it was so much more easier for autism-spectrum men who want formal rules and algorithms to follow.
I think I could and perhaps should spin it like “lack of formal etiquette esp. in courting is ableist and neurotypicalist”.
Of course, formal etiquette also means sometimes dealing with things that feel hurtful but approved and the need to toughen up for cases like this.
Here I see a strange thing. Remember when in the 1960′s the progressive people of that era i.e. the hippies were highly interested in stuff like Zen? I approve of that. I think it was a far better world when left-wingers listened to Alan Watts. What disciplines like that teach is precisely that you don’t need to cover the whole world with leather in order to protect your feet: you can just put on shoes. Of course it requires some personal responsibility, self-reflection and self-criticism, outer view etc. Low ego basically.
And somehow it disappeared. Much of the social-justice stuff today is perfect anti-Zen, no putting on mental shoes whatsoever, just complaining of assholes who leave pebbles on walkways.
This is frankly one of the most alarming development I see in the Western world. Without some Zen-like mental shoes, without the idea to decide to deal with some kinds of felt hurts, there cannot be a social level progress, just squabbling groupuscules.
But I am being offtopic here. No rape victim should be required to wear mental shoes, that kind of crime is simply too evil to put any onus on dealing with on the victim.
However, some amount of “creepy” behavior or hands-off sexual harassment may fall into this category.
No rape victim should be required to wear mental shoes, that kind of crime is simply too evil to put any onus on dealing with on the victim.
Depends on what one means by “rape”. If you are using the standard definition from ~20 years ago (and for all I know still the standard definition in your country), I agree. However, recently American feminists have been trying to get away with calling all kinds of things “rape”.
otherwise you’re motivating Jill to self-modify into a negative utility monster.
I actually know a woman who was a nice and reasonable human being, and then had a very nasty break-up with her boyfriend. Part of that nasty break-up was her accusations of physical abuse (I have no idea to which degree they were true). This experience, unfortunately, made her fully accept the victim identity and become completely focused on her victim status. The transformation was pretty sad to watch and wasn’t good for her (or anyone) at all.
Because running in the oppression olympics is the easiest way to gain status in most western societies.
I would argue that the sentimental compassion it exploits is a very specifically American feature and it is less efficient elsewhere. If I had to guess, American culture has uniquely selfish subsets (such as the Ayn Rand fans), and as a reaction, the opposite shine-with-goodness attitude evolved which then gets exploited. What you see is the middle ground missing, probably.
A good example is middle-class people seeing the welfare state either sentimentally as hearts going out for the poor, or the judgemental “bunch of lazy leeches” view which are both moralistic. What middle ground is missing is the simple “customer” attitude to the welfare state “well, I might need it any time, better make sure it works right, potentially for ME” which is the most common European attitude. This middle ground is missing, because there is a tribe that derives identity from shining-with-goodness, and another tribe from selfishness, usually interpreting selfishness as toughness.
Both can be exploited. Oppression olympics exploits the shine-with-goodness tribe and shit like not even a year of paid maternity leave exploits the my-selfishness-is-toughness tribe.
But I think in Western societies who go for the middle in things like this, oppression olympics e.g. complaining about misgendering generally gets answers roughly like “But I am just doing what the rules and social customs permit / prescribe?” with the connotation “Why exactly would I care about your personal feelings?”
Because running in the oppression olympics is the easiest way to gain status in most western societies. Looks like even children are starting to realise that, or maybe they’re being indoctrinated to do so in other classes or at home.
I would like to point out that this is the only comment in the thread that doesn’t assume that this behavior is culturally invariant, and suggest that the rest of LW think about that for a while.
I think the term “oppression olympics” is needlessly charged.
But it is a good question: Under what conditions will someone voice a complaint, and about what?
We learn early on that voicing certain complaints results in social punishment, even when those complaints are “valid” according to the stated moral aspirations of the community. If memory holds, the process of learning which complaints can be voiced is painful.
But at the same time, not all superficially negative self-disclosures are a true social loss: Signaling affliction seems to have been a subcultural strategy for quite a while, nowadays in teenagers, but we also have famous references to the over-the-top displays of grief and penitence from ancient (Judeo-Christian) cultures. And of course, complaints can also result in support, or can play a role in political games.
So there’s a cost-benefit happening somewhere in the system, which we might hope to be reasonably specific about.
To touch on some controversies: There’s a big push to reduce the dissonance between what we publicly accept as grounds for complaint and what we actually punish people for complaining about. Accepting for the moment that our stated principles are okay (which is where I expect you might disagree), this can still go wrong several ways:
People may mistake the aspiration for reality e.g. we tell kids they should complain about bullying and feel like we’re making progress, but then we allow the system to punish kids just as harshly as ever after their disclosure, because we can’t or won’t change it.
Or we feel that offering non-complaint-based advice is perpetuating or accepting a discrepancy between “valid complaints” and “effective complaints”, e.g. the outcry when someone suggests a concrete way to avoid being sexually assaulted, or voices a concern about “victim mentality” (the mistake of thinking that complaining is more effective than it really is, often because everyone is only pretending that we are going to take complaints more seriously now)
The project is eaten by political concerns e.g. we find ourselves debating exactly which groups get to participate in the new glasnost of complaining about complaint-hypocrisy.
A group becomes unable to exclude to bad actors who cloak themselves in the new language of moral progress. Social justice groups, who are very concerned with unfair exclusion, have this problem to a non-trivial degree.
The “Oppression olympics” is mostly point 3, with a bit of point 4. I’m actually far more concerned with points 1 and 2.
This is not a good thing to accept, since the stated principals are themselves subject to change. Hence
5. Once society starts taking complaint X seriously enough to punish the perpetrator, people start making (weaker) complaint X’. Once society takes that complaint seriously people start making complaint X″, etc.
I would argue that long term 5. is actually the biggest problem.
I think we need to separate complaints of the “what you did was not against the rules but it still hurt me” and “you violated the rules, and hurt me through that”.
The second complaint is very powerful. The first one requires high amounts of compassion in the other person to work.
I mean, extrinsic motivation replaces intrinsic motivation. This means, while with a complete lack of rules people may—may—be compassionate, if Behavior No. 11 is forbidden under threat of punishment because it hurts others, then people will care more about that it is forbidden and they can get punished for, rather than about the hurt it causes to others. For example the fact that rape carries heavy prison sentences reduces compassion for rape victims: see victim-blaming and related behaviors. It simply turns the discussion away from “Does Jill feel hurt from what John did?” towards “Is John really evil enough for five years in prison?” and then if not, then it is so easy write off Jill’s hurt.
But the catch is, if Behavior No. 11b is sufficiently similar but not expressly forbidden, the rule and punishment for Behavior No. 11 may still prevent compassion towards its victims, even in people who would have compassion towards the victims of behavior that are entirely unregulated.
And that is how it requires extraordinary compassion to give a damn about “what you did was not against the rules but still it hurt me”. Modern societies are so strongly regulated by both law and social pressure that almost any kind of hurt will at least resemble a different hurt that is forbidden hence the intrinsic compassionate motivation lost.
And that is why people who are not extremely compassionate give no damn about e.g. accusations of misgendering. It sounds roughly like the rules of politeness learned in childhood i.e. you will address the neighbor as “good morning Mr. Smith” not “hi old fart” or get punished. Since this sounds similar, but there is no such actual rule that is enforced, not extremely compassionate people do not care much.
How about the question “Is it reasonable for Jill to fill hurt from what John did?”, otherwise you’re motivating Jill to self-modify into a negative utility monster.
This sounds simple enough, but I think this is actually a huge box of yet unresolved complexities.
A few generations ago where formal politeness and etiquette was more socially mandatory, the idea was that the rules go both ways: they forbid ways of speaking many people would feel offended by, on the other hand, if people still feel offended by approved forms of speaking, it is basically their problem. So people were expected to work on what they give and what they receive (i.e. toughen up to be able to deal with socially approved forms of offense): this is very similar how programmers define interface / data exchange standards like TCP/IP. Programmers have a rule of be conservative in what you send and be liberal in what you accept / receive (i.e. 2015-03-27 is the accepted XML date format and always send this, but if your customers are mainly Americans better accept 03-27-2015 too, just in case) and this too is how formal etiquette worked.
As you can sense, I highly approve of formal etiquette although I don’t actually use it on forums like this as it would make look like a grandpa.
I think a formal, rules-based, etiquette oriented world was far more autism-spectrum friendly than todays unspoken-rules world. I also think todays “creep epidemic” (i.e. lot of women complaining about creeps) is due to the lack of formal courting rules making men on the spectrum awkward. Back then when womanizing was all about dancing waltzers on balls it was so much more easier for autism-spectrum men who want formal rules and algorithms to follow.
I think I could and perhaps should spin it like “lack of formal etiquette esp. in courting is ableist and neurotypicalist”.
Of course, formal etiquette also means sometimes dealing with things that feel hurtful but approved and the need to toughen up for cases like this.
Here I see a strange thing. Remember when in the 1960′s the progressive people of that era i.e. the hippies were highly interested in stuff like Zen? I approve of that. I think it was a far better world when left-wingers listened to Alan Watts. What disciplines like that teach is precisely that you don’t need to cover the whole world with leather in order to protect your feet: you can just put on shoes. Of course it requires some personal responsibility, self-reflection and self-criticism, outer view etc. Low ego basically.
And somehow it disappeared. Much of the social-justice stuff today is perfect anti-Zen, no putting on mental shoes whatsoever, just complaining of assholes who leave pebbles on walkways.
This is frankly one of the most alarming development I see in the Western world. Without some Zen-like mental shoes, without the idea to decide to deal with some kinds of felt hurts, there cannot be a social level progress, just squabbling groupuscules.
But I am being offtopic here. No rape victim should be required to wear mental shoes, that kind of crime is simply too evil to put any onus on dealing with on the victim.
However, some amount of “creepy” behavior or hands-off sexual harassment may fall into this category.
Depends on what one means by “rape”. If you are using the standard definition from ~20 years ago (and for all I know still the standard definition in your country), I agree. However, recently American feminists have been trying to get away with calling all kinds of things “rape”.
I actually know a woman who was a nice and reasonable human being, and then had a very nasty break-up with her boyfriend. Part of that nasty break-up was her accusations of physical abuse (I have no idea to which degree they were true). This experience, unfortunately, made her fully accept the victim identity and become completely focused on her victim status. The transformation was pretty sad to watch and wasn’t good for her (or anyone) at all.
I would argue that the sentimental compassion it exploits is a very specifically American feature and it is less efficient elsewhere. If I had to guess, American culture has uniquely selfish subsets (such as the Ayn Rand fans), and as a reaction, the opposite shine-with-goodness attitude evolved which then gets exploited. What you see is the middle ground missing, probably.
A good example is middle-class people seeing the welfare state either sentimentally as hearts going out for the poor, or the judgemental “bunch of lazy leeches” view which are both moralistic. What middle ground is missing is the simple “customer” attitude to the welfare state “well, I might need it any time, better make sure it works right, potentially for ME” which is the most common European attitude. This middle ground is missing, because there is a tribe that derives identity from shining-with-goodness, and another tribe from selfishness, usually interpreting selfishness as toughness.
Both can be exploited. Oppression olympics exploits the shine-with-goodness tribe and shit like not even a year of paid maternity leave exploits the my-selfishness-is-toughness tribe.
But I think in Western societies who go for the middle in things like this, oppression olympics e.g. complaining about misgendering generally gets answers roughly like “But I am just doing what the rules and social customs permit / prescribe?” with the connotation “Why exactly would I care about your personal feelings?”