A normal person living life will receive micro aggressions with some regularity
Please consider just how strongly the likelyhood of such microaggressions is inversely correlated with a person’s conformity to any given implicit norm! That’s why I find it more than purple prose to refer to the victims of oppression as “the weak”; by not conforming, they simply start in a much much weaker position than someone who reasonably fits within the norms. The current beneficiaries of identity politics- like transfolk—certainly have the field tilted against them, and talking to them of “equal opportunity” or “equality before the law” is outright cruel; you’ve got to privilege those worst off to end up with a remotely fair outcome. (Which leads to the problem of incentives, which leads me to questioning capitalism and meritocracy altogether, but that’s another story.)
So it would be unfair of you to view all consequences of similar microaggressions as morally equal and cancelling each other out. A rock that’s thrown downwards at someone hurts much more—and is easier to hit with—than the same rock thrown back up with equal force! The fact that a few people might try to profit politically from redefining “up” and “down” doesn’t make the objective social circumstances less real.
So it would be unfair of you to view all consequences of similar microaggressions as morally equal and cancelling each other out.
And what is your grounds for believing that the groups whose victimhood from acts of microaggressions it is currently politically fashionable to emphasize are at all correlated with the people who are actually more likely to be on the receiving end of microaggression?
To see why this is highly unlikely it helps to make an outside view: if I randomly picked some culture from human history, how strong do you think this correlation would be? What makes you think the currant culture is any different?
True, there are other things that arguably have a bigger impact, e.g., whether they’ll be punished for complaining, whether their complaint is likely to change anything. For example, frequency human rights complaints against governments tends to be inversely proportional to how bad that government actually is at human rights.
I’d expect a maximum somewhere in the middle of the range for internally generated complaints.
The countries and regions which are best at human rights get few or no complaints. The countries and regions which are bad but not horrendous get the most complaints. The countries which have a strong pattern of punishing complainers get a few complaints. The most vicious countries get no complaints.
That’s just for internally generated complaints. Outsiders may be saying that conditions are very bad in the worst countries.
I think your underestimating how many complaints get generated in countries with good human rights that would be considered frivolous by an international standard, e.g., arguing that refusing to subsidize condoms constitutes a “war on women”.
For example, frequency human rights complaints against governments tends to be inversely proportional to how bad that government actually is at human rights.
It is not particularly controversial to note that nations concerned about human rights focus their advocacy / attention / pressure on countries that care somewhat about human rights themselves. (i.e. the US pressures Turkey about human rights problems, not North Korea).
That said, I don’t think that was Eugine_Nier’s point. I suspect that I disagree with his intended assertion (denotatively if not connotatively).
Please consider just how strongly the likelyhood of such microaggressions is inversely correlated with a person’s conformity to any given implicit norm! That’s why I find it more than purple prose to refer to the victims of oppression as “the weak”; by not conforming, they simply start in a much much weaker position than someone who reasonably fits within the norms. The current beneficiaries of identity politics- like transfolk—certainly have the field tilted against them, and talking to them of “equal opportunity” or “equality before the law” is outright cruel; you’ve got to privilege those worst off to end up with a remotely fair outcome. (Which leads to the problem of incentives, which leads me to questioning capitalism and meritocracy altogether, but that’s another story.)
So it would be unfair of you to view all consequences of similar microaggressions as morally equal and cancelling each other out. A rock that’s thrown downwards at someone hurts much more—and is easier to hit with—than the same rock thrown back up with equal force! The fact that a few people might try to profit politically from redefining “up” and “down” doesn’t make the objective social circumstances less real.
(Sorry if this all sounds like banal platitudes.)
And what is your grounds for believing that the groups whose victimhood from acts of microaggressions it is currently politically fashionable to emphasize are at all correlated with the people who are actually more likely to be on the receiving end of microaggression?
To see why this is highly unlikely it helps to make an outside view: if I randomly picked some culture from human history, how strong do you think this correlation would be? What makes you think the currant culture is any different?
I think people are somewhat more likely to complain when they’re hurt.
True, there are other things that arguably have a bigger impact, e.g., whether they’ll be punished for complaining, whether their complaint is likely to change anything. For example, frequency human rights complaints against governments tends to be inversely proportional to how bad that government actually is at human rights.
I’d expect a maximum somewhere in the middle of the range for internally generated complaints.
The countries and regions which are best at human rights get few or no complaints. The countries and regions which are bad but not horrendous get the most complaints. The countries which have a strong pattern of punishing complainers get a few complaints. The most vicious countries get no complaints.
That’s just for internally generated complaints. Outsiders may be saying that conditions are very bad in the worst countries.
I think your underestimating how many complaints get generated in countries with good human rights that would be considered frivolous by an international standard, e.g., arguing that refusing to subsidize condoms constitutes a “war on women”.
[citation needed]
It is not particularly controversial to note that nations concerned about human rights focus their advocacy / attention / pressure on countries that care somewhat about human rights themselves. (i.e. the US pressures Turkey about human rights problems, not North Korea).
That said, I don’t think that was Eugine_Nier’s point. I suspect that I disagree with his intended assertion (denotatively if not connotatively).
(I think this was intended as an observation of high noise levels, not a moral judgement of sexism generally.)