There’s a certain breed of progressives that want to push widely-held positions out of the Overton window. While I feel a few shitloads more comfortable around such people than around people who are sympathetic to said positions, this worries me.
Shutting up debate (in every place Proper Decent People talk, not just specialised places where people want to move past the basic questions) is always somewhat dangerous, though admittedly that applies to every position. This can be circumvented by yelling at people who imply or baldly state these ideas are true, but not at those who argue them with enough formality and apologetic dances.
Condemning popular positions is going to make you yell at half the people you meet and isolate you from the mainstream. Inconvenient.
If we make it unpalatable to argue for one side but not the other, the goalposts shift to Crazytown quickly. Cull the least feminist person at every turn and soon enough Twisty Faster is sounding reasonable.
Relatedly, not having 101 debates over and over allows for semantic shift. It’s all very well and good to point at horrific things and call them “ableism”, but when the same word is then used to yell at me for saying “Crazytown” there is a leap in logic few think to plug.
Generic dangers of thinking people who disagree with you are evil rather than mistaken about what policies are helpful, and that there’s no value in understanding their model of the world. (Even though you have a whole body of work about how these mistakes are made and you are ignoring it in favour of calling them mean names, rarrr.)
Cull the least feminist person at every turn and soon enough Twisty Faster is sounding reasonable.
Uhm, curiosity made me google Twisty Faster, and… well, how could anyone not love a blogger whose comment moderating policy includes: “Everyone dislikes reading un-excellent comments.”? She says that men are not allowed to comment at her blog, which in my opinion is more fair that pretending to have a blog open for everyone and then silence any man who dares to disagree (“check your privilege”, “mansplaining”). She even quotes the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, and her ideas about preventing rape sound like a coherent extrapolation of ideas already existing in a weaker form.
But this article and its 200 comments are pure gold. If you don’t want to read it, the essence is this: -- Imagine that I (a man) simply declare myself to be a woman and enter a women’s sauna. (In the original article it was women-only college, but the analogy with sauna was made in the comments.) Should I be allowed to do that? -- The extra challenge is in properly explaining why, without saying anything that could be interpreted as a sexist, trans-phobic, or otherwise politically incorrect argument. (For example you can’t say it’s because I’m a man, because I declared myself a woman, and who are you to question my identity?) Twisty Faster bites the bullet, if I understand her correctly, and says that I should be allowed to do that. Respect!
I am not sure if that lady is real, but the internal consistence of her opinions makes her sound deep. Also, she does a really good job moderating the discussion.
There’s a certain breed of progressives that want to push widely-held positions out of the Overton window. While I feel a few shitloads more comfortable around such people than around people who are sympathetic to said positions, this worries me.
Shutting up debate (in every place Proper Decent People talk, not just specialised places where people want to move past the basic questions) is always somewhat dangerous, though admittedly that applies to every position. This can be circumvented by yelling at people who imply or baldly state these ideas are true, but not at those who argue them with enough formality and apologetic dances.
Condemning popular positions is going to make you yell at half the people you meet and isolate you from the mainstream. Inconvenient.
If we make it unpalatable to argue for one side but not the other, the goalposts shift to Crazytown quickly. Cull the least feminist person at every turn and soon enough Twisty Faster is sounding reasonable.
Relatedly, not having 101 debates over and over allows for semantic shift. It’s all very well and good to point at horrific things and call them “ableism”, but when the same word is then used to yell at me for saying “Crazytown” there is a leap in logic few think to plug.
Generic dangers of thinking people who disagree with you are evil rather than mistaken about what policies are helpful, and that there’s no value in understanding their model of the world. (Even though you have a whole body of work about how these mistakes are made and you are ignoring it in favour of calling them mean names, rarrr.)
Uhm, curiosity made me google Twisty Faster, and… well, how could anyone not love a blogger whose comment moderating policy includes: “Everyone dislikes reading un-excellent comments.”? She says that men are not allowed to comment at her blog, which in my opinion is more fair that pretending to have a blog open for everyone and then silence any man who dares to disagree (“check your privilege”, “mansplaining”). She even quotes the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, and her ideas about preventing rape sound like a coherent extrapolation of ideas already existing in a weaker form.
But this article and its 200 comments are pure gold. If you don’t want to read it, the essence is this: -- Imagine that I (a man) simply declare myself to be a woman and enter a women’s sauna. (In the original article it was women-only college, but the analogy with sauna was made in the comments.) Should I be allowed to do that? -- The extra challenge is in properly explaining why, without saying anything that could be interpreted as a sexist, trans-phobic, or otherwise politically incorrect argument. (For example you can’t say it’s because I’m a man, because I declared myself a woman, and who are you to question my identity?) Twisty Faster bites the bullet, if I understand her correctly, and says that I should be allowed to do that. Respect!
I am not sure if that lady is real, but the internal consistence of her opinions makes her sound deep. Also, she does a really good job moderating the discussion.