Let’s take the example of catcalling, because it’s even more clear-cut than slug bug.
Ideally you’re right. Pragmatically there is nothing you can do to stop catcalling on a big scale. Hence you’re better off not letting it bother you rather than uselessly railing against it or letting it embitter you.
As for slug bug, it doesn’t help anyone, it’s just something people do for fun. You’d certainly never start slug bug by holding a conversation “oh, slug bug will help our feeling of cohension, let’s play it”. You just try it out. And then maybe someone says they don’t like it. Then it’s up to you and that’s what the post discusses.
For both cases, pragmatically the victims can’t stop the instigators. Whether they’re better off reacting strongly (over-reacting, in some views) or by accepting and ignoring is up for debate.
For slug-bug, the pattern of “just try it out” is very small harm, but harm nonetheless. This harm is even smaller, to the point that it may be worth it, among groups where casual semi-violence is already part of the fabric. I’ve removed myself from such groups as I identify them, so I’m not sure.
My “fuck that!” reaction to being hit as part of an unstated game is IMO a reasonable way to express that not only do I prefer not to participate, I want you to know and internalize that I want to be asked before being assumed to participate in such things.
Note that I _do_ participate in such games. My wife’s family sometimes does this “draw an X on someone’s arm and then (lightly) punch them”. I can’t tell exactly why, but when they’re doing it and reminiscing about things, I join in. I’ve also been in semi-organized groups where a subset plays “the circle game”, where if you can get someone to look at a circle you’re making with your finger and thumb below the natural line of sight, you get to hit them. There was a weird “punch harder to show respect” thing that I didn’t particularly like, but it was purely consensual and opt-in, with only people who’d drawn a circle on their badge participating.
I read your reactions as being completely in line with what Duncan describes in Part 5 (social ownership of the micro), and what would be interesting is how you react to his arguments.
Personally, I think magnitude matters. “Very small harm” (for slug bug, feels like an overstatement) does not warrant the reactions Duncan outlines. They are not born of any actual real-life impact, but of ideologically motivated grandstanding. To me, this signals you’re going to be a very bothersome person to deal with, because you’re going to see evil where there is none (or more accurately wrongdoing rather than evil). Duncan goes into great details about this—but essentially, I have no intention to cause harm (not even very small), but I can never be sure what might cause very small harm, and so this leads to paralysis. He says more smart things, like outrage giving power under this paradigm — an abuse I have witnessed quite a few times.
Frankly, even this conversation is ridiculous to an outside observer. The reactions Duncan gets even more so. Whatever harm slug bug might cause, I can guarantee that any ideological argument about slug bug is going to cause more. I am going to be wary of any person that is willing to make this trade-off, start an ideological argument on the hypothetical of very small harm. And at worse I will give them a wide berth, but some people get angry. And I think it’s understandable. Making much ado about basically nothing is not a nice reaction. You’re actually making a fuss (not something pleasant to be involved with) about something that doesn’t actually do harm, but rather on the premise that it might. There is an underlying assumption of defending a general principle (e.g. refusal of participation in unstaged games), but again: magnitude matters. Enlisting someone into slug punch is not the same as enlisting them in a wrestling match, and no one is arguing that it is. I would have chalked that down to that oh-so-elusive common sense, but quite clearly that won’t do.
Ultimately, Duncan does not argue people should *initiate* slug punch. Rather than if you’re dragged into a game of slug punch, you should play along because not doing so will cause much more harm both to you and others. And it will lead to a toxic environment of outrage and blame-shifting without any kind of spontaneity.
I suspect Duncan (and you) never had the experience of such a game imposed on you where the instigator hit hard enough to cause pain, from an instigator who’d hit for other reasons in the past and could be expected to retaliate if the roles were reversed.
You’re just not going to convince me that playful cover for hitting people out of the blue is OK. The conversation _is_ ridiculous, but not in the way you seem to think. I’m not saying it’s the end of the world, or that people who try to spread this without permission are evil (or even that they have any bad intent whatever). I’m just saying there are a LOT of situations where it’s hard to distinguish from other kinds of violent intimidation, especially when the direction is from the strong to the weak.
You’re just not going to convince me that playful cover for hitting people out of the blue is OK.
Yes, that’s the operative filter.
I have a pretty different class background from most LW posters (think “banlieue”), and “social ownership of the micro” reads to me like the fable of the princess and the pea. The egalitarianism of the lower classes is that, since not everyone can insist that the single pea be removed from under their twenty mattresses, no one is allowed to—and instead, you’re required to become the sort of person who doesn’t even notice it.
Another operative factor is that the appearance of being useful if the shit hits the fan is a desirable trait. No one likes a weakling, and squeamishness at the sight of blood is decidedly uncool. But people also like people who are socially useful; and since you can tell she’s a princess because she notices the pea, that pattern is countervailing.
I have a pretty different class background from most LW posters (think “banlieue”)
For others who weren’t familiar with the connotations of this word:
In France, a banlieue (French: [bɑ̃ljø]) is a suburb of a large city. [...] However, since the 1970s, banlieues increasingly means, in French of France, low-income housing projects (HLMs) in which mainly foreign immigrants and French of foreign descent reside, in what are often called poverty traps.
(If you just google it, the result that comes up says “suburb”, so I thought it was worth calling out that an American-style wealthy or middle class suburb is not the right connotation.)
My point is that you need to set a line: if it’s below the line, ignore it, if it’s above the line, react. I said as much in a reply to another comment. If someone hits you in a way that is not okay, hit back.
Unless they’ve already demonstrated a sufficient power differential that it’s common knowledge that they get to do what they want and you can’t object.
I’m curious why this is downvoted—if someone can legitimately dominate you, and you can’t rally other resources to protect you from domination, how is learning to submit NOT the correct response?
The OP was suggesting that you shouldn’t set the line above slug-bug. If you do, the aggressor now gets to take offense and socially (or physically—if you “punch back”, you’ve defected and are now fair game for retailiation) punish you for it.
It’s a bad equilibrium and I won’t support it. I don’t often fight against it, but that’s mostly because I no longer feel the helplessness and fear I sometimes did as a kid, and I feel bad when I see it and do nothing.
I think the central question that Duncan is getting at in the article is where the line should be. Society is putting it more towards micro, Duncan thinks it’s swung to far and wants to be towards macro. But it’s clear that just saying “have a line” doesn’t help with the dilemma very much (unless people don’t have personal boundaries, in which case saying “Have a line” is definitely helpful advice).
I thought the point was that people don’t set a line in some cases. This leads to situation where something that doesn’t actually bother people gets pushed back against based *on principle* only.
But it could very well be that you are right, or that we both are.
This feels like a not-completely-honest question. But here is my honest answer: “hit back” is a shorthand/metaphor for “react”. It’s an example with a very particular scenario in mind, but I’m sure you can generalize. Do something effective about it, the keyword to search for here is “domestic violence”.
This was not entirely a hypothetical question. My wife has attacked me several times. She hits me hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to injure. She had said several times that my refusal to fight back makes me less of a man and less attractive to her. The last time this happened, I did fight back, and she ended up with a nasty bruise on her stomach which was tender for days afterward. I also went to the local police station and filed a report, declining to press any charges. It has not happened since, although it could just be a matter of time.
(I am not the only person that my wife has attacked. She says that if she gets mad enough, she “blacks out” and can’t remember what happens. Apparently, years ago, she went to the hospital to visit a close relative, only to be rudely told by a doctor “You can’t go into that room, that person’s dead.” She doesn’t remember what happened next, but supposedly she tried to strangle the doctor and had to be restrained by the people who went with her to the hospital.)
This is not normal behavior on her part. This is domestic violence. The standard advice is to leave people who hit you. Possibly after clearly stating that you are not okay with being hit and you will leave if it continues, and giving her a chance to change her ways. Maybe she should work with a professional to help with her anger problems. But there is a significant risk that a person who regularly attacks you will escalate.
Let’s take the example of catcalling, because it’s even more clear-cut than slug bug.
Ideally you’re right. Pragmatically there is nothing you can do to stop catcalling on a big scale. Hence you’re better off not letting it bother you rather than uselessly railing against it or letting it embitter you.
As for slug bug, it doesn’t help anyone, it’s just something people do for fun. You’d certainly never start slug bug by holding a conversation “oh, slug bug will help our feeling of cohension, let’s play it”. You just try it out. And then maybe someone says they don’t like it. Then it’s up to you and that’s what the post discusses.
For both cases, pragmatically the victims can’t stop the instigators. Whether they’re better off reacting strongly (over-reacting, in some views) or by accepting and ignoring is up for debate.
For slug-bug, the pattern of “just try it out” is very small harm, but harm nonetheless. This harm is even smaller, to the point that it may be worth it, among groups where casual semi-violence is already part of the fabric. I’ve removed myself from such groups as I identify them, so I’m not sure.
My “fuck that!” reaction to being hit as part of an unstated game is IMO a reasonable way to express that not only do I prefer not to participate, I want you to know and internalize that I want to be asked before being assumed to participate in such things.
Note that I _do_ participate in such games. My wife’s family sometimes does this “draw an X on someone’s arm and then (lightly) punch them”. I can’t tell exactly why, but when they’re doing it and reminiscing about things, I join in. I’ve also been in semi-organized groups where a subset plays “the circle game”, where if you can get someone to look at a circle you’re making with your finger and thumb below the natural line of sight, you get to hit them. There was a weird “punch harder to show respect” thing that I didn’t particularly like, but it was purely consensual and opt-in, with only people who’d drawn a circle on their badge participating.
I read your reactions as being completely in line with what Duncan describes in Part 5 (social ownership of the micro), and what would be interesting is how you react to his arguments.
Personally, I think magnitude matters. “Very small harm” (for slug bug, feels like an overstatement) does not warrant the reactions Duncan outlines. They are not born of any actual real-life impact, but of ideologically motivated grandstanding. To me, this signals you’re going to be a very bothersome person to deal with, because you’re going to see evil where there is none (or more accurately wrongdoing rather than evil). Duncan goes into great details about this—but essentially, I have no intention to cause harm (not even very small), but I can never be sure what might cause very small harm, and so this leads to paralysis. He says more smart things, like outrage giving power under this paradigm — an abuse I have witnessed quite a few times.
Frankly, even this conversation is ridiculous to an outside observer. The reactions Duncan gets even more so. Whatever harm slug bug might cause, I can guarantee that any ideological argument about slug bug is going to cause more. I am going to be wary of any person that is willing to make this trade-off, start an ideological argument on the hypothetical of very small harm. And at worse I will give them a wide berth, but some people get angry. And I think it’s understandable. Making much ado about basically nothing is not a nice reaction. You’re actually making a fuss (not something pleasant to be involved with) about something that doesn’t actually do harm, but rather on the premise that it might. There is an underlying assumption of defending a general principle (e.g. refusal of participation in unstaged games), but again: magnitude matters. Enlisting someone into slug punch is not the same as enlisting them in a wrestling match, and no one is arguing that it is. I would have chalked that down to that oh-so-elusive common sense, but quite clearly that won’t do.
Ultimately, Duncan does not argue people should *initiate* slug punch. Rather than if you’re dragged into a game of slug punch, you should play along because not doing so will cause much more harm both to you and others. And it will lead to a toxic environment of outrage and blame-shifting without any kind of spontaneity.
I suspect Duncan (and you) never had the experience of such a game imposed on you where the instigator hit hard enough to cause pain, from an instigator who’d hit for other reasons in the past and could be expected to retaliate if the roles were reversed.
You’re just not going to convince me that playful cover for hitting people out of the blue is OK. The conversation _is_ ridiculous, but not in the way you seem to think. I’m not saying it’s the end of the world, or that people who try to spread this without permission are evil (or even that they have any bad intent whatever). I’m just saying there are a LOT of situations where it’s hard to distinguish from other kinds of violent intimidation, especially when the direction is from the strong to the weak.
Yes, that’s the operative filter.
I have a pretty different class background from most LW posters (think “banlieue”), and “social ownership of the micro” reads to me like the fable of the princess and the pea. The egalitarianism of the lower classes is that, since not everyone can insist that the single pea be removed from under their twenty mattresses, no one is allowed to—and instead, you’re required to become the sort of person who doesn’t even notice it.
Another operative factor is that the appearance of being useful if the shit hits the fan is a desirable trait. No one likes a weakling, and squeamishness at the sight of blood is decidedly uncool. But people also like people who are socially useful; and since you can tell she’s a princess because she notices the pea, that pattern is countervailing.
For others who weren’t familiar with the connotations of this word:
(If you just google it, the result that comes up says “suburb”, so I thought it was worth calling out that an American-style wealthy or middle class suburb is not the right connotation.)
My point is that you need to set a line: if it’s below the line, ignore it, if it’s above the line, react. I said as much in a reply to another comment. If someone hits you in a way that is not okay, hit back.
Unless they’ve already demonstrated a sufficient power differential that it’s common knowledge that they get to do what they want and you can’t object.
In which case, learn to submit.
I’m curious why this is downvoted—if someone can legitimately dominate you, and you can’t rally other resources to protect you from domination, how is learning to submit NOT the correct response?
The OP was suggesting that you shouldn’t set the line above slug-bug. If you do, the aggressor now gets to take offense and socially (or physically—if you “punch back”, you’ve defected and are now fair game for retailiation) punish you for it.
It’s a bad equilibrium and I won’t support it. I don’t often fight against it, but that’s mostly because I no longer feel the helplessness and fear I sometimes did as a kid, and I feel bad when I see it and do nothing.
I think the central question that Duncan is getting at in the article is where the line should be. Society is putting it more towards micro, Duncan thinks it’s swung to far and wants to be towards macro. But it’s clear that just saying “have a line” doesn’t help with the dilemma very much (unless people don’t have personal boundaries, in which case saying “Have a line” is definitely helpful advice).
I thought the point was that people don’t set a line in some cases. This leads to situation where something that doesn’t actually bother people gets pushed back against based *on principle* only.
But it could very well be that you are right, or that we both are.
If my wife hits me, should I hit her back?
This feels like a not-completely-honest question. But here is my honest answer: “hit back” is a shorthand/metaphor for “react”. It’s an example with a very particular scenario in mind, but I’m sure you can generalize. Do something effective about it, the keyword to search for here is “domestic violence”.
This was not entirely a hypothetical question. My wife has attacked me several times. She hits me hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to injure. She had said several times that my refusal to fight back makes me less of a man and less attractive to her. The last time this happened, I did fight back, and she ended up with a nasty bruise on her stomach which was tender for days afterward. I also went to the local police station and filed a report, declining to press any charges. It has not happened since, although it could just be a matter of time.
(I am not the only person that my wife has attacked. She says that if she gets mad enough, she “blacks out” and can’t remember what happens. Apparently, years ago, she went to the hospital to visit a close relative, only to be rudely told by a doctor “You can’t go into that room, that person’s dead.” She doesn’t remember what happened next, but supposedly she tried to strangle the doctor and had to be restrained by the people who went with her to the hospital.)
This is not normal behavior on her part. This is domestic violence. The standard advice is to leave people who hit you. Possibly after clearly stating that you are not okay with being hit and you will leave if it continues, and giving her a chance to change her ways. Maybe she should work with a professional to help with her anger problems. But there is a significant risk that a person who regularly attacks you will escalate.