We need to defend the need for people to physically interact with the world, and potentially have some of those interactions be unfun, without invoking patterns of behavior that really do lead to terrible things.
I notice some level of confusion here.
Suppose Alice came to me with an argument like the following (about which I will make a meta-level, not an object-level, point; I don’t endorse the entirety of what follows):
1) The life satisfaction of humans in general depends heavily on whether or not they can bring their authentic selves to the social sphere, and this means the satisfaction of LGBT individuals in particular depends on how gender identity and relationships are policed culturally.
2) One method of policing such relationships is ‘gay bashing,’ but note that the perception of counterfactual gay-bashing is perhaps more important than the statistics of actual gay-bashing because people make decisions based on what they perceive their constraints to be. (The actual world could have everyone hiding themselves, and no one getting gay-bashed, which looks safe from the statistical view but doesn’t let us know what would happen if people didn’t hide themselves.)
3) One causal factor leading to gay bashing is the culture of sports and physical fitness, both because of historical factors and practical factors. (For example, it is simply easier for a physically fit athlete to intimidate or injure a normal person.)
4) Therefore, in order to maximize life satisfaction, we need to ban all sports, and all discussion that could lead to a culture of sports.
How would you go about responding to this argument? (Not the logical details or content of your response, but the methodology of how you give it.)
Personally, I point out that I’m a gay man, and thus have a license to discuss the object-level details because I’m sympathetic to the concerns of LGBT individuals, and then proceed with the object-level discussion of the argument. But imagine the hypothetical straight me, or even worse, the hypothetical straight athlete me. It seems like there’s some chilling going on where straight Vaniver is being punished not for actually gay bashing, but for doing anything perceived as the other party as potentially providing cover for gay bashing.
Though here I should take a step back, and look at the phrase “actually gay bashing.” In doing some fact-checking for this comment I discovered that the phrase “gay bashing,” which I had originally heard in the context of physical violence leading to hospitalization or murder, covers both verbal and physical abuse, both actual and threatened. Obviously verbally bullying someone for their sexual orientation is unacceptably cruel, but I find myself wishing there were some obvious threshold (on the level of injury, perhaps, instead of mere verbal vs. physical, which doesn’t carve reality at the joints) and short word to point to “intimidation of gays above this threshold,” so that I could say things like “I am opposed to people who hospitalize gays because they unacceptably damage the social fabric and freedom of expression for gays, while I support people who argue that some methods that reduce hospitalization of gays aren’t worth their other costs because they’re part of how society correctly handles difficult decisions about tradeoffs” with pre-existing categories for both, so that it was an easier sentence to write.
It’s not obvious to me that Alice feels my desire for such a threshold, or would find it convenient if that threshold existed. It seems to me that when Alice follows her own logic, she ends up being convinced that providing cover for gay bashing is bad for the same reasons that gay bashing is bad, even if it’s not as bad. The sort of callousness that I see as probably necessary to make good tradeoffs is of the same kind as the callousness that Alice hates, because it doesn’t oppose the evil she opposes.
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So it seems plausible to me that straight Vaniver would not engage with the argument, because the environment around the argument doesn’t give him any place to bring his actual self and actual views. Perhaps he feels a pang of ironic sympathy when considering point (1) of the argument.
Agreed that we should ignore the object-level, so I’m doing my best to ignore it.
This argument sounds like it is saying we should ban such consensual actions and discussion as a society/nation, rather than a website. In that case, I’d respond with the usual reasons why banning the action is folly, and banning discussions that could lead to ‘a culture of X’ is madness. Mumble mumble free speech, free association, etc. But of course, I’d also defend someone’s right to advocate for such decisions.
On the website level, I don’t get that easy an out, but I want to be clear I wasn’t suggesting I was against discussion of or advocacy of punch bug. I just wish Duncan had hit upon a better rallying cry slash central point, think trying to make this a thing without checking with people first would be pretty bad, and think it’s really important that we let Benquo point out that there’s something dangerous and alarming here if he senses that (even if we don’t think he’s right).
I notice some level of confusion here.
Suppose Alice came to me with an argument like the following (about which I will make a meta-level, not an object-level, point; I don’t endorse the entirety of what follows):
How would you go about responding to this argument? (Not the logical details or content of your response, but the methodology of how you give it.)
Personally, I point out that I’m a gay man, and thus have a license to discuss the object-level details because I’m sympathetic to the concerns of LGBT individuals, and then proceed with the object-level discussion of the argument. But imagine the hypothetical straight me, or even worse, the hypothetical straight athlete me. It seems like there’s some chilling going on where straight Vaniver is being punished not for actually gay bashing, but for doing anything perceived as the other party as potentially providing cover for gay bashing.
Though here I should take a step back, and look at the phrase “actually gay bashing.” In doing some fact-checking for this comment I discovered that the phrase “gay bashing,” which I had originally heard in the context of physical violence leading to hospitalization or murder, covers both verbal and physical abuse, both actual and threatened. Obviously verbally bullying someone for their sexual orientation is unacceptably cruel, but I find myself wishing there were some obvious threshold (on the level of injury, perhaps, instead of mere verbal vs. physical, which doesn’t carve reality at the joints) and short word to point to “intimidation of gays above this threshold,” so that I could say things like “I am opposed to people who hospitalize gays because they unacceptably damage the social fabric and freedom of expression for gays, while I support people who argue that some methods that reduce hospitalization of gays aren’t worth their other costs because they’re part of how society correctly handles difficult decisions about tradeoffs” with pre-existing categories for both, so that it was an easier sentence to write.
It’s not obvious to me that Alice feels my desire for such a threshold, or would find it convenient if that threshold existed. It seems to me that when Alice follows her own logic, she ends up being convinced that providing cover for gay bashing is bad for the same reasons that gay bashing is bad, even if it’s not as bad. The sort of callousness that I see as probably necessary to make good tradeoffs is of the same kind as the callousness that Alice hates, because it doesn’t oppose the evil she opposes.
---
So it seems plausible to me that straight Vaniver would not engage with the argument, because the environment around the argument doesn’t give him any place to bring his actual self and actual views. Perhaps he feels a pang of ironic sympathy when considering point (1) of the argument.
Agreed that we should ignore the object-level, so I’m doing my best to ignore it.
This argument sounds like it is saying we should ban such consensual actions and discussion as a society/nation, rather than a website. In that case, I’d respond with the usual reasons why banning the action is folly, and banning discussions that could lead to ‘a culture of X’ is madness. Mumble mumble free speech, free association, etc. But of course, I’d also defend someone’s right to advocate for such decisions.
On the website level, I don’t get that easy an out, but I want to be clear I wasn’t suggesting I was against discussion of or advocacy of punch bug. I just wish Duncan had hit upon a better rallying cry slash central point, think trying to make this a thing without checking with people first would be pretty bad, and think it’s really important that we let Benquo point out that there’s something dangerous and alarming here if he senses that (even if we don’t think he’s right).