I don’t group them. They group themselves — NOS4A2

You're making it appear that the grouping mechanism is just conceptual, like it occurs in ideas and expectations alone. You already know it doesn't, since class and race intersect.

Wouldn’t that be more class than race? I can imagine groups that organize on terms of socioeconomic status are multi-racial. — NOS4A2

Class and race are conceptually independent - they don't logically imply each other. You can be a black president or white trailer trash. But they're dependent politically and socio-economically. In a world with a history of racially motivated colonialism and imperialism (not that it's over now, it just looks different), and racism in the home territories, this is exactly what you'd expect. The poorest areas in a country tend to be minority saturated. This isn't a coincidence. Class issues and race issues intertwine.

Political action on racial grounds is wholly dangerous. — NOS4A2

The people who are disenfranchised or adversely effected as a demographic aren't, like, demanding stuff because they're black or trans or whatever. They're demanding stuff because of concerns common enough that it makes sense to organise as a demographic. Adopting the signifier of the demographic as a name, like marketing, forming broader lines of solidarity. That these concerns are reflected by social/economic conditions is what justifies organising along those lines.

Some poor black single mother in a ghetto trying to work 2 jobs and raise kids at the same time, kids don't get food every day at home due to poverty (choice between electricity and food, say). She'd not be like "my kids need food because I'm black", she's like "I live in this place that makes it hard to live, so do other people nearby... so do lots of racial minorities... huh, let's organise along those lines to try and get some food".

It isn't just "identity politics", it's organising around common concerns that happen to coincide with racial consideration (due to the history of colonialism-racism and how that interacts with economic conditions).

I suggest we’ll never know the causal mechanisms until each case is taken into account, and we abandon demographic, ethnic or race thinking from our analysis. — NOS4A2

I don't think that's true. The value of framing things systemically is precisely to highlight that such issues should also be addressed through policies and political action; thinking of things systemically lets you get a handle on what's causing what.

So, Glasgow's knife crime goes down a lot due to child education in poorer families and benefit schemes, with little to no additional investment in police presence. This policy came from looking at who was committing the knife crime (demographic factors), looking at case reports, economic data... It wasn't 'because the kids were Glaswegian", it was "because the kids were poor and disadvantaged and desperate".

London's knife crime and police presence? Not the same story. Extra police, not doing anything about the knife crime. The media framing it as a black on black violence problem? This is exactly what highlighting that an issue is systemic in a public arena attempts to mitigate. And what do you know, when policies are adopted that are a result of well structured analysis... They work better.

Looking at things in that way is how you criticise, make and propose effective policies. Looking at things on an individual level is how you resist any such policy as unfair.

"Colour-blindness" ceases to be a cause for equality of opportunity when it is invoked to argue against well motivated policies to address racial disparity (race here is really an economic proxy variable, racial minorities have poorer conditions for historical reasons which have remained unaddressed). It ain't 'because they're black' or 'because they're white' now, it's where they are, what they have to work with, and how that constrains or enables their capacities.

Edit: one part of this, which remains unaddressed, is that governments know that race and economic class intersect, this is why euphemisms work. In the US, just look at how "Border control is a jobs issue" transformed into "Mexicans are rapists and thieves". The same people who support those who say "border control is a jobs issue" are now those who support "Mexicans are rapists and thieves"... coincidence? Nah. Political discourse employs euphemisms so white dupes like us can be colourblind and have our racial disparities...

It's so great to get Norway's insights on that issue. — frank

You don't get Norway's insights. You get an irritated internet lefty's. Mine. But I do find value in reminding people about the relevance of politics in public. And of thinking about what to do.

About the fact that humans are assholes? — frank

We can be assholes. Ideally we set things up so the effects of us being assholes are minimised. You know, good laws and policies.

The funny thing about that: the people who advocate the anti-Rand attitude can be relied upon to turn on their fellow humans who happen to be conservative like a bunch of rabid dogs. They'll turn on each other in a heart beat. The Europeans ones will foam and bark about their fellow humans who happen to be American. IOW, it's all talk, or rather it's all endless fucking whining with no interest at all in follow through. — frank

Tomorrow is nearly yesterday and everything is stupid.

But out of that mindset, part of it is figuring out wtf to do, wtf we can do. The anglophone internet's a good place for that, being a microcosm of our shared culture.

If you search for disparities between tall and short, fat and thin, you’ll find them. The point is you’re not tackling a problem at all, but projecting groups and taxonomies onto vast swaths of disparate individuals. — NOS4A2

On one level you're right: part of the cultural problems surrounding race is to do with how we form inappropriate social expectations - how we stereotype, how we selectively know and do not know, how we selectively include and exclude people from our social groups.

This is the kind of thing that inspired a girl (this happened to my friends and I while out) to ask me to protect her from my arabic friends because they seemed like a threat in the bar.

Even on this level, we have to think about where these expectations are coming from; how are they produced and reproduced in the culture.

On another level; you're not saying anything of relevance to a vast swarthe of conditions that differentially effect demographics. The causal mechanisms here are economic trends and policies on the back of historical prejudice. These are not reducible to inappropriate expectations, even though their public legitimation often comes along with cultural production of racial difference (propaganda, nationalist sentiment, "coming over here and taking our jobs" etc).

If you reduce everything to cultural expectations, you miss one of (and the major source) the engines keeping inequality of opportunity in place.

Right, so when I show you that you're wrong — Harry Hindu

You've not established that the evolution of sex is relevant to gender at all. You've left it in the background as a framing device. We're not arguing about whether sex is relevant to gender, you invited me to argue about the specifics of the evolution of sex as if it were relevant to gender, this is just something you do. You say you want to "refine your worldview", you mean "perform certainty about it". If you were interested in questioning aspects of it, you would stay on topic, and not rabidly and uncharitably jump on anything you see as false while keeping your presumptions in the background.

You're only caring about evolution as it applies to producing typically sexed human bodies. Like it was a biological necessity. Like all the social stuff regarding gender is reducible to it. This is a major error.

Hermaphroditism is old. Sex isn't. You are the one that doesn't know what they are talking about. — Harry Hindu

"fdrake is wrong because hermaphroditism isn't a form of sexual reproduction"
"provides quote showing hermaphroditism is a form of sexual reproduction"

Many taxonomic groups of animals (mostly invertebrates) do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which either partner can act as the "female" or "male." For example, the great majority of tunicates, pulmonate snails, opisthobranch snails, earthworms, and slugs are hermaphrodites. Hermaphroditism is also found in some fish species and to a lesser degree in other vertebrates. Most plants are also hermaphrodites — Wikipedia

The entire point of raising hermaphroditism here is to undermine your claim that "we have the sexes we have because of natural selection", because evolution also produces hermaphrodites and species with more than two sexes...

Edit: I don't even mean to say that natural selection has nothing to do with human sexuality, just the story is way more complicated than you're giving it credit for. Well, what you're leaving in the background unexamined is giving it credit for, anyway.

Those shared assumptions or expectations are sexist, so when someone claims to identify with them, they are the actual proponents of sexism. — Harry Hindu

This is "he who smelt it dealt it" applied to social categories.

The entire point of that argument strategy is to get us talking about biological sex, as if it's relevant to gender at all...

If you press these guys enough, you'll find that it's never about the language issue, it's about something more fundamental. This is a major part of why people are campaigning for more inclusive language might actually be effective to some extent; if it becomes hard to articulate prejudice (misgendering is punishable), proponents of bigotry and ignorance have to speak in terms of their underlying (badly researched or wilfully ignorant) ideas about reality.

And they'll keep going, really, because it's never about the fact of the matter (if it were, they wouldn't behave like douchenozzles trying to refute you on all points and being internally inconsistent in the process), it's about a personal feeling of discomfort with norms shifting underneath them.

What makes a person a man or woman? Natural selection. — Harry Hindu

Do you even care if anything you write is true? I mean, if you're going to appeal to biology, at least know something about it. Why any particular baby has a natal sex (all else held equal) is due to essentially random union of gametes. On the individual level this has nothing to do with natural selection.

Sexual reproduction is evolutionarily old, need not have just 2 sexes, need not have one sex per organism. And you wanna reduce all of the question of "what makes a person a man or a woman?" down to evolutionary adaptations that occurred prior to the evolution of humans. What in the fuck are you even talking about.

Mostly the way you frame them. If you view it through the lens of race, racial disparities necessarily arise. Of course it isn’t true that all members of all races are encapsulated into these disparities. — NOS4A2

...

Black people are poorer in America because some guy who lives in Norway highlights racial disparities in America?

What even is this.

You can't tackle a problem with targeted policies without recognising it for what it is, and how it works. Maybe you know this. Maybe this is the entire point of you writing like this. "Things are good for everyone, I am good".

For those of you who struggle with this: there are laws and policies.

Law: the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties.

Policy: a course or principle of action adopted or proposed by an organization or individual.

Even if people have equal treatment under the law, it is still possible (and it happens) that policies disproportionately effect people along demographic lines. Moreover, a policy like "allocate funding for poor child education in Glasgow to try and stop knife crime" targets a specific demographic (poor children and families in Glasgow). If a policy targeting one demographic is necessarily prejudicial against other demographics simply because it targets one demographic... then I don't know what to tell you? Targeted policies are impossible? Policies are impossible? There's no such thing as politics? Political action to highlight concerns shared by a demographic or community is necessarily prejudicial (and hint: should not happen)?

This is just nuts.

Yes, the racial policies of the past has led to racial disparity. — NOS4A2

Good. Now what do you think is keeping the disparities in play?

I would it is racist because it categorizes disparate and unconnected human beings into categories of race. — NOS4A2

But the reality (historical effects of policies, different treatment, entangling of poverty and race) that creates that racial disparity is racist too?

The first thing we should do is stop being racist, to stop using these outdated and tyrannical categories in our policies, for our statistics, for our stereotypes and judgements. — NOS4A2

"The median wealth of black families in America is a lot less than the median wealth of white families in America"

Is this racist because it highlights a racial disparity?

Did he whost smelt it dealt it?

:up:

I just happen to believe that using racism to correct racism defeats that purpose at the start. I also believe that using racism at the institutional level is dangerous. — NOS4A2

Say there's a school in a poor area. The local council spends some of its funding to put in a school lunch scheme. So the poorest can eat at least one hot meal a day guaranteed. This is thereby prejudiced towards kids. This 'prejudice' moves the area a little bit closer towards equality of opportunity - not worrying about constant hunger for kids.

Say there's a large housing estate in a city with lax standards on house safety, and the landlords don't take care of the property; using cheap lead paint, asbestos and shit. Say these areas are impoverished, so the poorer people move in, poverty is strongly correlated with (socially constructed) race in the US. Now you got a whole load of minorities with lead poisoning and other health issues, which fucks up your brain development. Say you're a concerned government and offer legal aid to the effected to sue for damages, and this works - this is a 'racial prejudice' generated to partially address huge social costs rooted in equality of opportunity differences.

Say you're MLK and you want your people to get the vote, this means that the government has to change your constitution just for "you and your people", and no group of people deserves special treatment just because of who they are. This is racist because it's a minority group 'amplifying their voice' through political action.

Say you're the suffragettes, you're protesting for social recognition and equal opportunities for women...

If it came to it, we’d probably be in the same foxhole fighting the same enemies. — NOS4A2

Aye. :)

It's not your fault I've been on a tear recently, apologies you got caught in my fallout. I'm super sensitive to the posting style and political framings I've seen you use in political discussions; it's very vulnerable to being co-opted by far right rhetoric.

If you're willing to entertain that affirmative action and slavery resemble each other for the purposes of an argument, or in some politically relevant respect, and you're sincerely thinking these thoughts, you're going through a thought process that literal Neo-Nazis use. Jared Taylor for example is very happy to portray whites as a victimised minority due to political focus on mitigating 'racism' (through affirmative action, reparations, racial sensitivity training in workplaces). They're using the same elision between 'distinction' and 'discrimination' that I pointed out in your post, and they know it.

I don't think that believing any of the things you've said individually make you a racist, or a neo-Nazi, or alt-right or whatever, it's more that thinking in that way makes it easier to be coopted by the barrage of polarising propaganda we both probably see every day and hate.

If you wanna resist that stuff and free your mind from it, go left.

Edit: to me, go left means - a focus on democratisation (politics) and systemic critique (methodology)

I’m a liberal. — NOS4A2

I'm a raging lefty. You probably gathered.

Do you believe a government should discriminate between its citizens on the basis of their race? — NOS4A2

Slavery was also state discrimination against citizens on the basis of their race, as was segregation, apartheid, programs and genocides. — NOS4A2

Yes, that was the point: to show that all (affirmative action, apartheid, slavery) are similar insofar as they are forms of institutional racism — NOS4A2

Slavery = apartheid = affirmative action, insofar as they are all racist. When I say this:

Probably the same kind of batshit mental contortions involved in pretending someone said such a thing. — NOS4A2

Note: individuals or groups acting differently based on or motivated by people's socially constructed race is not necessarily racist; without this distinction the civil rights movement was racist (since it appealed to the affected community to seize power and gain representation). This similarity needs to be strengthened to equivalence for the argument as presented follow; alike in all relevant respects for a property to transfer over a similarity claim. Either the argument is invalid, or it's based on framing devices that smooth out the differences, or both. Whether this is done intentionally or not does not really matter.

Edit: ultimately this cashes out, collapses down, into an argument where someone further to the political left repeatedly throws statistics at someone on further to the political right. A clash between systemic analysis and personal responsibility; between collective and individual patterns of thought. Whether we're 'really' in a state of equality of opportunity between races; and the excuses used to portray that we are, when we in fact are not. Not within countries, not between the imperial political north and the colonised political south.

Maybe in your part of the world. — frank

On the anglophone internet and twitters.

"Affirmative action is equivalent to slavery" - what kind of batshit mental contortions do you need to do to make this make sense. This is supposed to be taken seriously?

Don't feed the troll. — Chris Hughes

It quacks like a duck. If smells like alt-right white supremacism mischievously disguised as confused liberalism. — Chris Hughes

I don't think this one's a troll, unfortunately. I don't think they're alt-right either. It's very common conservative talking points; that they're hard to distinguish from chan culture bollocks is problematic, but it's not their fault this stuff propagates like it does. Conservatism's always been a slippery downward slope to fascism, all it takes is a push.

We cannot favor races in policy (like in slavery reparations - me) while discriminating against others, especially at the institutional level. It’s institutional racism

(Everyone should get slavery reparations or no slavery reparations should be made).

Slavery was also state discrimination against citizens on the basis of their race, as was segregation, apartheid, programs and genocides.

(Slavery is just like slavery reparations in all relevant respects for this discussion).

And when you point out trivial implications which they intended in their posts:

Except no one said that.

They'll never come out and say what they actually believe, or believe what they are logically committed to, Maintaining ignorance of the implications of their beliefs is a necessary feature of internet reactionary praxis. Any awful consequences of their worldviews can be disavowed because they were never explicitly stated; it's not that my beliefs entail horrors, it's that you misread me. Never play defense - if you're always the one making the accusations, always the one doling out buckets of fisking condescension, you never have to systematise your beliefs or check them for consequences.

Lovecraft was right:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

"Reparations for slavery discriminate based on race - therefore they're just as bad as slavery" - this is the level they'll stoop to to maintain their sordid worldviews.

In other words: Don't feed trolls! Right on. :victory: — 180 Proof

I wish that they were just trolls. Trolls are nihilistic, just doing what they can to get a rise. This is a performance that's been picked up because it works; it looks like putting people in their place with witty comments to uninformed readers and passers by, it's easier to come up with than any rebuttals (the truth is complex) because it doesn't need research or fact checking, and it is more compressed, so travels further. It's a groupthink meme that propagates groupthink memes; an emergent conservative propaganda machine.

If it's done intentionally, it's dangerous, if it's not, they're a useful idiot for dominant (racist-colonialist/imperialist-capitalist-patriarchal) ideology. The same patterns of argument have been used for a long time.

Selectively invoked free speech arguments (yes this is horrible but people have a right to say it... I disagree but want people to say it due to a higher principle...), personal responsibility narratives (yes but not all are effected by... if only these people would stop complaining then...), accusing opponents of acting on mere sentiment rather than reason ("triggered!" "snowflake!" "cuck!" for some modern ones).

Framing tactics like:

Do you believe a government should discriminate between its citizens on the basis of their race?

When, in fact, they do. And this has been shown repeatedly. Higher arrest rates, conviction rates, poverty rates, education differentials, based on (socially constructed) race demographics. The current law evidently isn't enough (at least in the UK and US) to allow equality of opportunity for all; hence cultural and economic change is necessary, hence state involved action is necessary (they have all the of the easy to pull systemic levers), hence political pressure is necessary. This is what 'amplifying voices' most often looks like; turning pain into empowerment (as Lowkey puts it).

There are always stories to make the facts go away. But as they like to say, "facts don't care about your feelings".

The "upload files" thing in the response box, on the top right. Think you need to be a mod or a subscriber to embed images in posts. If not, a work around is to upload it to an image hosting site and use the [ url = (link)] (text to hyperlink) [/ url] functionality. Remove the spaces from the square bracketed bits.

What racial discrimination in 2 isn't actually 1? — frank

Emergent statistical effects like this. In terms of race, these largely come from past geopolitical strategy (genocide, slavery--colonialism/imperialism, usually economically motivated) on the colonised community, which are then reintegrated into the society in the lower classes (cheap labour) and impoverished areas (cheap areas, ghettoisation); as well as a nationalist/racist propaganda to legitimise mistreatment of the colonised group and stymie collaborations between workers. The story of the Irish in the US is instructive on the latter point, as is the UK's struggle with Pakistani and Indian immigration after WW2 (both colonies were invited to come in here and take our jobs and then demonised for doing so).

Edit: if you wanna talk about people being prejudiced, you always gotta ask: why here? Why now? Why so many? Where does all this "individual sentiment" come from?

One key strategy that internet reactionaries use to argue their points is presumption smuggling; controlling the conversation. In terms of colour blindness, it will be portrayed as an individual attitude; and of course individuals should not mistreat others based on perceptions of race. Questioning whether colour blindness itself is sufficient to tackle systemic racism is always off topic in this kind of discussion, for them, since it is not addressing the individualised notion of racism that the internet reactionary has in their head.

If you engage with them on their terms, the framing of the debate has already shifted to a terrain in which your worldview is necessarily incoherent; and they will continue to do this. They will not try to assimilate your worldview and meet you 'halfway' through charitable analysis of concepts and nuanced, contextualised debate (like they say they want). If you want to refute their arguments, you're already playing their game.

They will always assert their worldview as a necessary frame of interpretation; fundamental presumptions in it will not be challenged. They cannot be, by their own construction. It's like trying to refute an axiom within a system. The system is presented to argue against doubt of the axiom. Before this is portrayed as something everyone does all the time necessarily; consider that people participating in good faith will highlight their assumptions when called for, they will not repeatedly put them in the background as a framing device.

The left knows that it relies upon systemic critique methodologically, and thematises such as a concept. There are so many circular firing lines among our ranks precisely because we're all too attendant to conceptual structure and internal contradiction. We spend most of our time shouting at each other (like Marxists getting pissed off with Foucauldians and vice versa), the reactionary internet right spends most of its time shouting at us. Notice that, for all their alleged plurality of worldviews, they rarely shout at each other.

Once you have established that someone heavily relies upon bad faith as an argument strategy, you don't play that game with them any more.

The major disconnect is between:

(1) People who think of racism as only an attitude; agent-agent racial prejudice based on sentiment.
(2) People who think of racism as an umbrella term which covers (1) and also includes system-agent racial discrimination which in the aggregate exposes demographics to adverse (growth impeding, opportunity constraining) conditions.

The only system allowed to be treated as a system in an internet reactionary conservative's worldview is the market. If they were more consistent with their thinking, they would propagate the insights they have about the causal structure of the market into all the other systems staring them in the face.

Ideologically, this thinking is promoted through too heavy an emphasis on individualism in social ontology; a focus on the individual as the causal locus of all analysis. Except the market, which is just "the free actions of individuals together"; rather than an emergent phenomenon that selectively constrains and enables individuals and demographics effected by it.

If you think "an emphasis on individualism in social ontology" is a contradiction in terms; you're probably not an internet reactionary. If you don't, and further if your worldview is informed by such a reduction, then you're probably baffled by how everyone else can be such an incoherent idiot.

The "incoherence" of systemic critique is only there because reactionaries haven't learned to ask the right questions yet (on the most charitable, "they're not trolls or crypto" interpretation anyway). And usually, they won't, especially not in public, because the system of justification built up around it is ultimately a performance of their identity; an opportunity to display strength, certainty, and to defend the borders of their mind as rightly there.

If any of you think fisking a book review for low hanging seeming contradictions to be used solely for calling someone an idiot on the internet is a good substitute for actually doing research on a topic, stop thinking of yourself as reasonable and logical and begin to wonder why you're perpetually failing to understand what the "other side" of the political spectrum is saying. Spoilers: it's not because they don't know wtf they're talking about, it's because you don't know wtf they're talking about.

Am I saying that all the results of systemic critique are right? And that you can't take conservative talking points from a reasoned perspective? No, we have a great example of a well informed person who disagrees with the results of common systemic critiques and knows how to research on this site - @VagabondSpectre.

"Marx's systemic critique of the long term behaviour of capitalism is wrong, except for its central predictions, and how they assert themselves"

"lawless irregularity" in Marx = a general form of random variation.
"ideal average" in Marx = a driving trend that obtains all else held equal.

Other than that, and offering prayers to the oligarchy in the church of the market, nice post.

The social acceptance of new pronouns has never just been about the feelings of people involved. That's part of it, though. Enough of a part of it to inspire people to join political movements; being misgendered really matters to people darlings. But the people in those movements are campaigning for social recognition, to perturb norms to be more inclusive, in order to end discrimination against them for something as arbitrary as not fitting into how people think of gender, which does indeed have measureable social effects.

Gender nonconformity often leads to bullying and social exclusion; it leads to mental health disorders, it leads to workplace discrimination and hiring discrimination, it affects long term life outcomes pretty much everywhere. But it doesn't always, why? Why don't these people just "buck up" and accept their lot and work with it? Thing is, they already are. In some communities, gender nonconformity is a life or death matter. And that matters, because people's arbitrary social expectations should not inspire mistreatment of any demographic. This is the "we're all created equal"; but who we are is always to a greater or lesser degree in contrast with societal expectations. They shoulder all this while working like you do. Could you stand the same burden? I doubt it, we'd crumple like the sensitive little flowers we are.

Think of a societal expectation as a norm of interpretation; a prediction of someone's behaviour; they are also of course moral standards; if you do not behave consistently with society's norms, you will face social costs. Whether this is socially excluding the tomboy, beating the shit out of a guy at school for being "gay" because he seems feminine, or a trans woman losing a loving relationship just because "they're really a man".

This latter point, necessarily dichotomising people into genders and the normative consequences that entails based on sex is usually something which is presented as a consequence of a reactionary belief system, but should really be seen as a premise rooted in avoidance of punishment for society's norms shifting underneath them. It is a transference mechanism to avoid that vaunted conservative sense of social responsibility even applying to shifting their worldview. If these people cared about truth, they would fess up to their obvious mistakes in public. "This threatens society" <=> "This threatens me". It is a self defending response to something which, if they would only be more logical and observant, could be challenged; and a more informed, inclusive worldview would result. Alas, it is not. These people would burn the world and harm those in it because it does not satisfy their expectations; they are triggered by the fact that they are involved in systems of suppression and subjugation. But they will never thematise their response as emotionally driven; reason for them here is little more than an identity signifier and a defense mechanism. It's just tribalism expressing itself through stupidly motivated arguments, fisking condescension, and a total inability to consistently argue the same points.

Then there's the equal under the law stuff; hiring policies are written to be gender neutral, for example, but this does not imply that hiring is gender unprejudiced (see the article "Discriminating Systems" for a thorough data driven treatment of the issue). When even fucking Google and Facebook know that gender archetypes negatively impact their talent acquisition, one wonders why it is so difficult for people on the internet right to think in these terms.

Underneath all this is a state of prelapsarian (white, almost always male) bliss, a garden of Eden absent from politics that classifies anything which would perturb the current social order as political; as inappropriate state or community interventions; but the forces which to benefit of the people I'm criticising maintain the present social order and their place in it. Inappropriate political action is just that which does not maintain my "rightful" (pfft, entitled buggers) place in things. This is only sustainable by a blinkering of perspective away from systemic issues; which is funny, as political leaders have to be able to think like that about social issues. Think structurally, not personally, and allow suffering to speak.

The apoplectic resistance any systemic critique encounters by the internet right stems from an obvious failure of thought which absolves them from a guilty conscience; don't worry, mummy's already made the bad things go away, they don't exist because they're logically impossible. But you, dear reader, need not feel guilty. Just try and be better in what limited ways you can! And it's hard!

So this is ultimately why internet reactionaries are drawn like flies to the same topics. They don't need to have a consistent worldview to defend themselves; it's a a panic response expressing itself through white nerd rage. You don't need to panic, the world will be better eventually since you're wrong.

It ain't the left who're triggered, darlings.

Because they want special treatment, not equal treatment. — Harry Hindu

Baseless assertion.

phhhtttttlmao - skeptical of their "gender" from birth? How do you know that a newborn that has just come out of it's mother is skeptical of it's gender when it doesn't even know it has arms and legs yet? — Harry Hindu

Calm down. From age 3. This happens. If you were interested in finding out anything about what you're criticising, you'd probably not have jumped on any chance to show the world I'm an idiot.

If you were consistent, then we shouldn't be telling Christians that their god doesn't exist because it hurts their feelings, and we shouldn't be labeling others as racist because it offends them. — Harry Hindu

How can I be consistent when you've decided what I've believed is inconsistent? You never actually go away and read anything about anything. I would love to have an informed discussion with you about this kind of thing, but you never want to inform yourself about the perspectives you're criticisng. You put accounts in some box purely of your own invention (well, your ideology's), decide what people are saying, then come in all guns blazing.

There is a place for that, sometimes, of course.

You're obviously not interested in having a "reasoned debate" on the topic. In which people at least understand the other's perspective and then criticise it. You're interested in a bloodsport of worldviews, that you're going to portray as the natural functioning of reason or logic, which is always in agreement with what you've decided is true beforehand. Funny that.

What terrible consequence happens if your ideological enemies win an internet argument? People use zir as a word? Jesus.

It's a noble gesture to hold everyone to the same standards.

It matters what the standards are and where they come from, though. They're usually not derived from reason, they come from socialisation and life experience; and very rarely, study.

Think of all those arguments you've been in, usually with a lover, where neither of you could understand what the other was saying; what you thought was normal was not what they thought was normal. Follow the resulting intuition about the contextual fungibility of standards to differences in life experiences and socialisation, then notice there are trends in life experience and socialisation based on your circumstances of birth and life events after.

Stupid joke. The difference between Nature + mystery and Nature - mystery is 2 mystery.

• plus Mystery.. — 180 Proof

You forgot the second mystery.

No one's voice should be amplified in a society where we are all equal and have free speech — Harry Hindu

Yes. Why do you think people want to have their voices amplified then? Say someone who's been skeptical of their gender from birth, but doesn't identify with the...

Wait you don't believe in that, either.

It's just another internet right talking point, and you're here to take the predictable line under the banner of truth and reason.

Aight.

Something I don't understand: why would you take offence to a racial slur but not the pronoun stuff?

championing the free speech of trans people. — NOS4A2

Amplifying someone's voice != championing free speech. Free speech is already why they can say what they say, it's why we can have this discussion to begin with. You want to amplify their voice? Listen to their concerns and act in accord with them; form relationships of solidarity, think critically; what's needed is a new scalpel (critically motivated, recognition enabling vocabulary) rather than a redundant sledgehammer (the capacity to speak like that without punishment).

Why you frame your responses in this thread as an intent to amplify the free speech of gender non-conforming people rather than as an invocation of free speech to resist the perturbation of language norms is beyond me. It's like you're using free speech to marginalise someone; to stop them from articulating suffering so you do not have to accept it.

The main reason I defend free speech is for the marginalized voices, — NOS4A2

Then it is strange that you are not on the side of the normalisation of language that recognises flaws in how we think about gender that undermine the disastrous effects of its norms. Maintaining a sense of linguistic decorum in the face of the measurable harm it causes should not be construed as noble.

This same sledgehammer was used to defend the rights of abolitionists and civil rights activists, who were routinely censored for their views.

What a reasonable, critical individual would do is drop the bad argument form you're using. Or be happy that 60 years ago you would be defending the widespread censorship of abolitionists and civil rights activists in public. With the same strategy. — NOS4A2

I'm very happy that you've come round to seeing the importance of amplifying the voices of marginalised people and allowing them to (1) state their existence (2) demand recognition in their own terms and (3) do what they need to to get it.

Think about the political positioning of this 'matter of principle'; of what role you are playing in the discourse. Do you go into discussions about systemic racism arguing that use of the n-word is fine on a free speech basis? Have you tweeted Youtube for censoring ISIS material? I very much doubt it.

I respect free speech, I don't respect its selective invocation. I very much hope you are a true warrior of it, demanding that Youtube allows ISIS propaganda to propagate globally, and picking a fight with any verbally abused kid you see who wants his insulters to stop.