By the first part, I mean that their original x number of points as to the basis for founding the A+ forums made no mention of providing a safe space for persons who are not "neuro-normative". A little coterie of them basically pushed their way to the top of the dogpile and have taken over the tone and theme of the forums.
But the concept of a safe space obviously does apply to neurodiverse people (as they're a minority group). Or do you mean that they've somehow dominated the safe space so that it suits them more than minority groups? That could be a problem but I'm not entirely sure it's happened.
No, I don't expect them to all provide proof of diagnosis, but if they don't, they shouldn't expect me to take them seriously.
That's fair enough I guess, I don't think there is an imperative for you believe them. The only problem would be if you enter the safe space and start trying to challenge them on their (self-)diagnosis, as that wouldn't be conducive to a safe space.
I spent a whole lot of years on the fringes of what Lou Reed referred to as "the wild side" and know far too many marginalized people to take any one of them as a spokesperson for whichever group they are claiming to be a part of. I can't cite posts, but a number of them have made comments that speak to self-diagnosis.
Certainly, I've seen comments on self-diagnosis as well. The people I've seen identify as such though tend to avoid making claims about the group they think they belong to.
I believe we should also bear in mind that most of them are in Canada, particularly BC, and there is no cost associated with mental health treatment if you are referred by a physician, hospital or clinic. (Canadians can upgrade me if this has changed.)
Hmm.. okay, I don't know the stats to say whether the demographics are true there, and I don't know enough about the Canadian healthcare, but this still has the problem associated with having to see a doctor first. Even if that itself doesn't cost, visiting the doctor can often require taking time off work in order to go and that's not something everyone can do.
This isn't to defend people with self-diagnoses, but rather pointing out that there will inevitably be a large amount of people with self-diagnosed disorders who do have those disorders, and realistically, the label makes no differences to the problems that are discussed in a safe space.
Well, this doesn't apply only to mental health issues. It applies to their entire methodology on every topic. Whether it's "I'm a woman and thus know what women think" or "I've lived as a black person and you haven't" or "If you're cisgendered you can't possibly understand what I'm talking about", it goes on constantly. The thing is, they carry their particular oppression(s) on their back like a baby grand piano. Every single one of them gets to play Special Bunny on some topic.
And that's sort of the differing in perspective that I mentioned in my last post. To someone from a privileged perspective it can look like someone is trying to claim special powers by discussing some group that they belong to, but when we actually put it into context, this supposed display of power and superiority is in fact an attempt to be treated as an equal.
This can be a difficult thing for many people to get their head around because they've never faced discrimination (or they have and they've ignored or rationalised it away) and so they'll come up with arguments like: "But if you want to be equal then you have to be treated like everyone else!". This is the exact approach that racists take when arguing against affirmative action. The idea is that, if they want to be treated equally, then there shouldn't be any spaces or "handouts" given to minorities - but this assumes that, if people are left to their own devices, they will act fairly and not discriminate. And this is patently untrue.
The point being that if people in a safe space didn't speak up about how a privileged position is actively harming them, then they would simply be assuming the position they have always had where they are ignored and trampled all over. Speaking up doesn't mean that they are acting like "special flowers" or whatever, it means that they are taking the tiniest steps towards trying to get the world to treat them as equal.
And you know what? I have no problem with such a "safe space". I've said this before. They should just close the boards to all but approved members. Let people apply and keep the trolls and miscreants from reading. They opted to do this with the sooper sekret forum, but they should do it with the whole board. They could leave out a couple of their basket o' links and show the topics of the other sub-forums, but when you clicked to read or comment, you'd bee advised that it's a Members Only Forum. It's quite common in professional discussion groups. Why not apply it here rather than all the drama of making it public but not so public.
To be fair, I think they underestimated the sheer magnitude of the trolling that they were going to receive. And you can see why - they want a forum where people couldn't say racist, sexist, transphobic, etc, things and they wanted to discuss how equality is a neat concept. Why would they expect people to react so violently against it?
I don't think there's any need to close up the forum from outsiders. The front of the forum acts like a vetting station for newcomers so that not only can the established members come to trust the newcomers, but that the newcomers can decide whether it's really a place that they could fit in. From there, they have their Members Only area to protect from people who can't access the forum, and their trusted members only area to protect from trolls who join with the intention of disrupting the forum.
I think a far better approach that the mods could take would to be to stop taking such a lenient view with newcomers and just banning them when it becomes clear that they have no interest in social justice and are in fact trolls. It has the downside of sometimes catching people who have good intentions but just don't know how to act in a safe space, but they could easily set up a system where people who want to come back can try to justify it.
I think we all do this. Even when I dust off my critical thinking hat to hang out on these forums, knowing that I learn a lot here from a lot of people, I still think that what I think on a certain topic is the "correct" version. Oh, you may be right... but I'm righter. As I said, I think we all do this to an extent and to give Alan Watts credit (something I'm normally loathe to do), in The Book he actually hit that particular nail on the head.... I, Myself is the center of the universe. My universe, of course.
In a way, yeah. I think that "privilege" does act like a cognitive bias in that way, but it seems like a much harder hurdle to overcome because we often have little to compare our experiences to. When we are being biased in respect to something like an alternative medicine that we might believe works, we can compare our logic and reasoning to other times that we were wrong and correct our position. But with things like privilege, we simply can't imagine ourselves in the situation of a minority group - usually people just try to do a simple "swap" where everything is the same except one aspect. You see this a lot in sexism debates where a guy will say, "I don't see why women get upset about being objectified, if it were me I'd love that!". It's an easy thing to say when you don't have the same history and can jump back to your life if things got tough.
One of my favourite ways of understanding privilege is the song "Common People" by Pulp. You probably know it but if not, the song is about a girl who thinks it's "cool" to be poor and asks a poor guy to show her what it's like. He shows her a few things, each being met by her disbelief and lack of understanding, and the main point that keeps getting repeated is that she'll never understand what it's like to be poor because if at any point it gets too tough, she can always call her dad and he'll bail her out.
Minorities don't tell privileged people that they'll never understand what it's like to try to feel special, it's simply a fact that due to their significantly different histories and lives, you just can't put yourself in their shoes in any kind of meaningful way.
On this we'll agree to firmly disagree because more often than not, it is used to stifle discussion. Oh, it may be a valid point but as I believe Randfan was saying, there are other ways to make valid points than "Shut up, (s)he explained." e.g. if you're discussing politics with someone who keeps pausing and then saying "they" or "them", where you're pretty sure they wanted to say "blacks, ********, African-Americans, other" it's probably absolutely accurate to say, "Whoa, you're a ******* racist!" That's fine if you want to end the conversation. "Check your privilege" among the enlightened is a conversation stopper as it's an insult.
I certainly don't agree with your perception of the situation there. I can't say for certain whether all uses of the term have been used to further productive discussion (as I'm sure somebody out there has abused it for their own purposes) but very rarely in my experience is it said with the intention of shutting down discussion. In fact, the whole point of saying 'check your privilege' is to further the discussion and help people learn from a differing viewpoint.
As I mention above, "privilege" is a kind of cognitive bias. There is no logical argument or empirical evidence to disprove someone who is making privileged comments, they are just so fundamentally wrong that they are ignoring entire viewpoints and not even aware that they exist. In other words, when someone is making privileged comments, there is really not much else that can be said except "check your privilege".
Similarly, if someone claims that since they can't see how organisms could have evolved, evolution must be false, you'd point out that they are committing an argument from ignorance. You could teach them everything about evolution, show them all the evidence, and it wouldn't make a difference because the basis of their position is not something that can be reasoned out of - that is, they are denying something based on their personal disbelief. The same thing happens with privilege - you can show someone all the evidence on discrimination or the ways in which bigotry manifests itself, and it won't change someone's position because they are failing to comprehend the basic fact that they are ignoring an entire type of evidence (i.e. that which is not accessible to them).
I'd like to add that you're a better spokesperson for A+ than most of their leading lights.... and they want to tar and feather you (maybe figuratively - maybe literally). If you'd just use more exclamation points and not actually discuss both sides of the issue, you'd probably find a safe harbor there.
Thank you, I appreciate that. I think it's easier since we're not in a safe space and there is more room to debate basic concepts, but I'm glad that the discussion here is far more civil and respectful (at least from what I've seen) compared to other places I have discussed this in. I hope that it continues as nothing useful ever comes from throwing around insults at strangers on the internet.
