Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

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Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I don't see where it says that in your link, but I'll take your word for it - especially if it makes me look clever.
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Since qwints appears to be offline, I'll just stick my foot in the water and say that I believe he's referring to the fact that "rule of thumb" is often said to have originated in the idea that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick so long as it was no wider than his thumb. The Wiki link says that feminist Del Martin came in for a bit of flak when she was misinterpreted as believing that was the origin of the phrase. The etymology, of course, is quite different.

I think qwints believed you were using the phrase ironically to refer to the outrage over something that wasn't correct.
 
The trouble with over-emphasizing the feelings of victims of racism or misogyny is the likelihood of false accusation, and false accusations are among the worst types of social injustice.

The founding A+ mission statement promises to "apply skepticism and critical thinking to everything." The weight A+ advocates give to emotions is in direct violation of this promise.

We already covered A+ reliance on emotional judgement in this thread after ApostateA declared "emotions are intellectual tools" (an oxymoron if I ever heard one).

Emotions inform you of emotions and, well, nothing else.

...and, we did already cover the Straw Vulcan argument.

Skeptics and critical thinkers don't advocate ignoring emotions. We advocate following the evidence, and knowing that over-reliance on emotions is a royal road to losing touch with reality.

The devout of A+ and FTB falsely accuse mainstream skeptics and atheists of misogyny and racism because of their emotion-based "us vs them" logic, and it's terribly unjust.
 
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Empress said:
Since qwints appears to be offline, I'll just stick my foot in the water and say that I believe he's referring to the fact that "rule of thumb" is often said to have originated in the idea that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick so long as it was no wider than his thumb. The Wiki link says that feminist Del Martin came in for a bit of flak when she was misinterpreted as believing that was the origin of the phrase. The etymology, of course, is quite different.

I think qwints believed you were using the phrase ironically to refer to the outrage over something that wasn't correct.
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To be honest, I'm not sure that that's as clever as my earlier use of the names Bianca and Maurice, but it seems that nobody noticed that, so I'll take this one.
 
theprestige said:
I think this gets very close to the heart of the matter, so I'm still hopeful my question will be answered:

qwints said:
The feelings of marginalization are real even if they stem from an inaccurate appraisal of another's motives.

theprestige said:
And therefore... ?
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And therefore one can marginalize themselves as a result of "The feelings of marginalization even if they stem from an inaccurate appraisal of another's motives"?
 
qwints said:
Andrea Dworkin WP was accused of this, especially in Intercourse (book)WP. She explicitly rejected this interpretation.
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She half-rejected it, and in doing so is being either sloppy or disingenuous. Her writings clearly make the implication, by asserting that all sexual relationships in a patriarchy (which she does explicitly accuse Western society of being), and that all sex involving a power imbalance is inherently rape. She's done so repeatedly in different contexts. Either she's being unclear in expressing her particular brand of feminisim, or her denial of said implication is just backpedaling.

qwints said:
You couldn't be more wrong, it's part of the reality of the situation. Someone's internal state is part of reality.
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Someone's internal state is part of their perception of reality, it is not reality itself. To use a phrase so grossly misused by Post-Modernist wannabes, the map is not the territory. Perception does not alter the fundamental nature of a phenomenon, it only alters how we react to it, rightly or wrongly.

I've seen plenty of people denying the existence of a right not to be offended, but I've seen no one advocate one. Would you care to show me otherwise or are you just going to continue to make broad onsourced assertions?
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Seriously? You're seriously asserting this in a thread that so amply illustrates certain individuals' insistence on a right not to be offended? You missed the entirety of the oppression olympics discussions? Ophelia's crying jag at TAM over Harriet's shirt, and the blowup that resulted? I could go on for days.

The whole mess at A+ is predicated on certain individuals asserting their right to not be offended, while retaining the right to offend others.
 
Foolmewunz said:
YOUR perception, evidently.
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Not just my perception. Evidently the authors of the Greg/Emily study anticipated that criticism and randomly placed names with addresses in affluent areas compared to poor areas. This confuses wealth and class, which are not the same thing.
 
luchog said:
The whole mess at A+ is predicated on certain individuals asserting their right to not be offended, while retaining the right to offend others.
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That's an excellent way of putting it.

When I offend you, I'm a horrible, slimy, hateful, unrepentant, sexist, racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic scumbag who triggers all your innermost horrors and makes you sick to your stomach.

When you offend me you're "punching up", you're making me experience the alienation I inflict on others, you're raising my consciousness, you're expressing your lived subjective experience, you're defending yourself against microaggressions, you're asserting the simple right of all people to live in a world where everyone is a special snowflake and you are heroically shining your personal sunshine down on the whole planet.
 
squealpiggy said:
Not just my perception. Evidently the authors of the Greg/Emily study anticipated that criticism and randomly placed names with addresses in affluent areas compared to poor areas. This confuses wealth and class, which are not the same thing.
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How intriguing! Please elaborate on the distinction between wealth and class that explains why you think that it is probably not racism that causes employers to give less consideration to even wealthy job applicants who possess stereotypically black names. Thanks in advance.



Kevin_Lowe said:
This case seems about as clear-cut as one could ask for. Why do you think these people are right to be offended, given that we have clear evidence that hair-touching is a cross-cultural phenomenon reflecting curiosity, not a specifically USian phenomenon about racial prejudice?
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Uh, maybe because it's an uncomfortably intrusive request?
 
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Kevin_Lowe said:
How does that make it racist? Are all uncomfortably intrusive things racist?
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And the particular example, if anyone who's not black is honest about it, is something that probably everyone wondered about at one time. When the first major 'fros were out in the 60s, most people who were not black or intimate with blacks had no idea whether it felt like a big fluffy pillow or a wire scrub brush or something in between. I remember when the "wet look" came back in whatever decade that was and a white guy asking another white guy if he could feel his "Poindexter". It's just curiosity coupled with minor boorishness.

As I said, the best example is guys who shave their heads. Anyone who's gone that route knows that people of all sizes and shapes and colors and genders will ask if they can rub it.
 
This event, "Murder of Kriss Donald" reminded me of this thread and our lovely friends at A+:

Kriss Donald (2 July 1988 – 15 March 2004) was a Scottish fifteen-year-old white male who was kidnapped, tortured[2] and murdered in Glasgow in 2004 by a gang of men of Pakistani descent, some of whom fled to Pakistan after the crime.[3][4][5][6] Daanish Zahid, Imran Shahid, Zeeshan Shahid, and Mohammed Faisal Mustaq were later found guilty of racially motivated murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.[4][3] A fifth participant in the crime was convicted of racially motivated violence and jailed for five years.
The case, which featured the first ever conviction for racially motivated murder in Scotland, is cited as an example of the lack of attention the media and society give to white sufferers of racist attacks compared to that given to ethnic minorities, with organisations such as the BBC later admitting failing to cover the case sufficiently.[7][8] It is also suggested the crime demonstrates how society has been forced to redefine racism so as to no longer exclude white victims.[9]
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theprestige said:
And therefore... ?
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Therefore, one should take into account those real feeling of marginalization in one's future behavior.

luchog said:
Someone's internal state is part of their perception of reality, it is not reality itself.
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Not to get overly metaphysical, but my feeling of anger is as real as my feeling of heat. We can measure physiological responses that correspond to emotions. Those internal states may not be a reliable indicator of someone else's intent, but they are a thing that exists and matters. In your terms, an emotion is a phenomenon.


Foolmewunz said:
As I said, the best example is guys who shave their heads. Anyone who's gone that route knows that people of all sizes and shapes and colors and genders will ask if they can rub it.
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Sure, but I'm still not convinced the similar behaviors are identical in different contexts. What about the blogger I posed earlier who had the woman make racial comments after she refused?
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
"punching up",
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There really is a difference between punching down and punching up. We can discuss the tactics of activism and the usefulness of decorum, but it doesn't take much analysis to understand that the same insult had different effects depending on whether its going up or down. Imagine a millionaire and homeless person each calling each other a drain on society. Society tells the former in a thousand little ways the insult is false, while devaluing the latter.
 
qwints said:
There really is a difference between punching down and punching up. We can discuss the tactics of activism and the usefulness of decorum, but it doesn't take much analysis to understand that the same insult had different effects depending on whether its going up or down. Imagine a millionaire and homeless person each calling each other a drain on society. Society tells the former in a thousand little ways the insult is false, while devaluing the latter.
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There are so many things that bug me about A+ culture. Yet another one is the argumentative tactic of claiming a huge thing, then when challenged defending a tiny thing.

There is a difference between prejudice directed at generally-more-empowered groups and prejudice directed at generally-less-empowered groups, sure.

However the mere existence of a difference doesn't begin to justify the toxicity of the A+ forum community atmosphere.

A core part of liberal thinking is that prejudice is bad wherever it is and whoever is indulging in it. Racism and other forms of bigotry and prejudice are very bad things whatever the skin colour, social class, cultural background, mental health, sex, gender identity or whatever of the racist.

Historically this goes back to philosophers like Kant who laid the ground for liberalism and argued that all people are entitled to dignity and respect, regardless of who they are.

A-plussers trying to use the ideas of "privilege" and "intersectionality" as a justification for their own prejudice and bigotry doesn't make them any less bigoted or prejudiced. It just makes them hypocritical as well as illiberal.
 
qwints said:
Therefore, one should take into account those real feeling of marginalization in one's future behavior.
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Why and to what end? What's the purpose being served by indulging someones fantasies like that?
 
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