How Not To Argue

In the interests of clarity, I should state that these are my personal suggestions, not a TBAT mandate.

Popular demand (or at least the odd request) has asked that I put together some polite explanations of why, when it comes to discussing the inequities of our society, certain lines of argument are liable to wind up with both sides feeling savaged and despairing, and non-combatants blinking at the scorched earth and thinking, 'I'm sure there was an interesting conversation to be had about this once?' Such explosions usually spark off when someone with more societal privilege makes a remark that ... well, let's assume good intentions: when someone with more privilege than others puts a well-meaning foot in their mouth and says something that they don't realise people in marginalised groups have heard used to deny their experience and rights before, many times, in many contexts.

Such remarks may or may not be intended to oppress, but they operate in a context where they're at risk of having that consequence no matter what the intent of the speaker. So, in the interests of reducing flame wars, furthering understanding, and giving the oppressed a resource they can use if they want to tell somebody off politely, here are some tips on How Not To Argue.


You read too much into things

To begin with, this is just annoying. On a discussion blog, people discuss things; if you don't want to read that kind of thing, you're in the wrong place. And that's your fault for choosing a place that doesn't suit you, not the place's fault for being what it is. Saying 'You read too much into things' is basically tipping up and saying, 'Hey, everywhere I cast a casual eye should completely change itself to fit in with my personal tastes!' This is not the way to win friends and influence people.

More specifically, 'You read too much into things' is frequently employed to disparage someone's perception. In effect, it's saying, 'If you can see something and I can't, it must be because you're making things up,' which is basically a statement that you're omniscient and the other person is delusional. This is not charming. It's also lazy and disrespectful of other people's time: it dismisses the post or comment someone put effort and thought into writing with a wave of the hand and doesn't actually bother to engage with it. This is tantamount to saying that your most casual and shallow thought outweighs the serious consideration, reflection, education and experience of other people just because you're you and they're them. You are probably not correct in this.

Saying 'I think you're reading too much into this, for reasons X, Y and Z' isn't necessarily offensive, but it's a phrase with bad associations because it so often translates to 'I can't be bothered to think or talk about what you're saying, but I get to dismiss it anyway because I'm so much smarter than you.' This would irritate anyone, but people who experience marginalization get dismissed and disparaged a whole lot and consequently are pretty much up to here with it to begin with. If you disagree with an interpretation, make a case for what you think rather than just throwing a vague insult in its direction.


Not X, just Y

When the subject of bigoted behaviour comes up, here's a common thing to say: 'He's not misogynist/racist/gay-bashing/whatever, because I don't think he hates women/POC/gay people/whatever ... he's just saying things that don't support their rights'(Or she.)

This is a tricky one. Fine distinctions can be important to make, but they can also shift the goalposts.

The basic point is this. If a discussion is about how problematic someone's behaviour is, it's a discussion about the effect they have on others - very often including people taking part in the discussion. To move to an analysis of the person's inner life, especially one that defends them, can feel like changing the subject from the (marginalised) people whose rights they're denying to the (privileged) person's right to the benefit of the doubt. To someone used to having their rights undermined, this can feel very much like being told that a privileged person's right to be assumed a good human being is more important to the speaker than your right to be treated like a human being at all.

It's not always inappropriate to discuss whether someone's hateful, ignorant, silly, or something in between. But when you've seen too many threads get derailed into a semantic wrangle over the precise difference between sexist and misogynist, or something similar, to the detriment of any acknowledgement that the behaviour is bad for its victims no matter what you call it ... you can get a little wary of comments that look like they're straining out gnats and swallowing camels. There's a time and place, and if the discussion is about the problems someone's causing, a split-hair defence of them may not go down well.


That's just a subjective impression, and subjective impressions can be wrong

True. They can indeed. They can also be right; the fact that something could be wrong doesn't mean that it actually is.

Subjective impressions aren't very valuable when trying to determine something definitely measurable: if the glass looks half full to you and someone else thinks it's full of spiders, you can check. But when it comes to how people treat one another, which is what we're talking about when it comes to discrimination and bigotry, the 'subjective' experience of the subject becomes extremely important. If a woman says 'Men often talk down to me' or a man of color says 'White women often clutch their bags when they see me', they can only speak from their own experience--but it's experience of situations that they saw and you didn't, and that they've had a lifetime to get used to.

Some people are irrational and hostile and read oppression into innocent situations. But the majority of people don't like feeling mistrusted and disrespected, and a sensible person doesn't go looking for prejudice. By dismissing someone's experience of discrimination, you are effectively saying that you assume they're a person with no sense. That's not a nice thing to do to anyone, and when you're doing to someone who probably does get dismissed as irrational by bigots because of who they are anyway, it's particularly galling and disrespectful.

You don't have to accept everyone's descriptions of their experience as the absolute truth, but they probably know more about their lives than you do. If you have to rest on the assumption that they're wrong about what it's like to be them, you're treating them rudely, and you're also making yourself look like you can't think of a way to refute them but don't want to admit it. And if you appear to want to refute someone's claims of oppression but haven't got a better reason than that they might be wrong, well, it doesn't make you look well-disposed towards people's rights.


I didn't intend to be offensive, therefore you have no right to take offense

It can be rather startling to find someone reacting angrily or with distress to a remark you thought of as friendly, neutral or just common sense. There's a great temptation to shrug it off as someone being unreasonably touchy and dismiss what they're saying.

Well, take a deep breath, stop a minute, and think about it.

The thing is, nobody knows everything. It's perfectly possible that the reason you think of what you said as common sense is that you happen to have lived in an environment where marginalized people are, well, marginalized. That means their opinions on things don't get heard very much. That's pretty much what marginalization means. An opinion may be deeply insulting to someone, but if they're at the margins, they may not get to challenge it, or at least not where people near the middle will hear them. You may simply not know what the problem with this statement is because this is the first time you've heard that there's a problem. Someone's now telling you new information. If you dismiss it, you're refusing an opportunity to learn.

You're also declaring that what you feel about how you act should trump how someone else feels about how you act - even if the way you act is deeply insulting, upsetting or threatening to them. They will not agree with you about this, nor should they have to. Equality means listening to each other, not just to ourselves.

There's a right way and a wrong way to bring up whether you meant to be offensive.

It's quite reasonable to say 'I didn't intend to come across as saying X, sorry about that; what I really mean is Y.' That's just a clarification; everybody fluffs their words sometimes.

It's fine to say 'I didn't expect this to cause offense and I don't understand why it did; could you please explain so I can understand better?' If someone's very distressed they may not be in the mood to go into detail and it's good manners to respect that, but an honest confession of ignorance is much better than defensiveness. Again, nobody knows everything; we're all born knowing nothing and have to take it from there. If you said something offensive because you didn't happen to have a piece of information, it can feel like you're unfairly being called a bad person - but your best chance to refute that suspicion is to act like a good person in your response and try to open your ears. Generally speaking, people are more likely to base their opinion of you on how you react to being told, 'Hey, that's offensive!' than on whether you said the offensive thing in the first place. See it as a an opportunity.

It's also fine to say, 'I'm sorry to have caused you offense; I didn't intend to' ... as long as you acknowledge that accidentally-caused offense is still legitimate and that 'I didn't mean to' doesn't automatically remove someone's right to feel bad about that thing you said. If you bring up your good intentions as part of an apology, the focus needs to be on the effect you've had, not on the effect you intended, otherwise your apology is more about your feelings than the feelings you've hurt. That isn't an apology at all; it's brandishing intent as a get-out-of-jail-free card, and those only work in Monopoly.

The flip side of this is that if someone says something that strikes you as potentially offensive but you're not sure if they mean it that way or not, it can save everybody headaches if you ask for a clarification before you blast them. Nobody always expresses themselves perfectly, and a clarification can sometimes set things straight very quickly.

The basic principle here is that we are responsible for the consequences of our actions. If we did them in good faith and meant no harm, but they cause harm nonetheless, the best way to preserve that good faith is to try to fix the harm they did. If you react to the news of harm by getting angry and defensive, you're suggesting that your good faith was conditional on nobody questioning you, which isn't all that good. If you react to the news of harm with concern and respect, your good faith looks a lot better, and then your intentions may be relevant.

Intentions have a place as part of a sincere apology or search for understanding; they have no place as part of a refusal to acknowledge someone else's feelings.


Whoever's most/least angry wins

Sometimes people get frustrated. If you've said something that (however unintentionally) insults them or supports structures that tend to deny their rights, and it's something they've heard many times before from people who want to see them disempowered, there's a fair chance they'll get frustrated with you - especially if you don't listen to their earlier objections respectfully. They may start to sound snappish.

This is not the moment to say, 'But you're so intemperate, you're clearly just being emotional/unpleasant/irrational and I don't have to listen to you.' It's possible to be angry while also making a perfectly rational point - and in fact, if someone's trying to deny you your rights, it's highly probable that you'll be angry while also having a rational objection. The two go together, and thought and feeling are not mutually exclusive.

Dismissing someone's rational objections on the grounds that they sound angry while making them is known as a 'tone argument', and it's both poor logic and poor manners.

On the other hand, it's important not to do a reverse-backflip with the tone argument and start misusing the phrase. If someone says to you, 'Hey, that word you used is a racial slur,' or 'Your language is creeping me out,' that's not the time to say 'Tone argument! Aha, I don't have to listen to you!' A tone argument is bad logic when it's used to dismiss a logical point. When it's used to dismiss a point about how you are affecting the people in this conversation, tone is relevant and 'tone argument' is a misuse of the phrase. This doesn't mean you have to give way to anyone who says they feel they want you to, but it doesn't mean they're using a tone argument either.

When you're talking about a general issue, tone does not affect the rightness or wrongness of your stance. When you're talking about how you're treating someone, tone is part of the subject under discussion. Avoiding tone arguments is good when it keeps the debate relevant; it's not good when it gets used as a license not to care about the feelings of others. Basically, don't use 'You're using a tone argument' as a tone argument.

This can be a fine line, and disagreements about borderline use can create a disaster area. But the fundamental principle is this: one should try to respect other people's feelings. If someone feels angry, it doesn't necessarily mean their point is unreasonable. If someone is uncomfortable with your demeanour, it doesn't necessarily mean they're employing a tone argument. In both cases, try to consider the content of what they're saying rather than seizing on their feelings as an excuse to ignore the point they're trying to make.

If someone says, 'You're using a tone argument to dismiss my point and I want you to address the actual content of what I'm saying,' you probably need to listen to them more. If someone says, 'You're making me uncomfortable and I'd like you to adjust your tone so I can continue this discussion,' you should listen to that too.

The basic rule is this: whether you're hearing or expressing anger, don't use people's feelings against them.


Even if you're not talking about me, you must be talking about me

A common way to get yourself into hot water is to jump into a conversation about the behaviour of prejudiced members of a group to which you belong, or how your group gets a better deal in society than some other group, with an angry assertion that you may be a member of this group but you're not a bigot, and it's offensive to assume that you are. (Some people do this in conversations where nobody knew they were following it, or even who they were, which is extra awkward.)

The basic principle here is that saying men benefit from sexism, white people from racism, straight people from homophobia and so on is not a blanket condemnation of the beneficiaries. We can none of us help how we're born, and the fact that society is unfair in your favour doesn't make you a bad person. Jumping in to deny your prejudice is denying an accusation that nobody made.

It may, however, get people turning around and saying that yes, you are prejudiced. While this may feel like a confirmation that you were right to defend yourself, in fact it's a reaction to your jumping in, for a simple reason: you've changed the subject from the problems of the marginalised group to the offended feelings of a member of the privileged group. If women are talking about the problems of sexism, it's not the moment to demand they soothe the feelings of a man who is, in any event, misinterpreting what they're saying. If people of colour are talking about racism, they don't want to have to start placating a white person. And so on. Being a member of a marginalised group means that you get squashed into the corner in a lot of places; having a member of the more powerful group jump up and try to change the subject when you're getting a respite from that to talk about your own concerns feels very much like being told, 'You have to occupy the corner in every space, not just most of them. Stop talking about yourselves and talk about me.'

If you're not a bigoted member of the group, then when people are talking about bigots, they're not talking about you. It's therefore not the moment to ask them to start.


But I've done good things in the past!

This is one that often comes up when someone is accused of saying something prejudiced. Hurt by the accusation, they'll produce some proofs of virtue: either they've done some good work for the benefit of the marginalized group in the past, or they're supportive of another marginalized group and hence have some progressive cred.

Well, if that's true, good for you. It's good news. It does not, however, mean that you'll never again say something that's problematic. People are mixed-up creatures: good and bad attitudes jostle away inside us. Even if our attitudes are pure - and nobody's perfect - all of us put the odd foot in our mouths. Having done something good in the past doesn't mean you couldn't possibly ever do something awkward in the future. And if you use support of people's rights as an excuse not to listen to people saying, 'Hey, that argument you're making undermines our rights,' ... well, sorry, but you have (temporarily at least) changed sides.

Egalitarianism is a way of walking, not a destination. If you've walked the walk in the past, all honor to you, but you need to keep walking it in the here and now.


The Human Shield Defence

Otherwise known as "I can't be sexist, I have female relations." Or perhaps female friends, or gay relations/friends, POC relations/friends, and so on - though at least on this website, the citation of female relations to defend against an accusation of sexist behavior seems to be the commonest.

The simplest answer to this is: human being not being parthenogenetic, every sexist has female relations. If female family members or acquaintances actually prevented a man from ever expressing an opinion that supported sexist structures, there would be no sexism. The same applies to every other marginalized group. It's a big world, and we all know different people. But on the Internet, all people have to go on is what you say, and if what you say is problematic, it's problematic.

Citing acquaintances from a marginalized group to prove you couldn't be undermining it tends to provoke people even further. The reason is simple: by invoking such people as if they were talismans against accusations, you come across as using them as tokens rather than recognizing them as human beings. This may not be what you're doing, but the problem is, we only have your word that they actually agree with your opinions. For all anyone on the Internet knows, your acquaintances of color may think you're a racist, your sisters may think you're a sexist, your gay uncle may think you're a homophobe, and so on. Or they could think you're an ally but be, no offense to them, very stupid people who couldn't tell prejudice if it bit them on the nose; every marginalized group has the occasional dimwit in it. Referring to them as if their very existence indemnified you against prejudice looks like you're failing to recognize that being in a marginalized group doesn't mean you're an automatic education to everyone around you.

The real problem, though, is that it dodges the issue. The problem isn't about your friends and family, it's about that comment you made. Maybe you just phrased something badly, maybe you have hidden problems with discrimination that you aren't aware of, maybe you're a horrible person: the people on the thread don't know. All they have to go on is what you wrote. Moving the conversation to what kind of person you are - which people only have your word to go on anyway - is changing the subject and refusing to address the real point.


Last thread? What last thread?

This is not so much an argument as a form of behavior that undermines good faith.

Say you have an argument with Person B on a particular thread. You appear to have antagonised them, they say you've treated them rudely, they're seriously upset with you. If you then drop out of that thread without resolving the conflict and then pop up in another thread where they're posting as if nothing happened - especially if you start chatting with them as if you two are friends - B is going to feel very frustrated. In effect, you're denying them closure and expecting that to have no consequence on how they should behave towards you: you're showing their feelings no respect and expecting them to still treat you respectfully. At worst it can feel very close to gaslighting, and at best, it feels like taking advantage of the new thread to get out of a conversation that wasn't finished.

If you're going to get into a conflict with someone, you should have the courtesy to resolve it. If you can't resolve it, you should at least post that you'd like to agree to disagree and allow that this may change how they feel towards you. People's memories don't vanish from thread to thread, and acting as if they should will cause a lot of stress.

--Kit Whitfield

__________

 

The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



Comments

[Raj]

*stands and applauds*

Author! Author!

[Timothy (TRiG)]

*Copies Raj*

[The Kidd]

As someone who isn't exactly the most articulate of people I am amazed once more at the high quality of your writing. The content is very important. Beyond that, the way that content is expressed is crystal clear, nuanced, comprehensive, and without a wasted word. Furthermore, it is a pleasure to read.

[tana]

Love. This.

[MercuryBlue]

Now if only the problem people would read this.

[BringTheNoise]

This should be required reading in every high school in the World. Clear, concise and right on the money! Thank you Kit.

[hapax]

@MercuryBlue -- when Kit first submitted this to TBAT (yes, we all have to go through the same procedure), my first reaction was yours.

Then I started of thinking of all the times I've said things that could fall under one of these categories, and felt shamed... and inspired to do better.

In other words, I suspect that we are ALL "problem people" from time to time.

[renniejoy]

Very nice, Kit!

I think I may link to this (with the specific topic mentioned) in response to "ugly" comments.

[MercuryBlue]

hapax: fair point. *hides*

[Froborr]

This is excellent!

[aravind]

Mercury Blue: Now if only the problem people would read this.

Yeah, hapax already said what I basically want to say to this. Since this is exactly what I kept trying to get at in the Mormon baptism thread, I don't know if I can comment here anymore (not that I feel silenced, just that it's sometimes exhausting to have certain types of conversations about privilege*). If people aren't open to even considering that maybe, just maybe, they're acting privileged, then it doesn't matter if they're actually right about the privileged thing they're complaining about (like, say, in the Mormon baptism thread), especially if their complaint about it (admittedly just from my perspective) exercises privileged (like, say, in the Mormon baptism thread).

*Not all complaints about privilege in the slightest. See rest of comment for explanation. Before flaming. Please.

[kisekileia]

Kit, this is wonderful! Thank you for writing it.

I have to say, though: Although I absolutely agree with you about the sorts of responses to "you're acting privileged" that should be acceptable, some of them do not seem to be acceptable in other anti-oppression spaces. In my experience, outside of The Slacktiverse/Slacktivist, saying 'I didn't expect this to cause offense and I don't understand why it did; could you please explain so I can understand better?' tends to get responses of "It's not my job to educate you and it is rude and patronizing of you to expect me to do so," along with links to the "If you won't educate me how will I learn?" section of Derailing for Dummies. I think the way we do things here is better, especially since refusal to answer questions about social rules is oppressive of people who cannot pick up social rules without explanations (e.g. those on the autism spectrum). So this is something where Kit's guidelines for what is acceptable here may not carry over to other anti-oppression spaces.

Same with "I'm sorry to have caused offense; I didn't mean to." While it SHOULD be acceptable, and it is at least somewhat acceptable here, in some places it just gets a response of "Intent is not magic," with no respect for the importance of intent.

I also think that, while it is extremely important to educate people on how to respond if they're called out for privileged behaviour, there should also be some onus on the people doing the calling out to not pass judgment on people's character too soon. Most people, if told that they're bigots, are going to be very offended. Calling someone a bigot is going to provoke a defensive reaction in most people; that defensive reaction is not necessarily evidence of ill intent or poor character, as it is often assumed to be. All that reaction shows is that the person is aware that being a bigot is a Very Bad Thing, and may not be totally cognizant of the rules of behaviour in anti-oppression circles.

I'm not saying that people can't act angry when others make oppressive statements. I'd be a hypocrite if I said that. I'm just saying that there needs to be some recognition of the fact that lots of people who make oppressive statements are clueless rather than malicious. Jumping straight to character assassination can, in fact, be oppressive of people who haven't had the privilege of extensive exposure to anti-oppression discourse. Nuking needs to be done judiciously; e.g. when people engaging in a pervasive pattern of oppressive behaviour demonstrate that they really don't care how their behaviour affects other people.

[Ruby]

kisekileia: I have to say, though: Although I absolutely agree with you about the sorts of responses to "you're acting privileged" that should be acceptable, some of them do not seem to be acceptable in other anti-oppression spaces. In my experience, outside of The Slacktiverse/Slacktivist, saying 'I didn't expect this to cause offense and I don't understand why it did; could you please explain so I can understand better?' tends to get responses of "It's not my job to educate you and it is rude and patronizing of you to expect me to do so," along with links to the "If you won't educate me how will I learn?" section of Derailing for Dummies. I think the way we do things here is better, especially since refusal to answer questions about social rules is oppressive of people who cannot pick up social rules without explanations (e.g. those on the autism spectrum). So this is something where Kit's guidelines for what is acceptable here may not carry over to other anti-oppression spaces.

Yes, this. And it's not just for people on the autism spectrum--it's for everyone. Nobody knows everything, and surely there must be some fair middle ground between "yes, of course we'll stop everyting to answer all basic questions because we're a 101 site" and "you need to know everything about privilege, oppression, and triggers before you even consider commenting here."

[Kirala]

Yes, this. And it's not just for people on the autism spectrum--it's for everyone. Nobody knows everything, and surely there must be some fair middle ground between "yes, of course we'll stop everything to answer all basic questions because we're a 101 site" and "you need to know everything about privilege, oppression, and triggers before you even consider commenting here."

Likewise, when a much-given 101 explanation seems to be needed, it would be nice if someone could say "That's a much-answered question; see standard response here. If it makes sense, come on back after you've read it. If it doesn't, please look for a site which is not founded on taking this as given so that further discussion can be had."

It's the chief reason I like the FNE section on this site. It provides a lot of 101 info for people acting in good faith who are largely ignorant about privilege.

[Literata]

Kit, I don't have enough superlatives to describe this. Thank you.

I'm going to raise again an issue I brought up on the Baptizing Dead Quakers thread and didn't get an answer to. I understand about not jumping to character assassination, I understand about educating people, I get it, I really do. But when is vehement anger allowed?

On that thread, after multiple back and forths, I used precisely three cusswords about a very specific statement. The Privilege Defender came back with a long waaaah about how sad it was that no one was engaging with him, we were just cussing at him, waaah. I continued to try to educate him. I never again resorted to profanity. I contested one specific thing he said that was clearly contestable. I never resorted to character assassination. If I remember correctly, no one spoke up to support my argument specifically (although there were plenty of people concurrently engaging PD). Finally, I tried to express my anger in calm text one more time, including a reasoned discussion of why I thought my anger was a relevant part of the discussion. I then presented a long metaphor. People engaged with my metaphor, but (again, to the best of my memory) no one engaged with whether or not it would be allowable to express my anger.

We have had a long conversation that touched on this recently, but my impression is that the issue of relevant anger has not been sufficiently addressed, because so much of the community consensus seems to be about how and when it is mean to yell at people. I get that. But I still need some discussion about when my anger, expressed in ways commensurate with its content, becomes a valid or at least acceptable part of the discourse. When can I bring that to the conversation without the community censuring or even silencing me?

[kisekileia]

Personally, I would say that anger is appropriate when ill intent has been confirmed, or when angry statements appear necessary to get people to listen, or when the anger isn't actually personally attacking anyone. That's just me, though.

[Nick Kiddle]

//The simplest answer to this is: human being not being parthenogenetic, every sexist has female relations.//

While I agree wholeheartedly with the larger point you're making, the phrasing here makes me slightly uncomfortable. The implication is that everyone has female relations because a female person is necessary for sexual reproduction, which is cissexist.

(And now I feel like a jerk for picking that nit, because it seems so unimportant compared to the larger point. It's just a really irritating microaggression for me that hits critical mass every so often and becomes impossible to ignore.)

[Mmy]

@Nick Kiddle: huh? In what way is stating a fact (human being are not parthenogenetic) cissexist?

Note: in the spirit of the article we are both commenting on--I am simply stating that I do not follow your logic.

[Literata]

Nick, how would you express the scientific point that Kit is trying to make in a non-cissexist way?

[MercuryBlue]

Would amending it to 'female-bodied relations' improve matters, Nick?

Is it cissexist to point out that transgender and otherwise nonbinary individuals are not all that common? Because I'm having difficulty imagining a scenario where someone has both an FtM parent and two FtM grandparents, simply because of the rarity of FtM individuals.

[Nick Kiddle]

//@Nick Kiddle: huh? In what way is stating a fact (human being are not parthenogenetic) cissexist?//

Perhaps I misunderstood Kit's logic, but the statement seemed to be saying that since humans are not parthenogenetic therefore female relations are inevitable. It seems to blur the distinction between female as ova-supplying and female as victims rather than beneficiaries of sexism, which is the cissexist part.

//Is it cissexist to point out that transgender and otherwise nonbinary individuals are not all that common? Because I'm having difficulty imagining a scenario where someone has both an FtM parent and two FtM grandparents, simply because of the rarity of FtM individuals.//

Well, you'd only have to posit a trans male parent and complete lack of contact with grandparents - having to cut off contact with birth family is sadly all too common for trans people. But no, I don't have a problem with the statement that everyone's likely to have women somewhere in their extended family. It was just something about the way it was phrased that sat badly with me.

[jemand]

Actually, now that I think about it, an adopted child of gay male parents could end up a sexist as well, and if estranged from his father's families and his biological parents, could end up with no female relatives.

I guess you could say "given the nature of the world we live in, every sexist has female relations." Since that is certainly true. I liked the turn of phrase "humans not being parthenogenic" because it seems tongue in cheek witty, but it's not worth it if it causes people grief.

[Mmy]

@MercuryBlue: the dictionary definition of parthenogenesis off which I am working is a gamete develops into a new individual without the fertilization of an oocyte by a spermatozoon

Or, to put it another way -- human beings (with rare exceptions) inherited genetic material from more than one donor. Even if a particular human being inherited genetic material from only one donor that donor would themselves have inherited genetic material from more than one donor. Go back far enough and we all have at least one XX person in our genetic history.

[jemand]

Literata: "We have had a long conversation that touched on this recently, but my impression is that the issue of relevant anger has not been sufficiently addressed, because so much of the community consensus seems to be about how and when it is mean to yell at people. I get that. But I still need some discussion about when my anger, expressed in ways commensurate with its content, becomes a valid or at least acceptable part of the discourse. When can I bring that to the conversation without the community censuring or even silencing me?"

Good question! I think people probably didn't engage in the other thread because I don't know if anyone knows, but I'd like to see a discussion on the subject.

[Mmy]

@Nick Kiddle: Perhaps I misunderstood Kit's logic, but the statement seemed to be saying that since humans are not parthenogenetic therefore female relations are inevitable. It seems to blur the distinction between female as ova-supplying and female as victims rather than beneficiaries of sexism, which is the cissexist part.

I am still confused because to me (as I read it) the point that Kit is making is exactly the point that you want to make. She is pointing out a person having female relatives (that is, people who are ova-supplying) doesn't have any bearing on the fact that the same person may be treating women in a sexist way.

[jemand]

I think Nick's point is that we are a bit more complex than other species that can be neatly classified by things such as "parthenogenic" or "not parthenogenic."

Humans have biological sex AND societal *gender.* Sexism generally is against persons who identify as being GENDERED female, and that class is not synonymous with the class of people who are biologically SEXED homozygously. And that the million little quips and assumptions and turns of phrase which equate biological sex and cultural gender can feel like so many tiny thick flakes of snow that eventually weigh down and smother people who don't feel the more common congruence between the two identities.

[Mmy]

@jemand: Since the "human shield" tactic is to confound biological and sexual gender (by saying since they are related to a biological gender they cannot be discriminating against the sexual gender) one of the tactics one can use in response is to say that since we are all related to the biological gender it gives no one any "outs" to note that that is also the case for themselves.

[Mary Kaye]

The other thing the Mormon discussion brought up for me, and that Kit's post brings up as well, is that the world does not divide neatly into Privileged and Non-Privileged people. It's *significantly* more complicated than that. And this makes "non-privileged people deserve safe space to talk about their issues without being tromped on by privileged people" ... a lot harder to implement than it initially sounds.

In the Mormon discussion, I had the impression that some of the Mormon participants saw themselves as coming from a less-privileged position. Their religion is not well understood or accepted in mainstream America, and is often criticized unfairly and ignorantly. This makes them, understandably, sore and touchy about further criticism.

Some of the people on the other side of the debate felt exactly the same, for equally good reasons. Pagan commentators tended to see the Mormon practice as one form of Christian cultural hegemony, tolerated because it uses forms and terms fairly familiar to Christians and thus shares in Christian privilege.

A community consensus that the person in a position of less privilege gets to be angry, but the person in a position of greater privilege needs to be courteous--how does it play out in a situation such as this? Both sides may quite reasonably feel that *they* are the ones in a position of less privilege. Compared to mainstream Protestants certainly both Pagans and Mormons get the short end of the stick. But given that, how should Kit's advice, which presumes an asymmetry in the interaction, be applied? Are both sides privileged? Neither? Do we have to adjucate who is more privileged in this interaction?

I am personally left quite uncomfortable by Kit's essay for this reason. I don't think I can reliably say "this is the less-privileged person in the discussion and therefore his/her views need to be given more space" and to me a lot of Kit's advice is contingent on being able to do that.

It does not work to assume that *you* are always the more privileged person in any discussion, although that seems to be the go-to position for those of us brought up with a lot of guilt or insecurity. For one thing, it can't possibly be true; for another, it ends up transforming the concept of privilege into yet another way to silence people, which is not what any of us want. (And it will silence most those who probably deserve it least.)

[Ruby]

jemand: I think Nick's point is that we are a bit more complex than other species that can be neatly classified by things such as "parthenogenic" or "not parthenogenic."

Except that we're not. Humans are not parthenogenic. There is some work being done in labs, but as of right now, every single person on Earth has a female relation (whether s/he knows her or not), because we still need fertilized eggs to reproduce. People may be raised by any number of other people, but at some point, a woman had to be involved in the process in order to supply the egg.

[Karen, who must find something to write about, since it's too hot to do anything else]

I wish I could send a copy of this to almost every single person I sue.

Also, I've missed you guys. We're getting my late MIL's house ready to sell. The woman was a high-class hoarder; she kept every single tchotchke purchased by any relative ever in history that she could. It's all neatly packaged in clear boxes and wrapped in acid-free paper, but oh Lord is there soooo much of it. It's all very nice stuff, but I have no use for 35-year-old rug hooking canvases and yarn. Goodwill and the Salvation Army are going to make a huge profit.

[malpollyon]

Yeah, I have to agree with Nick, the original statement relied on the cissexist assumption that childbearing* individuals are all female, rather than majority female. That distinction is pretty important to bear in mind when we're trying to make a safe place for QUILTBAGs.

As to the article as a whole though, I agree with the common consensus, it's a great explanation of some important stuff.

*I had XX here originally, but of course there are other possibilities such as XXX, careful use of language is *hard*.

[Mary Kaye]

I think the biology is irrelevant. Coming from an egg certainly inoculates no one against sexism, and that argument never gets made anyway: it's always "I know a woman and therefore--" and the definition of "woman" in that statement is going to be about social gender, not biological sex.

Incidentally, I'd like to get the "self as human shield" in there too: a person can be female and express virulently sexist views. Phyllis Schlafly's fight against the ERA hurt women just as much as it would have if she had been male, perhaps more, and after all, that's what counts--that people are getting hurt. Neither my chromosomes nor my social gender should give me a free pass to say misogynistic, hurtful things on this board.

[jemand]

Ruby.... but that is the POINT. The person who gives a child an egg, might not be a woman. Thomas Beatie, to give a real life example, is a man, who gave his daughter, mitochondrial DNA.

Insisting that the biological donors of eggs MUST be women, is a way of rendering invisible trans parents. The more people are doubling down on this and explaining how it doesn't matter or acting like people like Thomas Beatie (I'm sure there are others, who might not like to make their stories public, or I just don't know about them) don't exist really does seem to be trading in cissexual privilege.

Again, the original statement doesn't bother me personally very much, but the explanations for why it's totally ok and couldn't possibly have a problematic interpretation or make some people feel like their lived experiences don't count or are invisible, are more frustrating.

Humans are not biologically parthenogenic. But when you leap from that to specifying that a *woman* must have supplied a child an egg, you have entered into the discussion an assumption that feels obvious to you, but doesn't admit the reality of some other people's lives. THAT is what I'm objecting too.

[Mmy]

@mallpollyon: I have to agree with Nick, the original statement relied on the cissexist assumption that childbearing* individuals are all female,

But that is not what the original statement said. It was:

human being not being parthenogenetic, every sexist has female relations.

There is nothing in that statement about childbearing. It is a statement about genetics (we all of us have female relatives.) Therefore (the logic goes) if you are claiming that you cannot be a sexist because you are related to a woman you are basically making the claim that no one can be sexist.

Again, the original statement said nothing about childbearing. It said nothing about giving birth. It matters not if you were conceived in a petri dish you have female relatives.

[Mmy]

@jemand: Insisting that the biological donors of eggs MUST be women

No one here was making the claim that the biological donors of eggs MUST be women. The claim (scientifically butressed) is that every single one of us has someone in their genetic lineage with XX chromsomes).

(We are all of us extremely close cousins given that at one point there were probably no more than 10,000 of us. Everyone is related to everyone.)

[jemand]

@Mmy, and that's probably why, as I said in my last post, I found the initial statement fine. However, in the discussions once Nick brought it up, there HAS been, I believe, some invisibleizing of trans parents, and conflation of biological sex and social gender.

[jemand]

@Mmy (11:32 AM)

I must respectfully say that you are wrong. Ruby stated this "a woman had to be involved in the process in order to supply the egg."

That is exactly what you said HASN'T happened. Maybe you just hadn't read that post by the point of writing your own comment. But we are treading on dangerous ground here I think.

[Ruby]

jemand: Ruby.... but that is the POINT. The person who gives a child an egg, might not be a woman. Thomas Beatie, to give a real life example, is a man, who gave his daughter, mitochondrial DNA.

Thomas Beatie did not engage in parthenogenesis. His children were still products of egg-plus-sperm.

Again, let's be clear: parthenogensis is asexual reproduction in which an ovum develops without fertilization, which is not what happened with Beatie. And even if it was, the children still have female relations.

[jemand]

And of course, in the spirit of the article I'm posting on, I'm not saying that Ruby is a *bad* person or anything. Just that language is hard to use precisely, that we're treading on territory that is commonly used to deny transsexual people rights (especially rights to parenthood), and that most people have a lot of unexamined privilege in this area because "common sense" here hasn't taken into account the experience of this minority yet.

[Ruby]

jemand: I must respectfully say that you are wrong. Ruby stated this "a woman had to be involved in the process in order to supply the egg."

My apologies.

That said, my incorrect statement does not make humans parthenogenic.

[jemand]

ARG! I'm not saying Thomas Beatie engaged in parthenogenesis! NOBODY is saying that! I'm saying he is a *MAN* who donated an *EGG.*

And furthermore, that insisting that eggdonors are *women* or *female* is getting uncomfortably close to cissexism.

[jemand]

and I'm sorry I'm posting too quickly. :(

Apologies to everyone, and I'll try to stop posting so quickly so that emotional responses might start snowballing :(

[Mmy]

@jemand: Maybe you just hadn't read that post by the point of writing your own comment. But we are treading on dangerous ground here I think.

By "we" do you mean "you and me" or "the board" or "you, mmy?"

[Ruby]

jemand: And of course, in the spirit of the article I'm posting on, I'm not saying that Ruby is a *bad* person or anything.

Gee, thanks. Again, I'm sorry. I take it back. It was my mistake.

Just that language is hard to use precisely, that we're treading on territory that is commonly used to deny transsexual people rights (especially rights to parenthood), and that most people have a lot of unexamined privilege in this area because "common sense" here hasn't taken into account the experience of this minority yet.

Language is indeed hard to use precisely. For example, a number of people here are misunderstanding the definition of parthenogenesis.

[Ruby]

Mmy: By "we" do you mean "you and me" or "the board" or "you, mmy?"

Actually, I kinda think jemand means me.

Again, sorry.

[Mmy]

In an attempt to bring the discussion back to the point that I personally saw Kit to be making -- that "human shield" defense is less an attempt to justify/excuse the behaviour of the person using the excuse and more an attempt to undermine/devalue the thing they have been accused of doing.

I know that in my time of teaching about gender/ethnicity that was the usual pattern -- that the person who began by making that argument was working towards a total denial of the problem. (In other words they were arguing that problem does not lie with those who "seemed to be prejudiced" but rather with those they were prejudiced against.)

[malpollyon]

@mmy The claim (scientifically butressed) is that every single one of us has someone in their genetic lineage with XX chromsomes).

No, the claim was "human being not being parthenogenetic, every sexist has female relations" (emphasis added). The point being contested is that the former does not imply the latter. It is quite possible for someone to have relatives who are XX but *not* female, perhaps even all of them (all of them in the sense that matters to Kit's original argument, anyway).

I agree fully with the general point Kit was making, and the point that having female relatives/friends is so common as to be near-universal, I *definitely* agree humans are not parthenogenetic. I just agree with Nick that the way it was phrased has unfortunate implications for intersex and transfolk. Is that any clearer?

[renniejoy]

Literata, jemand - ITA about the need to have a conversation about expressing anger. It's my impression that, as it stands now, all we have is a retroactively proclaiming someone wrong. I would very much like to know how to "do it right".

[chris the cynic]

Nick, I think I understand what you're saying, but I'd like to check.

I think that this is what you are saying:

The human shield argument is not made based on genetic relation, it is instead based on a personal relationship "I am descended from mitochondrial Eve, and thus cannot be a sexist," is not the kind of argument Kit was discussing. "I'm on good terms with my stepmother," is.

Thus the fact that someone must logically have some female ancestor at some point is irrelevant to the human shield argument because it only applies if they've got a personal relationship with the person

Thus it doesn't read as saying, "Everyone has a granmother," or something like that, it instead reads as something more like, "Everyone has a mother, which we know because the nature of human reproduction requires a male and a female," which ignores the fact that trans people do exist and can in fact have children.

-

Is that right?

--

If one does read it that way, it doesn't just invisible trans people, it also ignores all of the cases where the biological mother was female but never had a personal relationship with the child.

[Mmy]

@malpollyon: I agree fully with the general point Kit was making, and the point that having female relatives/friends is so common as to be near-universal, I *definitely* agree humans are not parthenogenetic. I just agree with Nick that the way it was phrased has unfortunate implications for intersex and transfolk. Is that any clearer?

Yes, your point is far clearer. But honestly I think this discussion is conflating one issue with another. If one is arguing with a sexist who uses that "I can't be sexist cause my mother is a woman" argument then the most effective response is "so what -- everyone alive is related to someone who is a woman -- so by your argument NO ONE can be a sexist." In other words this is a discussion of useful tactics to use when confronting an sexist.

[chris the cynic]

I'm apparently a very slow writer, because I started that before mmy tried to steer things back on track more than 15 minutes ago.

I'm also a bad proofreader, the last paragraph before "Is that right?" should read:

Thus "human being not being parthenogenetic, every sexist has female relations," doesn't read as saying, "Everyone has a grandmother," or something like that, it instead reads as something more like, "Everyone has a mother, which we know because the nature of human reproduction requires a male and a female," which ignores the fact that trans people do exist and can in fact have children.

[Ruby]

chris the cynic: Thus "human being not being parthenogenetic, every sexist has female relations," doesn't read as saying, "Everyone has a grandmother," or something like that...

To me, that's exactly how it reads.

[Nick Kiddle]

//I am still confused because to me (as I read it) the point that Kit is making is exactly the point that you want to make. She is pointing out a person having female relatives (that is, people who are ova-supplying) doesn't have any bearing on the fact that the same person may be treating women in a sexist way.//

As I said, I don't have any problem with the underlying point. My concern was that the particular language felt as if it was equating the two definitions of "female" in an unconsciously cissexist way.

//I think the biology is irrelevant. Coming from an egg certainly inoculates no one against sexism, and that argument never gets made anyway: it's always "I know a woman and therefore--" and the definition of "woman" in that statement is going to be about social gender, not biological sex.//

I agree with this. Bringing in biology seems like a rhetorical flourish that has the unfortunate side-effect of othering trans people.

//(I'm sure there are others, who might not like to make their stories public, or I just don't know about them)//

There's a trans man who has given birth posting semi-regularly here. *Raises hand* Now, I'm willing to admit that, considering I had an interview on Tuesday where I was asked repeatedly what my child's physical gender was, I'm extremely oversensitive to cissexist phrasing right now. In fact, I'm rather sorry that I brought the subject up, since I'm not sure I'll be able to participate in the debate I inadvertently sparked. But, I don't know. I felt like I should mention it.

[Nick Kiddle]

chris the cynic: yes, that's a fairly reasonable summary of the argument as I read it and the problem I had with it.

[Mmy]

@Nick Kiddle: I'm willing to admit that, considering I had an interview on Tuesday where I was asked repeatedly what my child's physical gender was, I'm extremely oversensitive to cissexist phrasing right now

What? Huh? I am not sure that I would characterize your response as "oversensitive" --- I would say that the issue is more than usually salient for you right now. (Oversensitive reads as "critical of you" and "salient" reads as "it is normal for people to notice things that are relevant to them")

[Nick Kiddle]

//But honestly I think this discussion is conflating one issue with another. If one is arguing with a sexist who uses that "I can't be sexist cause my mother is a woman" argument then the most effective response is "so what -- everyone alive is related to someone who is a woman -- so by your argument NO ONE can be a sexist." In other words this is a discussion of useful tactics to use when confronting an sexist.//

This, to me, sounds like saying "It doesn't matter if we make a few trans people feel uncomfortable because sexist men are the real enemy". I'm not sure it can be an effective response or a useful tactic if it calls on a second oppression in the service of fighting the first.

[Nick Kiddle]

//What? Huh? I am not sure that I would characterize your response as "oversensitive" --- I would say that the issue is more than usually salient for you right now.//

Yes, I think that was the voice of internalised oppression slipping out for a moment. Salient is a much better way of putting it.

[Raj]

Mary Kaye: The other thing the Mormon discussion brought up for me, and that Kit's post brings up as well, is that the world does not divide neatly into Privileged and Non-Privileged people. It's *significantly* more complicated than that. And this makes "non-privileged people deserve safe space to talk about their issues without being tromped on by privileged people" ... a lot harder to implement than it initially sounds.

I am personally left quite uncomfortable by Kit's essay for this reason. I don't think I can reliably say "this is the less-privileged person in the discussion and therefore his/her views need to be given more space" and to me a lot of Kit's advice is contingent on being able to do that.

No, there is no such thing as an absolutely privileged person. There is such a thing, however, as the privileged party in a discussion about a particular form of privilege. If Kit and I were to have a discussion about male privilege, I would be the privileged party, and should be expected to conduct myself accordingly. If we were to have a discussion about white privilege or Western* privilege, however, Kit would be the privileged party, and should be expected to conduct herself accordingly.

*A multiple-choice test question in a psychology class I took read something like this:

Psychological Issue X is

a.) Blah blah blah.

b.) Blabity blah.

c.) More common in Western societies than in primitive societies.

d.) Blah blah.

The professor did apologize after I had words with her.

[Laiima]

@Literata, I too would welcome a discussion of vehement anger, and when it is appropriate, on this board. Because my gut feeling right now is that vehement anger is acceptable when it comes from someone that everyone likes and respects, but not otherwise. Which sets the bar very high. Sometimes you are okay if another person that everyone likes and respects takes your part, and says that you are right. But if they don't, for whatever reason, you will feel hung out to dry. Or chased away. That's been my experience anyway.

[Mmy]

@Nick Kiddle: This, to me, sounds like saying "It doesn't matter if we make a few trans people feel uncomfortable because sexist men are the real enemy". I'm not sure it can be an effective response or a useful tactic if it calls on a second oppression in the service of fighting the first.

No, there certainly isn't what I meant/intended/understood. My own experience has been that that in order to achieve less oppression for everyone one has to chip away at whatever point of entry one could find. If the person one is chipping away at could be more effectively moved by an argument that addressed the issues of the transgendered first and then issues of sexism second then (I hope) I would say "go for issues of the transgendered"

Again -- I am reflecting my own experience of having to "teach" about sexism/gender/ethnicity/race to students who arrived with a boatload of existing prejudices. There is a lot of discussion in the field of how best to deal with exactly this situation.

[chris the cynic]

To me, that's exactly how it reads.

I'm not saying that it doesn't read that way to me because, to be honest, I'm having difficulty figuring out how to read it in a way that makes sense.

If I were to just take the sentence in isolation, then I'd definitely read it as saying that everyone must have a female in their ancestry at some point. But it's not in isolation, and I'm a big believer in putting things in context.

Unless I'm reading the rest of that section wrong, Kit is not talking about people who say they can't be sexist because an ancestor of theirs is female, she's talking about people who say they can't be sexist because someone they know and care about is female. Their mother, their sister, their girlfriend, their friend, their cousin their whatever. Not someone they never had a chance to meet, someone they have known.

And in that context it doesn't make sense to me to bring up anything about ancestors at all. The only ancestor every human being has definitely come into contact with is the one in whose womb they developed, but they aren't necessarily acquainted with that person. I think that makes things break down.

I don't think that any sexist has come here and said, "I can't be sexist because my biological mother, whom I've never met, was female," or anything remotely like that. As far as I know those using the argument Kit describes base it on the non-genetic portion of the relationship. I've missed a lot of the arguments here, so I've missed a lot of the sexist dodges and thus could be completely wrong. Going on Kit's description and my own experience the impression that I get isn't that the argument is, "A female relation of mine exists at some point in space and time," but instead, that there is a kind of relationship there that would not exist if the person were sexist.

-

I think that the, "I have a female friend," defense has more in common with hiding behind mothers and sisters (or other female relatives) than Kit acknowledges when she responds to the latter by saying that everyone has female relations.

The, "I have a female friend," defense is not saying, "I know someone who is female," or even, "I have a relationship with someone who is female," it is saying that there is a specific kind of relationship. It is saying, "If I were a sexist I'd still have female acquaintances, but I wouldn't have them as friends. I do have a female friend, thus I am not a sexist," and, "If I were a sexist women wouldn't become friends with me. One has. Thus I am not a sexist." Responding to that with, "Everyone knows some women," would miss that the argument is that sexists might know women, but they wouldn't have this kind of a relationship with them.

I remember one person trying to use, "That would come as a surprise to my sister," or something similar as a dodge when being called out on sexist positions. It seems to me that the defense in that case wasn't, "I have a sister," but, "I have a sister who does not find me sexist," with the argument not being, "Men with sister's can't be sexists," but instead, "Sexists would be told they are sexist by their sisters, my sister has said no such things, thus I am not a sexist." The argument being made couldn't have been made if the only relationship the person had to his sister was genetic.

I think that sexists who hide behind their mothers would readily agree that most sexists have mothers, where I expect them to disagree is on the point that their relationship with their mothers could possibly be the same as the relationship a sexist has with his mother.

-

I do want to point out that the sexist arguments I've brought up are fully addressed in Kit's original post. They're also addressed much better than I could have done.

[Literata]

Chris, I agree that most of the "human shield" defenses (thank you a million times for giving it that name, Kit!) rest more on social relationship than genetic relationship. But I understood Kit's point to be a subtle refutation of both, precisely because sometimes people put up with sexist/racist/classist/whatever jerks precisely because they are related by blood, choice, or both. "My sister would tell me if I was sexist" is exactly as reasonable as "I'm the best trombone player ever! My mother says so."

Thank you to everyone who has commented on expressing anger. Personally, I am not willing to let this go. I understand that the discussion about cissexism is important, and I'm not trying to stop it. But I am going to keep bringing this up because I value this place as one of the few opportunities for conversation where I shouldn't have to be afraid, and yet I am afraid of expressing anger here now, and I am tired of that fear.

I am willing to talk about limits, or advice, or warnings, or anything else. We started to do that in the thread about nuking. But I was still afraid to be angry on the Baptizing Dead Quakers thread, and nothing has reduced that fear; in fact, it's been reinforced. No one has to like, enjoy, or appreciate my anger. But I want to know when and how I can be angry without being afraid that the community will banish or shun me.

I don't want to lose this place, but if I'm allowed to be here, I want to be my whole self, and that includes my anger at times. I'm not asking for a free pass to pitch temper tantrums at the drop of a lollipop. I'm asking for help to balance being a constructive community member and still myself.

[Laiima]

I would also like to know what sorts of anger are welcome here.

In my everyday (offline) life, my anger is quickly shushed, or just ignored. Sometimes I've been shamed for having angry feelings, never mind trying to talk about them. I don't really know how people deal with anger constructively, but surely someone knows!

I would like to learn how to do things more effectively, and how not to feel silenced, or like I've just transgressed a social boundary I didn't know about.

[Mmy]

Speaking only for myself (that is, I can't claim I know the community consensus) I feel that sometimes righteous anger is the only psychologically appropriate response.

I think the reason why we find it "acceptable" from some posters and not others is that we have some context on which to rest our understanding/responses.

While we shouldn't go by the "the angriest person wins" rule here at the same time we should be aware that for some people "silencing" may be one of the symptoms of their oppression.

One of the things that confuses this issue is that their are some people within this community who find the expression of any form of anger triggering.

Ideally (and it may take some time and experimentation) we can develop a community that allows both groups to feel safe(r) although not necessarily on the same threads.

Again, this is just my tottering steps towards an understanding of the situation.

[Kit Whitfield]

Regarding the 'not parthenogenetic' issue - well, what I meant was that given there are two biological sexes who are born with relatively equal frequency, it's vanishingly unlikely that anyone will have no female relations, be they parents, grandparents, aunts, sisters, daughters, granddaughters or cousins. However, it clearly doesn't come across that way, so how about:

The simplest answer to this is: every sexist has female relations. If he didn't have, at the very least, a mother or a grandmother or a great-grandmother somewhere in his background, he wouldn't be here disrespecting women now.

Does that get rid of the problem? It doesn't cover the possiblity of someone being the son of a trans man who was born the daughter of a trans man who was born the daughter of a trans man, but I think that's unlikely in the extreme.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Karen, are you sure you want to give to the Salvation Army?

TRiG.

[Laiima]

There are numbers! Yay!

[Timothy (TRiG)]

@#67 Laiima (as they say on Pharyngula)

The numbers happened as I switched from page 1 to page 2, which meant that page 2 had the same posts as page 1, which left me confuzzled till I noticed the numbers.

Moving the names to the top of the post makes things a bit more like other places I'm used to, and makes my habit of using a signature at the ends of my posts seem less weird, but I was just getting used to having the names at the bottom. It does affect the way you read the board, I think, but as I was starting to recognise many of the avatars anyway I suppose it doesn't make that much real difference.

TRiG.

[Kit Whitfield]

I don't like these numbers. They squash the comments to a narrower thread which I find harder on the eyes.

I like mmy and appreciate her hard work, but I really hate the effect the numbers have.

Also, why do we now have to include an e-mail address to comment? That seems to jeopardise privacy quite seriously; there are plenty of places I don't comment because I don't want to give my e-mail address.

[Mmy]

Kit: I am not taking this personally at all. People asked to see what they would look like. I am not crazy about them myself.

I am going to "go back" to the old system and see if I can find a numbering system that doesn't "squeeze" the comments and doesn't require email addresses (neither of which was my idea -- TypePad added those extra "features" all on its own.)

[Mmy]

@Kit -- if you are still there -- is this back to the system that you prefer?

[Ruby]

I'm not a huge fan of the numbers. I prefer the idea of just quoting a person, rather than saying something like "Jason said at post 45," which I fear would just leave me scrolling up and down constantly, wondering, "Wait, what did he say??"

Just my two pennies. And many thanks to our fine admins for trying new things to make this place the best it can be!

[Nick Kiddle]

//The simplest answer to this is: every sexist has female relations. If he didn't have, at the very least, a mother or a grandmother or a great-grandmother somewhere in his background, he wouldn't be here disrespecting women now.

Does that get rid of the problem? It doesn't cover the possiblity of someone being the son of a trans man who was born the daughter of a trans man who was born the daughter of a trans man, but I think that's unlikely in the extreme.//

I obviously can't speak for anyone else, but that does pretty much remove the discomfort as far as I'm concerned. Thank you for being willing to address it.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Kit,

I sign in with OpenID to comment, which I like because I can then find all my posts again (yes, this does have privacy concerns, because other people can find them too; this is not a problem for me, which, yes, is a function of privilege). I don't like the fact that the OpenID option is less immediately obvious than it was before. I don't know whether that's related to the other changes.

Also, when I made a post with a link, I was asked to fill in a CAPTCHA, which was fine, but the box I was typing in was hidden. I could see the CAPTCHA itself fine, but only the top two pixels of the letters I was typing and the submit button. That's on Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110422 Ubuntu/10.10 (maverick) Firefox/3.6.17 if it matters.

But perhaps we should be talking about the board setup on some other thread. I do have more to say about things I'd like to see which may or may not be possible.

TRiG.

[chris the cynic]

Moving the names to the top of the post makes things a bit more like other places I'm used to, and makes my habit of using a signature at the ends of my posts seem less weird

I thought of you when I saw that names had been moved to the top.

-

It doesn't cover the possiblity of someone being the son of a trans man who was born the daughter of a trans man who was born the daughter of a trans man, but I think that's unlikely in the extreme.

Actually, most of the time it would cover that. (Because the cis parent might have a mother, as might one of the other grandparents. And one of the sperm giving parents could be female.) So that's even less likely to exclude someone than you seem to think.

What it does to your argument rhetorically is something I can't really say.

[Julie paradox]

of course, you could always think in terms that everyone has had a parent who at some point in their life has had to deal with society treating them as a woman ;-)

[Julie paradox]

oops, even that doesn't cover cases where mother has no contact. Sorry. But my point was the society treating thing, which is what I suspect Nick and many people in the same situation have a massive problem with.

[Robert loblaw]

Perhaps a trigger warning about offensive argument styles?

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I'm on my housemate's laptop, which I've just managed to get the wireless card working on by connecting to the Internet over a cable and installing upgrades. The wireless card needed a proprietary driver, which doesn't come by default with Ubuntu, which is why it wasn't working before. As soon as the upgrades were installed an alert came up telling me that the wireless card needed a proprietary driver, and offering to install it. Have I mentioned that I love Ubuntu? If Windows is missing a driver for a printer, a wireless card, or anything else, you have half an hour of googling and wondering whether to trust whatever some dodgy-looking site to download and install drivers from. Ubuntu pops up a box: do you want to install this driver? Yes. Okay then, it's installed. Carry on.

Anyway, now it's time to upgrade this thing to Ubuntu 11.04 and head back to my desktop. I miss having a laptop.a

TRiG.

[Kit Whitfield]

TRiG: please bear in mind that some people don't have many computer skills. I understood pretty much nothing of your last two posts - and if the solutions fox me, they'll fox other people too.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Well, the OpenID option is prominent again, so that's fixed. Thanks. The other thing I was saying was that because I sign in to post, I have a public Typepad profile, which shows all my posts across all Typepad blogs. As far as I'm concerned, that's not a problem, and I'm not worried about my Backtype profile, which shows all my posts across all Wordpress blogs either. For some people concerned about privacy, this sort of stuff definitely would be a problem, so the ability for anonymous posting should, as you were saying, be preserved.

The other post was just me saying "Ubuntu is much easier to use than Windows! Yay!" Nothing actually important.

TRiG.

[Mmy]

Appeal to everyone:

Just trying out "numbers" triggered TypePad changing a number of the board defaults.

I have tried to "fix" them all so accessibility is returned to previous settings.

Please let me know if anyone is still having problems.

BTW -- I tried this out first on a sibling blog and it didn't act the same way....

(mmy goes off to grumble at the TypePad)

[hapax]

@Literata -- I'm sorry that you felt your question about expressing anger was given short shrift.

Speaking only for myself, I didn't say anything because I honestly didn't have anything to say beyond, "it depends."

And by that, I mean not only does it depend on the person who is angry and the situation triggering the anger, but also on who *I* am at the particular moment I read the angry response.

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who reads an angry comment, thinks "What a jerk!"; and then, after a cup of tea or a good night's sleep or (most likely) subsequent commenters wielding the clue-bat, goes back and re-reads the thread and thinks "What a jerk!" -- but aimed at the object of the original commenter's ire.

Anger is a COMPLICATED emotion, and a scary one, to feel, to express, to receive, and to witness.

I think it may be especially complicated for women in our culture, who have so many complicated social pressures about when and how we are allowed to be angry.

(of course, I've never been a man in this or any other culture, so feel free to tell me that last paragraph is full of soup.

And, come to think of it, spouse has sometimes mentioned how difficult it is to feel honestly angry at a woman without triggering all sorts of ingrained "but be nice to girls!" cultural guilt trips.)

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Anger is complicated for everyone, but I'm perfectly prepared to believe it's more complicated for women.

TRiG.

[Deird, who hasn't been here for a few days]

I'm not a huge fan of the numbers. I prefer the idea of just quoting a person, rather than saying something like "Jason said at post 45," which I fear would just leave me scrolling up and down constantly, wondering, "Wait, what did he say??"

This. It's one of the things I really hate at some boards. People will say "@67, I agree with your argument, but..." and I'm given no indication of who 67 is or what they said. Cue huge amounts of scrolling, followed by me getting frustrated and wandering off to the Slacktiverse where I can at least keep track of what's going on.

(I can't see any of the changes people are mentioning - have they just been reverted? *is confused*)

[Ruby]

@Deird--yes, they were reverted. I think Mmy was experimenting--which, again, is great, because then we can actually see what a proposed change looks like, rather than theorizing.

[spinetingler]

The basic principle here is that saying men benefit from sexism, white people from racism, straight people from homophobia

How do straight people benefit from homophobia?

Granted, I'm not homophobic, but I'm having trouble envisioning some way that being so would improve my life.

[kisekileia]

@Literata, I saw and remembered your question. I didn't answer it because I wasn't sure what to say, particularly given that as someone on the autism spectrum, I'm not an incredibly authoritative source of information on how to behave socially. I'm going to take a stab at it now, though.

I'm concerned that my statement that nuking anti-oppression rule violators on contact is in itself oppressive may have contributed to Literata and Laiima feeling like they can't express anger. That wasn't my intent. In fact, I made that post fully aware that it was itself a rather angry nuke! And, despite the fact that I've only been posting here since just before The Great Divide, that wasn't the first time I nuked anyone on here.

Nonetheless, I've never gotten flak for nuking. Maybe that's partly people pulling punches because they know I have Asperger's, I'm not sure. However, I think a lot of it is that I nuke strategically. I put significant thought into making sure I target who I want to target and not other people. I don't get more personal than (I feel) is justified based on people's observed behaviour. I use language carefully and explain why the behaviour that offended me is so bad. I pay attention to people's intent and do not assume ill intent before it becomes obvious. I try to make my motivation for nuking clear. From my perspective, it seems to work out okay.

Literata, I think at the point where you were really really wanting to nuke Ray on the Mormon baptism thread, it would have been pretty reasonable to do it. He was getting to the point of willful obstinacy, which is a very different thing from honest ignorance.

So, basically, it seems to me like nuking is not completely forbidden on here, but that one is expected to nuke carefully and judiciously. I think that's reasonable.

[Laiima]

@kisekileia: "one is expected to nuke carefully and judiciously"

That doesn't sound, to me, like there's room for anger, esp vehement anger. Because who is likely to be "careful and judicious" in the grip of strong emotion. I mean, if you're right that that's the standard here, then I can't post angry; I'd have to calm down, *way* down, first. And if I'm feeling triggered, I might as well just go away entirely (w/o saying anything). I don't see why that's reasonable.

[kisekileia]

(Warning: swearing in a hypothetical phrase.)

Hmm. Maybe I didn't phrase that well. My nuking posts have very much been made in the grip of strong emotion. I was vehemently angry when I made the ones I was referencing, but I still thought about what I said...does that make sense? I absolutely didn't meant to imply that people can't post angry, because my nuking posts were certainly made while angry. My idea of "careful and judicious" is more along the lines of (to quote from a comment I made here a couple of months ago) advising someone to "seriously consider how you can best fulfill your moral obligation to protect your son from your husband's abusiveness," rather than "divorce your motherfucking asshole of a husband." Not suppressing one's reaction to anger--just not OVER-reacting.

[renniejoy]

kisekileia - So who gets to say that someone else is over-reacting?

[Mary Kaye]

Raj writes:

No, there is no such thing as an absolutely privileged person. There is such a thing, however, as the privileged party in a discussion about a particular form of privilege.

Who was it in the discussion of Mormon practices?

Whom do we trust to adjucate answers to that question?

Is it necessary for posters to disclose their skin color, sexual orientation, religion, cultural background, cis/trans status, etc. before we can figure out if what they are saying is acceptable or not?

Maybe this is the right way to think about the problem, but it makes me awfully uncomfortable. I am not bringing up the Mormon example just to be difficult: I truly do not see how we can apply "the person with privilege should defer to the person without" to that argument, since I think both sides have a reasonable claim to be the "person without".

[Kit Whitfield]

How do straight people benefit from homophobia?

For instance:

- When married opposite-sex couples get financial breaks from the government that same-sex couples don't, gay taxpayers are basically subsidising opposite-sex marriages for no reward.

- Homophobes who decry same-sex relationships as destroying the fabric of society tend to see opposite-sex marriages as the foundation of it, and hence elevate opposite-sex relationships as a corollary to denigrating same-sex ones.

- A straight person competing for a job against a gay person is at an advantage if the interviewer is homophobic.

- Straight men get to see women in bikinis on every other billboard but seldom have to see an equally sexualised male model because their homophobia is catered to. Hence, straight men get sexually served by popular culture at the expense of gay men and straight women. (Gay women, I suspect, have more of a mixed blessing: there are lots of images of sexualised women, which could be fun if you're into the same kind of women that the notional straight-male-gaze prefers, but those contribute to the objectification of women and to the demand for a male-gaze friendly femininity, neither of which are particularly in a lesbian's interests.)

I'm sure there are more, but those are the examples that occur off the top of my head.

[Kit Whitfield]

I truly do not see how we can apply "the person with privilege should defer to the person without" to that argument, since I think both sides have a reasonable claim to be the "person without".

if this is a response to my post, I'd refer you to the FAQs, which are a sort of companion piece:

A complaint or worry often expressed by people who get called on privilege is the idea that being privileged automatically discounts your opinions if you disagree with someone less privileged. As is often said around here, it's more complicated than that. If people are discussing sexism, for example, and a woman tells a man that it's not all that easy for a woman to succeed in a heavily-male work environment, it's reasonable to assume that she knows more about being a woman in a male environment than he does, and consequently she's more likely to be right than he is. On the other hand, if the same two people are disagreeing about French culture, he's French and she's Australian, he's more likely to be right than she is. When it comes to disagreements, lack of privilege is not a sign of higher status; it's simply a sign that you have more personal knowledge about what it's like to be not-privileged, because everybody knows more about things they've experience than things they haven't.

Hence, if it's an issue of two groups who each consider themselves disadvantaged, the logical thing to do is drop the idea of privilege and focus on who has expertise.

[Kit Whitfield]

Oops, I mean FNEs.

[renniejoy]

Kit - Am I right to guess that by "expertise", you mean that lived experience is often more "useful" than book or internet reading?
And that this can be a way of responding to those who would say that someone is "taking things too personally"?

[renniejoy, who needs to sleep real soon]

Please substitute "relevant" for "useful" in my post at 4:52 am. :)

[aravind]

Mary Kaye - I hear you on that. I think the biggest problems in the Mormon discussion (again, just as an example) were that some non-Mormon posters didn't seem to want to look at sectarian pressures within the Christian community (to the extremely weak degree that Mormons can be considered to be integrated into that group - this came out in suggestions that baptism has a single definition which is suspiciously similar to what mainstream Protestants and Catholics decide it means even according to individuals from other religious groups) but equally important, certain Mormon posters didn't seem to want to entertain the thought that their actions were offensive to various groups, which overtly denied the experiences, ideas, thoughts, and opinions of other religious groups that they were bringing into the ceremonies without consent.

I think the important bit that everyone in that thread (myself included) lost sight of was how those two expressions of privilege (and the rejection of them) aren't mutually exclusive. We can say that baptism is contextually defined by various religious groups *and* that some Mormons are being extremely hostile on this issue. We don't have to cut the baby in half, do we?

Raj: "There is such a thing, however, as the privileged party in a discussion about a particular form of privilege."

Mary Kaye's asking you the bigger questions about this, but I'm going to perhaps foolishly zero in on the example situation. Both of these groups certainly perceive themselves as victims of religious privilege exercised by another group - does one form of religious othering trump another? What happens when a conversation starts out discussing how some Mormons are being hostile towards various religious groups but then skirts dangerously close to othering Mormons? Where are we drawing the line, basically?

[Literata]

kisekileia, I understand what you're saying about being judicious, and I'm glad that you thought I was being judicious on the Mormon thread, but the example you posted is exactly what I mean about not expressing the vehemence of my anger. Everybody in the Mormon thread knew I was angry, but the vehemence of my anger would have involved cussing, jumping up and down, screaming, and so on.

Hapax, good points about how gender makes it more complicated.

Raj is right about relative privilege. I don't think anyone here is suggesting that we hold Privilege Olympics. In the situation like the Mormon thread, privilege wasn't the primary issue. And lack of privilege shouldn't be the sole determinant for whether vehement anger is okay.

[Mmy]

@Literata: I wonder if we (not just here on the board) need the right/opportunity to express anger [a special type of trigger warning for example]. Not because the anger will be effective against someone else but because expressing anger is a necessary tonic for the person who is feeling it.

Part of the oppression of some people is that they have been either prevented from expressing anger or punished for doing so. (Or shamed for doing so.) Expressing anger then becomes a necessary step on the path to "dealing with" with pain and healing.