EPTSo where do you draw the line on the not-being-a-dick policy?
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Uldridge
Belgium4759 Posts
So where do you draw the line on the not-being-a-dick policy? | ||
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levelping
Singapore759 Posts
Even without the racial elements, this is just a rather juvenile way to talk about a pressing social issue. Now, people are responsible for what they are trying to communicate. A good writer will know that words are not read in a hypothetical enclosed room with only the Oxford dictionary. Words are read in the historical and cultural context of the society reading them. Good writers use this to set their writing in the real context of society. If you truly and honestly believe that calling a group seeking to address perceived injustices committed against black people "vermin" is entirely not racist, then you're either a bad writer, willfully obtuse, not very bright, or you're masking some level of racism within you. America has a history of black people being treated like vermin, and groups seeking to address this have been exposed to harassment, violence, and ridicule. Many times, these groups are predominantly made up of black people too. Against this backdrop it's very reasonable for someone to read "vermin" as being racist, whether the writer intended it as racist or not. Now the writer can clarify his intention, but pretending that "seeing racism in vermin" is "ridiculous" is well... Pretty ridiculous | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
edit: as are the rest of Bill's issues with women. | ||
KwarK
United States42609 Posts
On September 24 2016 12:20 Uldridge wrote: I completely understand the not being a dick thing, but people also need to realise there's a whole subset of people that are attracted to things people are afraid of, find offensive, are intimidated by. It's scary to think that someone can't express how they are because he might get heavily criticized for it. I also realise I'm being a bit hyperbolic here, but the other day, I saw a video of some woman calling out her uber driver because he had a hawaiian hula girl doll on his dashboard, which I found completely nonsensical. So where do you draw the line on the not-being-a-dick policy? Sometimes one person is being a dick by doing a shitty thing, sometimes the other person is being a dick by getting way too upset about a thing that wasn't actually shitty, sometimes they're both being a dick. In almost all cases no real line needs drawing because it almost all falls under free expression/speech or shit we already have laws for. | ||
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oBlade
United States5571 Posts
On September 24 2016 11:31 Nyxisto wrote: Calling black people monkeys is racist, calling Jews rats is racist as well. As Kwark pointed out, if you're working yourself through the Nazi cookbook you're probably on racist territory. This also isn't dependent on what your motivations are. Everybody knows that those things are widely being perceived as racist statements so the will-full ignorance of this convention already says enough. Denying this is like saying that Pussy Riot doesn't harbor any anti-religious feeling and that they just ended up in a church accidentally, nobody with a brain is actually going to believe it. Nobody denies that Pussy Riot is anti-religious, religious disagreement is a part of life, there's nothing wrong with it per se. Let me give you a couple other hypotheticals to see what you think: -Imagine there's a group of white people burning cars, and exasperated spectators, or even victims, call them thugs. So far, so good, right? -Now imagine a second group of people, doing the same thing, they're also called thugs. Then you find out the group is half white and half black. What's your reaction? -You know the movie The Departed? Imagine they were Jewish gangsters instead of Irish gangsters. Then when Jack Nicholson's character is talking about the police mole in the gang, when he calls him a "fucking rat," is that now a form of internalized anti-Semitism, and he should have said something less offensive, like backstabbing "fucking prick," which the character already says at some point? | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On September 24 2016 12:26 Doodsmack wrote: I'll tell you one thing, the story of Juanita Broddrick is pretty disturbing. Fucking legend how long the original story was sat on. "The good news is you’re credible. The bad news is you’re very credible." | ||
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levelping
Singapore759 Posts
On September 24 2016 12:33 oBlade wrote: Nobody denies that Pussy Riot is anti-religious, religious disagreement is a part of life, there's nothing wrong with it per se. Let me give you a couple other hypotheticals to see what you think: -Imagine there's a group of white people burning cars, and exasperated spectators, or even victims, call them thugs. So far, so good, right? -Now imagine a second group of people, doing the same thing, they're also called thugs. Then you find out the group is half white and half black. What's your reaction? -You know the movie The Departed? Imagine they were Jewish gangsters instead of Irish gangsters. Then when Jack Nicholson's character is talking about the police mole in the gang, when he calls him a "fucking rat," is that now a form of internalized anti-Semitism, and he should have said something less offensive, like backstabbing "fucking prick," which the character already says at some point? These hypotheticals are situations which are rather removed from calling blm demonstrators vermin. Your situations have no clear racial element other than the ethnicity of the persons in the situation. A blm demonstration has racial issues written all over it. | ||
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oBlade
United States5571 Posts
On September 24 2016 12:38 levelping wrote: These hypotheticals are situations which are rather removed from calling blm demonstrators vermin. Your situations have no clear racial element other than the ethnicity of the persons in the situation. A blm demonstration has racial issues written all over it. That's because I'm not talking about xDaunt and don't plan on going back to it, they are directly related to what Nyxisto just said | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
But when you call minorities vermin, especially a group that identifies itself as a civil rights group, you know exactly what the reaction is going to be. All these right-wing political movements at the moment that insert this stuff into public discourse know what they say. The outrage is exactly why they say it in the first place. Every time they do it they lower the bar just a little bit for something more obscene to come up a day later. What else do you want to say really, that damaging cars is bad and that rioting is troublesome? Everybody agrees already. Crossing that line of what is socially acceptable is the message. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4759 Posts
On September 24 2016 12:27 KwarK wrote: Sometimes one person is being a dick by doing a shitty thing, sometimes the other person is being a dick by getting way too upset about a thing that wasn't actually shitty, sometimes they're both being a dick. In almost all cases no real line needs drawing because it almost all falls under free expression/speech or shit we already have laws for. I guess, but it's so unproductive, tedious and all those other adjectives that describe nothing constructive is happening. Why can't people just grow the fuck up and get their heads out of their asses (or should that be singular in both cases, I don't know my English seems to be lacking lately, heh) or let it go? I've never flung shit at someone, nor provocatively nor taken offendedly, I've always tried to constructively talk about issues like this and yet I'm feeling affected by all this circle jerky echo chambery shit show of an us vs. them. I so want to become a hermit sometimes, but then I understand there's enough awesome people around me never caring about all the hissy fits being thrown on the internet (like I'm doing right now, how ironic right?!). I feel like the racial, gender and 'able' issues are handled pretty well in Belgium, but the voices of the internet are so loud and it's spilling over so much I just can't seem to be able to ignore it. Anyway, I'll stop my little rant here and say one last thing that's completely not in line with this discussion, but does have to do with this thread: I'm afraid Trump might win the election. | ||
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oBlade
United States5571 Posts
On September 24 2016 12:51 Nyxisto wrote: The thing with this kind of stuff is that we all have a very good intuition of how what we're saying is received on the other end. If some criminal calls someone a rat that's not antisemitism, being ratted out is an idiom for criminals who report to the police. That's why nobody called the movie makers antisemitic. But when you call minorities vermin, especially a group that identifies itself as a civil right group, you know exactly what the reaction is going to be. All these right political movements at the moment that insert this stuff into public discourse know what they say. The outrage is exactly why they say it in the first place. Every time they do it they lower the bar just a little bit for something more obscene to come up a day later. What else do you want to say really, that damaging cars is bad and that rioting is troublesome? Everybody agrees already. Crossing that line of what is socially acceptable is the message. You just said motivation didn't matter. You should have said, the motivation matters, as long as you get to be the arbiter of judging what it was. | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
On September 24 2016 11:10 RealityIsKing wrote: I think people are free to say whatever they want and other people are free to be offended. That's how we can get a discussion going. Can the person defend his/her point using logic and reasoning? Is the message REALLY offensive or is there some offensive industry that makes money in this whole thing? Will the person saying offensive stuff be convinced if wrong? Will the person getting offended be accepting that if right? You can't boil all of your feelings inside. Gotta discuss it. The problem is the discussion is unproductive 3/4 of the time because half the time the accuser isn't interested in actually discussing anything because they just want to call you a racist, and half the time the accused isn't interesting in actually discussing anything because they aren't interested in being introspective about whether things they say are/aren't racist. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On September 24 2016 12:56 oBlade wrote: You just said motivation didn't matter. You should have said, the motivation matters, as long as you get to be the arbiter of judging what it was. I'm saying that the motivation is always sufficiently clear. When XDaunt made that post he knew exactly how the discussion was going to go, just like Trump and his campaign team know exactly what kind of outrage they're going to produce every time they create some inflammatory twitter post. And using that outrage and language to fuel your zealous voterbase is a really fucking malicious tactic at the expense of minorities or whoever it is they are insulting. | ||
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CorsairHero
Canada9491 Posts
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Slaughter
United States20254 Posts
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KwarK
United States42609 Posts
On September 24 2016 13:31 Slaughter wrote: I thought he already supported Trump lol. He did. He's been praising Trump for a long time. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On September 24 2016 13:31 Slaughter wrote: I thought he already supported Trump lol. He gushes about Trump but he endorsed Hillary in an ironic fashion at some point in the past. | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
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KwarK
United States42609 Posts
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
Hillary's introduction to the American public was a TV interview immediately following the super bowl where, with Bill's candidacy on the line, she defended him for a 12 year affair. In other words, she had to cover for bill after a sexual indiscretion. Combine that with Broddrick's very credible story, and you have a pattern. Hillary has in fact been covered with slime since she came on the scene, with unhinged ambition and who knows what else they have done, given what we know they are capable of. But Donald Trump has no governance conception or plan. Our country is a dump. | ||
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