Good faith vs Bad faith

How do you define “good faith” vs “bad faith”? How do you identify when someone is acting/behaving/saying something “in good faith”? What triggers do you look for when deciding whether someone’s reaction should be taken at face-value or is not to be trusted? What does it take to make you believe someone who normally acts in good faith is now acting in bad faith, or vice versa?

in meatspace I generally assume good faith of people I encounter unless I have a good reason (like, idk, they're a cop or a CEO) or they give me a good reason. online? depends entirely on the community/medium tbh

in the context of online I guess my definition of "good faith" is "even if it seems like maybe you're being a dick about this particular subject you're probably a good egg overall and have your reasons" which is how I view the majority of ILXors. not all of course (thx killfile!). it id definitely conditional though, with the condition mainly being "be nice" tbh

What triggers do you look for when deciding whether someone’s reaction should be taken at face-value or is not to be trusted?

maybe it's my time spent in the tech "sector" but heavy use of jargon definitely makes me lean quickly towards distrust

for me, some prior knowledge of the person in question is usually a baseline requirement. it's hard for me to assume 'faith' of any type if I don't have any kind of prior history with them to know how they usually act, how what they say typically lines up with what they do, etc.

Not always "in-person" knowledge, obviously - we can 'know' a politician well enough to know if they're acting in good faith. but knowledge in general.

when it comes to people I know IRL, the usual tell for me with "bad faith" arguing is hearing someone heavily "devil's advocating" or sealioning when I already know their beliefs and know they believe in the thing they are "devil's advocating" for without actually admitting it. or seeing/hearing them say something not long after an argument that directly contradicts the point they were previously making.

otherwise, lacking any of that, I like to give benefit of the doubt, because one of the main thing that frustrates me nowadays is that "bad faith" seems to be a default assumption for some people, so everybody has to 'audition' for them and prove they're legitimate. i don't understand why it's not easier and better for society as a whole when, in absence of evidence otherwise, we shouldn't just assume "good faith" since we can pivot to "bad faith" later if we see the person is being less than genuine.

not sure I make use of either of these concepts

This here nook is different enough from the rest of the internet that I almost always assume – perhaps wrongly, doubtless naïvely – that regular posters are well-intentioned and worthy of our collective attention, even at their most abrasive. Elsewhere, I tend to assume the opposite unless the topic at hand is innocuous.

Online is easy. Certain topics, you know from a certain point exactly how it’s going to go. When they start shifting the goalposts, when they throw in useless irrelevant shit - who has the time for that? I used to, but now I think, unless it’s very granular and easy to be mistaken, I don’t give the benefit of the doubt half so easily and if a post is bullshit, I’ll move on. Much better for all concerned.

You can really only judge people irl by actions, but that’s significantly harder as you are only privy to a certain amount of people - there are very few people that you will ever get to know well relative to how many you meet in a lifetime. So again you develop heuristics. Is this person lying about trivial things for no reason? Are they being weird about something I’m not comfortable with? All fairly obvious, I think.

I think people start off in good faith but as soon as something tips me off it’s bad faith - nah, not wasting time on it. It’s entirely possible I’ll be wrong - but that’s my problem.

My default is to take on face value what was actually said rather than try and assume I know better about what the person might mean, but with the caveat that perhaps they might well be meaning something they're not saying, and maybe that should be drawn out. However if someone has historically been contradictory, phobic or Bad At Arguing it helps me to remember that in order to prioritise which discussions to spend my energies on.

The following goes for ILX only:

I think I'm pretty good at detecting sarcasm, most of the time. So if I don't think someone's being sarcastic/ironic, I assume that they mean what they say. That doesn't preclude them being WRONG, of course, and I'll happily try to engage them on the subject of their WRONGness. But I always presume good faith, and I always argue in good faith myself — I mean what I say. Sometimes I say things "wrong," and I hurt the feelings of ILX's more sensitive souls, because I'm old(er) and crude(r) and my rhetorical style was shaped in a coarser environment. But it doesn't come from a place of malice, and it does bother me when something I say legitimately bothers someone else, and I try not to make the same mistake twice.

Outside of ILX:

If I feel like someone's trolling or shitposting, I ignore them. Period. And the only IRL conversations I have outside my apartment anymore are transactional — literally transactional, with bank tellers, cashiers, etc. There, good faith is assumed because there's money involved.

As far as sarcasm is concerned, this may sound weird but when it's obviously what poster x or y is aiming for, that still counts as 'good faith' in my book.

xp your dn is the real grace note

I was horrible to unperson so I understand why he will take posters in bad faith

Doubly so seeing as it's a quote drawn from an older beef iirc.

xp

xp your dn is the real grace note

Funnily enough (or not), it's a quote from Brad, directed at me.

TS: George Michael Vs. Limp Bizkit

no that def makes it funnier

is "meaning what you say" a virtue

is it the same thing as "good faith"

Over on ILM there's only True Faith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG_0LUdM-X8

🤍

A small but significant percentage of posts on ilx are completely mysterious to me and I think I would have to have more information about the poster to get the nuance. almost all seem in good faith though

A small but significant percentage of posts on ilx are completely mysterious to me

Even since deems left?

in general I think there should be more farting and belching

Natural remedies for the bloat that is our lot.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/9a/b8/719ab89b7eafa2050b8ecee378d564a5.jpg

xxp is deems darraghmac? his posts were often inscrutable but in a delightful way

Indeed, indeed.

in general I think there should be more farting and belching

Then we'd have contests such as who can belch press the most shitposts in a single day. I'd be down.

You’d lose.

Aw, thanks for the compliment. :) Don't think you'd win either fwiw.

also if it's a stranger on FB, usually I take 3 looks at profile pics and recent posts and that often gives away the game.

ie, if all of your posts are public cos u don't know how to set them to your friends list, and they're all poorly formatted pro-cop memes, im pretty much gonna know yr "just asking questions" on a BLM thread is not just asking questions.

If we're talking in the political sense, then there's a lot of crossover with the brainworms thread. The main difference is that the BadFaith people are the people who put the brain worms in the BrainWormed people, so are less likely to be people you know and more likely to be people with positions of influence.

That being said, there are crossovers between the two groups, but much of it is unconscious (at which point is it really bad faith anymore?). Either way a crucial component is misrepresentation, so you have to spend time not only defending what you think but also clarifying about some other things that you don't think, or some conclusions that have been incorrectly extrapolated. BadFaith is really an attempt to trip you up, and as with brainworms the best approach is to try keep things specific and targetted and not let conversation skit around multiple areas uncontrollably

There's a deeper issue though, which is easy to fall into, and thats the need to 'win', which is the territory a BadFaith actor is most comfortable on, replacing substance with appearance

But there are surely other scenarios that aren't this familiar one. A work scenario works in a different way, maybe the pretence that something is being considered when really its a charade. The mechanisms to force the showing of your hand. But perhaps this is mere chichanery, depends what is being asked here!

If you were going to act in bad faith - how would you do it? I might enthusiastically agree with every point someone makes but use them to come to a different conclusion that they obviously don't agree with, then say hmm I'm not sure this makes sense after all, and use that to discredit their arguments. Depends on context? motives?

bad faith = trolling/'just asking'/'debate me'/ppl who 'love arguing'

current ilx users may or may not be utter shitheads, but i feel like compared to the halcyon noize board days, there aren't as many people just shitposting to get a reaction? we have narcissists and automatons and people who resurface periodically to get their martyr on, but that isn't exactly 'bad faith' (okay maybe some of it is)

i don't read all the threads but like . . . andrew f unloaded on brad today, discovered he was wrong, and apologized. that's good faith, and i think there's a lot of it here now, relatively speaking

mookieproof otm

probably more accusations of bad faith than actual bad faith rn. but usually only in politics threads

more accusations of bad faith than actual bad faith

These are broadly the same thing? Or at least end up having the same effect? Once you get into this territory you're moving away from the topic at hand and into more existential territory around defeating an opponent, and thats a distraction and a dead end. Fighting a battle that actually an unstated other battle rather than the one ostensibly at hand is where things start to spiral!

As tetchy as things have gotten on ilx the last many months...if you zoom out and think abt how insane our lives are right now...it could be a lot worse

17 years ago, as no WMDs were found in iraq, a former friend of mine was all like 'so you're saying that the world would be a better place with saddam hussein still in charge there, right?'

i can only imagine the gymnastics he's performing these days

I always try to make it clear when I'm trying to defeat someone, in case anyone is accusing me of bad faith

This is touching on something else, which is the desire to be right, to win - which has some problems. Its not bridge building or consensus making, it focuses from a starting point of difference rather than agreement and can we build on that. Its difficult in a format which inherently rewards stridency, and we can all be guilty of that (and sometimes its merited)

If you think someone is genuinely coming from a place of bad faith, they most likely see you as the problem, rather than anything you are saying at that moment. Accusing them of bad faith (even if true) can't help in winding that down, that in itself is a trap and unproductive i think

17 years ago, as no WMDs were found in iraq, a former friend of mine was all like 'so you're saying that the world would be a better place with saddam hussein still in charge there, right?'

A classic of the genre! Though actually isn't he right? Weren't you saying the world would be a better place with Saddam in charge? Phrasing it like that is obviously weird and designed to provoke an emotional response but the conclusion is actually correct?

As tetchy as things have gotten on ilx the last many months...if you zoom out and think abt how insane our lives are right now...it could be a lot worse

― singular wolf erotica producer (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 11:13 PM bookmarkflaglink

this is otm. i was expecting a coup, with LJ possibly usurping control of the borads

you could occupy a very powerful role in my Council

Non internet it's easy because you can see when someone is playing devil's advocate and it's not smart so I just switch off.

And I think online and on a board where you get to know what matters or does not to a poster you can see how that plays out too. Although it might take a bit longer to figure out.

Charlie Kirk has been tweeting about why he’s done watching the NBA for seven years. pic.twitter.com/iaNk2wOWYj

— Chris Jackson (@ChrisCJackson) July 31, 2020

xp is this you admitting the tools of your trade?

I don't find "good faith" and "bad faith" to be particularly useful concepts in deciding whether to enter a discussion.

For me, there are two criteria for whether I enter a discussion. 1) do I genuinely think that there's a chance that *I* might learn something, through having the discussion? 2) is there a genuine chance that at least one of the people involved might be willing to change their mind? (And the person in criteria 2 might very well be me!)

Criteria 1 - I do often learn things from people I have (fairly minor, but important) differences from. Discussion, and teasing out the shape of those disagreements can be a very powerful way of learning. But there has to be a certain level of mutual respect, and mutual enjoyment for that to happen. (And a good way to discover whether you do have mutual respect, is to find out how each other handle small disagreements before you move on to the important ones.)

Criteria 2 - well, I have a pretty good understanding on the kinds of new information or new paradigms or new theory or different experiences I had not encountered, that could change my mind, so I'm learning to recognise whether other people display the capacity to provide me with those kind of things. In the other person, that's harder - have they shown the ability to learn and grasp new ideas before? Do they seem like *they* actually want to engage in a mutual learning process? Are they actually engaging with me, and the things I'm saying, or are they talking to some weird projection of their own issues somewhere six feet over my left shoulder? (I don't always manage that one myself, to be honest, so if I catch myself doing that, I generally find that it's a good sign that *I* am the one who should exit the conversation.)

But there has to be a certain level of mutual respect, and mutual enjoyment for that to happen. (And a good way to discover whether you do have mutual respect, is to find out how each other handle small disagreements before you move on to the important ones.)

This is true and also surprisingly rare ime

I wouldn’t say I use good/bad faith as criteria for engaging in a conversation but I do use it to determine whether I stay in a conversation, usually using questions similar to the ones Branwell posed.

Yesterday on Twitter, I engaged in some wild speculation about the potential for COVID-19 to create a large population of citizens with debilitating long-term medical conditions and some yahoo with less than 20 followers popped up to quote much smaller death statistics at me, completely ignoring that I wasn’t talking about mortality rates and that if his were actually correct, the size of the at-risk population I was discussing was actually an order of magnitude higher and the problem I was speculating about could be much worse than my already-and-admittedly handewavey numbers were making it out to be. Instead, he stubbornly insisted on quoting a death rate which, if accurate, has already been surpassed by reality. I engaged him solely to put my narrative out to others who might have more concrete information than my speculation then ignored him as he refused to engage the topic I was actually discussing and was parroting information cherrypicked to minimize the potential threat of the pandemic. It was a bad-faith conversation and I quickly saw my way out of it.

Conversely, I said some extremely harsh things about Jody Rosen’s article championing “Lean On Me” as the US national anthem on a mutual friend’s Facebook wall; he engaged me, stated further thoughts and intentions that were not evident in the article as presented, and thanked me for the feedback, which he viewed as valuable since I effectively took away the exact opposite messages of what he was trying to communicate. I thanked him for engaging me and, while I still disagreed with his article and the reasons he dismissed other anthem candidates, the conversation ended well and I think we both got something out of it. That is the definition of a good faith conversation, to me.

And sometimes it’s not even a “this person is in bad faith” or “that argument is in good faith” but it is about the chemistry between those conversants in that space?

I agree that it's a reductive framing of the interaction, yeah. Intentionally so; I find it easier to start a conversation within specific boundaries and then explore how those boundaries expand.

xp is this you admitting the tools of your trade?

― let them microwave their rice (gyac), Friday, 31 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Lol, "trade" implies a skill I could make a living from. I would if I could!

So yes.

i won't argue with anyone i am not 100% sure is a real person with honorable intentions
life is too short and i have more than enough argument on my plate, not hungry for more

what makes me sense that someone is arguing in bad faith? if they are arguing with me and do not know me personally, for starters!

i will settle for a real person whose identity i can verify; intentions are hard to determine but actually not that hard when a person who doesn't know me at all/hasn't talked to me in 20+ years is suddenly itching to argue.

Sorry, DJP, that was an x-post to kinder.

It was a bad-faith conversation and I quickly saw my way out of it.

I think this gets to the heart of it. It is much, much easier to recognise bad faith arguments, than it is to recognise "good" faith arguments.

If you're talking about structural racism, and someone starts "all lives matter"-ing, or if you're talking about structural misogyny and the other person immediately goes "oh, you just hate men" or if you're trying to talk trans stuff and your awful uncle starts up with "penis = man" you KNOW immediately that's a bad faith argument and you can make a swift exit with whatever energy you have left.

It takes something far more ineffable, and "you know it when you see it" to recognise the "good faith" arguments, even sometimes when you are already in them. (Like, when you started rubbishing Jody's piece, did you even know you were doing a "good faith" argument or were you just venting about an awful piece of criticism you read online?)

Something else that's quite important (and Anvil has kind of touched on in the brainworms thread before) - is recognising the terrain of the conversation. Recognising the rhetorical style, or whatever, of the conversant.

Some people are really swayed by logical arguments, by facts, by contextualisation, by understanding more about the topic. And for other people, it really is more of a feelings and emotions and social connections thing. (And, indeed, the same people can operate in different modes on different topics.) If you think you're in a logic, facts, contexts conversation, and the other person is in a feelings, emotions, social connections conversation, that is going to run into rocky ground very fast. And it's not even a good faith / bad faith problem. It's people operating in different modes.

(I've said this many times on the No Boys thread, if someone starts talking astrology, the correct thing to do is not to start debunking their terrible pseudo-science, it is to recognise that they are giving you *emotional* information about themselves and their relationship to you, and flip into "this is about social connection" mode.)

For the facts, logic, contexts person, it is sufficient to be Right! All that is required is to provide data and prove the thesis statement, and then you have won the argument, Q.E.D. For the feelings, social connections person - a far more effective and persuasive conversation would involve, "well, this would be the *kindest* thing to do" or "wouldn't this be fairer to everyone involved?" or "this would promote peace in your social circle and bring you closer to your friends and loved ones." I really struggle with the latter style of conversations (and I thank my therapist for teaching me how to *do* them, at all) but for many emotive topics, these kinds of conversations are far more persuasive - and far better at counteracting actual propaganda, which always works on an emotive level, and not a rational level.

I think I conflate concern trolling with bad faith. Or is concern trolling a form of bad faith? I'm specifically thinking of conservatives who are deeply concerned about murder in Chicago.

And it's not even a good faith / bad faith problem. It's people operating in different modes.

I think this is largely true, or at least there is overlap. For instance a key part of 'bad faith' delivery, for me, is misrepresentation. Someone intentionally misrepresenting what I've said, or misunderstanding. But my RW cousin consistently 'mishears' what I've said in such a way that I don't think its intentional. Its more that he has decided what I've said before I've said it. The exchange for him is more of a big picture exchange, and the detail is an obfuscation (weirdly inverting the concept of bad faith almost to a point where he might see my 'detail' as the bad faith, intended to trip up a more obvious big picture truth which is self-evident to him)

Which comes back to this idea of modes. Its also why I think 'debates' don't really work, why challenging often doesn't really work. Its focused on an end goal and working backwards, instead of fixing on a starting point of what is shared.

if there is enough shared (and that might be as little as 20%), perhaps there is the possibility of moving that forward to 30%. This seems more productive than starting at oppositional points

This is all complicated by the fact that on TV, youtube, print and elsewhere, people are paid to do this, and many of those wheeled out on 'the other side' aren't really equipped, and often end up flustered and frustrated (in some cases leading to the well worn eye roll)

Sara Ahmed - "Rolling eyes is feminist pedagogy".

Its more that he has decided what I've said before I've said it.

Yeah, this is definitely a thing. (Again, something I know I have done myself, too, so I know how easy it is to do.)

I think it’s possible for people to hold un-PC beliefs / beliefs that I find reprehensible and not necessarily be acting in bad faith when they argue them. But maybe I don’t understand what bad faith means.

So yes.

― let them microwave their rice (gyac), Friday, 31 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Feeling this is bad faith from you

Its more that he has decided what I've said before I've said it.

I initially put the 'blame' on him for this (and there is some to go there don't get me wrong). But I've also had to think, well what can I do to try and make that not the case). In some ways the phyiscal reactions, body language, signs of irritation, tone of voice, he's using those as cues and much of the conversation is actually happening there (and for me it must be too). So when I say he's already decided what I've said before I've said it, maybe thats only partially true and whats actually happening is he's listening to my mannerisms and speech patterns more so than my words, And even if I'm speaking as neutrally as possible and aiming to not give away visual cues, if my underlying mode is to win, then thats still obvious, more obvious than any words that might be said

This is really what I've gradually tried to jettison, the focus on being right, and to try and get more towards understandings

I think it’s possible for people to hold un-PC beliefs / beliefs that I find reprehensible and not necessarily be acting in bad faith when they argue them.

Of course it is. Most people would say Richard Spencer argue in good faith? Its right there on the tin. Someone like Tim Pool on the other hand..

I assume everyone is arguing in good faith unless they’re obviously trying to speak to/influence an audience - ie arguing with one person on Twitter but it’s actually for the benefit of 500k followers who will see it.

'bad faith' to me is when you really believe one thing, but you aren't comfortable admitting it, so you go for the plausible deniability of objecting on procedural grounds ("I don't have a dog in this fight, but I question the logic you're using here!") or sea-lioning ("I'm not against Black Lives Matter, but why not a more open-tent approach?") in an attempt to chip away at the opposition so that you can win the debate through attrition (the other person flipping out at you or retreating).

like that one Hendrix vs Van Halen thread when a few people were saying it was obviously Hendrix who was a better guitarist, and St3v3 Goldb3rg started arguing with these people, saying that it's fine to find Hendrix better, but you can't use bad logic and poorly constructed arguments like he alleged they were. but then after pushback he admitted he just thought Van Halen was better and that was his real M.O..

In my lexicon, arguing in "bad faith" does not equate to employing an indefensible argument, based in ignorance. Ignorance itself is not a form of bad faith. Rather, it means knowingly employing a weak or false argument and adhering to it in the face of contrary facts and a stronger argument structured around those facts. iow, at the point where your interlocutor begins to deny the relevance of a reality contrary to their position they've entered the wonderful world of bad faith arguing.

An example that comes easily to hand is when "death with dignity" laws are being opposed on specious and false grounds, such as the slippery slope argument that it is just a preliminary step to euthanasia of the old and disabled. Such laws have been in existence for decades now and no such slippery slope has appeared. Pointing out this reality should result in their rethinking and retracting the slippery slope. If they say "that proves nothing", then they are committing to asserting a non-existent reality, based on no facts observable anywhere. That's instant "bad faith".

'bad faith' to me is when you really believe one thing, but you aren't comfortable admitting it

Contra my boundless optimism in this regard, it does happen all the time on ILX, i.e.

The Official, 100% Anonymous ILX Self-Censorship Poll

Bad Faith is also Earth-2 George Michael's best album

Boolean faith vs Fuzzy faith

For me, there are two criteria for whether I enter a discussion. 1) do I genuinely think that there's a chance that *I* might learn something, through having the discussion? 2) is there a genuine chance that at least one of the people involved might be willing to change their mind? (And the person in criteria 2 might very well be me!)

then after pushback he admitted he just thought Van Halen was better and that was his real M.O

for some reason this is really poignant to me rn -- like, it should become some sort of shorthand to deploy -- a la is this a "Van Halen was better" clusterfuck?

good faith means you’re stating something you believe or are willing to posit while accepting people may disagree, may find disagreeable, or may question your basic assumptions. you don’t have to accept those disagreements, reply to them, or make assumptions about where they are coming from without reasonable discussion

bad faith isn’t necessarily a thing. it comes from dissembling, being unwilling to accept your wording or premises (or even their historical/institutional stance) may have been in error, or that you are posting something you don’t want to be questioned

our words have contexts, sometimes based on past interaction, and insisting that others interact in good faith when you’ve been guilty of any of the above in the past assumes a lot. be kind, perhaps even walk on quiet feet when you’re trying to speak to a group where your words have been unclear in the past. if someone seems unnecessarily aggrieved by your current words, do not take personal offense but consider the past.

tl;dr no knee-jerk reactions to the knee-jerk reactions to those you’ve quarreled with in the past unless they’re universally bad actors. it’s better in that case to play dumb or just ask, not assume

is making an argument that is obviously intended to refer to a specific set of circumstances or an individual person but without stating that -- is that good faith or bad faith? or just passive-aggressive? asking for a friend. ... not to be self-righteous about it, because I have done it as well, but it's uh, impressively self-referential here and now

Bad Faith is also Earth-2 George Michael's best album

my brain read this as Earth doing a George Michael cover album and if someone could get Dylan Carlson on the phone that would be great

xp - I don't think it's either. "Bad faith" (in terms of debate/argument/conversation) is pretty simple, IMO - arguing what you know to be untrue, to serve your desired ends. Bush/Cheney/Powell leading up to Iraq were arguing for it in bad faith, knowing that there were no WMDs or links to al-Qaeda. Your dimwitted cousin who was pro-war was most likely acting in good faith because they believed their leaders were telling them the truth.

The line becomes blurry when you can't tell if someone is stupid or in on it. Joe Rogan is acting in good faith because he's a numbskull; Ben Shapiro is probably acting in bad faith because he either has a career to serve or he's an ideological true believer who's happy to get his followers riled up to serve those ends. But he might actually just be as much of a numbskull as Rogan.

If we're going to accept the premise of 'bad faith' then some, most, or even all of this thread would now appear to qualify. It the 'obviously' in obviously intended is referring to this thread itself it definitely wasn't obvious to me!

If true then yes, soliciting opinions on a specific thing without stating it is a form of bad faith. The removal of specificity can be done with the idea of making something 'clearer' but it is a form of skullduggery. It makes an assumption that the specific is an example of the abstract and asks you to implicitly agree with the premise but without being told thats whats been done

Rogan's position can change of its own accord. Shapiro's would only change by design.

I think a lot of this might actually be about how zoomed in or out you are. eg if your position is scousers are thieves and you use a particular example of a theft as evidence knowing it not to be true. Its bad faith in that you're arguing something you know not to be true - but you don't care because its handy evidence and it will do, and you think bigger picture 'all scousers are thieves' is true regardless of this one particular scouser, so it becomes true in the abstract even if not in the specific.

So whether its bad faith or not starts to depend on your stance (pointing out this particular case isn't a scouser becomes nitpicking)

If true then yes, soliciting opinions on a specific thing without stating it is a form of bad faith. The removal of specificity can be done with the idea of making something 'clearer' but it is a form of skullduggery. It makes an assumption that the specific is an example of the abstract and asks you to implicitly agree with the premise but without being told thats whats been done

Anvil, you're very perceptive. I get caught out by this a lot. It's a form of bait and switch.

I took the topic of the thread seriously, thought about specific examples in recent conversations I had decided to have or not have (and weirdly, none of them were conversations on ILX? One was a private twitter DM thread I decided to engage; the other was a set of private DMs on another messageboard where I noped out of the conversation when it became apparent in which direction it was going.) That I was using it as a place to think carefully about my own actions, without realising that others were using it as a soap box to give their opinions on others' actions!

I did not see that possibility, and I now feel foolish about that. It's always a shock to realise that I am seeing one set of contexts, while other people are working with a completely different set of contexts that did not occur to me. (And it's completely mutual, that my context is as obscure and inexplicable to them, as theirs are to me.) As an autistic person, grasping the contents of other people's minds can be *incredibly* difficult. It's like being inside a very specific kind of philosophical solipsism all the time. (Which some people choose to read as narcissism, which... you know, whatever.) But the blithe assumptions that others make about the contents of my own mind, and put forward as the truth - since diagnosis, I am at least aware that I have little grasp on other people's interior worlds - but they seem genuinely unaware that they don't have a grasp on mine, either.

When I am having an Actual Discussion, and not just ~messageboard chit-chat~ I really do try to discuss the background and context of each word in the original question, to make sure that that the actual argument under discussion is clear to both parties. ("Do you belive in god?" well, what does 'you' mean, what does 'believe' mean, what does 'god' mean? Once we are in agreement on those words, then I can answer the question.) That a discussion where two people are using the same words with different contexts and interpretations may not actually *be* bad faith, even though it sure can feel like it. But an argument where one person is deliberately using one word or context in a way that obscures other meanings or contexts they are still continuing to draw on (or deny) is bad faith from the start?

This comes up a lot in litigation — I tend to think of a “good faith” argument as one that has some reasonable basis in the law or the facts even if it could be wrong, whereas a “bad faith” argument is one where you just willfully ignore contradictory facts or law. Like the other day I took a deposition and I asked the guy “Did CrookedCo ever have a policy against doing x?” And he said “Absolutely not, we never had any policy against that.” And then I showed him an email in which he wrote “We at CrookedCo do not do x, please keep this confidential.”

He was trying to claim that it wasn’t really a “policy” but that email made it a bad faith argument imo.

This comes up a lot in litigation — I tend to think of a “good faith” argument as one that has some reasonable basis in the law or the facts even if it could be wrong, whereas a “bad faith” argument is one where you just willfully ignore contradictory facts or law.

This is consistent with U.S. tax practice as well -- though there are a bunch of different metrics about how "good" one's faith in based on percentages of likelihood that it would be accepted/accurate. ... Most of this w/r/t to the tax code is relevant to what type of citation and fine you can get if the IRS/tax court disagrees with your position. Basically the penalties for making a good faith mistake are much lower than those for making bad faith mistakes, which may/may not constitute "tax fraud" -- where the penalties for preparers / agents / attorneys are the equivalent often of being dis-barred from doing tax work.

example related to run-of-the-mill stuff:

tax pro: how many miles did you drive for your business?
client: 25,000
tax pro: that's a lot of miles! are you sure that's a good estimate of the total for the year 2019?
client: oh yeah
tax pro: *puts 25,000 business miles on client's return, which at the standard mileage rate is approximately a $13,000 deduction, and could save the client anywhere from $2k to $10k in taxes

tax pro is obligated to take what client reports in good faith, and assume that client is being honest ... unless there are facts and circumstances that indicate what the client is reporting isn't accurate, facts and circumstances the tax pro would be a complete idiot if they were to ignore. Like (these are common):
1. client told tax pro that they didn't own a car
2. client reported travel expenses with a lot of it being the cost of rental vehicles
3. client's business doesn't entail much driving, but they also have a job where they are paid as an employee and have a long commute
4. client tells tax pro their previous accountant used to help them make up numbers and invent expenses so they wouldn't owe taxes

If you were tax pro and got one or more of these answers from your client and still accepted that 25,000 miles number without digging further ... then that would probably be bad faith on the part of the tax pro

When I input everything into the Quicken nothing flashed red so... that's got to mean everything's OK, right?

hahah -- ok sorry for day job-posting

xpost hai Skylar

???

Kinder's quote is from Breaking Bad I think........or very similar

yeah sorry sarah! In Breaking Bad {{{spoiler alert}}}

Skylar avoids getting done for tax fraud or something by acting the ditz

ohhhhhhhh i need to rewatch that show

Getting threads locked where arguments are happening and genuine issues as to your behavior are being raised doesn’t seem like good faith imho

I can see why someone who feels entitled to set the terms of every conversation they are involved in would feel entitled to end those conversations too

There’s actually an easier way of ending the conversation though which is leaving

Which is what I was gonna do until we went around asking mods to lock a thread as soon as someone points out that we are being a dick

But as previously mentioned I’m a big idiot not earth’s most advanced thinker

So... lock this one too?

I dunno man!!!!

You tell me, the notorious dumbass

you could just move the argument to another thread if you want to continue discussing it ...

i mean, this is ILX, you can even appropriate a dormant sub-board for your purposes!

silbs, here ya go:
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=74

What’s wrong with this thread tbh

i suppose, nothing, tbh -- just, y'know, I Love Computers could be yours if you have the ambition

I hate computers tho

I was hoping for the summarise Cerebus thread tbh

aardvark, surrealism, misogyny, profit?

ugh I did not know about the misogyny. Led Zeppelin? ugh maybe we should just move to I Love Computers.

wasn't that a major critique of Dave Sim/Cerebus -- the misogyny? I haven't read it in like 25 years

tbf I am pretty sure the “I Love Computers” board was named as such in bad faith

i realize i have an entrepreneurial spirit which is oft associated with capitalism and i apologize for suggesting silbs expand his domain to the dormant subboard of I Love Computers

the profit decreased sharply with the advent of the misogyny

my brief googling seems to agree. I didn't know before. I was just making a joke which has obviously failed terribly.

ha joke was fine

Sara Ahmed - "Rolling eyes is feminist pedagogy".

This got missed at the time. I'll have to read this in context to see what it is - but something here about the role of non-verbal communication. That which is communicated intentionally, and that which is elicited as reaction. Watching debates in foreign languages is interesting to see, because the dynamics are familar. Even if the topic is alien and unknown the positions of the protagonists are guessable

Answering the original question I don't know that responding to good faith and potentially bad faith actors in different ways really leads anywhere

Here’s the original essay, Anvil:

https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/12/05/complaint/

Thanks, I was confused by this at first because its a reversal of roles from what I was thinking (right wing guest says something like racism doesn't exist, with at least partial intent of eliciting an eye roll). The principal difference being that seems to be done with the intent of goading, whereas the ones in the piece are defensive responses. But in both cases a form of moving from the verbal to the non-verbal.

The racism isnt real guy they'll role out on the BBC is equally likely to eye roll himself or goad the guest into it, the end result is the similar (us vs them, we are enemies) but the path there isn't. The elicited or goaded eye roll is meant to diminish the roller by separating from audience, the intended roll to bond with audience. But thats a level of performativity not present in a domestic situation (at least not on same level)

body language so important!

But this is also the problem with body language - there really isn't such a thing as a universal gesture, that always means the same in every case? How body language is read depends so much on who is performing it, and in what context.

That the eyeroll of performative white supremacy, is different from the eyeroll of feminist solidarity. And it matters who is making the gesture, and with what intent. (Intent is not always clear, depending on the viewer's subjective position to the gesturer.)

And so much of good faith / bad faith is about intent. And intent, like eye-rolls, looks different from where one is sitting.

Absolutely, body language a language like any other. In some ways the most performative, but also the most involuntary and unconscious.

I was struck in the piece by where the author says about being judged before you even say anything (but also in any exchange we can be as liable to do the same). Which leads to exchanges where everyone has already decided and judged others before, not after, they have spoken. Viewed through this lens I want to back away from the idea of bad faith, at least on practical terms (even when I know it to be true, to try and not take that shortcut and let go of pattern recognition)

That's why I thought you would appreciate the piece - that she writes about that pre-judgement, of judging before the speech act has even happened. In some ways, the speech act doesn't even *need* to happen, it has been pre-determined.

I've read this intensely valuable / frustrating book recently, by Sarah Schulman, called Conflict Is Not Abuse, and I think it's both hugely important to this discussion (but also so inherently flawed by her own 'OK boomer'-ism that any reccommendation would have to come with a million caveats that she is trapped in her own generation's ways of thinking) - how she talks about the same actions (eye-rolling, fragility) can come from either place, from a place of Supremacy Ideology OR from a place of fragiligy-from-having-been-abused, and still look and function and behave in the same ways. It's not always clear which is which, especially to the person having the fragility-reaction, let alone to onlookers.

I really want to discuss the book somewhere, because there's so much *deeply wrong* with it, and also so much *deeply right* about it, often at the same time, that she is almost an example of the Thing She Is Trying To Describe.

I don't know that ILX is that place, tho.

I think there are some ways around the pre-determining! Depending on the context. One thing I notice is she talks about how it doesn't matter how you deliver the critique/content/answer. Whether its 'shrill' or 'pleasant' doesn't really matter (and associated questions of tone policing etc which is sort of a red herring)

This is well covered ground, but I think misses something crucial. These are all variants of delivering Answers (to people who don't want to hear them?). The style and format may change but the mechanism is the same. Leading with answers is really tough and generally doesn't work! I think you have to lead with Questions where possible, open questions with interest in the answer. This is how guards are dropped, where the 'ins' are. That you have to show you're listening to someone else, before expecting they're going to listen to you

I was thinking about the guy that wrote the Trump Train song there was an interesting piece on him, will try find it

I really want to discuss the book somewhere, because there's so much *deeply wrong* with it, and also so much *deeply right* about it, often at the same time, that she is almost an example of the Thing She Is Trying To Describe.

I read an article about the author and the book recently, and I actually have been meaning to get the book and read it. ... I must have been on a sociological bender that day because it also reminds me of that thing I read that people were sharing about "ask culture" vs. "guess culture" -- which definitely plays a role in conflict and assertions/assumptions of abuse

Couldn't work out why I'd also read that piece - someone linked it on the I May Destroy You thread
Sounds interesting!

This one, yeah? https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/sarah-schulman-conflict-is-not-abuse.html

It ended up on a couple of ILX threads (I thought it was posted on this one, but I guess not).

I was really expecting to enjoy it, because we've read a lot of Sarah Schulman in queer theory reading groups, and she's generally very smart. But reading this book was such a frustrating experience - I got out a pencil and started arguing with her in the margains. Just skip the first chapter, it is *terrible*, but there is a lot to be gained out of the rest of it, but what you can get out of it is generally better absorbed (for someone of Gen X or below) by reading Captain Awkward and living the maxim of "Use Your Words". (pretty sure Ask Culture vs Guess Culture is also something that came out of Captain Awkward, and super useful as a way of understanding or avoiding conflict.)

1) Her insane Boomer insistence that telephone calls are 'real' and 'authentic' and 'totally unmediated' but emails, texts, chat, blogging, etc. are somehow 'inauthentic' and 'over-mediated' and ~inherently problematic~. Please understand how people communicate today, rather than blanket dismissing any technology that arrived after you turned 35.
2) She flat-out accepts without interrogating in any way, the shitty right wing boomer assertion that 'triggered' means 'mildly upset, annoyed or uncomfortable' in a way that totally diminishes the impact of the more proper and specific psychological usage of 'triggered' in a PTSD sense. In a book about overcoming collective trauma, this kind of mis-use of terminology *MATTERS*.
3) Because of number 2, of course she doesn't understand what Trigger Warnings are, or what they're for. No, they don't mean that students can refuse to read things they find 'upsetting' - it means you provide context and warning, so that people with trauma backgrounds can choose when and how and in what state to interact with material that may cause damage if they are blindsided by it.
4) The level of accountability and authenticity that she demands from even casual friends sounds, frankly, exhausting! No; a person who has cancelled a lunch date during a busy trip does NOT owe you a 20-minute FEELINGSCONVERSATION via telephone. She seems to think that boundaries are something bad, used to punish people, in a way that often sounds... wow, Sarah Schulman seems like a small doses friend.
5) Her repeated insistence on privileging spoken speech acts over written speech acts is... really, super autistic unfriendly. Not everyone is neurotypical, Sarah!
6) just reproducing verbatim arguments that people had on your Facebook wall is a lazy bad way of rounding out a chapter. Ugh.

And it's a shame, because she is actually getting at the core of something important - *dealing* with collective trauma, among marginalised people, and explaining the mechanics of the victim-bully switch, how people who have been frequently bullied, traumatised and victimised, *DO* often turn around to lash out at others. This is a real and genuine psychological phenomenon - however, the psychological term for this phenomenon is not 'Triggering', it is a form of 'Projection'.

People who have a history of being traumatised or abused *are* often lacking in the psychological tools necessary to handle normal conflict. When your life has been one long series of events of being unjustly attacked, any kind of conflict *does* start to look like an attack. And learning to use your words, ask questions, go back and re-read (and I *do* mean re-read, it's much easier to get distance and re-read written text, than it is to ask someone to please re-state what you just misheard.) is a big part of recovery from trauma, and learning skills to discern Conflict from Abuse (good faith from bad faith, in the context of this thread) is a neccessary skill to learn.

The chapter on domestic abuse (what is abuse? it is "power over") is great. The chapter on the abusive dynamics that can develop in queer and specifically lesbian relationships, is phenomenal - in a way that heterosexual advice paradigms just do not fit. Her reflections on collective shunning as a form of abuse are absolutely on point, and reflect a lot on ILX during the Suggest Ban era. Her comments, as a Jewish woman, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seem, to a total outsider, really astute, and show a complex and nuanced understanding of the issues.

But you have to read through so much lazy-bad ok boomer assumption to get to those points that... well, I do wish that someone else I know and trust would read this and see if they had the same problems I did.

speaking of bad faith when this book came out i'd read rumblings that schulman had, in the past, been accused of abuse by a partner but of course i can't find anything about that anymore because every google variation of "sarah schulman + abuse" just brings up shit about her popular book

am i allowed to put that out into the world without proof and then leave this thread forever or did i just become a bad faith actor myself? discuss

The entire book is a series of representations of many-sided conflicts, and how in complex relationships - especially in queer relationships where there is not an obvious power asymmetry - where both parties have both victim-and-aggressor roles, accusations of abuse can *become* another form of abuse. Schulman is pretty obvious, that she has been in multiple situations where she was cast as the abuser, but felt the situation was far more complex.

But, it's so hard to discuss this, without lapsing into victim-blaming.

There is a lot of this book that does read like "*I* was falsely accused of abuse, in a situation that was about mutual conflict" - maybe in a sense of defensiveness, and maybe in a sense of trying to set the record straight. But she doesn't seem like she's trying to justify or exonerate herself, it sounds like she's trying to teach herself/others how to negotiate conflict situations, without either lapsing into abuse, or using abuse accusations as a method of punishing an equally conflicted partner?

I found it a good description of queer relationships *I have been in* where there wasn't always a clear-cut "power over" dynamic, there were complex, interlocking sets of traumatised people re-traumatising each other.

But these descriptions rarely translate well into heterosexual relationships where there usually *is* a very clearcut divide between which kinds of people almost exclusively have the financial, societal, legal, physical power over the other. This book does not cover the "Why Does He Do That" situations at all. It covers the kinds of situations that Schulman and her peers have been in. She tries to generalise it, but it's not a situation that *can* be generalised.

Thanks for that, branwell. The verbal vs written thing would wind me up no end so good to anticipate!

I would not have made it past the first chapter, unless I was warned it was bad beforehand & assured the rest of the book was worth it. surely someone must have questioned that stuff before it went to print

So it's not just me, that first chapter is just genuinely tone deaf and terrible and "learn what a soft No is, Schulman!!!"

(But I suppose some books do need warnings - like, everyone always tells people, "Read The Gift of Fear, but skip the chapter on domestic abuse")

However, there are enough good insights in the rest of it, that it's worth battling through the bad bits.

And it's a shame, because she is actually getting at the core of something important - *dealing* with collective trauma, among marginalised people, and explaining the mechanics of the victim-bully switch, how people who have been frequently bullied, traumatised and victimised, *DO* often turn around to lash out at others. This is a real and genuine psychological phenomenon - however, the psychological term for this phenomenon is not 'Triggering', it is a form of 'Projection'.

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

yeah that is like the #1 thing i struggle with - i am really acutely aware of collective trauma and i am really acutely aware that i struggle with personal trauma and i work my ass off to deal with the personal trauma but the collective trauma is bigger than i can handle and it's kicking my ass

and a lot of times i try to reach out and it always turns into a big fight, and i don't know if it's because i can't keep my personal trauma out of it or if it's because where other people are at they can't allow themselves to admit to the collective trauma or because they just conceive of the collective trauma differently, for them it's a different problem with a different solution

and dividing the world into Abusers and Victims doesn't really work well for me either, it's important to me that i've been both, that i'm capable of both depending, i see it more as a cycle of abuse, my tendency is to act in accordance with the behaviors that were and are modeled for me, and a lot of those behaviors were and are pretty fucking awful

Whitney Phillips is so absolutely great on this stuff:

http://bostonreview.net/gender-sexuality/whitney-phillips-whose-anger-counts

She's honestly one of the best people out there studying the internet at the moment, including the darker corners thereof.

Re: Schulman, she should stick to fiction— her theoretical writings, with the exception of her strident take on pinkwashing in Israel, are mostly awful, liberal garbage, afaict.

I was once attacked during a question-and-answer period during a roundtable discussion that involved her and some other queer reformist types because they basically were going on tirades against people who shop at chain stores— this was when Gentrification of the Mind had just come out— and I raised the point that a lot of people don't have access to the capital and resources that allow them to shop at many smaller, mom-and-pop shops, and people acted as if I'd shit in their breakfast. Schulman included! It was the most classist, tone-deaf shit I've ever experienced in that sort of environment.

I haven't read Conflict because of that experience. TBH, other than 'Rat Bohemia,' I kind of think she sucks!

I raised the point that a lot of people don't have access to the capital and resources that allow them to shop at many smaller, mom-and-pop shops,

it's tricky! Because poor people don't all live in the same type of places. Like, you used to live in West Oakland ... how many chain stores were even there? You probably remember when they put in a Subway sandwiches on 7th St .... that kept getting robbed. I was telling a colleague the other day, about when a Quizno's opened near the DIY space I ran (this was back in 2002), and I was able to walk to get a vegetarian sandwich on a Saturday afternoon, which was very exciting at the time. A few years back a Walgreens opened in deep East Oakland (around 78th and International iirc) and people were stoked! ... Like, in certain areas, the only stores you have are mom-and-pop shops, because of poverty and disinvestment, but these are probably not the types of stores your fellow panelists regularly patronize.

Like are they saying, the virtuous thing to do is eat cereal, nutter butters, and canned goods from the corner store vs. buying healthy groceries from Wal-Mart?

See, this is to me, an absolute classic example of a bad faith discussion.

Where we don't end up discussing the author's work, her writing, her Theory - but instead, we end up talking about the emotional feelings, reportage of an event that took place a decade ago, where none of the rest of us were present, there is no transcript, there is just this emotionally charged reportage, hearsay, academic gossip, from someone who has already acknowledged that they dislike her writing, and thinks she simply "sucks".

We don't have the context, there's no way of ascertaining of there was any more nuance to what Schulman or other unnamed panelists were actually discussing - there's only Table's sense of being "attacked" (was this an attack, or merely a disagreement? This is literally the meat of Schulman's most recent book - she literally describes, in the book, having an experience at a public talk where someone takes exception to a mis-hearing and mis-understanding of what she said in her talk - but she is actually able to walk the questioner and the audience through a group session of "what did other people in the audience hear me saying? did they hear me saying what you've just quoted back to me, or something more nuanced?" so that the questioner actually returns to *what was actually said* and not their ~feelings about Schulman~ or their ~feelings about the conversation~). I get what you're doing, Sarahell, but you're not getting to hear and address what Schulman actually said, you're shadow-boxing with Table's mental image of Schulman.

And we end up discussing, not Schulman's work at all - but Table's ~feelings about Schulman as a person~ - that she's mean, that she's attacky, that she was tone-deaf and not a nice person.

I really do prefer to engage with theorists' and writers *work*, not peoples' ~feelings about the 'kind of person' the writer is~ (and that goes double when the theorist is a woman, especially a *difficult* woman, because we all know the standards of acceptable niceness for women are already warped to start with.)

No one cares about Phillips, huh. I'm surprised there's not more interest in her work on ILX, given how much she has studied 'internet messageboard culture' and Trolling in general as a phenomenon. I always find it weird, the highly relevant work that people on ILX prove weirdly incurious about.

Just not had time to read it yet

nothing to take issue with in the Phillips piece. Schulman is more contentious in what seems like an intentional way and she seems to ask for charitable readings of things which seem cruel or dismissive or which themselves seem like uncharitable readings. there is a lot of seeming and a lot of what seems like plausible deniability. have heard second or third accounts of her work being used to defend abuse (beyond conflict) which is obv not (mostly or necessarily) her fault- but combined with the accusations she acknowledges (as accusations) I feel pretty uncomfortable with the whole project. which may be the point

haven’t read the book so I don’t know how accurate this critique is but I feel parts of it https://thenewinquiry.com/trust-in-instinct/

Yeah, see, "Here is an essay by a person who has read the work, engaged with it, and flagged up some important flaws in the book's arguments" is a good faith discussion, in a way that "I met this woman and found her personally disagreeable, therefore her work - which I haven't read - sucks" is not.

Like, it is the job of theorists, activists, reformers, etc. to disagree - to *be* disagreeable.

It's kind of weird to read Schulman dismissed as this kind of classist, ivory tower 'panelist' with no experience of ~the real world~, given her own background. She didn't come from inside academia - she was born in the east village when it was essentially still a Jewish ghetto, didn't finish college, became a teacher *after* having been a working writer and an activist, through a loophole that she is the first person to admit no longer exists - the latter half of Gentrification of the Mind is about what a pyramid scheme the MFA-ification of writing and the teaching-of-writing is. If she's blinkered about chain stores or food deserts, it is because she is a lifelong New Yorker, and probably cannot comprehend what it is to live in a place where one needs a car to exit the food desert, or get to a large chain store.

A ton of the flaws of her writing, are about that - the specific contexts that she is discussing simply don't translate to other contexts. But what's important is to pull back and look at the context she *is* addressing, rather than dismissing her that she blanket "sucks".

The Phillips piece was well written, but was there anything new there? New information, new ways of looking at the landscape? It felt like a (long) rehash of discussions that have been had over and over, and everyone on one side is keenly aware of the parameters and is shouting "why won't you listen?" at the other side, meanwhile the other side (the David Brookses of the world, or the obtuse journalist Phillips mentions in her intro) is responding with bemused shrugs and keeping on doing exactly what they've been doing - making goo-goo eyes at Trump supporters, making sad faces about "cancel culture," and on and on unto the heat death of the universe. I mean, if I missed anything, by all means point it out.

I'm not getting into the Schulman thing because a) I don't have time to read an entire book this morning and b) Branwell, your own strong misgivings about her work expressed upthread make me think it wouldn't be worth panning through the slurry for one or two nuggets of gold.

I get what you're doing, Sarahell, but you're not getting to hear and address what Schulman actually said, you're shadow-boxing with Table's mental image of Schulman.

fwiw, I didn't intend my recent posts to be _about_ Schulman. I was changing the subject and wanted to talk to table (who I know irl) about the topic he was arguing about -- shopping at chain stores re classism.

Branwell, I just don't agree. If she's such an important thinker and her books get national of not international attention, then why should we engage with their arguments as if we all know she's talking about New York? That's ridiculous.

And it was audience members, not Schulman herself, who attacked me during that panel discussion. I don't have anything against her as a person, despite my saying 'she sucks' above. I just don't find much if the theory she's written worth talking about, BECAUSE it is so specific to certain geographies and situations.

Also, Branwell, for someone who claims that people create hostile environments for you on this board all the time, your denigration and questioning the reality of my experience is pretty rich.

i think her ideas about interpersonal conflict and how people's tendencies toward conflict avoidance are really interesting -- however, just because someone is otm in one area, doesn't mean they are universally otm. I have similar issues with David Graeber -- where there are certain things he's written that I think are great, and others where I am skeptical and people who are better versed in those areas are like, "he doesn't know what he's talking about."

still though -- the Graeber story and his analysis about the effects of someone donating a car to an anarchist collective is one of my favorite things and super insightful writing.

Re sarahell, yeah, you're right about the Bottoms, but this discussion was focused on SF. Took place in the old Luggage Store Gallery in 2012, I think.

Like many of these people were essentially saying that poor people shopping at Safeway or 7-11 instead of one of the local delis or Bi-Rite or the Co-op were wrongheaded.

hahahahahah -- so telling that a discussion focused on SF would not even consider the vast urban civilizations right outside its borders where the overwhelming majority of people that make San Francisco function actually live ... but the solipsism and arrogance of San Francisco is another topic ...

xp - didn't San Francisco only start getting a significant number of 7-11s only around 2012? Maybe a few years prior? ... Like, San Francisco's planning code is potentially one of the strictest in terms of banning chain stores in the country?

So Schulman’s work “sucks” because ... her *audience* disagreed with you?

Like, this is so far from a good faith engagement with Schulman or her work, it couldn’t even find one on a map?

Can you read?

Let's try and avoid a hundred-post pile-up, shall we?

It seems to me that table is going out of his way to separate his critique of Schulman from his critique of the hostile audience at a panel discussion where she was one of the panelists. His dislike for her work is detached from his anecdote about the event in question.

Am I right or wrong about that, table?

there are food deserts in nyc fyi

Over the course of several posts, I said I liked her fiction, which is actually quite provocative at times-- she wrote a novel about a precocious queer youth in a relationship with an older person that got her into a lot of trouble-- but that her theoretical writing seems mean-spirited and hyper-specific in its contextual framing. And that I don't feel the need to engage with it as a result.

And unperson, yes, that is what I was attempting

And re: BradNelson, I know that there are food deserts in the five boroughs, don't know who you were addressing.

just reacting to the idea that schulman is blinkered about food deserts because she's a lifelong new yorker

idk if it's a food desert issue and more about the prominence of mom-and-pop stores in NYC vs. in other parts of the country where there tend to be fewer of these, partly due to culture and partly due to population density

yeah lol i'm making a selective argument bc i'm annoyed. doing a really good job of living up to this thread, gonna bounce

I mean -- I kinda did a similar thing in terms of changing the subject to the chain store/classism -- so idk

I don't think it's bad faith to change the subject of a discussion ?

Right. Like the nearest place to get affordable food for many of the people living in the largest homeless encampment in Oakland is Target, not the small cooperative grocery only a few blocks further.

What I object to is the idea that these are moral or ethical failings on the part of a beleaguered mass of mostly poor people rather than the hegemonic prowess of capital and its logistical frameworks.

One of the reasons that I am reacting the way that I am, is that there is a long history of judging authors who are considered ot be women by how *likeable* they, or their work are - whether they are agreeable, whether their work makes people feel good after they have read it. (And writers who are considered to be male are not expected to meet this 'likeable' criteria, not in anything like the same kind of way.)

And one of the reasons I like Schulman, and the reason I keep persisting with her, even though such a mixed bag as this book, is because she makes absolutely no pretense as to being likeable, or agreeable - which is an unbelievably freeing thing to read in a female writer, someone who doesn't GAF if they come across as likeable or not. There is no wink, no sugar-coating, there is no handholding or making you feel OK about challenging stuff. She *IS* disagreeable. I often come out of reading her theory books feeling like I have been challenged, maybe even called out - perhaps sometimes attacked.

And working through that feeling of 'why do I feel so attacked by this disagreement' is part of what *I* get out of it, puzzling through difficult and complicated phenomena, in which I feel I may be complicit. She's a really good author, for me, for learning to sit with discomfort, and winkling out discomfort from mere difficulty. And she works for me, because of those things.

Her arguments do not scale. They are not universal, and she falls down where she tries to make them universal. But that doesn't mean that she "sucks". And Table, your post really did seem to boil down to your finding her - or, it turns out, her audience - disagreeable. Which to me, is the point.

But I'm not actually interested in local politics of SF, so I'll bow out and you can carry on with your derail.

Your willful misreading of my follow-up posts is laughable.

Like the nearest place to get affordable food for many of the people living in the largest homeless encampment in Oakland is Target, not the small cooperative grocery only a few blocks further.

<pedantic> actually one of the food banks has a massive site a few blocks past the co-op grocery as well and there tend to be long lines there. </pedantic>

Yeah, there's also the bank on San Pab at 34th or so, if that's still around...

Anyway, enough derail. After being accused of being a sexist because I don't like a famous author's theoretical frameworks, I'm going to leave this thread.

Yeah -- San Pablo & 34th! ... awww don't leave, let's just try to have better arguments.

Rhonda????

*sigh* ... where?

The real bad faith move was that bollox djp starting this thread during my hiatus imo

Thought this was a deems revive at first.

The great revivals of 2022 are in motion dont worry, rhonda has the green paper