Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

Boycotts, hmm.

Compared with boycotting McDonalds, how much does the suggested boycott of sodastream machines help people?

I mean I'm thinking both of them, and boycotts in general, probably don't do much?

And also doomed gestures and the narcissism of small differences

tonight in a coffeeshop i heard a bro talking up the awesome benefits of sodastream all bro-like so apparently they've got some market penetration

Because just the very casualness of a consumer appliance like a sodastream machine kind of makes the boycott attempt seem ridiculous all by itself, regardless of the politics - but then, depending on what you're used to, anything can seem trivial and given, and protests about it ridiculous

The Sodastream boycott has been effective afaict. They have stopped production in the occupied territories and moved it back to Israel.

lol

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/12/at-law-school-is-insensitivity-grounds-for-an-objection/383882/

Law Professor Eugene Volokh recently wrote about a controversial exam question at UCLA, where he teaches. The question noted a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, where the stepfather of Michael Brown, the unarmed man killed by police, reacted to news that Officer Darren Wilson would not be charged in the killing. Overcome with anger, he shouted to a crowd of protestors, "Burn this bitch down!” Students were asked to write a memo analyzing how the First Amendment applies to such speech. Several complained. Said one UCLA student: "These kinds of questions create a hostile learning environment for students of color, especially black students who are already disadvantaged by the institution." The professor who gave the test agreed to adjust grades of test-takers who did worse on that question than the rest of their First Amendment exam.

On the other side of the country, Harvard law professor Jeannie Suk has taken to the New Yorker to express concern over her perception that students are increasingly likely to object when classroom discussion turns to rape. "Individual students often ask teachers not to include the law of rape on exams for fear that the material would cause them to perform less well," she writes. "One teacher I know was recently asked by a student not to use the word 'violate' in class—as in 'Does this conduct violate the law?'—because the word was triggering."

"We now use the vocabulary of post-traumatic stress disorder—trauma, triggers, etc.—to refer to virtually any bad feelings occasioned by controversial events or expression."

I often worry about what this means for individuals who are both survivors of individual trauma and members of communities that have suffered collective trauma. I've been mugged 3 times in this city, on all occasions having been grabbed from behind on the sidewalk at night--now my heart rate spikes when I hear footsteps behind me on the sidewalk at night. That fits my (granted pretty layman's) understanding of a trigger in the traditional sense. While I can't speak to the interior of anyone else's experience and wouldn't ever try to invalidate anyone else's feelings, *I feel* a little :| when I see "being triggered" being used as a synonym for "this made me upset."

I'm in with the notion of collective trauma, but I think maybe individual survivors of trauma might be better served by unhooking these common languages from one another.

I am wary of the term "triggers" being so public. It is an Internet term, and if you use it, you feel weak, and I don't think that's a healthy persona to have on the 'net.

I'm not sure I follow you?

i'm with you on displeasure with seeing "triggered" used synonymously with "i am temporarily upset". i had a similar experience with a violent mugging (also a crazy violent dog attack) and so to me a trigger is something that instantly morphs your brain and body into a tense helpless defensive mode. i have similar thoughts whenever i overhear someone on the phone say "ugh, the bank closed early today just as i was about to walk in, ohmigod i am SO DEPRESSED NOW." not a huge deal, just annoying and it devalues the original meaning of the word, bit by bit.

It's a term from recovery groups, where gamergaters and net creeps etc. don't belong - I'm not sure it's something to be used in a more open forum - whether it's online or in a classroom. It just feels like it's giving predatory and abusive people ammunition.

I think for it to work everyone in the conversation needs to agree already that trigger warnings are a good idea

Other groups' politeness codes always look arcane and bizarre

(Should be question marks on both of those really)

We are in the 'irony stage' with certain therapeutic terms, meaning arseholes are using them either incorrectly or sardonically.

i'm starting to view "abuse discourse" as bordering on being so widespread as to be useless.

like i was reading through this: http://blog.ameliagreenhall.com/post/what-it-was-like-to-co-found-model-view-culture-with-shanley-kane

and my takeaway is "you worked with a demanding, driven asshole".

if someone says "i worked with an abuser" or "it was an abusive relationship" i expect more, in some sense, than somebody just being miserable to work with, or losing their temper or etc.

i heard someone the other day claim, in seriousness, being asked to explain something when they didn't want to was "abusive".

i don't know what's happening, how we can hope to interact like this

the problem is not concepts like abuse or triggering its that somehow i feel like for a group of people these are becoming the _only_ concepts they know how to use

Habitual yelling and requesting that she cut off her friends seem like abuse to me. My stepdad "lost his temper" a lot when were were kids, and my sister, brother, and I are all comfortable characterizing his behavior then as abuse.

If you follow the pastebins Shanley Kane is tweeting, she admits to saying things like those that weev accuses her of saying, and in her chatlog she laughs when he says someone should hit his girlfriend. I'm sure there are associates and allies of Kane's right now who are skeptical of the sincerity of her commitment to social justice; I'm sure many wonder whether, at best, she is engaging in the politics of pity, or, at worst, she is using social justice, righteous anger, and twitter beefs as mercenary means to boosting her brand.

And "being asked to explain something" can be abusive depending on the context. Being asked once is one thing; it might be innocent or it might be rude, but not abuse; being asked many times can certainly be harassing and abusive, especially if the person asking really has no right to know.

I see no communication apocalypse looming. In spite of this blip, occurring largely on the internet, of some people being more mindful of some speech and speech acts, I see no evidence in my daily life that people are having difficulty communicating.

Given that today's college students are unlikely to enter the workforce, this stuff might not change society too quickly

My stepdad "lost his temper" a lot when were were kids, and my sister, brother, and I are all comfortable characterizing his behavior then as abuse.

^^^

The act of going through the theatrical display of losing one's temper even though/because you know it will scare or hurt someone is also something abusive parents/partners/people do. Esp if it happens repeatedly.

to uh quote myself last time this subject came up

I think maybe individual survivors of trauma might be better served by unhooking these languages from one another.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, December 23, 2014 8:32 PM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that said, in the article greenhall writes:

eventually I was able to see many of the things I was experiencing - such as yelling, excuses that the yelling was just because she needed me so much, her demands that I isolate myself from my friends - as classic abuser tactics.

this is otm

yeah, having grown up with abusers, i can't say that getting punched out by a angry, drunken parent is any worse than being trapped in a corner and made to feel like human garbage. six of one...

so i checked and greenhall's "leaving" post says: "As part of my values, it was important for me to build a business which could be run sustainably, for years, with a long term goal of working only 40-50 hours a week and being able to take weekends off, and occasional vacations. However, it became clear that my co-founder had a different vision for the future of the company that wasn't compatible with those values"

So in asking someone (an equal) to work longer and getting angry when they didn't can turn into a very different story just by changing the words used to characterize it. but we knew this.

my frustration is we have this great big language and the power to actually discern lots of different sorts of situations and meanings and interactions and instead there's a desire to reach for always not just the same word but the same narrative.

i don't know if arguing about shanley as such will do any good at all but i gotta say printing a piece criticizing someone when gg and breitbart are circling the wagons is really nagl, even if its something that eventually needs to be said. i wonder if this also has to do with different ideas of the correct approaches to situations -- one that says 'lets look at what is happening in this moment first and foremost' and the other which says 'lets take a moral inventory of the parties involved as a whole and see if either side is generally decent enough to warrant unreserved support'.

I've never heard of either party or their company, but pretty much how I break it down is that Shanley tried to manipulate her business partner into behaving differently, instead of accepting her choices and deciding what to do about it. And manipulation + forceful behaviors like anger & accusations, used against someone who you know can be intimidated or fearful, is coercive.

And coercive behavior + a big power/fear disparity is an abusive dynamic, like many other cruel acts that damage the health of other ppl repeatedly over time.

Imo that doesn't make Shanley evil or irredeemable, and if she was in a relationship w someone who was harming her it doesn't surprise me that under extreme stress she didn't make awesome decisions. Duh.

so my issue (one more post and then i'll stop digging what i feel is a hole for myself) is we have all these things, ranging from actually threatening people with harm or carrying out harm to calling someone names on the internet, with other stuff like yelling at someone and making them feel bad because they're not working as hard as you or even asking that someone do something they don't want to or saying that something someone did pissed you off or talking about someone behind their back or etc. and these all in a sense fall under the word 'abuse', which then means in my mind that every possible sort of negative interaction where both people don't walk away feeling like total winners has an element of 'abuse' and this makes no sense to me.

ok so say somebody wants to make a choice and i know this person well, is my only option to accept this choice and decide what to do about it? is attempting to sway somebody necessarily something that should go by the name manipulation? and is attempting to sway somebody and being passionate about it therefore necessarily coercion and abuse? i don't see how we can have human interaction then. there's a huge rhetorical arsenal of 'i am going to attempt to change your mind' options and some are clearly a priori off limits in decent society, but i feel like a whole bunch of others shouldn't be?

if she was in a relationship w someone who was harming her it doesn't surprise me that under extreme stress she didn't make awesome decisions. Duh.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Wednesday, January 21, 2015 4:13 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've always been fascinated by how this dynamic replicates itself--i've only been in one relationship i'd genuinely call abusive, and that person had the most horrific childhood & adolescence of anyone i've ever met. i want to know more about why this happens the way it does.

we have all these things, ranging from actually threatening people with harm or carrying out harm

Names can be harmful, let's get that straight from the start.

which then means in my mind that every possible sort of negative interaction where both people don't walk away feeling like total winners has an element of 'abuse' and this makes no sense to me.

No, I agree that scenario wouldn't seem to make sense, but then that's not a real scenario. What is the problem with letting someone define when they have felt harmed/abused for themselves, and believing that they mean it? I know you're smarter than getting hung up on the word "abuse" itself, but let's just lay out that there's never going to be a dictionary definition that satisfies everyone and applies in all contexts, and that if you invoke it, something magical happens. So why not believe someone when she says that she has felt abused, and consider whether it requires any response from us, and if not, move on? Is there a downside?

You're being too categorical with your language. The rest of us take Greenhall's statement at face value; we trust her when she says that she now recognizes her treatment as abuse, and the behavior she cites (which is separate from what she says about differing company values) jibes with what we regard as abuse. There's no language being employed in new or unusual ways here, and if there were, Greenhall still qualifies her wording with descriptions of the behavior she considers abusive, which would take the ambiguity away.

I don't agree with you mixing the issue of abuse with a differing vision for the company. She doesn't say that asking her not to see her friends was accomplished by asking her to work long hours at the company, and I trust that Greenhall is grown up enough not to call overtime abuse.

Even if politeness codes and the language of abuse changes a little among very particular groups, people will still be able to communicate functionally, as they always have after every other language change.

there's a downside when those names can trigger administrative actions in a workplace

xp to s clover

greenhall's characterization of her working relationship with shanley as abusive is taking up all the oxygen here; she also accuses her of still being a racist, which is the charge shanley's harassers are now running with

that she’d had a months long, live-in relationship with the sadistic harasser and internet troll “weev” and that she had had a racist past. These issues have been written about extensively, following a pretty awful article where weev discloses their relationship and her racist past in an effort to hurt her and the diversity in tech cause in general...

What concerned me about these revelations was not that Shanley has had a relationship with weev where she participated in making racist jokes, but that she did that so recently before starting a publication focused on diversity. Had I known about these things before we were well into running the company, I doubt I would have chosen her as a co-founder. As it was, at the end of our 6+ months of working together, I came away unsure if she had actually fundamentally changed from that past or not.

the feminist conversation about tech right now feels like “You’re either with Shanley or you’re with weev.” And I think there should be room for a third option

i'm more sympathetic to the part in scare quotes, at least for the time being

ok so say somebody wants to make a choice and i know this person well, is my only option to accept this choice and decide what to do about it? is attempting to sway somebody necessarily something that should go by the name manipulation? and is attempting to sway somebody and being passionate about it therefore necessarily coercion and abuse? i don't see how we can have human interaction then. there's a huge rhetorical arsenal of 'i am going to attempt to change your mind' options and some are clearly a priori off limits in decent society, but i feel like a whole bunch of others shouldn't be?

dude these questions are uncomfortably broad - you're not defining the action that was called abuse beyond "being passionate" and then saying "well then what ISN'T abuse?" if you want validation that someone is being alarmist but not letting us have the perspective to make that claim.

if you want validation

this isn't to say i'm not sympathetic to being rankled by popular word choice - i've huffed at people using "mansplain" when "condescend" seems accurate enough - but when i did that it came from a defensive place. stepping back, that kind of linguistic overreach is still a piddly problem compared to what it's describing. and i'd rather people not be afraid to speak up for themselves in potentially abusive situations than accuse some amorphous sector of our culture of taking it too far. that road leads to being alec baldwin.

on the subject of shanley i do think she's an incredibly unempathetic raging bully online--it doesn't surprise me at all to hear that she's the same kind of bully in the work environment, and finding out she had a relationship with weev sort of brings it full circle--they're like a yin and yang of cause-driven id

i'm not trying to ask for validation that someone is being alarmist. there's an element where you have to say "insufficient information" on all this stuff and sorta not care about prying for more. i'm responding to what's put out there though.

and at this point the "being passionate" isn't attempting to be about shanley per se -- its about the question, when does attempting to sway someone's opinion become "hostile" in a way that we should view as negative. are certain forms of hostility ok? necessary even?

and i'm connecting this to lots of other things i've seen that i'm not being specific about (so apologies) where it just seems like "disagreeing with me is itself abusive", which is why this thread is where i wanted to raise this. "i don't want to have this conversation" is something that should be respected, i think. however, "the fact that you want to have a conversation is wrong" often seems to be tossed in the mix.

also there's a sense in which "i feel x" has a different sort of truth-status than "x is the case" -- you necessarily have to believe the former in some sense, but you have to believe it in a different way than the latter. does the current way we're learning to have conversations allow us to make that distinction?

yes

glad we solved it

also there's a sense in which "i feel x" has a different sort of truth-status than "x is the case" -- you necessarily have to believe the former in some sense, but you have to believe it in a different way than the latter. does the current way we're learning to have conversations allow us to make that distinction?

i think much of the social justice rhetoric and general tendency to empathize with victims on the activist left leads to much of the weight being on the former ("I/he/she feels x") because what is decided to be "x is the case" is historically weighted towards those in power. so there's (good!) pragmatic and political reason to lean that way in general as a kind of corrective to those tendencies. that doesn't mean, though, that we arent responsible when we get it wrong.

tyfr

to better answer your (very good) question, i want to say that "the conversation we're having on the left tends to intentionally and strategically occlude that distinction, and sometimes those who do want to make that distinction are also doing it for pragmatic reasons (because they want delegitimize victims of oppression/abuse/etc), but that we should reserve the right to make that distinction if/when we feel we need to." i dont think there's any way forward that isn't loaded with some risk of being wrong.

sorry if im babbling on.

i've come to peace w/ the fact that when we talk about the left we're really talking about a very small percentage of political society and maybe they should take on radical positions that occlude distinctions for pragmatic reasons (attempting to draw the discourse further to the left).

i've always been fascinated by how this dynamic replicates itself--i've only been in one relationship i'd genuinely call abusive, and that person had the most horrific childhood & adolescence of anyone i've ever met. i want to know more about why this happens the way it does.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 9:54 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's pretty simple ime, people do what they know.

io otm.

the problem isn't that people are overrusing the word abuse but that it's more prevalent than people care to admit and why would anyone want to shake that status quo if it's benefitting them or stands to.

i have nothing to say specifically about these fascinating people s.clover is talking about ftr

http://girlempowered.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/screen-shot-2012-09-02-at-2-58-53-pm.png?w=300&h=294

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html