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Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

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Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#161

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

diyorgasms wrote: post #159
brobinson wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Saying you love or hate something to show off what a virtuous person you are, instead of actually trying to fix the problem."

Funny enough, the phrase "virtue signaling" itself acts as "virtue signaling", as at this point it is used almost exclusively by members of online communities who are opposed to political correctness and are often outwardly intolerant of transpeople. I don't mean to imply anything about the GP, just to observe a particular irony around that phrase.

The irony was not lost on me, but I think it's an interesting term to describe the way in which people communicate with each other. Some memes need to piggy-back on the traits of other memes in order to propagate, and "virtue signaling" is one of those. My usage of it is predominately to encourage more thoughtful reflection on what people actually say and not make snap judgements or stereotypes about another's positions.

Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#162

Post by bcrypt »

JonFish85 wrote: post #38
Synaesthesia wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't forgotten. After reading this I'd like to write Chelsea. I'm also inspired to do more anti-prison and anti-solitary activism. This looks like a very touching book on solitary confinement - (Hell is a Very Small Place) http://www.amazon.com/Hell-Very-Small-Place-Confinement/dp/1...

Just a quick note that the solitary can also be a way to prevent a certain prisoner (like Manning) from being torn to pieces by the general prison population. Considering that Manning is in a military prison and is very unpopular amongst the military folks, and transgender to boot, it wouldn't surprise me if solitary is in Manning's best interests.

Having visited her (I wrote the original post), I can say this is absolutely untrue. She is much, much better off in the prison among other inmates than in solitary. IIRC, solitary was one of the worst experiences she went through.

Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#163

Post by henrikschroder »

frogpelt wrote: post #140
henrikschroder wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Correct" is silly to even discuss relative to this topic. How about "polite"? It's exactly as rude to use the wrong pronoun about a person, as it is to use the wrong name. It's common decency to call people what they want to be called, and it's not exactly hard to do either.

Ok, that makes sense. However, hypothetically speaking if someone wanted to be called a name that I considered to be vulgar or offensive, I would not call them that.

Yes, but we're not talking about a vulgar name, we're talking about a person that presents as female, has a female name, looks female, but was born a male, who simply wishes people would adress her as a "she".

This is not burdensome. This is not onerous. This does no harm. Just honour her wish. Why wouldn't you?

Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#164

Post by Freak_NL »

gambiting wrote: post #27
Freak_NL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That honestly surprises me. Where are you from? In the Netherlands all major news sources reported on this the past few years.

Poland.

Thank you, that might explain it somewhat. Although you are still blessed with a free press — and your major newspapers do appear to have reported on this issue up to 2014 — mainstream media now seems dominated by other interests. The way PiS is trying to control the public discourse is worrying; at least from an outside perspective.

Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#165

Post by grkvlt »

davidcollantes wrote: post #42
wtbob wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The correct pronoun is 'her', not 'him/her' No, the correct pronoun is 'him.' Chelsea Manning, despite his self-perception and despite his name change, is and always will be a man. Gender is an objective, physical, biological fact, not a subjective experience. There are people who believe that they are disfigured even though they are perfectly normal looking; they are not disfigured, even though they believe so. Th…

I understand what you are saying--your comment will be out of sight soon, by the way--but, does it hurts to "humour" someone? What do you lose or win? Why not just be nice to others?

It seems the point they are trying to make is that for (wrong, according to them) reasons, a person's internal gender perception is privileged over other types of internal identity, such as the false belief that one is the messiah or Napoleon, or one has missing limbs. It's an interesting enough point, which deserves careful thought, although perhaps this is not exactly the right forum for it.

Also, note that they did say in their comment that the correct pronoun to use when talking to Manning was 'her', which seems like being nice to others, and respecting their choices. I'm guessing it's probably considered unhelpful to reinforce delusions such as believing oneself to be Jesus, but would be interested to know where psychiatrists draw the line in such things.

Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#166

Post by grkvlt »

dragonwriter wrote: post #130
ythl wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The correct pronoun is 'her', not 'him/her' The correct pronoun is whatever people deem the correct pronoun is. Personally, I don't see a lot of value in referring to people as their preferred gender. I see more value in referring to them based on their biological sex.

Biological sex isn't binary, even if socially ascribed gender is, and is often based on one aspect of biological sex (external genitalia.) If you think what's between someone's legs is more important than the person themself, that's your preference, but don't be surprised if outwardly subjecting people to that kind of objectification produces negative responses.

Species isn't a fixed concept. If you think what's expressed as someone's phenotype is more important that the person themselves, don't be surprised if refusing to refer to someone as a dragon, and subjecting them to objectification as a human being, produces negative responses.

Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#167

Post by grkvlt »

vacri wrote: post #37
seletz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the point developer2 tried to make is that the parent poster's language is very non-personal. This is a common thing -- by not seeing the victim as a person/human it's way easier to rationalize whatever ideology etc. you might have. Sorry, not a native speaker -- can't put it better :p

I disagree. I think when you're talking about someone you don't personally know that's in the public eye, you should use their surname if you're trying to make a clear point. I noticed it when I saw my own nation's male politicians always mentioned in the media by their surname, and the female politicians referred to by first name if the media outlet didn't like them. It was a way of robbing them of respect. As a tec…

Interestingly, when talking about SpaceX, the CEO is almost always 'Elon' rather than 'Musk', and I'm sure there's some sort of point that could be made about that...

Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#168

Post by threebees »

lisper wrote: post #85
threebees wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although I vehemently disagree with wtbob's comment, I think it was a mistake to flag it. For what it's worth: I didn't see the comment in question, but based on context, I assume that reading it would have made me want to cry. Maybe that's an unpopular emotion to express on HN, but that's what happens when a place you think of as a home suddenly makes you feel unwelcome and conditionally accepted. So thank you, co…

You can see the original comment by going to your settings page (click on your user name in the upper right hand corner of the screen) and set "Showdead" to "Yes". You really ought to read it. If you're going to support the suppression of a point of view you really should know what it is you are trying to suppress. Supporting censorship of things you haven't read based on "context" generally does not lead to good out…

You're being very dramatic. As you point out, the comment hasn't even been deleted. I simply choose not to read it, and the community nicely made that choice very easy for me.

Perhaps you believe I shouldn't have that choice, or it should come at a higher price. That's fine, you're entitled to your opinion. Just realize that what seems to you like a novel and reasoned argument could be, to someone closer, just one more voice in a screaming mob of rejection. And remember that when you shout back at a mob, you join it.

So I'm not going to tell you you have to be on my side here. But you could at least believe what I've already told you about my experience: it may be useful for you to read more about folks' opinions on my life, but not for me. Communities that respect that are going to see more of my participation, and those that don't will wonder why they have such a diversity problem.

Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#169

Post by lisper »

threebees wrote: post #168
lisper wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see the original comment by going to your settings page (click on your user name in the upper right hand corner of the screen) and set "Showdead" to "Yes". You really ought to read it. If you're going to support the suppression of a point of view you really should know what it is you are trying to suppress. Supporting censorship of things you haven't read based on "context" generally does not lead to good out…

You're being very dramatic. As you point out, the comment hasn't even been deleted. I simply choose not to read it, and the community nicely made that choice very easy for me. Perhaps you believe I shouldn't have that choice, or it should come at a higher price. That's fine, you're entitled to your opinion. Just realize that what seems to you like a novel and reasoned argument could be, to someone closer, just one mo…

> You're being very dramatic

Sorry about that. I'm trying very hard to be sober about this.

> the comment hasn't even been deleted

It was. I undeleted it.

> Perhaps you believe I shouldn't have that choice

Of course you should have that choice. But you wrote:

"So thank you, community, for saying that if someone wants to make any more "cogent claims" about the validity of my existence, they're welcome to do so, elsewhere."

That sounded to me like an oblique endorsement of censorship, and that's what I was objecting to.

> So I'm not going to tell you you have to be on my side here

Not knowing anything about you besides what you've written in this thread it's hard for me to know what your side actually is. (One of the things I've learned after years on the Internet is to never try to extrapolate someone's beliefs beyond what they actually say.) But I'm pretty sure I'm more on your side than you think. Please note that the reason I undeleted wtbob's comment was so that I could rebut it. I'm sorry if that caused you personal pain. But I really believe that the best way to fight bad ideas is to expose them to the light of reason.

Re: Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

#170

Post by EdHominem »

diyorgasms wrote: post #159
brobinson wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Saying you love or hate something to show off what a virtuous person you are, instead of actually trying to fix the problem."

Funny enough, the phrase "virtue signaling" itself acts as "virtue signaling", as at this point it is used almost exclusively by members of online communities who are opposed to political correctness and are often outwardly intolerant of transpeople. I don't mean to imply anything about the GP, just to observe a particular irony around that phrase.

> Opposed to political correctness and intolerant of transpeople.

Wow, stereotype those who disagree with you much?

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