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A new moralism is gripping the literary world

persuasion.community

241–250 of 293 posts

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#242
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s like asking “why is it racist to have an opinion?” It’s not. Its TE (or racist, or whatever) to have a TE (or racist, or whatever) opinion.

Is it in some absolute sense for all time? Or is it only ‘TE’ within the theoretical framework of Trans activists?

Excluding people is exclusionary. It doesn't mean justified or unjustified.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#244
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some trans men and non binary people. Those are biological females (women). >And many women don't menstruate. What is your point here?

Woman most commonly refers to gender. Very few people know the sex of most people they meet. The point is women isn't a synonym for people who menstruate even if you ignore trans people. What sort of answer to your original question did you expect?

> Very few people know the sex of most people they meet.

This is false.

> The point is women isn't a synonym for people who menstruate even if you ignore trans people.

It was until it was high jacked.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#245

Ironically, this post is flagged.

It's been removed from the front page too. Yep, it's messed up.

I'm a bit of an HN neophyte, having recently left FB for a place where thoughtful discussion was still welcome. I'm not being rhetorical when I ask, what is going on? Are some highly-rated users just abusing their power to flag, or is this something else? Is HN on its way to being more concerned with virtue signaling than open discussion?

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#246
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is it considered anti-trans speech, when a villain is "a male serial killer known to have worn a dress"? Surely, in many other books the serial killer is a straight male. Why are their authors not accused of anti-heterosexual speech? Are we promoting some sort of discrimination against straight males? Are they the only ones allowed to be evil?

If you're really curious about this matter, film analysis YouTuber Lindsay Ellis has an excellent video on the history of depictions of trans people (primarily in film) and puts Rowling's work into that context, tracing it back to Psycho and beyond. https://youtu.be/cHTMidTLO60 Basically, there's a long and sordid history of the Cross Dressing Predator as a literary and film trope and this has been used against trans…

So it's not what she did, it's what other people did before her. Now, finally, we can call someone to task for it. Ah, this has so many parallels now with so many other things going on.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#247

What's actually happening: society is justifiably deciding that some things that used to pass without notice, because people were very racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever, are now recognisably and irreparably awful. And we should probably stop doing them because they are hurting people. Both directly, by being the constant micro-aggression wallpaper of marginalised lives, and indirectly, by sustaining a cultur…

> I don't expect HN to understand this. But it is fundamentally different from the various tirades of the Moral Majority and friends. This is not an attempt to impose a religious set of restraints. This is an attempt to make the world kinder and less awful. And it is a good thing.

But the Moral Majority was also an attempt to make the world kinder and less awful. They just had different definitions of "kinder" and "awful" than you do.

If you don't like having it done to you (or viewpoints you like), then don't do it to others.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to figure out why this topic in particular triggers exceptionally passionate discussion on HN. I have some pet theories, but they're really speculative, and I'm not very confident in them.

There's passion, and then there's dirty fighting. Name calling and dismissiveness. A veritable army of straw men. Unwillingness to even attempt to understand an opposing viewpoint. Let's call that what it is. It ain't "passion."

I don't disagree. But isn't calling anybody who disagrees even slightly with you a racist, or a bigot, or a xenophobe, or a hate monger, or any of a thousand other things, the very height of "unwillingness to even attempt to understand an opposing viewpoint." I don't hear critics of CRT and wokism calling their opponents the most reprehensible and odious names they can imagine. I see plenty of CRT advocates doing just that. Why is this okay?

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#249
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right about Gurba, but you're dead wrong if you're trying to imply that the criticism of even just that book (to say nothing of the others mentioned in the article) was based only on the grounds of 'bad writing'. From the article: “I was sure I was the wrong person to review this book,” Groff wrote, noting that neither she nor the author were Mexican migrants. “In contemporary literary circles, there is a…

So if I'm a white male, I'm only allowed to write about white males? That means that if I write a book, it will be full of white males. How does that help the oppressed? It just removes them from the dominant narrative entirely. (I mean, maybe it makes books by white males so bland that nobody wants to read them, and so books by white males stop being the dominant narrative...)

Maybe the idea is to stop having white males being given such a strong ownership of the market?

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#250
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some trans men and non binary people. Those are biological females (women). >And many women don't menstruate. What is your point here?

Woman most commonly refers to gender. Very few people know the sex of most people they meet. The point is women isn't a synonym for people who menstruate even if you ignore trans people. What sort of answer to your original question did you expect?

>Woman most commonly refers to gender. Very few people know the sex of most people they meet.

If one would do a general survey, most ordinary people would consider sex and gender the same thing. Most of them would also say that they know the sex of somebody they see for the first time. Which is statistically true, because people whose sex and gender don't match are truly a small minority.

>The point is women isn't a synonym for people who menstruate even if you ignore trans people.

For the pedantic I guess she should have said: women who are in their fertile age without health problems or taking medications which prevent menstruation.

>What sort of answer to your original question did you expect?

A possible medical breakthrough.

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