Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A new moralism is gripping the literary world

persuasion.community

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 293 posts

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#251

Post by nickthemagicman »

jmkb wrote: post #185
nickthemagicman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Black, Asian, or Latin aren't cultures either? The wright brothers, carl benz, charles babbage, invented flight, automobiles, and computers respectively. All very white dudes.

"Black" was a label applied to persons of many different cultures in the context of colonialism and slavery. In some places, such as the USA, Black became a cultural identity because it was a legal one; these people and their offspring were governed by a separate set of laws and only legally allowed to raise families with each other. "Asian" is too broad a term to be much use outside of geography. "Latin" is a little…

I think using skin color as a cultural identity, instead of an actual culture, is a relatively new invention.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#252

Post by orwin »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #226
MikeUt wrote: 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...)

I think you have to read a lot of books to understand what they mean. And i don't think this woke crowd is right btw.

If you're writing fantasy or fiction in anothertime book, be my guest and write about any character (although if it is supposed to be based on history and you're completely off about the culture at the time, i don't want to read your junk, really). If you're writing about a character in modern time, either you do some really good research, or you'll be off, and if your book/movie is bad, the woke crowd will drop on you. I mean, even if "The Wire" or "Treme" was ran today, nobody would drop on it.

And i will take another example for people in the US. Books about the so-called "white trash"/"trailer trash" or who depict people in this population are mostly wrong. Sometime its hilarious, sometime you just stop reading because the book is so bad. For me it was books about Appalachians hillbillies. Since its the american crowd i know the most, i was quite exited to read about them. I've found on good book, one. The rest is complete trash. Honestly if my grandfather or any of his friends found those books, those would burn.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#253

Post by nickthemagicman »

leephillips wrote: post #214
jmkb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Black" was a label applied to persons of many different cultures in the context of colonialism and slavery. In some places, such as the USA, Black became a cultural identity because it was a legal one; these people and their offspring were governed by a separate set of laws and only legally allowed to raise families with each other. "Asian" is too broad a term to be much use outside of geography. "Latin" is a little…

I’m not even sure there is a single “white” culture within the US. I mainly see the idea promoted by people who want to absorb some credit for the accomplishments of others. See some of the other comments here, about computers being invented by “my people”.

Skin color is s an arbitrary physiological trait.

There's no bald people culture.

Or innie bellybutton culture.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#254

Post by zepto »

pseudalopex wrote: post #242
zepto wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Excluding people from a category is just a way of thinking about something.

Trans people exclude CIS people from the category of Trans.

Do we call them CIS exclusionary?

Just saying someone else is exclusionary is meaningless.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#255

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #135
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oscar Wilde has something to say about censorship (and he knew a little bit about being attacked for writing): > There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. In today’s highly polarized and tribal world, books must also be a way to signal virtue and tribe membership.

This also applies to art in general. Marcel Duchamps Fountain was one of my favorite pieces of art because it called out the art world for judging art based on the fact that it was made by a member of the accepted 'art world' but it was a frickin urinal.

I didn't think that was the point. I thought that the point was that, within certain flavors of philosophy, there is no such thing as beauty (that is, beauty has no objective reality), and therefore that anything could be regarded as being art. Duchamps' point was that this urinal was as good as the Mona Lisa; that is, Duchamps really agreed with this viewpoint (if I understand correctly). He got upset when critics called it "pretty", because that meant that they had completely missed the point.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#256

Post by pseudalopex »

nec4b wrote: post #250
pseudalopex wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Guessing right most of the time isn't knowing. And people not knowing how sex and gender differ doesn't change the fact that they rely on gender markers lots and chromosomes never.

People who menstruate is much shorter than your suggestion.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#257

Post by pseudalopex »

zepto wrote: post #254
pseudalopex wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Excluding people from a category is just a way of thinking about something. Trans people exclude CIS people from the category of Trans. Do we call them CIS exclusionary? Just saying someone else is exclusionary is meaningless.

Excluding someone from a domestic violence shelter isn't just a way of thinking about something. Imprisoning people more likely to be raped with people more likely to rape them isn't just a way of thinking about something.

Cis and trans are opposites by definition. They existed long before they were applied to gender.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#258

Post by karaterobot »

h2odragon wrote: post #121

When the right wanted to ban media, a quire reasonable counter argument was "you don't have to buy, or read, the things you don't like". Where's that argument today? Why is anything "problematic" an assault against society as a whole, automatically, as well as whatever underprivileged group its offensive to? Have humans lost the ability to tolerate the knowledge that someone, somewhere, may disagree with them? Or is…

> When the right wanted to ban media, a quire reasonable counter argument was "you don't have to buy, or read, the things you don't like".

I don't actually think the situation is all that different. I think it's still a perfectly reasonable counter-argument, which the other side will ignore, just as it did back then!

This is all a proxy for tribal, cultural warfare. It's never been about the books themselves, their potential for hurting people or anything else. It's about destroying the other side. The books and their authors and their readers are a means to to that end. There's no room for compromise under that framework. It's a ridiculous and unproductive situation.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#259

Post by nec4b »

pseudalopex wrote: post #256
nec4b wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Guessing right most of the time isn't knowing. And people not knowing how sex and gender differ doesn't change the fact that they rely on gender markers lots and chromosomes never. People who menstruate is much shorter than your suggestion.

>Guessing right most of the time isn't knowing. And people not knowing how sex and gender differ doesn't change the fact that they rely on gender markers lots and chromosomes never.

"gender markers" and "chromosomes" are the same thing for 99% of the population. So guessing really is knowing.

> People who menstruate is much shorter than your suggestion.

Women is even shorter and everybody in the whole world understands it.

Re: A new moralism is gripping the literary world

#260

Post by zepto »

pseudalopex wrote: post #257
zepto wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excluding people from a category is just a way of thinking about something. Trans people exclude CIS people from the category of Trans. Do we call them CIS exclusionary? Just saying someone else is exclusionary is meaningless.

Excluding someone from a domestic violence shelter isn't just a way of thinking about something. Imprisoning people more likely to be raped with people more likely to rape them isn't just a way of thinking about something. Cis and trans are opposites by definition. They existed long before they were applied to gender.

> Excluding someone from a domestic violence shelter isn't just a way of thinking about something. Imprisoning people more likely to be raped with people more likely to rape them isn't just a way of thinking about something.

True, but the relevance is not obvious because these aren’t problems caused by so called TERFs.

It’s also not true that censoring JK Rowling is required as part of solving them, either.

> Cis and trans are opposites by definition. They existed long before they were applied to gender.

Does that mean that you think that cisgender women are not in the same category as transgender women?

Post reply on HN