As usual Wired's brand of journalism is skin deep, at best. Any time they report on something I have a bit of expertise in, it's wildly inaccurate.
OP's tale sucks, but does not surprise me.
Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
21–30 of 170 posts
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#22I can't say I'm surprised.
I've read some great stories in the Wired print magazine over the years, but their online presence is typically Gawkeresque.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#23Without a lot of prior context, this seems like a clear-headed rebuttal to an otherwise pretty low ad hominem attack. On a specific note, to characterise someone as sexist because they disagree with someone who happens to be a woman is in my opinion itself one of the most egregious examples of both sexism (for reasons I'll detail) and libel (for the damaging political and social impact of being branded with such a la…
> First, throwing the term 'sexist' around carelessly > undermines genuine claims of sexism. The same goes for rasism. We are at the stage, that merely acknowledging someone's sex or race will earn you these labels. Too bad.
The same goes for rasism.
Well, we're at a stage in our society where you can't truthfully criticize some people because they happen to be members of select groups. Do so and you are accused of some kind of "ism".
As the GP poster indicated, this undermines those truly trying to fight a given "ism".
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
An the same goes for antisemitism. In America, [publicly] write anything critical of the Israeli government and you are labeled an anti-Semite.
To be honest I've seen people complain about this far more often than I've actually seen it happen.
Yes the complaints are more common than the occurrence (I think that's pretty normal, though), but the occurrence isn't uncommon. Back in my reddit days I was accused of anti-semitism merely for saying that creating Israel at that particular location was a mistake. Was that a real person? A false flag troll? Who knows.
I've also read accounts by Jewish people whose family members called them "self-hating Jews" because they criticized Israel.
But these anecdotes are not that meaningful. They do tell us the views of some extremists, but they tell us nothing about the prevalence of that extremism.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#25Without a lot of prior context, this seems like a clear-headed rebuttal to an otherwise pretty low ad hominem attack. On a specific note, to characterise someone as sexist because they disagree with someone who happens to be a woman is in my opinion itself one of the most egregious examples of both sexism (for reasons I'll detail) and libel (for the damaging political and social impact of being branded with such a la…
Do you actually believe that calling someone a sexist (however 'careless' it might be) is an attack on the male gender as a whole? Really? Try swapping sexism with homophobia or racism, and see how ridiculous you sound. (Note: I agree with your first assertion.) First, throwing the term 'racist' around carelessly undermines genuine claims of racism. Second, it attempts to not only target an individual as racist, but…
> Do you actually believe that calling someone a sexist (however 'careless' it might be) is an attack on the male gender as a whole
Keyword being 'often' not 'always', and it's usually particular to the male/female gender issue rather than all majorities/minorities. In particular, if you read the article you'll see that both the critic who claimed sexism and the woman being critiqued throw the term "boy's clubs" about. I've found it's socially quite acceptable to imply assumed male misogyny, but maybe my 'often' should be degraded to 'sometimes'?
> A problem with reverse racism/sexism arguments is that they allow people who are secure in their positions to brush aside the racist/sexist undercurrents of society
Right, which makes it all the more important to ensure that when racism/sexism claims are made, they are made legitimately and not casually, lest they be used as examples to dismiss, or ignore, genuine issues.
> Just because people with axes to grind can use gender as a smear (an inept one, in this case) to paint someone as a sexist, doesn't make it right to imply we as males are somehow being attacked or victimized
This probably comes back to my first point, but look I think the points are orthogonal. We agree that using social issues as a smear tactic is wrong. What I've noticed (and we seem to disagree on) is that at least sometimes (though perhaps limited to the gender case as I talk about above) someone using a social smear tactic will make an appeal to the wider issue (e.g. "x is a horrible sexist, and we all know how bad those boys clubs are") to solicit agreement and rapport, thus strengthening their attack. What I get concerned with is that the implicit acceptance of this wider issue claim tends to paint the majority as collectively guilty of issues which should be identified on an individual basis, which leads to more of the "us vs them" mentality that we're trying to eliminate.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#26Without a lot of prior context, this seems like a clear-headed rebuttal to an otherwise pretty low ad hominem attack. On a specific note, to characterise someone as sexist because they disagree with someone who happens to be a woman is in my opinion itself one of the most egregious examples of both sexism (for reasons I'll detail) and libel (for the damaging political and social impact of being branded with such a la…
> First, throwing the term 'sexist' around carelessly > undermines genuine claims of sexism. The same goes for rasism. We are at the stage, that merely acknowledging someone's sex or race will earn you these labels. Too bad.
I'm a completely uninformed white male, but I'm weary of drawing analogies between sexism and racism. It seems like reductionism, I think they should be tackled separately.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#27[deleted]
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
An the same goes for antisemitism. In America, [publicly] write anything critical of the Israeli government and you are labeled an anti-Semite.
To be honest I've seen people complain about this far more often than I've actually seen it happen.
That's because fear of being labeled is a deterrent from writing anything critical. To argue that this isn't a problem, find examples of people being critical and not being labeled.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#29Without a lot of prior context, this seems like a clear-headed rebuttal to an otherwise pretty low ad hominem attack. On a specific note, to characterise someone as sexist because they disagree with someone who happens to be a woman is in my opinion itself one of the most egregious examples of both sexism (for reasons I'll detail) and libel (for the damaging political and social impact of being branded with such a la…
Do you actually believe that calling someone a sexist (however 'careless' it might be) is an attack on the male gender as a whole? Really? Try swapping sexism with homophobia or racism, and see how ridiculous you sound. (Note: I agree with your first assertion.) First, throwing the term 'racist' around carelessly undermines genuine claims of racism. Second, it attempts to not only target an individual as racist, but…
Point one and the latter part of three make sense to me. Point two should be, "it's an ad hominem attack and intellectually bankrupt." This applies if and only if the target of the term is not actually prejudiced.
I don't think males as a whole are being attacked when one gets called sexist, but I also don't know what you mean by "position in society". For the majority of men in the US that position is that they're more likely to be murdered, arrested, serve relatively longer sentences, receive less money for health care, pay more for insurance, get called to selective service, and die younger. You seem to be presenting it as if they should be embarrassed at how high above everyone else they are.
Re: Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... one might argue that a woman may or may not understand a female target audience better One might argue that women _on average_ may or may not understand a female audience better, but I can't even begin to think how someone wouldn't understand that variations between individual understandings would dwarf any potential divide here.
"May or may not" is the same as "on average, may or may not".
I'm not certain of the exact context since the comment has been deleted, but the impression I gained was that my parent comment suggested tenuously that a person could justify a sexist position taken against an individual due to a statistical bias in the sexes. I was trying to emphasise that this position couldn't be taken logically, not suggesting that "may or may not" was being applied in a non-aggregate fashion.