61–70 of 216 posts
To leftist politics, and the "social justice" movement in particular: separate the bullies from the revolutionaries. Shun the bullies; don't let them use your name. Then we'll stop being afraid of the name, and of the revolutionaries.
Funny, that's the exact advice I would give to #GamerGate.
Blanket statements all around, personal attacks, strawmen galore, just-so anecdotes as moral fables, and for what? The kind of petty political polemics inevitably attracted by the topic do nothing to make HN a more interesting or pleasant forum.
To quote the submission guidelines:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Wizards of the Coast posted a story today that featured a transgender character. I thought, and continue to think, it was a shit story. I've no experience with WOTC's writing, and I don't know if shit is the norm for their fluff, but nothing about the story engaged me, and the one 'interesting' piece was heavy handed; Oh, no, a sexist orc is literally a pig to the trans character and then put in his place! For that,…
...Okay. Maybe you could submit that story and post a comment to it, instead of hijacking this story's comments?
I spent about ten years being an "ally" to feminism, to the LGBT community, to minorities, etc. And then my views drifted ever so slightly from the tried and true party lines. One day I said I thought it was wrong that Brandon Eich was forced out of Mozilla, I said I thought it was wrong the way he was treated. Immediately the decade spent arguing for gay rights and marriage equality disappeared and I became a bigot,…
> people pushed out and marginalized in left-wing circles because
> they didn’t use the proper set of social and class signals to
> satisfy the world of intersectional politics.
This definitely happens, but not as some sort of organized strategy by "the left". It happens because "the left" on college campuses is made up of young people who are angry about the racist/sexist/classist/etc culture in which they have grown up, but have not yet learned to be diplomatic with and empathetic to people who are less informed.
The goal isn't for people to avoid certain terms, the goal is for people to not be assholes.
[1] http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-d...
I don't think queer-exclusive spaces should exist, and I'm queer, and extremely left wing. That opinion is unpopular in queer circles. The flak I cop for that is nothing compared to the very real, quantified consequences for women trying to enter tech, or who are already in it. I think we should upvote more articles about that and less articles about this.
Well said. I find the internet social justice movement intensely annoying. They are, to be blunt, assholes. But unfortunately, they're also right more often than not. And dwelling on how disgustingly annoying the online social justice movement is instead of solving its problems is one facet of geek culture that is just somewhat pathetic.
I don't think it's an accident that all three of his examples involve college students. I saw plenty of examples of this type of aggressive ideological policing in various political groups I was involved in when I was college. I have seen exactly zero in nearly twenty years of being involved with and working in left-wing politics after graduation. (Which isn't to say it never happens, I'm sure it does, just that it's…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is easy to beat: just go to the source. If there's a howling white man going on about injustice and how he's going to tell you about the struggles of women of color, First Nations and Imperialism.. ignore that person. Go talk to a (well.. several, actually) woman of color, member of a First Nation or a nation ravaged by European and/or American imperialism. "But what can I do as a white man/white women/generally…
It’s absurd to claim that white men can’t ever under any circumstances have anything to say about the struggles of other people, but there are certainly people who make such a claim. As one example, my father, an anthropologist/historian in his 60s who spent his whole career and life befriending, interviewing, translating, and writing about indigenous rural peasants in southern Mexico, and probably knows as much or m…
I was specifically speaking about people that pontificate about things they have no legitimate claim to have experienced. Being a Latin@ in the United States doesn't legitimize your claim to speak about rural peasants of Mexico (though, if your family has roots there you may have lingering first hand accounts that can color the discussion more than those without).
In fact, historians are one of the people I would consider a source, especially if their words are born from the interactions and studies done from interacting with real people. They make it their life's work to understanding the situation in which people live.
Also, everyone makes mistakes and/or embellishments. I make mistakes. People in their own experiences get caught up in those experiences instead of the truth. Historians get caught up in their own narrative of truthiness instead of truth. Skepticism and an open mind are great tools toward enlightenment.
So, yeah, sometimes white men can be more legitimate than others in their viewpoints. But far too often the voices of the privileged and uninformed drown out the voices of experience and truth. That's the tragedy.