What's with the label-crazy people?

[Anakin McFly]

I've been seeing more and more of it around. like:

"Bronwyn Davies Glover is a white, cisgendered, female, queer, able bodied anarcho-feminist

like OKAY so you're an uber-privileged person whose only experience of marginalisation is your gender and sexuality, congratulations.

or another:

"I am Quinn Norman Capes-Ivy. I'm your average twentysomething queer and transgender parent, radical feminist, mentalist, cripple, emotionally unstable, arrogant, self-absorbed, narcissist."

and so many more examples that drive me up the wall.

wtf is wrong with people.
and why is it almost always white lesbians who do this crap, srsly. Or just lesbians in general; I've seen the same from lesbian POC, just not as commonly. Also they're usually vegan and pagan and have a degree in the liberal arts and own at least one cat. Whereas I've never seen, say, a black gay man do the same.

I get that some of them do so out of an intent to own up to privilege or something, but when their descriptors includes things like 'white, cisgendered, able-bodied', it comes across much more like them flaunting said privilege in people's faces and driving it in how much more society values them, but how they're being so radical for being able to acknowledge it, and meanwhile dumping in all the ways they're oppressed just so we know how unique and liberal they are, and it severely pisses me off. More often than not it just makes me feel like an inferior, unprogressive human both for not acknowledging my privilege and not being sufficiently proud of my marginalised identities, and not being as enthusiastic about overthrowing the kyriarchy as they are, especially in areas that affect me more than it affects them, if at all.* Like liberal straight cis friends chastising me for not being sufficiently offended by homophobic things or liking Ender's Game too much, and implying that they're so much more progressive and LGBT-affirming than I am with all my internalised homophobia and transphobia, and I should be ashamed of myself and rethink my life.

also, the Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites. YES, WHAT A BRILLIANT IDEA, CREATING A GROUP OF ANTI-RACIST PEOPLE THAT ONLY WHITE PEOPLE CAN JOIN

...sometimes, people like this highly tempt me to turn conservative and rediscover the merits of young earth creationism or something, just to get away from them.

*@Cine - back on the hadesmedia boards I saw that thread between you and Troy about how you still intended to tell black people when they were being racist against black people. Don't do that. It'll just make them feel worse by showing them how white people are better than they are even at not being racist, and it feels extremely shitty to be on the receiving end of that. Leave it to other black people to tell them, if necessary. That way, it'll be criticism free of that implied racial superiority and the idea that you know better, no matter how much you don't mean to. A white person telling a black person they're being racist against black people is always going to be inherently racist, no matter how much you try otherwise or how good a human you are, just like a man telling a woman she's being misogynist is inherently misogynist, or a straight person telling a gay person they're being homophobic is inherently homophobic.

[Boomer]

When I see descriptive labels like that, they're often prefacing some blog or article, or part of some personal social media page. I find most times the author does it to provide a lens through which their work should be read in order to provide perspective to the reader.

Also, I'm not sure if I completely agree with not calling out bigotry/misogyny/homophobia when it manifests itself regardless of its source. In my experience silence lends power to such views.

[Anakin McFly]

I feel like it's something that can be mentioned on a case-by-case basis where it's directly relevant to the article etc they're writing on; if for instance they're posting an article about how gardening is awesome, things like their mental health status shouldn't be relevant, unless perhaps gardening helped them to cope with depression or something. But there's something about it that's very characteristic of a particular radical/rebellious subculture, where they're trying so hard to be non-conforming and different that they end up being all the same. Everyone has almost identical political beliefs and interests and stances on controversial topics, and there's something about that which bothers me a lot; it reaches a point where people don't individually think through why they believe things, but just toe the party line on everything until they end up not that different from the very people they're trying to be different from. I have a friend who refers to them as the Borg.

Also, I'm not sure if I completely agree with not calling out bigotry/misogyny/homophobia when it manifests itself regardless of its source. In my experience silence lends power to such views.

I think it's a cost-benefit thing: the act of calling it out may be good, but doing so inevitably carries a message of "I know better than you about your own oppression", and feels unavoidably condescending regardless of intention. But I guess the effect can be mollified - e.g. if a female author writes an article about why she hates feminism, there's a difference between going "This article is misogynist" with a gender-neutral handle vs "I'm a man and I find this article misogynist". The former doesn't carry that same patronising tone. Or another approach would be to write a separate post addressing the very points that article made, but without making direct mention to it or the author, and better still if it's targetted at men. That way you could help to educate people who read it, but without the implication that as a man you know more about feminism than a particular woman does.

[Cinemachinery]

Many of my friends in the neo-pagan community identify in those terms.

It can be laborious, I admit.

[Anakin McFly]

It's the particular combination of all those things that bugs me. Like, what is it about being lesbian that makes one also likely to be pagan (vs, say, atheist) and really into organic food and doing feminist critiques of Doctor Who (vs, say, feminist critiques of Star Wars)? There's no logical connection between those things, and makes a lot of it seem to be just peer pressure stripping people of their individuality, which is all the worse and hypocritical in a subculture that prides itself on individuality.

Or maybe I'm just jealous because all my life I've never found any community where I fit in.

@Boomer - on further thought, I think it's still possible for a white person to criticise a black person's racism etc in a way that's not condescending - namely, make it about them, not about you. So it's a matter of not going, "You said something mean about black people and that offends me because I find racism offensive", but rather going, "don't you think that might be racist?" or pointing out things in that person's life that might contradict what they're saying. That way the point is still made, but in a way that doesn't position you as being morally superior or more aware.

[Islandmur]

More often than not it just makes me feel like an inferior, unprogressive human both for not acknowledging my privilege and not being sufficiently proud of my marginalised identities, and not being as enthusiastic about overthrowing the kyriarchy as they are, especially in areas that affect me more than it affects them, if at all.*

I wonder why you so often link your sense of self worth to others? Too many things seem to affect you that way, and that worries me. You're sweet and you're intelligent I would like for you to be able to get some distance from such things.


As to the topic at hand, such descriptions actually make me think those making them have very low self esteem hence the need to list all of their little labels to draw attention.

[phe_de]

I am reminded of the Hadesmedia Forum, when there was a discussion about a Jezebel article about Saartje Baartman. The author of the article was white, and some people thought that she was therefore unqualified to write about a black woman.
I don't know if you participated in the discussion; but there was also the topic of "personal experience" mentioned, and the opinion that an article written by someone who had "personal experience" of growing up as a black person would be different than an article written by someone who wasn't.

Maybe this urge to label persons stems from wanting to check the "personal experience" of the person; trying to make a quick judgement whether their opinion should be considered.

In my opinion this is lazy thinking.
First, different people with identical labels regarding skin color, gender, sexual orientation can still have had completely different experiences in their lives.
Second, whether arguments are sound or not depends on the arguments, not on the people who make them. Believing otherwise is a form of ad hominem fallacy, in my opinion.

[Cassius Clay]

Regarding the topic of privileged people talking down to oppressed people that defend the status quo. I tried to point out that the oppressed are coming from a completely different place that privileged cannot appreciate, and therefore have no business mocking them. A lot of the time, that place is self-preservation. It's kind of a "if you can't beat them, join them" mentality...or, at least, don't fight back so you don't make it worse for yourselves. To use a crude, drastic example: At the start of black slavery in America, black slaves had a relative amount of freedom. They could maintain family and community to some extent. Then there were a series of slave revolts, which the powers then used as justification to strip blacks of whatever little freedoms they had...codifying black inhumanity into official law little by little. Many slaves were naturally against slave revolts because they knew it would make things more difficult for them when the revolts would eventually fail. That, crudely stated, is the basic, general sentiment behind an oppressed person defending the status quo. Imagine some white abolitionist mocking slaves that resisted revolution...saying "ha! you cowards!"...how obscene that is. That is basically what is going on when a privileged person, from the comfort of their privilige, criticises an oppressed person defending the status quo. It's horrendous. When Bryce was saying that Tyson needs to represent the black community better, and not give racist conservatives excuses to be more racist, as wrongheaded as that position may seem, that is where he was coming from...and I could see it plainly. He's black, and he happens to think Tyson is making things more difficult for black people like him. A white person has no business...no moral ground criticizing that because they are not in that position. And to mock that is so cluelessly offensive and frankly "comfy" . A black person, on the other hand, is in the same position...so therefore has the ground to criticize or mock.

Regarding the relevance of personal experience, anyone here that is still trying to downplay the importance of personal experience, in converstion about oppression, is being intentionally obtuse at this point. "A sound argument is a sound argument" sounds nice in the theoretical vacuum you insist on having these conversations in(which, in my opinion, is "lazy thinking"), but not in the real world. Privilege informs a person's point-of-view...and we know that pov is typically shaped to defend an oppressive status quo. People's agendas and lack of experience...their position in the power structure...have to be taken into consideration. There's nothing lazy about that.

And there are a lot of white people with critical opinions on oppression that are not simply dismissed because they are white (like Chomsky). It is not as black and white as you frame it...nor is it that difficult to understand. Stop the bullshit.

[sikax]

Well said.

[Cassius Clay]

Thx

[Anakin McFly]

What Cassius said.

First, different people with identical labels regarding skin color, gender, sexual orientation can still have had completely different experiences in their lives.

Yes, but those experiences will never include, say, a white person knowing what it's like to be black - and those are the experiences that are relevant in that particular discussion.

Second, whether arguments are sound or not depends on the arguments, not on the people who make them. Believing otherwise is a form of ad hominem fallacy, in my opinion.

I disagree. To fulfill Godwin's Law, imagine Hitler making an argument about why Jews are inferior, vs a Jewish person making that exact same argument while a Nazi points a gun at his head. The context always matters; in the latter situation, there is obviously an element of self-defense at play, and no matter how sound the argument, the circumstances of the speaker should affect how it's received.

I wonder why you so often link your sense of self worth to others? Too many things seem to affect you that way, and that worries me. You're sweet and you're intelligent I would like for you to be able to get some distance from such things.

<3 thanks. That means a lot to me. I struggle with a chronic desire for external validation which probably stems from a lack of self-acceptance, but knowing that doesn't always help. But I'm doing a lot better these days, and things have overall been moving in an upward direction over the past few years.

I hope to move back to NYC in future. I felt a lot freer there. In NYC I had to deal with low-level racism, but the palpable lack of homophobia and transphobia more than made up for it; it was like leaving an suffocating atmosphere I wasn't even aware of, given how insidiously subtle that stuff can be over here, and we're already the most LGBT-friendly country in the region. >_> Muslim countries north and south. One of them is currently trying to make it legal to stone gay people to death. One of my gay friends moved here from there and thinks that Singapore is a magical haven of acceptance. We don't do physical violence here; there's just that pervasive psychological messaging that LGBT people are less than human.

Plus the constant emphasis on building healthy heterosexual nuclear families, with all the government cash and other benefits they receive (wikipedia: "By having two children, a middle-income Singaporean household may receive various incentives which are equivalent to S$166,000"), because they're trying to raise the birth rate. Unmarried people can't buy subsidised housing until we hit 35 (which equates to any housing, really, since property prices here are in the millions), so all the younger gay people I know have to still stay with their parents, and are usually not out to them just in case they get disowned and become homeless. The government has been trying out new ways to make life harder for single people, hoping it will pressure us into getting heterosexually married and spawning kids, with the implied condemnation of those who can't or don't want to - like we don't count, don't exist, and nobody cares about our happiness - and sometimes all of this gets draining. also, I just realised that Valentine's Day is coming up. /o\ huh, so that explains why it's been getting more intense. Posters of happy straight couples everywhere, and contests, and surveys on how you plan to spend your day with your loved one, and discounts on gifts for him and her, and I want to crawl into a hole somewhere until it's over.

[Dr_Liszt]

Can't you adopt?

[Anakin McFly]

Gay couples can't adopt; my ability to do so is questionable, because I'm still legally female, but at some point I'd probably have to go through interviews and stuff and I don't think that would go well. Also, single or unmarried parents aren't eligible for all the marriage/housing benefits and are treated as singles.

[Anakin McFly]

I'LL BE BETTER WHEN VALENTINE'S IS OVER, I PROMISE

[Boomer]

Ugh, Valentine's day is the worst holiday ever.

[Dr_Liszt]

Gay couples can't adopt; my ability to do so is questionable, because I'm still legally female, but at some point I'd probably have to go through interviews and stuff and I don't think that would go well. Also, single or unmarried parents aren't eligible for all the marriage/housing benefits and are treated as singles.

Well I thought unmarried parents could have some benefits, mainly because of the kids. Wouldn't you like to move to some country where they value individuality more?

[Anakin McFly]

Ugh, Valentine's day is the worst holiday ever.

Singles Awareness Day!

I'm not sure on the details, but I know that for instance single parents can't buy subsidised housing, because those are only for married people. Ok, googled it - they do get quite a lot of child-related benefits, but not the full range of it: "Single mothers are not eligible for two parenting benefit schemes - the Working Mother's Child Relief and the Foreign Maid Levy Relief - as they are intended "to support married women who remain in the workforce and raise their children within the context of marriage""

Wouldn't you like to move to some country where they value individuality more?

Eventually, yes. Though the food here is really good. We've also got one of the lowest crime rates, so I definitely feel a lot physically safer here; and I have my friends whom I don't want to leave. and my family, and my family's home theatre system. and we're perhaps the cleanest country in the world, and one of the most efficient. argh there are a lot of things I do love about my country despite the things that suck. I plan to eventually come back to Singapore when my parents get older, so I can be there for them (unless they move too - which they have considered) but in the meantime I'd like to get out for a few years.

...the food though. It's always the main thing I miss whenever I'm overseas for long stretches of time.

[Dr_Liszt]

You can try moving to the UK or Italy with me. If we get to the U.K I'll cook but if we go to Italy, who cares, there's good food everywhere there. I'm not sure about the crime rates though, but anywhere but my country is bound to be better in that regard.

[Anakin McFly]

Italian food is good.

http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-ne ... y-20140306

So there's that... I have a female friend who would go watch football matches in bars and then cycle home alone at 2 or 3 am in the morning, and nothing ever happened. Whereas that would be highly dangerous in the US, or almost anywhere else really.

Why can't there be an awesome country where everything is great.

[Dr_Liszt]

Because countries are run by people and people suck. Maybe we need a country run by puppies, that would honestly be better.

[Anakin McFly]

YES. puppies.

I realise that if I stay here, I can know with high certainty that I'll be safe: I'll have a home, enough to eat, financial security at least while my parents are around, friends I can depend on, and likely won't get murdered; which is more than the majority of humans can say. But it's the psychological toll that I'm not sure of.

[Dr_Liszt]

I want out mostly because of the psychological toll. I know the culture or I don't know what it is exactly but it has impact my mental health really negatively. It's mostly the double morality which I am not able to handle well and I feel like I have down syndrome compared to the rest of my population. (not trying to say anything negative about down syndrome, only those people have a limited perception on what malice is, they are very simple, and I am very simple.)

Also there's the part that that I am quite likely to get murdered, or sexual assaulted, and if I want a partner I have to accept the very likely possibility he will be sexist.

[Anakin McFly]

That sucks. :( What kind of opportunities might you have to leave? Or is it difficult?

Go to UK or Italy! (or you could move here. which will at least greatly lessen the threat of physical harm.)

I've been thinking about Sweden. It sounds like a nice place.

[Dr_Liszt]

I thought about Sweden too. But I don't know if I would fit in in a place where everyone is too blonde and kind of racist. You would probably do better there than me considering I've heard stories about Latinos being treated like shit over there. And they were blonde. So imagine myself that looks kind of interracial.

Besides I've heard stories about Chileans moving there and falling into depression because the sun is non existent. Im already a depressed person and I have sun. The UK doesn't have sun either but at least is more multicultural. And I guess whitey too... Whatever.

[Whitey]

if I want a partner I have to accept the very likely possibility he will be sexist.

What makes you think that will change over here......bitch.

[Ptolemy_Banana]

Identity politics has turned into an arms-race. It's important to let people know just how many non-privileged communities you belong to.

[phe_de]

Regarding the relevance of personal experience, anyone here that is still trying to downplay the importance of personal experience, in converstion about oppression, is being intentionally obtuse at this point. "A sound argument is a sound argument" sounds nice in the theoretical vacuum you insist on having these conversations in(which, in my opinion, is "lazy thinking"), but not in the real world. Privilege informs a person's point-of-view...and we know that pov is typically shaped to defend an oppressive status quo. People's agendas and lack of experience...their position in the power structure...have to be taken into consideration. There's nothing lazy about that.

And there are a lot of white people with critical opinions on oppression that are not simply dismissed because they are white (like Chomsky). It is not as black and white as you frame it...nor is it that difficult to understand. Stop the bullshit.

Again: A sound argument is a sound argument. Regardless of who makes it.
But if the argument clashes with reality, then it is not sound. And this clash with reality can be shown through personal experience.
So personal experience is of course important in evaluating the soundness of an argument.

What I meant with "lazy thinking" is the following.
Let's assume we have a group or class of people who identify as a group. Let's gall this group G.
Now let's assume we have a person who is not a member of G. Let's call this person X.
X makes a statement about G, or maybe a member of G.
Let's now take two people, let's call them A and B, who are members of G, who listen to X, and then disagree.
A says: X's argument is fallacious. It clashes with the following facts I experience in reality. Therefore I disagree with X.
B says: X is not a member of G, so they can't possibly know what they're talking about. Therefore I don't have to examine X's argument to know that I disagree with X.

In my opinion B is a lazy thinker.
The argument of X may be fallacious; but this has to be evaluated by placing the argument against reality; not by checking X's background. Maybe X would make a different argument if X was a member of G; but we can't know that.

[phe_de]

Second, whether arguments are sound or not depends on the arguments, not on the people who make them. Believing otherwise is a form of ad hominem fallacy, in my opinion.

I disagree. To fulfill Godwin's Law, imagine Hitler making an argument about why Jews are inferior, vs a Jewish person making that exact same argument while a Nazi points a gun at his head. The context always matters; in the latter situation, there is obviously an element of self-defense at play, and no matter how sound the argument, the circumstances of the speaker should affect how it's received.

The argument that Jews are inferior is not a sound argument in my opinion.
And it doesn't matter if Hitler says it or anyone else. If they can't back it up, then it's not a sound argument.
And being forced to support an unsound argument does not strengthen it. Quite the opposite. Because if it was a sound argument, there would be no need for the gun at the head.

[Anakin McFly]

@phe - I think it's more about not having all the facts if you're not part of the group, such that any argument you make might appear like a sound argument but not be; and due to that similar lack of knowledge among an audience, they might also think it's a sound argument even though it's not. So, saying that if you're not part of this group you can't know what you're talking about is just that - by definition (barring exceptional cases) you *can't* have all the information, because you lack that first-hand experience - you're thus working with an incomplete picture to begin with.

At least, that's been my experience when people who aren't part of a marginalised group make arguments about it- their argument appears sound on the surface, but that's because they lack information about being part of that group that would otherwise affect or even contradict the basis of that argument. And the people they speak to often do not know this.

@Liszt - that sucks. :/ I keep hearing about how Sweden is one of the happiest countries, and the most liberal especially when it comes to feminism and LGBT stuff - also, it's responsible for the magical thing that is IKEA - but I'd wondered about the racism since I've heard it's common in Nordic countries. I won't mind darkness though! Darkness makes me happy, idk. But generally speaking I don't get as personally affected by racism as other isms, since I grew up as part of a racial majority with a kind of Asian supremacy thing going on in my country. So I have a pretty healthy racial self esteem and react to people being racist against me in the same way I react to people insisting that Jesus spoke English- i.e. it's annoying and might make me angry, especially if it inconveniences me, but they're obviously being stupid and I don't have to take them seriously. It doesn't make me spiral into a pit of depression and self-loathing the way transphobia might, for instance.

[Dr_Liszt]

I'm part of the dominant class too but racism against Asians is different considering people tend to equate you as hard workers/intelligent/good at math people. So there's that! Unlike my people who have all these negative things attached to them. Besides I've always been kind of an outsider over here, my looks don't help since I tend to stand out compared to the average population. I'm quite tall and too fair skinned for my country, besides my features are quite soft and my frame is slim. I get teased by my looks a LOT over here. Aels complains about catcalling in the street, I experience bullying. So moving to a place where I, again, am the dot in a world full of stripes is not that appealing.

I've never experienced racism in the U.S or by other people from other parts in the world. People usually complain about mistreatment in the U.S and people from the Southern Cone, but the people over there have never treated me differently apart from the "Is there Macdonalds over there?" And Argentinians and Chileans have always been cool and talkative with me. But I do worry about having the system against me in that regard, which is why Italy sounds more appealing in that topic. Italy might be the one place on earth I might manage to almost blend in as a normal person. Seriously being a mongrel is the worst!

I do think I will take the lack of sun negatively, mainly because I love water and going to the beach. And not being able to swim in the sea will be a blow for me. But my skin is sensitive to the sun as well, I get sunburned even on cloudy days so I might develop skin cancer by staying here, so maybe there's that.

[phe_de]

@phe - I think it's more about not having all the facts if you're not part of the group, such that any argument you make might appear like a sound argument but not be; and due to that similar lack of knowledge among an audience, they might also think it's a sound argument even though it's not. So, saying that if you're not part of this group you can't know what you're talking about is just that - by definition (barring exceptional cases) you *can't* have all the information, because you lack that first-hand experience - you're thus working with an incomplete picture to begin with.

At least, that's been my experience when people who aren't part of a marginalised group make arguments about it- their argument appears sound on the surface, but that's because they lack information about being part of that group that would otherwise affect or even contradict the basis of that argument. And the people they speak to often do not know this.

This sounds good on the surface. But on the other hand... What if a person who is a member of a marginalized group makes a similar argument?
Then we could have lazy thinkers who accuse them of being a token member who tries not to offend those in power; fit in with the cool kids, so to speak.
As Cassius Clay said: It's kind of a "if you can't beat them, join them" mentality...or, at least, don't fight back so you don't make it worse for yourselves.

So no matter whether a person who makes an argument about a group is a member of that group or not; lazy thinkers will always find an excuse to dismiss them with ad hominems.

That's why I said: Focus on the arguments. If an argument is fallacious because the person making it does not consider all the facts, then dismiss the argument based on that. That's how productive discourse works.

[Anakin McFly]

@Liszt - I hope you make it to Italy, then. :)

What if a person who is a member of a marginalized group makes a similar argument?

Then they themselves will have to bear the cost of harmful arguments, which is key.

If it's a woman arguing that women belong in the kitchen, disagreeing with her would actually help her, whereas if you agree with her, she's just shooting herself in the foot. But if it's a man arguing the same thing, people agreeing with him would hurt women, and leave him unscathed, while disagreeing with him wouldn't make much of a difference unless there are women listening in who appreciate the support. Either way, there's a greater chance for harm to be done, and that's usually the kind of example where all this applies - non-marginalised people talking about stuff that doesn't directly affect them, but where their opinions have the potential to hurt people who are not them.

Sure, they also have the potential to help - which can be used as a litmus test. If you're not part of marginalised group X and you have an argument which you think is for their benefit, then sure, make it. However, if most people in group X happen to disagree with you, then there's a better chance that they know something you don't, rather than you being more insightful than all of them, and it would be a better idea not to say anything - or perhaps ask them why they hold that opinion.

Then we could have lazy thinkers who accuse them of being a token member who tries not to offend those in power; fit in with the cool kids, so to speak.

Well, in some cases that is true, and it's not necessarily lazy thinking - they are trying not to offend those in power. It's only lazy thinking when that's your automatic response without trying to see if it's relevant in this case - for instance they might believe it due to brainwashing, or self-defense, rather than trying to suck up to powerful people, or they might be looking at things from a different angle.

If an argument is fallacious because the person making it does not consider all the facts, then dismiss the argument based on that.

Yep - but the problem is that the audience might likewise be lacking the same facts, and thus consider it a valid argument when it's not. Which happens unfortunately often. :/ e.g. straight people making good, logical arguments in favour of ex-gay therapy but which all rest on the assumption that being gay is a life-ruining choice, which a scary number of people still believe is true and thus find those arguments legitimate and use them to ruin more gay people's lives.