[HN Gopher] It Is Obscene: A True Reflection in Three Parts
___________________________________________________________________
It Is Obscene: A True Reflection in Three Parts
Author : wellpast
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-06-16 13:58 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chimamanda.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chimamanda.com)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Let's not bring one side of a social media dispute that has
| nothing to do with tech to HN, please.
| beaner wrote:
| If you read the essay, the anecdote is just an anchor for some
| lucid thoughts on today's culture and how people treat each
| other on and off the internet. It's worth a read.
| throwkeep wrote:
| It does have to do with tech. Social media, and Twitter in
| particular, enables and encourages the behavior the author is
| talking about.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Please don 't complain that a submission is inappropriate.
| If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. [...] If you flag,
| please don't also comment that you did._
|
| (From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
| Joeboy wrote:
| The most glaring question this raises for me is, why is somebody
| allowed to say something like this on twitter?
|
| > I trust that there are other people who will pick up machetes
| to protect us from the harm transphobes like Adichie & Rowling
| seek to perpetuate.
|
| https://twitter.com/azemezi/status/1346268453221658624
|
| I mean, I think I'm not generally that pro-censorship, but I'd
| expect it to be pretty uncontroversial that that crosses the
| line.
| jolux wrote:
| This doesn't seem plainly like a request to attack people, if
| that's what you mean? The language used suggests defending from
| harm caused by people, not attacking the people themselves.
| People who tweet things like this often believe that
| celebrities being publicly bigoted (assume that they believe
| this, even if you don't) enables physically violent bigotry
| from other people (non-celebrities) through elite consensus. In
| that view, I think this tweet is more understandable, though
| it's still not something I would say.
| leephillips wrote:
| I don't understand a single word of what you wrote. How does
| one defend against naughty words using a _machete_ , unless
| the machete is wielded against the speaker of the heresy?
| jolux wrote:
| I'm not sure what the person intended, but in my experience
| it's not against the words directly, but against the
| violence that trans people face, which the tweeter likely
| sees as perpetuated by elite support of transphobia.
| leephillips wrote:
| So you are saying that Ms. Adichie is violent, that she
| chases transsexuals down the street, and that people need
| to pick up machetes in self defense?
| jolux wrote:
| No. Not in the least.
|
| The argument is that normal people (not Adichie, not
| celebrities) see the bigotry of celebrities in the media,
| and see it as justifying their own bigotry. Some of those
| non-celebrities might be violent.
| leephillips wrote:
| But Ms. Adichie says that she was telling people to pick
| up machetes and attack _her_. Is she lying?
| jolux wrote:
| I think she misunderstood what the person was saying,
| which is understandable because at minimum it was poorly
| phrased and inflammatory, and Adichie already had a
| negative personal history with them. It's possible that
| the person intended to advocate violence against Adichie
| personally, I just find that interpretation less likely
| given the context (" _the harm_ transphobes like Adichie
| & Rowling seek to perpetuate") and my experience with how
| these people talk.
| tomcam wrote:
| This appears to be the tweet you linked to. Is it your
| contention is it censoring it would not be controversial?
|
| > A reminder that several of your favorite cishet African women
| writers share similar opinions on trans people as She Who Must
| Not Be Named
| Joeboy wrote:
| I'm confused. Are you saying the text you quoted is literally
| the text of the tweet I linked to? That is not the case on my
| internet.
|
| Edit: The text I quoted is from the tweet at the end of the
| thread that starts with the text you quoted. For me, the text
| I quoted is what's initially displayed (also a few more words
| I didn't include as they didn't seem relevant).
| dbrueck wrote:
| I want to believe that it's a combination of (a) the sheer
| volume of tweets that makes it impossible to catch all the
| stuff and (b) that there's probably a lot of overlap (at least
| initially) between people who read the tweet and people who
| agreed with it (so a relatively small number of people flagging
| it as a TOS violation).
| Mizza wrote:
| The missing backstory here is that the author _played the game_.
| This is the end state. You play with fire, you get burned.
|
| If you want to use graduate student/CIA-recruitment language,
| reduce individuals down to their demographic components, and rely
| on stereotypes to build a hierarchy of piety, this is what you
| can expect. There is a lot of incentive to play the game, for a
| brief time you can be king of the hill, and have NPR, the BBC,
| Vox and Twitter fawning over you, and maybe get a good book deal
| out of it. However, whenever the slightest crack appears in your
| facade, which it inevitably will, there will be dozens of people
| rushing in to knock you down and take your place. That's what you
| chose.
|
| You don't have to play the game. You can establish yourself as a
| critical, independent thinker and become "uncancelable", because
| your ideas will stand on their own merit. It is not the easiest
| path.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Do you have citations for this backstory you are referring to
| of the author "playing the game"? If you do, I'm genuinely
| interested in what you are referring to. If you don't, you are
| just casting aspersions without providing any info that would
| let someone evaluate your position.
| lucretian wrote:
| adichie is a prominent feminist author. it reads to me as if
| the person you are replying to is sneering at her for that
| reason, framing her feminism as a comparable manipulation
| (aka "the game") and reveling in that.
| Mizza wrote:
| Here's her talking on stage with Hilary Clinton:
| https://pen.org/press-clip/hillary-clinton-and-chimamanda-
| ng... - which I think is the best example of "playing the
| game" as you can get.
|
| As a counter example, you will not find a similar talk with
| Camille Paglia.
| cafard wrote:
| I haven't read the author. Is it necessary to establish
| yourself as a critical, independent thinker to be a novelist?
| Tolstoy's ideas were often silly, but he was a tremendous
| novelist.
|
| As for uncancelable, what does that even mean? That the idle
| and excitable will quit barking at you on Twitter? If it just
| means you won't care, why bother with the establishment bit.
| jolux wrote:
| I really don't like how discussions on issues like this always
| seem to devolve into an argument over the underlying "culture
| war" issues, and I'd like to try and disambiguate this issue and
| others like it as I see them.
|
| I'm a trans woman. Two things can be true here:
|
| 1. Adichie is transphobic.
|
| 2. Whatever the harms of her transphobia, the other person
| referenced in this post behaved egregiously outside of
| professional and personal norms in attacking Adichie, and this
| behavior is not appropriate in any circumstance.
|
| Too often I think people complain about how they are treated on
| social media, or about "ideological orthodoxy," as a proxy for
| defending opinions that they understand to be offensive. But it's
| perfectly reasonable to think both that Adichie's opinions on
| trans people are offensive, and that the offense does not justify
| the aggression she received here.
| pierrebai wrote:
| I'm a man and my neighbor is a man. I don't think we're the
| same. But thinking a born-woman and a trans-woman are different
| is wrong and oppressive? Transphobic is an easy word to flaunt
| to target people who have different opinions. I find it
| unbelieveable that someone could think impossible to make a
| difference while not having any problem with trans people. To
| label people transphobic for having this single opinion is
| itself bigotry.
| konogasa wrote:
| > 1. Adichie is transphobic.
|
| I'm a trans woman too. Can you please explain to me how "trans
| women are women" is transphobic?
|
| I have said "I am a trans woman" many times in my life. Can you
| please explain whether I was being transphobic at those times?
|
| Many thanks.
| xbar wrote:
| Those two things could be simultaneously true.
|
| Are they?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think the point is that I haven't seen anything to imply that
| Adichie is transphobic. This is taken from her Wikipedia page:
|
| > In 2017, Adichie was criticized by some as transphobic,
| initially for saying that "my feeling is trans women are trans
| women."[44][9] Adichie later further clarified her statement,
| writing "that there is a distinction between women born female
| and women who transition, without elevating one or the other,
| which was my point. I have and will continue to stand up for
| the rights of transgender people."
|
| Now granted, there may be more to the story that I am not aware
| of, but stating that there actually are differences between
| "women born female and women who transition" shouldn't be
| considered transphobic, it should be considered acknowledging
| reality.
| leephillips wrote:
| Tautologies are transphobic.
| jolux wrote:
| Basically I think "trans women are trans women, and are in
| some ways different from cis women" in this instance is a
| motte-and-bailey with "we should be allowed to discriminate
| against trans women because they are different." See:
| https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/15/chimamanda-ngozi-
| adich...
| tyleo wrote:
| I see your motte-and-bailey and I raise you a straw man.
|
| I don't think there is much to read into "trans women are
| trans women, and are in some ways different from cis women"
| from this author. I certainly don't read "we should be
| allowed to discriminate against trans women because they
| are different." out of it and thus I'd consider the
| interpretation to be a strawman: its easier to attack the
| author for it but I don't think its what she meant.
|
| I think this gets at her point in the last paragraph, "the
| assumption of good faith is dead." If we interpret what the
| author said as the latter statement we are assuming it was
| said in bad faith.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Okay - you've shown us the motte, but where is the bailey?
|
| Where does Chimamanda advocate for discrimination against
| trans women? Because there is nothing in your source that
| implies that.
|
| Also, that is only a motte in liberal circles. Saying "I
| have and will continue to stand up for the rights of
| transgender people" is not necessarily a no-brainer moral
| stance for the general population.
| arkaniad wrote:
| The bailey is in the othering of trans women as a
| separate class which opens opportunities for
| discrimination by separating them from women-at-large.
| And since we still have binary gender norms to contend
| heavily with in the US and beyond, this ends up playing
| out as bills banning trans women from playing in a league
| in accordance their gender, bathroom bills, etc. [1]
|
| There's a fantastic book about this written by Julia
| Serrano called 'Whipping Girl' [2] that goes over these
| things and more and describes these phenomena as
| 'Transmisogyny' - trans individuals being subject to both
| misogyny and misandry depending on the situation, and
| sometimes both when it's convenient.
|
| [1] - https://freedomforallamericans.org/legislative-
| tracker/anti-...
|
| [2] - https://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-
| Scapegoatin...
| googlryas wrote:
| Why is speaking of "trans women" othering them into a
| separate class, but the same isn't true when speaking
| about "black women" - which is something that is
| celebrated in modern intersectionality theory? Don't
| trans women face unique challenges relating to their
| womanhood - just the same way that black women do?
| arkaniad wrote:
| If you're interested in an intersectional discussion,
| then sure. But too often this framing of 'trans women are
| trans women, not Women' is used in bad faith to open the
| dialog of "What should we do about them in women's spaces
| then, since they aren't?'
| googlryas wrote:
| Isn't it bad faith to assume that someone who says
| something like "I have and will continue to stand up for
| the rights of transgender people" is actually arguing
| against the rights of transgender people without any
| evidence otherwise?
| jolux wrote:
| To be clear, Adichie has said she finds J.K. Rowling's
| opinions on trans people reasonable, so it's not just an
| assumption. There's evidence backing it.
| googlryas wrote:
| She said that Rowling's article was "a perfectly
| reasonable piece", relative to "all the noise" it was
| generating online. Are we talking about Rowling's actual
| words, or what they were morphed into on twitter?
|
| Have you ever characterized something which you don't
| necessarily agree with, but appears genuine and well
| argued, as "reasonable"?
| arkaniad wrote:
| Saying that you support the rights of transgender people
| is great, but it's possible to say that and still get it
| fundamentally wrong so much as to actively harm people.
| So if someone says that but then says "But I have
| concerns about women's safety" now you see how quickly
| trans women become removed from the conversation.
|
| https://juliaserano.medium.com/debunking-trans-women-are-
| not...
| googlryas wrote:
| Chimamanda, as far as I can tell, never argued about
| women's safety, or really anything like that. What I do
| know she said that got pushback was that transgender and
| cisgendered people have different histories and
| experiences. That doesn't seem particularly
| controversial, but then again I am not a twitter justice
| warrior.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I mean, I think what you are saying is the very thing so
| many people have an issue with, that if I try to say
| something that is definitely true, "trans women are trans
| women, and are in some ways different from cis women",
| _automatically implies_ your second statement, "we should
| be allowed to discriminate against trans women because they
| are different." I mean, sure, some people may mean that,
| but one of Adichie's main beefs is that we always assume
| the worst in a very "if you're not with us it every way
| then you're against us", and that given Adichie's other
| actions and support for the LGBT community (no small feat
| in Nigeria) that she is at least somewhat deserving of the
| benefit of the doubt.
|
| Otherwise what you're left with is people feeling that
| their only option to _not_ be considered transphobic is if
| they say "trans women are women and are the same as cis
| women", which gets at the heart of why people are so
| concerned about public discourse today.
| jolux wrote:
| Have you read the Rowling essay? She advocates many
| discriminatory positions in it. Among them, she doesn't
| think trans women should be allowed in women's bathrooms,
| or other "single sex spaces." I don't think everyone who
| agrees with that statement is transphobic, but it's
| become a bit of a shibboleth amongst people who are, as
| it's often posed _against_ the statement "trans women
| are women."
| Udik wrote:
| > she doesn't think trans women should be allowed in
| women's bathrooms, ... a shibboleth amongst people who
| are, as it's often posed against the statement "trans
| women are women.
|
| Because the right to call yourself "trans woman" has been
| widened to the point of including people who didn't
| undergo any gender reassignment surgery or hormone
| therapy. And yes, I don't think that those "trans women"
| are, or should be considered, women. Actually, not even
| "trans".
| konogasa wrote:
| > And yes, I don't think that those "trans women" are, or
| should be considered, women. Actually, not even "trans".
|
| You say this very lightly but it's obvious to me that you
| haven't really considered the consequences.
|
| For example, you say "people who didn't undergo any
| gender reassignment surgery or hormone therapy". But you
| don't seem to consider that those are medical
| interventions. I think if you thought of them in that
| light, you would be a little more thoughtful about
| demanding that people undergo medical interventions for
| any reason, no less as the price of being recognised as
| their claimed, or lived gender.
|
| Such requirements are common. In some countries in Europe
| until very recently transwomen were not allowed to change
| their papers to identify them as women and to declare the
| female names they used everyday unless they could
| demonstrate that they had been rendered surgically
| sterile, by castration. Germany was one such case.
|
| I wonder also if you have a slightly romantic idea of
| surgery and hormone therapy. The truth is that surgery
| doesn't magically transform a man into a woman, no matter
| what some surgeons want us to believe. Some transwomen
| will always look like men, no matter how much they cut
| off and throw away. Others, will look like women without
| having taken any hormones in their entire lives. I know
| that's hard to believe, but it's how it is. The human
| species is only very lightly sexually dimorphic and some
| males can pass for women, and some females for men, with
| very little intervention. In the case of transwomen, for
| many it is enough to remove their beard (by electrolysis
| or photolysis) and take care of their hair, to be
| immediately identified as women by everyone that sees
| them. On the other side, history is full of females who
| cut their hair short, wore pants and lived the rest of
| their lives as men.
|
| But, I know the above is hard to believe so OK. Just
| please try to keep an open mind and remember that you
| don't automatically know everything there is to know
| about transwomen (and transmen).
| arkaniad wrote:
| Transitioning is centered around the needs of each
| individual - many choose not to or are outright unable to
| receive surgery or medical transitioning, yet that
| doesn't make them any less trans.
|
| At the end of the day, it's their decision what to do
| with their body, not yours. All that is asked of you is
| to respect their decisions and treat them with the same
| amount of respect as you'd treat any other non-trans
| individual.
| Udik wrote:
| It's their decision what to do with their bodies,
| absolutely, but then why should everyone be forced to
| accept their view of themselves as an objective fact? I
| don't doubt that in the vast majority of cases their view
| is sincere and sound- but shouldn't this judgement be
| left to those who know them rather than being imposed?
| arkaniad wrote:
| It is an objective fact. Each individual is free to
| express themselves as they see fit. Nobody is responsible
| for proving that they're a -real trans- and we really
| shouldn't be in the business of gatekeeping that anyways,
| because we already did that decades ago and the APA and
| AMA now move in line with WPATH guidelines which are far
| more reasonable.
|
| If we meet in public and you say "Hi, my name is Michael"
| I can only assume that that's objective fact. If I then
| say "You know, you don't really seem like a Michael. I
| think you're more of a Denise based on what I've seen."
| You would be right to take offense for disregarding your
| own right to self expression based on my own
| interpretation of your person from the limited
| information gathered in a first impression.
|
| This is a very similar thing, except by the time someone
| is out as trans you can best believe they've spent years
| agonizing about whether it's even a good idea to do so
| knowing they'll face this kind of a conversation every
| time the topic comes up around people who they aren't
| close with / are not sympathetic.
| dbrueck wrote:
| Meh... what you're describing is rarely where the actual
| conflict is. What about situations where it does affect
| other people (and unfortunately those situations tend to
| be ones where merely articulating your concerns is enough
| to earn you all sorts of labels and hate)?
| ambicapter wrote:
| Can you point out the bailey here? Because otherwise its
| just a motte.
| Udik wrote:
| > Adichie is transphobic
|
| Maybe we can start by defining exactly what it means to be
| "transphobic", so we can decide both:
|
| 1) whether someone is or not transphobic;
|
| 2) how bad it is to be transphobic.
|
| So how do you define "transphobic"?
| leephillips wrote:
| Maybe we can start by growing up and not caring how people
| define the insult of the day, even less whether they spit it
| at us, and less still about whether they are offended by our
| opinions.
| czzr wrote:
| I mean this as a genuine question - do you think it offensive
| to say that "a trans woman is a trans woman?", meaning that
| their life experience is not identical to a cis-woman?
| [deleted]
| draw_down wrote:
| Just shows it's not possible to ever actually say the right thing
| with regard to trans discourse, regardless of how "inclusive" one
| is attempting to be. There is always, always, always an angle of
| attack available.
|
| I'm sorry this happened to her but it's also an object lesson in
| what that discourse ultimately leads to. It's not acceptance.
| NationalPark wrote:
| I am absolutely fascinated that someone can read that entire
| essay and come about with _this_ conclusion. There is so much
| nuance, so many well articulated points that transcend
| politics, and your conclusion is "my side of the culture war
| is correct". It's just fucking sad man.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I'm a trans woman and the fact that saying "the experience of
| a trans woman is not the same as that of a cis woman" can be
| turned into evidence of transphobia, for which one must be
| hung out to dry on social media, is fucking horrific to me.
| There _are_ people for whom it is impossible to say anything
| correct about trans issues if they are looking for someone to
| tar and feather. Or about any other issue. The American Left
| has a terrible tendency to turn into a circular firing squad.
|
| There is a certain style of essentialist thinking that
| Twitter encourages. No apologies will be accepted. You are a
| bad person forever, your transgressions will be screenshotted
| and saved on whatever this era's repository of Drama is (I
| think right now it's Kiwifarms?) to be brought up whenever
| you're seen, let us create outrage around you that we may
| feed upon to boost our own profile, and that Twitter may feed
| upon to keep everyone glued to the news about whatever poor
| bastard is today's Main Character on there and jam more ads
| in front of Engaged Eyeballs.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Circular firing squad is a fantastic (and sadly apt)
| phrase.
| [deleted]
| scythe wrote:
| Why is it that whenever a story involves "followers", you know
| something like this is coming?
|
| > _This person has asked followers to pick up machetes and attack
| me._
|
| Some people have gotten very rich creating a world in which
| unpopular people can now expect to be threatened with machetes.
| jlg23 wrote:
| Others have gotten very rich creating a world in which poor
| pedestrians can now expect to be threatened by SUVs. But what
| exactly was your point with regard to the story?
| [deleted]
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| > Besides, a person who genuinely believes me to be a murderer
| cannot possibly want my name on their book cover, unless of
| course that person is a rank opportunist.
|
| When dealing with voracious liars that gaslight and try to muddy
| the water through verbosity and the cloak of victimhood it's
| really useful to have these kinds of small but immutable points.
| Same thing with people stuck in cults, a small discongruous fact
| that draws a line in the sand makes all the difference for
| cutting out people acting in bad faith.
|
| I had a co-founder develop a cocaine and eventually meth
| addiction (and eventually spent time in jail) and the massive
| amount of content he spewed was undone by a few simple and
| undeniable facts like these.
|
| People, _who shockingly to me_ were able to ignore the linear
| facts and timelines of events that showed causation.. were moved
| by a small inconsistency that lodged in their minds.
|
| I don't know what the implications of this are but I personally
| find it both powerful and disheartening.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Oh, good, HN finds another crown witness confirming their believe
| that most of them are terrible, and that this sugar mommy
| relationship's dirty laundry is somehow relevant to HN, while
| racism or misogyny in the tech sector are regularly flagged as
| off-topic.
| rendang wrote:
| Most of who are terrible?
| leephillips wrote:
| Despite editing your comment to change "sugar daddy" to "sugar
| mommy", it still comes off as a smidgen less than
| breathtakingly full of insight.
| grahamburger wrote:
| For some context, in case, like me, you don't recognize the
| author by name:
|
| > Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie... is a Nigerian writer whose works
| range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. She was
| described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most
| prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young
| anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new
| generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her
| second home, the United States. [1]
|
| From the article (last paragraph) that I think sums it up nicely:
|
| > I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to
| tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because
| they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of
| good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the
| appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now
| angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is
| obscene.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| > What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness.
|
| This behavior just popped up in a conversation recently.
|
| Is there a word for this behavior?
|
| Perhaps "Fake Altruism".
| mooseburger wrote:
| Virtue signaling.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not
| goodness but the appearance of goodness.
|
| Hallelujah!! Can't say enough about how much I agree with this,
| and given that the author is well-known I hope it gets a lot of
| press. One of the most bizarre effects of this in the past ~5
| years is there are now certain words (and actually not even
| certain words, certain _phonemes_ ) that are simply deemed un-
| utterable. Never mind the context, never mind if your sentence
| is actually "<word> is incredibly offensive and should never be
| directed at another person", never mind if you're actually
| _quoting from a legal document_ [1], the actual meaning doesn
| 't matter, intent doesn't matter, all that matters is if the
| sound coming out of your mouth matches the list of forbidden
| sounds. 10 years ago I would have laughed it off if someone had
| suggested we would have gone this collectively nuts.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/nyregion/Rutgers-law-
| scho...
| [deleted]
| leephillips wrote:
| No, certain words and phonemes are _not_ unutterable. Their
| utterance can be used as excuse to hurt you, or they can be
| celebrated, depending on whether you are in the good graces
| of the thuggish management class that has taken over so many
| of our institutions. So if you are Donald McNeil and these
| thugs decide they don't like you, and quote someone else
| using a forbidden word, that can be used to fire you1. The
| fact that other people are allowed to use the same word
| dozens of times in a single article shows that it is not the
| word itself that is prohibited.
|
| [1] https://reason.com/2021/02/06/its-official-linguistic-
| intent...
| nostromo wrote:
| > I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified
| to tweet anything
|
| This is the proper response. I'm not sure why anyone is on
| Twitter. And if you are, you definitely shouldn't be using your
| real name.
|
| The upside is de minimis, and the downside of a misconstrued
| opinion or a bad joke is "your life is basically ruined." Maybe
| not today or tomorrow -- maybe it'll happen 10 years from now
| when the Overton window shifts again.
|
| People _should_ be afraid of these platforms.
| leephillips wrote:
| But if there is danger in a Twitter mob, that mob can savage
| you just as easily if you are not on the platform. It'll just
| take you a little longer to find out about it.
| wsinks wrote:
| But the metaphor still applies. If the mob doesn't
| necessarily know that you exist, can they attack you?
| leephillips wrote:
| Some people on Twitter know about people who aren't on
| Twitter, I've heard.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Interestingly, this empowers people who hold beliefs so
| deviant that they're universally subject to sanction.
|
| They've already paid the reputation tax, and are now free to
| use the technology to its maximum benefit, when in earlier
| times they'd have been outsiders in their community
| struggling to find like minded allies through creepy
| newsletters or pamphlets
| slumdev wrote:
| This would be true if the penalty were only reputation
| damage.
|
| Instead, the penalty is censorship.
| wsinks wrote:
| don't a lot of accounts get more reputation because they
| get banned? i've seen accounts literally have "banned at
| 75k followers" as a badge of honor
| throwaway789256 wrote:
| For those who have not read the piece yet, the starting
| paragraphs of Part 3 are especially good:
|
| > In certain young people today like these two from my writing
| workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-
| blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never
| give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show
| gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness
| that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation
| always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or
| not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional
| intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an
| unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-
| inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at
| all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without
| justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well
| executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate
| space of friendship.
|
| > I find it obscene.
|
| > There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on
| sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate
| on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show
| kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in
| emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its
| expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer
| matter. People who claim to love literature - the messy stories
| of our humanity - but are also monomaniacally obsessed with
| whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who
| demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order
| to remain a member of the chosen puritan class.
|
| We have all met those people.
|
| It reminds me of something that PG said: fanboys become your
| worst haters. That is, it's a small step from intense love to
| intense hate.
|
| He also said somewhere that there is a higher incidence of bad
| actors/sociopaths among founders of non-profits than for-profits
| among the teams he's met.
|
| The way I think about it is: ideology is dual use. The two uses
| are collective good and individual gain. Those are often
| hopelessly entangled, because a good way to get ahead is by
| presenting oneself as selflessly working toward the common good.
| Cue Ayn Rand...
|
| What that means here is we can criticize both Chimananda and her
| critic as "playing the game". It's possible to see their actions
| as selfish or selfless or most likely both at once.
|
| The lesson I draw from Chimananda's story, though, is that people
| who are out to fight dragons (i.e. defeat the forces of evil in
| society) are liable to turn you into their next dragon. The
| revolution eats its own. It happened to Basecamp, too.
|
| That is one reason why startups that want to thrive should not
| hire activists for whom being woke is central to their identity.
| They will outwoke you, too, no matter how woke you thought you
| were.
| leephillips wrote:
| There is some entertainment value in sitting back and watching
| the woke eat itself.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| Yeah. The collateral damage sours it a bit, though.
| kelnos wrote:
| Tried to find out what OP actually said in the interview she
| references, and it seems her point was about nuance, that the
| experiences of a trans woman are not the same as someone who was
| assigned female at birth.[0]
|
| Which... I think should be a "well duh" sort of thing, but of
| course in our outrage-fueled chase-engagement-at-all-costs social
| media environment, that means that we have to twist things to
| assume the OP was actually saying "trans women are not women"
| (when she didn't say that and denies she was implying that). But
| I don't know; I'd never heard of her before this post, so maybe
| she has a history of saying shitty things and this is just the
| latest.[1] Or maybe it's what it looks like on its face, a few
| jealous, opportunistic people trying to smear her.
|
| (I think it's telling that one of these people called out to
| their "followers" to attack OP with machetes. You've lost the
| moral high ground once you do that, if you hadn't already. I
| don't care how pissed you are, direct calls to violence toward
| another person, because of some _words_ , automatically
| invalidates your viewpoint in my book.)
|
| All this stuff just makes me sad and tired. And I know I'm
| privileged that I (being a straight, cis, white man) generally
| don't have to worry about any of this in my daily life. But I
| wish people could just _listen_ to each other, and not
| immediately assume ill intent, or especially manufacture ill
| intent in order to bring someone down and elevate themselves. It
| 's all just so counter-productive, and pushes people away who
| could otherwise be allies. Not saying that there aren't people
| out there who dog-whistle and say bad things just ambiguously
| enough for plausible deniability. But it feels like the default
| is to assume that of everyone who says anything, and that's
| gross.
|
| > _I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified
| to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets
| because they fear they will be attacked by their own._
|
| And all this just reminds me that I still need to get around to
| downloading my FB and Twitter history before deleting it all.
| (I'd really like to close my FB account, but outside of the
| pandemic use it heavily for event invitations. I might close my
| Twitter account, though.)
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/21/chimamanda-
| ngo...
|
| [1] Edit: ugh, seems like she's not great, at the very least:
| https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/11/15/chimamanda-ngozi-adich...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What is not great about saying that "Trans women are trans
| women"? I thought modern feminist theory was about
| intersectionality, and isn't trying to rewrite a trans persons
| history to be equivalent to a cisgendered person's history the
| exact opposite of intersectionality?
| [deleted]
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