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[Already Torn]

Like what ideas?

The racist and insulting ones I guess

 

[Valhelm]

Like what ideas?

The idea that class actually matters, for one.

But this isn't new. The left in the West (and particularly America) has never recovered from the Reagan-Thatcher era.

 

[Oblivion]

I have to say, I'm getting sick and tired of this horseshit idea that left-wing "political correctness" and "SJWs" and the like are equivalent threats to democracy as say, some walking orange turdball wanting to use the power of the state to round up millions of Mexicans.

I sure as hell don't agree with everything someone like Anita Sarkeesian says, but if her videos and the inability to freely use the n-word are the top perils you have to face, well...

 

[Henkka]

I have to say, I'm getting sick and tired of this horseshit idea that left-wing "political correctness" and "SJWs" and the like are equivalent threats to democracy as say, some walking orange turdball wanting to use the power of the state to round up millions of Mexicans.

I sure as hell don't agree with everything someone like Anita Sarkeesian says, but if her videos and the inability to freely use the n-word are the top perils you have to face, well...

I'm not sure where you're seeing them being equivalent. People should be able to talk about these things without someone constantly going "but Trump". Just as you should be able to criticize Trump without someone going "but Hillary".

 

[Trident]

I'm not sure I understand this accusation that authors want to be "free from criticism." I don't think this author, or any I've seen, is arguing that people should be unable to criticize them. Rather they're arguing that the criticism levied against them is wrong, that people should realize it is wrong, and that those people should therefore decide of their own volition not make those criticisms.

 

[Spectone]

As an Australian I would say that the only people whos freedom of speech is impeded by section 18C are racists. Non racists don't have a problem with it at all. Anytime you hear complaints about this section the people complaining are racists. I have never heard a valid complaint about section 18C from non racists.

 

[JesseEwiak]

The idea that class actually matters, for one.

But this isn't new. The left in the West (and particularly America) has never recovered from the Reagan-Thatcher era.

Class matters, but it isn't the only thing that doesn't matter. I'm not going to tell a woman, a gay person, or a person of color should put down caring about things like reproductive rights, gay rights, immigration reform, or police brutality and instead make sure some guys in rural Indiana don't get their jobs shipped to Mexico.

 

[ZackieChan]

I'm not sure where you're seeing them being equivalent. People should be able to talk about these things without someone constantly going "but Trump". Just as you should be able to criticize Trump without someone going "but Hillary".

Yep, and it's used by people to try to shut down criticism. Just because someone thinks two things are bad, doesn't mean they're creating a "false equivalence." It is maddening to read. Happens all the time when people don't like Hilary in election threads.

 

[MHWilliams]

I'm not sure I understand this accusation that authors want to be "free from criticism." I don't think this author, or any I've seen, is arguing that people should be unable to criticize them. Rather they're arguing that the criticism levied against them is wrong, that people should realize it is wrong, and that those people should therefore decide of their own volition not make those criticisms.

What is the criticism levied against this author? Have you looked to see if that criticism is right or wrong?

Let us look.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ente...3a5620-7e9f-11e6-8d13-d7c704ef9fd9_story.html

A self-described “renowned iconoclast,” Shriver said she had been victimized in this way by The Washington Post review of her recent novel, “The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047.” That June 20 review, she said, “groundlessly accused her book of being ‘racist’ because it doesn’t toe a strict Democratic Party line.”

The review, which I wrote, criticized the novel for several failings, including its didacticism and its mirthlessness (but, hey, some good things were said about it, too). I mentioned a couple of offensive racial characterizations — without contesting Shriver’s freedom to write about black and Latino characters. My complaints had nothing to do with cultural appropriation.

This is the review:

This would be refreshing, as dystopias go, if Shriver’s novel wasn’t so burdened with dialogue in which the characters repeatedly explain to each other the reasons for America’s calamitous fall. They’re really lecturing the reader, of course, their main themes being initiative-sapping big government and the frauds perpetuated by the Federal Reserve.

At times, Shriver’s novel reads like the “FoxLiberty-Ultra” version of Gary Shteyngart’s “Super Sad True Love Story,” without the humor, but it more often recalls the libertarian fables of the classic science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein. Further in the future, when active workers are slaves whose labor funds Social Security, one Mandible educates the other in the inevitable depredations of the state: “Government becomes a pricey, clumsy, inefficient mechanism for transferring wealth from people who do something to people who don’t, and from the young to the old — which is the wrong direction.” This analysis, reductionist in its language and its vision, echoes the lessons of Heinlein’s “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” (1966).

On race:

The Mandibles go hungry amid the ruins of an America that hasn’t been made great again, and it’s clear who the culprits are. Becoming bluntly partisan, the novel uses fantasy and name-checks to score points against Florence’s fellow liberals in her time and ours. The immigration amnesty of 2020 is followed by a constitutional amendment that allows for a foreign-born president: a pudgy, lisping Mexican, just one of the novel’s several racist characterizations. The criminally incompetent Fed chairman is named Krugman. Later, some very bad stuff goes down during the Chelsea Clinton administration.

The Mandibles are white. Luella, the single African American in the family, arrives in Brooklyn incontinent and demented. She needs to be physically restrained. As their fortunes become ever more dire and the family assembles for a perilous trek through the streets of lawless New York, she’s held at the end of a leash. If “The Mandibles” is ever made into a film, my suggestion is that this image not be employed for the movie poster.

So, moving back to the reviewer talking about the nonsense rebuttal to "Your characters are racist" with "They accused me of cultural appropriation!".

After an immigration amnesty, the country is flooded with “Lats” who elect a Mexican-born president who presides over a devastating economic collapse, in part created by runaway entitlements. Shriver observes President Alvarado’s “baby-faced softness only emphasized by the palatalized consonants of a Mexican accent,” a stereotypical image of a pudgy, lisping Mexican that links his perfidy to his ethnicity as would an elliptically described hooked nose on a loathsome Jewish character.

The two black characters are similarly ill-treated. One, a social worker, is the novel’s only character who speaks sub-standard English. After Alvarado renounces the national debt, she says, “I don’t see why the gubment ever pay anything back. Pass a law say, ‘We don’t got to.’ ” It was once common in newspapers, fiction and nonfiction to report the speech of “ordinary” people in standard English, while voicing minorities in dialect or vernacular, as they might sound to white ears; this still happens from time to time, unfortunately. By recording only the speech of minority characters in sub-standard English, you stigmatize the entire ethnic group as something other than normal. No one speaks perfectly. Respect for your characters suggests that if you record one’s solecisms, dropped consonants, drawl or brogue, you will faithfully record everybody else’s, too.

The most problematic of Shriver’s minority characters is an African American woman who has married into the white family at the heart of the novel. She suffers from early-onset dementia and is a danger to herself and to others. As the economy collapses, the family loses its home and treks across Brooklyn with the woman at the end of a leash. A plot development that features an uncontrollable black person who has to be kept under restraint like a dog seems guaranteed to hurt and provoke outrage. I wrote, “If ‘The Mandibles’ is ever made into a film, my suggestion is that this image not be employed for the movie poster.” I was thinking of ads in bus shelters and, honestly, I imagined they’d be wrecked.

The freedom to write about people of other ethnic identities or nationalities or gender is and should be widely respected. (I myself am an American who has published two books set in Russia.) Shriver’s full-throated defense against imaginary charges of cultural appropriation is meant to obscure the offensiveness of her racial characterizations, in the same way that certain people who make deliberate, categorically insulting remarks about women and minorities claim persecution by the political-correctness police.

Some more on that and the author's thoughts.

Specifically, Shriver takes issue with the critique that The Mandibles’ treatment of Luella, one of the book’s two women of color, is racist.

Luella has dementia, and spends most of her page time in diapers, soiling herself. Eventually, as the Mandibles — the family into which Luella has married — take to the streets in the wake of a financial collapse, they realize that they can’t keep her with them as they flee the city. They shoot her instead. But before they do, they spend a while delaying the inevitable by keeping her on a leash. "If The Mandibles is ever made into a film," Ken Kalfus wrote in the Washington Post, "my suggestion is that this image not be employed for the movie poster."

Shriver is appalled at this critique. "Behold," she cries, "the reviewer in the Washington Post, who groundlessly accused this book of being ‘racist’ because it doesn’t toe a strict Democratic Party line in its political outlook." The character’s fate, she explains, is meant to be a dark joke on Luella’s liberal New York husband, who abandoned his (white) wife and the mother of his children in order to take up with what Shriver describes as "arm candy of color," only to find himself saddled with an unimaginable burden.

It is also racist, as I wrote in my review of The Mandibles, to imagine that a Spanish-speaking, Mexican-born president would be all it takes to doom America. It is racist to suggest that an influx of Latino immigrants are destroying America’s national character; it suggests that America’s national character is, as a default, white, that America is fundamentally a country that belongs solely to white people. And The Mandibles does all of that.

That’s why I find it difficult to take Shriver at her word when she says that fiction is "born of a desperation to break free of the claustrophobia of our own experience." Because what books like The Mandibles demonstrate is a profound terror at the idea of breaking free of one’s own experience, a terror at the idea of people who are not like you — you being, by implication, white, straight, cisgendered, thin, able-bodied, and neurotypical.

This is the context of that speech. These are the charges of cultural appropriation, in Shriver's mind. Being told that her minority characters are poorly written and racist does not sit with her and instead of looking into that critique, she instead takes it as "Someone is telling me I cannot write minorities at all".

I remain in awe of those still trying to assume this retains any merit. I've tackled the argument. I've tackled what led to the argument. What remains if the fight you bring within yourself, the charge to fight against "political correctness" and "cultural appropriation", even if the flag waver in this case isn't even in the same ballpark.

 

[SomedayTheFire]

That's a spectacularly bad article lol

 

[Riddick]

No, the so called American "left" won't survive. This keeps happening every fucking decade and the two sides never learn. Every time one of the two sides is at the top they use authoritarianism and straight up bullying to enforce even their most stupid dogmas on to society. A great example of this is cultural appropriation which I consider one of the most regressive and moronic fads ever conceived by the so called left.

So what happens next? A huge backlash against what many people perceive as the establishment/status quo until the other side is at the top for a few years and starts enforcing their own moronic dogmas. This idiotic circle of authoritarianism that existed in the US for a long time thanks to globalization it is now being exported to other nations and especially anglosaxon ones.

And for the record this isn't left. This is identity politics fused with the economic rightwing pretending to be left. They use identity politics as they go to excuse to to support economic rightwingers and separate themselves from other rightwingers something that systemic media not only support but also promote, heavily, since it's the perfect distraction for a dying middle class.

 

[KonradLaw]

"cultural appropriation" is completely idiotic idea when applied to fiction. it has no place there. It's fine to criticize somebody writting shitty about the other, not that they written about it in the first place. I mean...the most hardcore proponents of this are also the ones that cry when there's not enough minorities in fiction. So a white writer is in their eyes doomed from the start. If he writes about minorities he's appropriating their culture. If he/she doesn't then it's racism and exclusion.

In case of this particular case it's not the reviews that were problem. I don't remember reading any that would deny Shriver the right to write about minorities. The shitstorm only started with the awful Guardian article, where the author was writting how hurt she was that some white chick had audacity to write about different ethnicity.

 

[Trident]

What is the criticism levied against this author? Have you looked to see if that criticism is right or wrong?

Let us look.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ente...3a5620-7e9f-11e6-8d13-d7c704ef9fd9_story.html

This is the review:

On race:

So, moving back to the reviewer talking about the nonsense rebuttal to "Your characters are racist" with "They accused me of cultural appropriation!".

Some more on that and the author's thoughts.

This is the context of that speech. These are the charges of cultural appropriation, in Shriver's mind. Being told that her minority characters are poorly written and racist does not sit with her and instead of looking into that critique, she instead takes it as "Someone is telling me I cannot write minorities at all".

I remain in awe of those still trying to assume this retains any merit. I've tackled the argument. I've tackled what led to the argument. What remains if the fight you bring within yourself, the charge to fight against "political correctness" and "cultural appropriation", even if the flag waver in this case isn't even in the same ballpark.

None of this is relevant to my comment at all. Do you see how it's not relevant at all? Shriver's book seems appalling, and my comment has nothing to do with political correctness or cultural appropriation.

I was making a point about a specific argument used in this thread by multiple people (largely because I see it often in similar threads). The merit of that argument is independent of the merits of the positions its employed to defend.

 

[EmSeta]

It's a great article, regardless of the author. Try to discuss its contents, instead of trying to dig up as much dirt as possible on her.

When I was growing up, the progressivism I was invested in was about expanding individual expressions. Avoiding dogmatic thinking. Trying to respect everyone, regardless of skin color or beliefs – even if you vehemently disagree with them.

These days, it seems like it's all about trying to shut everyone up who doesn't think exactly like us (and don't give me the pathetic excuse that it's not "illegal" – no one's arguing that it is). Instead of having reasoned debates and conversations, it's all about bringing out the biggest guns every time and attacking the opponents character instead of the arguments. "Racist". "White supremacist". And then using those descriptors – words that the other person would never want to associate with – in order to disqualify them from even taking part in the conversation.

This behaviour is dishonest and disgusting. It's like today's young progressives don't understand why the culture surrounding McCarthyism was so terrible. At the time, stopping Stalinist totalitarianism was one of the most important objectives in America, but using that struggle as an excuse to enforce ideology and publicly ruin the lives of dissenters is wrong. Union leaders caught quoting Marx were stamped as radical communists and became persona non grata to everyone around them. Were they indirectly supporting slaughter in the Gulags? Sure. Somehow, I guess. But treating them like traitors was wrong.

Racism, homophobia, violence against women and a lot of other ills must be stopped today. But we can't stoop to those levels. At least I won't.

 

[alexthekid]

Like what ideas?

That a religious upbringing are a straitjacket and not a freedom.

 

[ClosingADoor]

Ah, yes. The good old "lone wolf" context. Almost exclusive for white people.
The logic is that the far right are far more violent and saying both sides is bullshit.

Regarding free speech my original point is that I don't believe that Nazis have the right to demonstrate. Period.

I think that is a bit of a slippery slope. Because how do you classify this stuff? Sure, you can ban groups carrying actual nazi symbols. But then you have the ones doing it more covert, but we all know they are neo-nazi's. Then you have groups with maybe some nazi ideas. Or ones that might be extremist, etc.

And it just doesn't help anyway. Nazi symbols are forbidden in Germany, yet there are still some of those groups around. Holocaust denying is forbidden in some countries, it happens anyway.

If you forbid things for one group, do we also forbid it for others? What exactly are you forbidding with this. Hate speech? Hate speech against Jews? Glorification of Hitler? And would those same rules then apply to other groups as well?

That's why it's a difficult discussion and not as easy as just forbidding people to say certain things.

I don't really get your lone wolf thing. If I had said groups, would it be better then? Because sure, it is creating an environment in which extremist groups might appear more and do damage. But is limitations on speech going to fix that? Don't think so.

 

[Henkka]

Hmm. I broadly agree with the author about cultural appropriation and identity politics, but her book does seem pretty lame. From the way accusations of cultural appropriation were brought up, I thought her book would be about a POC main character in a different culture than the author's, not about a white family trying to survive in America ruined by libruls.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

What is the criticism levied against this author? Have you looked to see if that criticism is right or wrong?

Let us look.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ente...3a5620-7e9f-11e6-8d13-d7c704ef9fd9_story.html

This is the review:

On race:

So, moving back to the reviewer talking about the nonsense rebuttal to "Your characters are racist" with "They accused me of cultural appropriation!".

Some more on that and the author's thoughts.

This is the context of that speech. These are the charges of cultural appropriation, in Shriver's mind. Being told that her minority characters are poorly written and racist does not sit with her and instead of looking into that critique, she instead takes it as "Someone is telling me I cannot write minorities at all".

I remain in awe of those still trying to assume this retains any merit. I've tackled the argument. I've tackled what led to the argument. What remains if the fight you bring within yourself, the charge to fight against "political correctness" and "cultural appropriation", even if the flag waver in this case isn't even in the same ballpark.

 

[Derwind]

From my own personal experience I've always found a pattern prevalent in people outraged at perceived censorship claims.

It's that it's a catch 22.

When criticism is dealt it should be heared and any disagreement is akin to the sheltered mentality of the one side not want to hear opposing views.

But on the other hand if criticism is being received, that is akin to censorship and is the death of free speech.

And it's always portrayed in an 'Us' vs 'Them', interchanging between left, liberal, sjw's or millennials. Often through fatalistic headlines such as the 'death of free speech' or the 'demise of critical thinking'... ect...ect

It's a repeating cycle. And I'm not even saying only one group is guilty of this (you can switch whose who in these scenarios and it won't change much), it's just something that always seems to occur in discussions involving sensitive topics.

Free speech is not going to die because there are people that disagree with you on any side of a debate, disagreement only enhance how speech develops or evolves as people are forced to recognize one another.

If you are upset people don't meet you half way, try getting the other half yourself and try to understand their concerns without shouting that your free speech is being taken away. If that's how you react to others exercising their speech, expect the same disinterest in understanding your position.

 

[Media]

I don't and never will understand how apparently freedom of speech only goes one way according to people who keep crying about its demise. Aside from the fact that none of those people are being arrested, apparently it means that they should be allowed to say whatever the heck they want, and people who disagree aren't allowed to say anything at all or they are infringing on their freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from criticism.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean you say whatever you want on a privately owned Internet site and not be removed if it violates the TOS.

And as a writer, I'm appalled that she's arguing that criticism should be silenced. That's the only thing that makes us better writers aside from reading.

 

[Palette Swap]

This column is disappointingly lazy.
I expected a takedown of the worst allies minority voices can have, instead all I found is a writer using a column to complain about criticism, speaking in broad (and very perceptual) generalities and making a caricature of her few precise examples.

I mean, if you want to expose a problem to actually discuss it and look for solutions, the bare minimum you should be doing is :
- frame it with the concepts you're going to be using (in this case, the left, progressivism, millennial and their specific characteristics), just so everyone is on the same page, rather than having a discussion where the most basic concepts don't even have a shared meaning.
- describe how wide (how frequent) your problem is. I get that a column such as this one will naturally go for a qualitative approach, but at least bring some kind of assurances you're not discussing an epiphenomenon.
- describe how deep your problem is, what its actual real life impacts are. Typically, that Australian thing is interesting, except there's literally no information about what this has led to. If penalizing "thought crimes" in western democracies is a big deal to you, look at other countries who have been doing that for decades to get a quantitative idea of how it organically works and why it's so problematic.
- open up the debate a bit by describing what should be done. I guess her point here is that liberals should march to defend neo-nazis right to free speech. This looks more like an effect of a solution than looking at how you can reach that if that's what you're looking for.

I'd argue this is what would separate a thoughtful column published in a prestigious paper from an nth forum post complaining about vague platitudes.

FWIW, I'm pretty sure she's idealizing left wing college movements of the past, as the all-or-nothing crazy liberal student stereotype wasn't exactly invented in 2008. I feel most of these points would have applied to campus movements in the sixties or seventies.

 

[Apt101]

I think millennials get pigeonholed quite a bit depending upon who is speaking about them. They range from far left to right like every other person. For every asshole making memes for /r/thedonald there is an equal number overreacting for whatever today's far-left cause is today. And many of them are millennials.

"The Left" is the same today as it was ten years ago, and will be the same ten years from now.

 

[aeolist]

None of this is relevant to my comment at all. Do you see how it's not relevant at all? Shriver's book seems appalling, and my comment has nothing to do with political correctness or cultural appropriation.

I was making a point about a specific argument used in this thread by multiple people (largely because I see it often in similar threads). The merit of that argument is independent of the merits of the positions its employed to defend.

your comment has everything to do with those? she's saying you shouldn't criticize people for cultural appropriation, it's literally the entirety of this discussion if you're talking about her op-ed.

the people who criticized her took issue with her blatant exploitation of bad stereotypical characters, not the mere fact that she wrote those characters in the first place. it is not possible to separate the concept of cultural appropriation from the instances in which it is used to critique.

 

[BassForever]

You can put whatever you want into your fictional story. If you plan on put something controversial in your ficional story don't get upset if people criticize you for it or call you out for the content of your story. There is a difference between having offensive content as part of the narrative for effect and having making your narrative be offensive content.

 

[Kaiterra]

ITT: I learned that objectivity means ignoring context.

Wait, what?

Seriously, I get the feeling that the people beating that drum here are being the least objective about it and just projecting their own previously drawn conclusions onto the article. Even if you agree that there's a problem with sensitivity on the left, this article does a shit job of making any relevant points about it.

 

[Already Torn]

ITT: I learned that objectivity means ignoring context.

Wait, what?

Seriously, I get the feeling that the people beating that drum here are being the least objective about it and just projecting their own previously drawn conclusions onto the article. Even if you agree that there's a problem with sensitivity on the left, this article does a shit job of making any relevant points about it.

But one time I told a funny joke and people said I was being offensive. But I was the one offended because nobody laughed!

 

[MisterR]

This article is dead on. Love this part "the race is on to see who can be more righteous and aggrieved". It's annoying and it is driving people away from supporting the left.

 

[MisterR]

The author is arguing in favor of a broad interpretation of free speech as being preferable and more productive to liberal ideals and progressing them to one where speech is more heavily censored through various strong arm tactics including the advocacy of legislation. When you unpeel the elements that likely drove her to write this that is what is at the core. Those tactics, amongst others are the emphasis on silencing those that speak with deemed micro-aggressions, stirring online mobs to silence or punish, organizing real-life groups to strong arm or silence deemed inappropriate speech, and to use the shield of being sensitive to engage in brutal insensitivity to others deemed an enemy(something often done arbitrarily and through imperfect information), often those in their own ranks.

I don't understand what is so offensive about discussing that? Those on the left supporting these methods and sympathizing with those she speaks about advocating censorship have a moral obligation to the common good and liberalism itself to explain what makes its approach the appropriate and optimal method for addressing their grievances.

If I am being honest it seems like a natural human social behavior where something new is being felt out to determine its limits and it seeps into and affects older social structures in the process. Like a comedian that tells increasingly offensive or dark jokes to find out where the lines are at a given moment in time. In this case it is the world opened up through social networking and the ability to connect and surround yourself with like minded people like never before.

Social shaming has had a role to play in social progress forever. With social networks and new avenues of connecting it has changed the game.

My issue and concern is this new left's inability to self reflect or take criticism well. Something that was a core tenant of western liberalism and helped drive it forward. An unwillingness to even question the efficacy of their methods and at times even attack those that dare question them. That mindset is incredibly dangerous and self defeating and shows a tone deafness to what built the foundation they are now claiming is theirs to build on. The loop of honest and tough discourse questioning present ideas through critical thinking, logic and reason is why liberalism has advanced over the years. When a person shows genuine concern for an issue they see on the left, if you can't stop and actually defend why that criticized tactic or method is optimal, you should probably figure that shit out before declaring that criticism is invalid. If your first instinct is to try and declare they aren't genuine or they are secretly harboring cynical motives and thus you can ignore them, you are doing progress no favors if you call yourself a progressive and you certainly aren't a liberal.

Very, very well written. Couldn't agree more.

 

[Trojita]

So I did the unthinkable and actually read part of her book. There's a ridiculously sized sample on Amazon to peruse.

Yes the book is a libertarian, alt-right paranoid conspiracy thrown into the fryer at 11.

I skimmed around so I might not be the best source on this, but it did seem pretty poorly written.

Shriver observes President Alvarado's “baby-faced softness only emphasized by the palatalized consonants of a Mexican accent,” a stereotypical image of a pudgy, lisping Mexican .

I can clarify this point. They specifically mention palatalized consonants (I expected a different kind of lisp). The book also explained that he was doing this specifically and when speaking to white audiences during the campaign the palatalized consonants would completely disappear.

She also has the one character self admit that she was a racist. She has had a boyfriend that is a second generation American of Mexican descent. and described with all the best qualities you can describe from looks to how he takes care of her in the family.

Didn't get to any part with black people. The parts in the article sound REALLY bad.

So yeah the book is ultimately fueled in paranoid xenophobia and racism.

 

[cyclonekruse]

This reply is sarcastic, but honestly I wonder, do people believe this?

I think I might have something of an analogy to explain the position. Whether or not you buy the logic of it is up to you, however.

Let's say that you're a psychologist and you run an experiment. You bring people in, test them, and gather your data. After all the calculations are done, you definitively find that, say, men are better than women at mathematical thinking on average. Let's say there's no doubt and that the finding is pretty clear-cut.

Now, when you go to publish your findings, you are met with resistance. Many journals refuse to publish your paper just because they don't want to deal with the accusations of sexism. When you finally do find a journal to publish in, the backlash is severe and you are criticized heavily. Not about whether or not your findings are accurate but because you're supposedly pushing a misogynistic agenda. There are shame campaigns and you lose funding. You get the idea.

There's no Constitutional free speech issue here since the government isn't involved (let's say your funding was all from private donors). But there does seem to be an issue of political criticism being levied at your paper rather than scientific criticism. If someone pointed out that you did a calculation incorrectly, that would be one thing and you'd readily accept that. But if someone says you should feel bad for setting women back, you might not accept that criticism as so valid. The truth doesn't care about your political or even moral stances. It just is.

Of course, there are substantial differences between the above scenario and the general case of decrying criticism. But I think that's kind of the logic such people use. They aren't upset by criticism, per se, but criticism that they feel is coming from the wrong angle. They'd say if a joke is not good, call it out for being unfunny, not for being offensive. The idea being that what is offensive is subjective and therefore not something you can police (even though what is funny is also subjective).

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

The american idea free speech is so enshrined and held above all else to my confusion.
I'm often flabbergasted the amount of hate speech that is not only tolerated but outright protected in the name of free speech.

That doesn't mean we don't have the same issues but that people can actually get the rule of law behind them against the heinous rhetoric directed at them.

 

[Sirpopopop]

Ironic. It's mostly right-wingers and older conservatives I see refusing to hear or see uncomfortable things. Being on a very far-left and progressive college campus right now, we're not constantly triggered by things we don't like to hear or shut down discussion. This meme is getting annoying.

Also, wow at the descriptions from the book. Maybe she should learn to take criticism.

Ehh... as much as I despise the man, the videos of protestors disrupting Milo's speeches on campus, right in the middle of them, rather than letting him speak, merely feed into his narrative.

That's certainly a case of the Left trying to shut down conversation.

 

[Derwind]

I think I might have something of an analogy to explain the position. Whether or not you buy the logic of it is up to you, however.

Let's say that you're a psychologist and you run an experiment. You bring people in, test them, and gather your data. After all the calculations are done, you definitively find that, say, men are better than women at mathematical thinking on average. Let's say there's no doubt and that the finding is pretty clear-cut.

Now, when you go to publish your findings, you are met with resistance. Many journals refuse to publish your paper just because they don't want to deal with the accusations of sexism. When you finally do find a journal to publish in, the backlash is severe and you are criticized heavily. Not about whether or not your findings are accurate but because you're supposedly pushing a misogynistic agenda. There are shame campaigns and you lose funding. You get the idea.

There's no Constitutional free speech issue here since the government isn't involved (let's say your funding was all from private donors). But there does seem to be an issue of political criticism being levied at your paper rather than scientific criticism. If someone pointed out that you did a calculation incorrectly, that would be one thing and you'd readily accept that. But if someone says you should feel bad for setting women back, you might not accept that criticism as so valid. The truth doesn't care about your political or even moral stances. It just is.

Of course, there are substantial differences between the above scenario and the general case of decrying criticism. But I think that's kind of the logic such people use. They aren't upset by criticism, per se, but criticism that they feel is coming from the wrong angle. They'd say if a joke is not good, call it out for being unfunny, not for being offensive. The idea being that what is offensive is subjective and therefore not something you can police (even though what is funny is also subjective).

What you describe does sound like someone effectively being silenced, I'm sure a great many people would agree that but speaking directly at the BOLDED, I believe criticism is its own speech in and of itself, and if they want to curate criticism it just comes off as hypocrisy. IMHO.

If there is an issue over something that is criticised for being offensive, the person should bring a counter-argument to highlight what is incorrect about their criticism, rather than telling people to simply stop being offended.

I get what you're saying and all but to me the moment people start trying to curate criticism, they defeat their own position, rather than meeting criticism head on with a counter-argument.

 

[Infinite]

Ehh... as much as I despise the man, the videos of protestors disrupting Milo's speeches on campus, right in the middle of them, rather than letting him speak, merely feed into his narrative.

That's certainly a case of the Left trying to shut down conversation.

thats seems like more of a case of them protesting which is their right.

 

[Onlinehero]

"this criticism is censoring me!" (she says in the pages of time magazine)

This I will never understand. I see COUNTLESS articles from shitty writers bitching about how they can't express themselves and scores more support their sentiments.

Are the writers really that fucking stupid so they can't see the irony or are they just exploiting mindless readers for the reliable support of cranky has-beens?

 

[Zero²]

You too have to understand why this things are met with such outrage. If you wrote an article that by your calculations men are undoubtedly better at math than women, you need to understand that woman that work with math will not be happy with it, specially in an ambient where they are in a minority already. Or in another and more personal example, if someone says that being gay is a disease and you can be cured from it, do you really expect gay people to take it easy and not be outraged? These things speak to the core of who we are, they are sensitive topics and should be treated with delicacy and tact. If you want to write your research on how in average men seem better at math than woman why not take your time to maybe tell it's not because men have better brains, but maybe it's a cultural thing instead? Try to understand why people get outraged at you when you are racist, misogynist or wtv.
You are asking me, a minority who is already persecuted to extreme points to have empathy with you, when you can't even do it yourself?

 

[DeviantBoi]

So they want to exercise their free speech but without any of the consequences.

That's not how it works.

To quote Ice-T: "Talk shit, get shot."

 

[Riddick]

The american idea free speech is so enshrined and held above all else to my confusion.
I'm often flabbergasted the amount of hate speech that is not only tolerated but outright protected in the name of free speech.

That doesn't mean we don't have the same issues but that people can actually get the rule of law behind them against the heinous rhetoric directed at them.

European approach to "free speech" doesn't do shit against racism. Anyone who is gullible enough to think that by banning words they can stop racism deserves what's coming to them. People will find way to go around these words or symbols and create the same context. On the contrary, by using authoritarianism to attempt to stop them you only manage to make the dipshits look like rebels.

I mean look at Europe ffs, the far-right is fucking thriving right now thanks to the economic and immigration clusterfuck created by neoliberal and neoconservative Western policies. Banning hate speech didn't, doesn't and will never achieve anything. Educating your population, preserving their way of life, and not destroying entire regions with imperialistic policies does.

 

[Palette Swap]

European approach to "free speech" doesn't do shit against racism. Anyone who is gullible enough to think that by banning words they can stop racism deserves what's coming to them. People will find way to go around these words or symbols and create the same context. On the contrary, by using authoritarianism to attempt to stop them you only manage to make the dipshits look like rebels.

I mean look at Europe ffs, the far-right is fucking thriving right now thanks to the economic and immigration clusterfuck created by neoliberal and neoconservative Western policies. Banning hate speech didn't, doesn't and will never achieve anything. Educating your population, preserving their way of life, and not destroying entire regions with imperialistic policies does.

I agree with that, the basic freedom x education formula. The part where it gets tricky is education though: if in the name of freedom, you can teach kids pretty much anything, you're not educating anyone and ultimately the formula won't work.
On the other hand, saying "your la la land stuff is nice but doesn't really belong in a classroom", you could be seen as infringing on basic freedoms. This also assumes a basic common curriculum.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

The american idea free speech is so enshrined and held above all else to my confusion.
I'm often flabbergasted the amount of hate speech that is not only tolerated but outright protected in the name of free speech.

That doesn't mean we don't have the same issues but that people can actually get the rule of law behind them against the heinous rhetoric directed at them.

This is working out so well in Europe, clearly. Perhaps the author's point about driving people into the arms of actual fascists and neo-Nazis should give y'all a little reason to pump the brakes on the America bashing.

 

[aeolist]

But I think that's kind of the logic such people use. They aren't upset by criticism, per se, but criticism that they feel is coming from the wrong angle. They'd say if a joke is not good, call it out for being unfunny, not for being offensive. The idea being that what is offensive is subjective and therefore not something you can police (even though what is funny is also subjective).

this is one of the core problems in this whole debate and it just comes down to people talking past each other. when someone reads shriver's book and says "this is cultural appropriation and i don't like it" what they're saying is that the minority characters were shitty and racist but what she hears is political correctness gone mad.

sometimes it's understandable because the person being criticized is some random old dude who simply doesn't understand newer cultural paradigms but in the case of this great wordsmith it's kind of laughable. she either doesn't understand how people use critical language (which means she's bad at her job) or she's deflecting points about actual problems in her work by trying to make people think it's about some greater cultural issue of free speech (which is baldly manipulative and disingenuous).

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

This is working out so well in Europe, clearly. Perhaps the author's point about driving people into the arms of actual fascists and neo-Nazis should give y'all a little reason to pump the brakes on the America bashing.

European approach to "free speech" doesn't do shit against racism. Anyone who is gullible enough to think that by banning words they can stop racism deserves what's coming to them. People will find way to go around these words or symbols and create the same context. On the contrary, by using authoritarianism to attempt to stop them you only manage to make the dipshits look like rebels.

I mean look at Europe ffs, the far-right is fucking thriving right now thanks to the economic and immigration clusterfuck created by neoliberal and neoconservative Western policies. Banning hate speech didn't, doesn't and will never achieve anything. Educating your population, preserving their way of life, and not destroying entire regions with imperialistic policies does.

I didn't say it works perfectly just that the approach of freedom of speech has to be absolute is weird to me.
I'm well aware of the situation in the EU and I dread it profoundly. Still I'm glad people can't openly be Nazis and that more can be done in regards to hate speech than point to the constitution.
Preserving our way of life is impossible to boot considering much of our welfare systems are unsustainable in their current form.

 

[Liu Kang Baking A Pie]

This article is dead on. Love this part "the race is on to see who can be more righteous and aggrieved". It's annoying and it is driving people away from supporting the left.

Tired of these constant drive by posts that don't give relevant examples.

What exactly are you talking about?

 

[Trident]

your comment has everything to do with those? she's saying you shouldn't criticize people for cultural appropriation, it's literally the entirety of this discussion if you're talking about her op-ed.

the people who criticized her took issue with her blatant exploitation of bad stereotypical characters, not the mere fact that she wrote those characters in the first place. it is not possible to separate the concept of cultural appropriation from the instances in which it is used to critique.

Saying "this particular ciriticism is wrong and has potentially dangerous implications" is different from saying "I should be able to write whatever I want and be free from criticism." This is a straw man argument employed all over this forum in plenty of threads completely independent of this particular author.

Yeah If you can't separate the quality of an argument from the moral standing of your target, that's a problem.

 

[Liu Kang Baking A Pie]

Saying "this particular ciriticism is wrong and has potentially dangerous implications" is different from saying "I should be able to write whatever I want and be free from criticism." This is a straw man argument employed all over this forum in plenty of threads completely independent of this particular author.

Yeah If you can't separate the quality of an argument from the moral standing of your target, that's a problem.

The author misrepresents the criticisms. Everything is off about this whole situation right from there. If she doesn't have a grasp on what she's responding to, how can anything here make sense? In the end, we can just figure the author doesn't like to be criticized in any context related to racial politics in writing.

 

[MHWilliams]

It's a great article, regardless of the author. Try to discuss its contents, instead of trying to dig up as much dirt as possible on her.

Already did.

Once again, folks seem to be coming in, seeing the words they wish to fight against, and not actually looking at the article to see if it aptly makes a good argument or the writer to see where her claims are even coming from.

So I did the unthinkable and actually read part of her book. There's a ridiculously sized sample on Amazon to peruse.

So yeah the book is ultimately fueled in paranoid xenophobia and racism.

I remain unsurprised, given the reviews.

Saying "this particular ciriticism is wrong and has potentially dangerous implications" is different from saying "I should be able to write whatever I want and be free from criticism." This is a straw man argument employed all over this forum in plenty of threads completely independent of this particular author.

Yeah If you can't separate the quality of an argument from the moral standing of your target, that's a problem.

So again... what is the criticism aimed at the author? Point to it. Show it to me and how it was wrong.

See above on the quality of the argument.

 

[Valhelm]

Class matters, but it isn't the only thing that doesn't matter. I'm not going to tell a woman, a gay person, or a person of color should put down caring about things like reproductive rights, gay rights, immigration reform, or police brutality and instead make sure some guys in rural Indiana don't get their jobs shipped to Mexico.

Who said they should?

The problem is that the American left wing has become so thoroughly liberal (capitalist) that class interactions are almost never considered at all. Because the left works to promote equality and promote the downtrodden, failure to defend poor people who may be members of socially privileged groups is not acceptable. Support of neoliberal policy, anti-worker attitudes, and the exaltation of problematic bourgeois women (Hillary Clinton, Beyonce) is not left-wing at all. But because the American left is so liberal, criticism of these traditions is often taken as be right-wing sympathy.

 

[Trident]

So again... what is the criticism aimed at the author? Point to it. Show it to me and how it was wrong.

See above on the quality of the argument.

Look at post 324 for a perfect example of what my post was in response to.

As for Lui Kang's post, I don't know how to quote two posts on mobile, but asserting that an argument is a red herring is different from misrepresenting what the argument is.

 

[Noirulus]

You too have to understand why this things are met with such outrage. If you wrote an article that by your calculations men are undoubtedly better at math than women, you need to understand that woman that work with math will not be happy with it, specially in an ambient where they are in a minority already. Or in another and more personal example, if someone says that being gay is a disease and you can be cured from it, do you really expect gay people to take it easy and not be outraged? These things speak to the core of who we are, they are sensitive topics and should be treated with delicacy and tact. If you want to write your research on how in average men seem better at math than woman why not take your time to maybe tell it's not because men have better brains, but maybe it's a cultural thing instead? Try to understand why people get outraged at you when you are racist, misogynist or wtv.
You are asking me, a minority who is already persecuted to extreme points to have empathy with you, when you can't even do it yourself?

Out of curiosity, how are you getting persecuted to extreme points? I'm also a minority and have never had any such thing happen. I want to believe you but you don't have any examples of this extreme persecution.

 

[Ekai]

Pretty amazing how so many people fail to get this.

Some people just want bigots to have their safe spaces too. (But not the actual definition of safe space, the alt-right version of it). Kind of hilarious when you consider how often the alt-right projects their characteristics onto the left-wing. They get triggered at the tiniest difference of opinion/the very existence of minorities. They live in quite literally echo-chambers. They fail to comprehend even the simplest of logical fallacies, what the actual definitions are and how they're even using them. Etc. etc.

In the long-run, I find them to be deplorable, pathetic, almost understandable but still pathetic. Weak and sad. Very sad. They're bigly on being sad. How sad, I'm not sure. There's something going on there. I'm not saying it but some people are.