I completely agree with all of this.

And then when someone demonstrates there's no basis for hating him, "Well, I can still hate him, because it's still his fault for being so stupid as to say something I misinterpreted."

The worst bit is probably when you demonstrate that there's no basis for hating him, and the other person replies with something vague and impossible-to-refute like "maybe that comment could be read in a harmless way, but knowing this person, it's still misogynistic". Which could, admittedly, be a reasonable claim if you knew for sure that the person had a long history of unquestionable misogyny, but comments like this tend to get thrown around even when the speaker is merely commenting on the blog post of somebody they were just linked to and had never heard about before.

Or "maybe that comment could be read harmlessly, but in the overall context it's clearly misogynistic", with no better explanation than this. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH.

Evidence is not their friend.

I think it is wrong to annalogise hating on Mitt Romney to hating on the smelly unpopular kid. The smelly unpopular kid is friendless and alone, he has no-one to turn to who will help (the adults in these situations often join in or condone the bullying) or understand him. Mitt Romney on the other hand is a very successful business man and politician, he has a lot of support - although probably not in the liberal corners of the internet.

Also, pulling away from the Romney issue.

I think when you do When some white male politician makes a remark that sort of out-of-context sounds racist, I pattern-match this to the smelly kid saying "You're ugly". you shouldn't pattern-match to the smelly kid saying "You're ugly" but rather to the popular kid saying "You smell". Because of who has powerful friends, who suffers more often from bullying, etc etc

I do not think it is right to turn the tactics of the bullies right back on them.

On the other hand I do think it is right (and NOT BULLYING) to stand up and say "you bullied me, your words and actions have caused me pain". Except that it seems so very often a tactic of the bully to say "WAH SHE CALLED ME A BULLY THAT HURTS".

The focus of the post is not on the "bully" but on the behavior that surrounds them, the circle of hate. If you and all your friends get together to make fun of Mitt Romney, who you know you all hate, it's much closer to the smelly kid being picked on than the popular kid.

If me and all my friends get together to hate on Mitt Romney then Mitt Romney suffers zero effect from this - I'm thousands of miles away from him, am unlikely to ever see him in person let alone actually meet him, I don't even have a vote in American election. This is nothing like the situation where I'm standing in front of Bob shouting insults at him; in that situation Bob hears the insults and may be hurt by them.

But the complaint was not only the harmfulness of your act. It is also the vicious, mean-spirited, hate-mongered nastiness of it.

Plus of course getting the habit of being a vicious, mean-spirited hatemonger for fun only increases the chance of your abusing someone who can be hurt by it.

One notes that this assumption of harmlessness of the act is far from harmless. We see it every day in the codeword "privilege" which denotes a person who deemed by virtue of race and/or sex to be outside the pale, such that they have no rights which anyone is bound to respect, and common decency is optional when dealing with them. They don't need rights or common decency. They have privilege.

I have seen people waffle and temporize at the notion that it is insane to say that a homeless bum is privileged compared to Condoleezza Rice.

The assumption of harmlessness is far from harmless.

A white male homeless bum has some systematic advantages that Ms Rice lacks; on the other hand he lacks other advantages that she enjoys. I think it would be a nonsense to try to add these things together to get one single comparator to rank all people. Most people have both advantages and disadvantages.

People with privilege and without deserve the same rights; people deserve common decency only as far as they have demonstrated they deserve it.

Systemtic advantages?

Name one.

Anything that tries to invoke his race or sex a magical power that overcomes whatever lies before it is the problem, not the answer.

Neither his race nor his sex have the power to overcome anything for him. But one's race and sex affect how other people relate to you, affect what opportunities are offered or denied, what persecution you might suffer or avoid.

For instance as a simple matter of biology a man who does not possess a uterus will never find himself pregnant (given current medical technology); whole swathes of female-body-specific health care are much more directly, personally, relevant to any woman than they are to him.

As a white person it is very unlikely (if he is in the USA) to be subjected to racially motivated attacks.

"But one's race and sex affect how other people relate to you, affect what opportunities are offered or denied, what persecution you might suffer or avoid. "

That is entirely too vacuous to mean anything.

So, what, you are incapable of understanding that something is a social trend but rather demand specific examples?

Well, unfortunately I'm way to fucking lazy to type up a giant list of all that shit.

But I have one example for you: it is the case that when orchestras conduct their auditions "blind" (so the people-deciding don't know who they are listening to) they hire many more women and non-white people than otherwise.

And they are conducting them "blind." So what's the problem?

Just because you like giving answers so vacuous as to be meaningless does not make it all right for you to insult people as "incapable" when they call you on it.

Now they are, and it works.

Previously they weren't. Their hiring practices were thereby biased.

Other people's hiring practices are harder to "blind" to remove these biases.

So -- hmmm -- have you demonstrated that you deserve common decency?

Not to you. On account of how I don't actually know you. Apparently we disagree on some issues I consider rather fundamentally important, so I guess you get to think I'm a vile person. No skin off my nose.

You commit slander, at any rate.

Against whom?

Me. How dare you impute not only what my judgment of you is, but why I think so? Falsely?

What? That's not what 'privilege' means. Maybe that's how some people use it, but they're using it wrong.

Then it's never used properly in any scenario I've seen, and that has been many.

Frequently, to be sure, by people in deep, deep, deep denial, who have deluded themselves into thinking their rampant sexism and racism is the very proof that they are as pure of sexism and racism as driven snow.

It may be that some people, sometimes, say or think "They don't need rights or common decency. They have privilege". But I have never once ever seen anyone actually say that, or seen good evidence that they think it.

Well, I have. Repeatedly. Incessantly.

Good evidence, that is. They, of course, don't say; it would give away too much. But it is used to silence, and to rule out of bounds in advance anything anyone would say in self-defense.

I shall simply put on record my opinion that you may sometimes be incorrect in your inferences about these people's intentions and beliefs.

(You have certainly been very incorrect about mine in earlier discussions we've had. In other threads it looks to me as if you've been equally incorrect about some other people's. Always, curiously, in the direction of thinking worse of them than they seem to me to deserve.)

giggle

Given that the throwing around of word "privilege" is invariably predicated on the claim to know other people's intentions and beliefs better than they know themselves, this is a incredibly rash claim on your part.

So far as I can tell, nothing requires the use of the word "privilege" to involve any such claim. In particular, on those rare occasions when I use it no such claim is any part of its meaning.

In any case, since all I'm claiming is that "you may sometimes be incorrect in your inferences", and if you regard *that* as incredibly rash then I'm really not sure how I can respond.

(Just out of curiosity, how do you consider that the "giggle" at the start enhanced what you wrote?)

ROFLOL

Because you are being silly.

It is essential to the claim that someone else is "privileged" that you have penetrated their thought processes and discerned that their thinking has been warped by their circumstances -- or melanin concentration in the skin, or what have you.

No, that idea is not in fact essential to the claim. "Privilege" generally means the advantages some people allegedly have on account of belonging to particular groups, not their attitude to those advantages.

So, e.g., here's a FAQ on a feminist website which says this: "Privilege, at its core, is the advantages that people benefit from based solely on their social status." and this: "While every man experiences privilege differently due to his own individual position in the social hierarchy, every man, by virtue of being read as male by society, benefits from male privilege."

Now, I'm sure you would find plenty to object to there. But the point is this: this person, who is clearly the kind of person who uses the word "privilege" and finds the concept useful, considers it something that applies to whole groups, not only to the people within those groups whose thinking is warped by it.

I should add that the author quotes someone else who apparently takes a different view: "It’s about advantages you have that you think are normal." Evidently the word can be used in more than one way. But it is *demonstrably not true* that it's essential to the very idea of "privilege" that the people involved have had their thinking warped by their circumstances. I would say that in most cases where I've seen the word used, that idea has *not* been part of the definition. (Though the people using the word may well believe that many people with privilege *do* have their thinking warped by their circumstances, and that that's part of why the concept is useful. That's a separate matter.)

What you say you use a word as is no evidence of what you actually use a word as.

I am not going to believe you over my lying eyes, which say that people invariably use "privilege" in order to claim superior insight into the thinking of someone else -- insight so superior that the person has no right to argue against it. (See: "mansplaining.")

> What you say you use a word as is no evidence of what you actually use a word as.

Then, how shall I put this?, evidence is not your friend. Also, you're claiming to have "penetrated the thought processes" of the people using the term and found that their thinking is warped -- exactly the thing you complained bitterly about other people doing earlier in the thread -- and claiming to have an insight into those people's meaning that's "so superior that they have no right to argue against it".

All of which is *so obvious* that I have to ask: Are you, in fact, just trolling?

If not: I think it may be that your lying eyes are telling you what you find politically and/or religiously convenient to be told. I could of course be wrong -- I am not a mind-reader -- but so far you've offered no argument but bluster and mockery, and that's not a trait I've generally found characteristic of people who are looking clearly and impartially at things.

"That's just your privilege speaking" is not something it takes Sherlock Holmes to penetrate.

Especially since you have offered no argument but bullying. You claim to use it differently -- wholly in the abstract.

I didn't say you claim to be Sherlock Holmes. I said you claim to have penetrated others' thought processes and to have a better account of their thinking and intentions than what they explicitly say, which is exactly the same thing you've been complaining of others doing.

I have offered plenty of argument, and I have no idea how any reasonable person could categorize anything I've said as "bullying".

"people invariably use "privilege" in order to claim superior insight into the thinking of someone else"

I want you to step back for a minute. I want you to really think about what you just said.

You're claiming you have superior insight in to the thinking of everyone that uses the word 'privilege', so they need to get off their high horse and stop claiming superior insight in to the thinking of everyone else...

There are a lot of trolls that use the word 'privilege' as a club to silence dissent, but that doesn't mean there aren't other people using it in a more meaningful way.

One notices that the defenders of the term talk about its rightful use a lot in the abstract.

This does not create confidence in their ability to so use it.

I will continue to believe my lying eyes.

In the specific? It's privilege when you can walk home safely from work. Not everyone has that privilege. Some people treat the world as though everyone does, though, and that causes issues. Especially when they insist that a woman is "paranoid" just because she insists on avoiding dangerous-to-her-but-not-them areas.

It's privilege when you can afford to shop at Costco. It's privilege when you can put money in to savings. It's privilege when you can reasonably rely on having a warm place to sleep every winter.

The idea is simply that some people have advantages, and others don't. These advantages often come from basic factors like social class or gender.

You're harming yourself and everyone who is involved or witnessing it by being intellectually dishonest, and encouraging said dishonesty every time you defend it.

That Mitt Romney is not personally harmed doesn't make it okay, any more than I can say "fucking lazy Hispanics" to my Caucasian friends and call it harmless.

Given that "binders full of women" is/was a major internet meme, I'd say it's rather disingenuous to claim that it will have no effect at all on voting.

Given the post this is in reply to, it should be pretty obvious that "binders full of women" was NOT an example of someone calling Romney out as a bully.

Finally, we'd expect that someone who has accidentally done damage would be apologetic when this is pointed out. Bullies and trolls, by contrast, love to excuse it as "just playing games" and insist they did nothing wrong, and/or that they have a right to this behaviour.

Given the lack of apology from the meme-spreaders, I can't help but conclude that they're bullies. Succeeding at hurting Romney's feelings is not a prerequisite here - the behaviour is present and abhorrent whether the victim is hurt or not.

Yes.

Let us consider two scenarios:

1) A giant group of popular powerful people called Bob go round smashing in people's windows. Most people ignore this, because if you try to stand up to the Bobs they are more likely to smash your windows. One small brave person called Susy says to the Bobs 'You are Evil and Wrong to smash in people's windows'. This probably achieves very little, except maybe Susy gets her windows smashed, but presumably a) Susy gets to be proud to have stood up for what is Right, b) some of the Bobs may have their conscience pricked and stop, and there is a remote chance c) that other people might see that Susy is brave and also rise up against the Bob-window-smashing-problem. In this Susy is good (if naive) and the Bobs are bad.

2) A fairly useless, unpopular, clumsy guy called Bob accidentally falls through Susy's window. Susy rallies her 90 million bitchy friends, and they all spend the next week publically and painfully telling Bob, Bob's family and anyone else who will listen 'Bob is Evil and Wrong and smashes windows'. Bob is actually incredibly sorry he smashed Susy's window, tries his best to apologise, but Susy's hate circle is unstoppable, and for the rest of his life when Bob meets new people they say 'oh _Bob_? The window smashing guy?'

I think there is an interesting continuum between (1) and (2), and I think Scott's attempt to define Mitt Romney as (2) is a bit disingenuous. Clearly it is all a bit of a factor of how many Bobs and how many Susies and how much power they have. I think in our happy liberal corners of the internet, it is easy to see things as (2), because there is one Mitt Romney and all our friends hate him. But actually in the world as a whole, about half of America will vote for him, and the percentage of people you can talk to about privilege and sexism and positive discrimination in an informed and rational way is vanishingly small. I _think_ the actual situation is that Mitt Romney -as-Bob is part of a big and powerful group, but there is more than one Susy finally being able to stand up to the Bob's together, and because Scott is in the middle of the group of Susy's and a long way away from the Bobs he sees a Susy-hate-fest that looks like (2).

[On the other hand, I really agree with Scott that when there are so many things to rationally get worked up about, piling on bandwagons and taking extreme positions is a bit annoying. Then again, when someone has been smashing your windows for the past 30 years, you probably have quite a need to vent.]

Oh yes, I agree that the thing about the "binder full of women" being a Big Internet Joke is rather silly. There are other things he said that are much wronger and more in need of the point-and-laugh treatment. But if people were going around the internet making silly joke-pictures with some actual horrible Romney policy on them then I'd think the resulting "hate-fest" would be justified - Horrible policy deserves people standing up and saying "your policy is horrible".

I think it's really interesting. I think lots of in-group behaviour really helps people do hard things. For example, it's easier to run a marathon, or stand up and say 'no to nuclear weapons', or admit that you fancy people of the same sex as you, if you know you are not alone and other people are doing the same thing, especially if you have 'group behaviour' to highlight that (shared internet memes, or shared songs, or shared jokes, or dress sense etc etc). Groups are powerful, and can be powerful for good.

But groups are powerful, and do do stupid things. They don't tend to think very hard about the differences between, eg, an amusing internet meme saying Romneys-policies-are-stupid and an amusing internet meme saying Romney-is-ugly-and-smelly. I think it is important to police groups you're a part of and call them when they do the latter.

As to when does 'Romneys-policies-are-stupid' stop being 'smelly-lonely-susy-failing-to-bully-bob' and becomes 'powerful-susy-hate-piling-everyone-onto-poor-bob', well, one good test of that is whether Romney's policies are being _implimented_ and listened to and treated as 'not stupid' by a vast majority of people...

I would agree with that second point.

Once someone uses a silly phrase like "binders full of women" and hundreds of thousands of people call him a "human piece of shit", I think we're getting well beyond the "pointing out that your words are hurtful" level.

I agree that Romney is rich and famous and probably has friends somewhere. But I still think he has feelings and it probably really hurts to get attacked like that. I still think his friends aren't especially relevant here, in that I can't really imagine someone from his Mormon temple going to a feminist blog and saying "Actually, hear me out, Mitt is kind of an okay guy" and it going at all well. And it doesn't seem like a combination of pro-Romney and anti-Romney remarks. He might have friends somewhere in the general case, but in this case the entire media is devoting itself to making fun of him and his friends are nowhere to be seen.

Agreed. And it applies to racists and sexists in general; they're not lone smelly unforunates, these are major streams of the culture.

There might be some psychological similarity between picking on the smelly kid to mocking sexists in a safe space on the Internet, but there's some real situational differences.

Reading Kahneman, I think Scott's trying to fight the halo effect and our System 1 generated sense of coherence. If we think someone is good in one way we tend to think more highly of them in other ways; ditto for badness. Thus "Hitler loved animals and children" causes dissonance between "BAD MAN!" and "good traits", and Romney may be painted blacker than he fully deserves.

OTOH, he deserves plenty of black paint as is, and has higher stakes than usual what with federal elections coming up. I don't know that this is really the best use of limited time and attention.

Most of the internet political stuff I see is people trying to increase their status in and/or maintain their membership in one in-group by attacking the rival group. The "binder" meme is being grabbed by folks keeping a look-out for sticks to hit the other side with (cf "fifty-seven states" for something equally silly in the other direction). I think the most frantic efforts come from people who need the political group identification as their main status identity or are worried about being expelled for a heretical opinion. Example: a gun-owning liberal posting lots of I-hate-Republicans stuff.

Along the lines of 'patriarchy hurts teh menz too', it might be worth examining the matter of dogpiling from the perspective of the harm that it does to the dogpilers.

I think that a group that embraces the practice, even if they are righteous and justified at time T, is pretty much guaranteed to become evil at time T' > T.

Agreed. Dogpiling seems to harm intellectual honesty, and my experience is that intellectually dishonest groups degenerate fairly quickly in to evil >.>

Until you stop your attempts to reason people out of the positions they did not reason themselves into, AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAA is your modus operandi.

You get worried when people you don't know link here?

I guess I should admit I've linked here from my G+ a few times, but with the specific request not to share the links in case someone comes across your more controversial posts and labels you something rude, and if I'm problematic you can blame Leah Libresco for regularly linking here and getting me interested in the first place. :)

You are a remarkable man.

I hope that morality pays off for You some day as well. It is extraordinary and rare...but You have an extraordinary and rare mind and soul. Me and my friend are not simpletons by any means, but we regularly read Your posts and virtually turn to each other in mind-blown astonishment at Your grasp of human nature, Your ability to articulate it in a reasonable, coherent way, and Your pairing of IQ and EQ in a way I don't think I've ever really seen before. Your mind and proliferate expression of it is simply astonishing, and always encompassing of ten more perspectives than the average person is even capable of comprehending let alone assimilating into their reasoning. Your empathetic, intuitive, and supremely logical marriage of ideas is just magnificent. This may not be the place for this...but after reading this post I just couldn't be quiet anymore.

Thanks for...not being silent. Thanks for sharing Your perspectives and ideas. Even though I am a resolute believer in the idea that You really can't ever change anyone's mind truly, I think if anyone could...it would be You. I have no doubt that you have at the very least opened many people's minds to concepts they simply would not have entertained before. To me, that is nothing short of miraculous. Many people say they have an open mind, but one hand allows me to count how many I've met who are truly open. You are the most open I have ever seen. I hope You are able to open many more in at least small ways.

So yeah...thanks. :-)

I'd like to reiterate the other posters who have said "Yay for you doing this, you are awesome because of it" :)