Why are people friends with annoying people? [Archive]

Razade

2017-06-21, 03:29 PM

thorgrim29

2017-06-21, 03:35 PM

I would advise not getting mixed up in a couple's business unless you have reason to think one of them is in danger. To the main subject though... I don't know, inertia and fear of awkwardness mostly I guess. Maybe the person was nice originally or was a friend of somebody else who drifted away from the group, and now it's just more trouble than it's worth to get rid of them, especially if you have the same extended social circle. That or he's annoying in some ways but makes up for it in others. Maybe he's very loyal, maybe he's a ton of fun at parties, maybe he has a pool.

Honest Tiefling

2017-06-21, 03:39 PM

They might not find him annoying, but rather, find him amusing. If you don't like him, try to hang out with the people WITHOUT him. Just invite them along and don't mention it to him. But I think it would be better to tell him that you really don't appreciate his behavior, so if he could tone it down that'd be great. If he gets bent out of shape he's a jerk. If the group picks him over you, then they'd rather be around the token 'annoying' friend then you. Their loss, you can find new friends that appreciate friendly people so you really haven't lost anything.

As for the girlfriend, that's her business. You don't know her, let her make her own decisions, she's an adult. But the fact that he's willing to be different around her might mean that his group of friends have been intentionally or unintentionally encouraging. Maybe he knows he doesn't appreciate that type of humor so he doesn't do with her and lets loose around those he thinks will appreciate it?

It could be an issue that he's been around so long or he's related to someone or was there for some event or whatever that they feel like they CAN'T get rid of him without hurting his feelings. But as the newcomer, I don't think it's helpful or a good idea to speculate like that and just accept that you can either hang out with them without him or tell him how you feel.

JeenLeen

2017-06-21, 03:49 PM

BWR

2017-06-21, 04:40 PM

What everyone else said.
You are the outsider, you are the one with the least amount of information, you are the one who doesn't really know what you're talking about. You may not want to learn more to see if your current opinion is an accurate and valid one, and that is your right, but don't assume you know everything there is to know about the people involved.

More generally, sometimes people hang out with others not just because they like them but also out of a sense of pity. They may not consider X to be their best friend or even a particularly good one, but X is still a friend of sorts and needs some social support. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if I fell into this category with some of my friends.

Lastly, sometimes people just rub others the wrong way without there being any malice or intentional rudeness on either side. Some people are just bad at moderating behavior to accommodate people who aren't used to their friendly behavior.

2D8HP

2017-06-21, 04:50 PM

Why?

Years of practice.

That really is the answer.

Also, don't mess with the couple. At least one of them will get angry with you, and you don't want that.

Knaight

2017-06-21, 05:23 PM

They might genuinely like the guy despite his more annoying traits. With that said, the group dynamic where there's someone in a group that nobody else actually likes who just stays in the group because none of the rest of the people want to make waves is absolutely a thing. There are certain circles where this is even more prevalent, and nerd circles are one of them. See: GSF 1 (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html).

Shamash

2017-06-21, 06:21 PM

So, I have been going out with this group of people in the hopes of finding friendship, it’s been great so far they are nice and interesting expect for this one guy.

He is very rude, the kind of guy who use insults such as “cuck”, “fag”, “beta male” etc..
They invited me to play a silly computer game with them and when I asked for help and advice he just said “get gud skrub” and overall being an annoying and unlikable person.

Yesterday, we stopped by to eat and when he was in the bathroom one of them joked that he was the “token annoying friend” and every group of friends has one… That puzzled me. Why? Why put up with such a rude and unpleasant person?

Even worse he has a girlfriend and around her he is super nice and friendly, why allow him to deceive the poor girl? Isn’t that immoral? Should she be warned about his true colors?

Dude; don't get in the way of a guy and his girl! That's just common sense!

To me at least friends are less a thing of choice and more a thing of proximity, my best friends are people I met at school or work, they are not super similar to me but I feel like I can really trust them a lot since we went tough a lot together, they don't share the same interests or even personality I think that if we weren’t forced together we wouldn't be friends at all.

In my experience at least I feel that friendship is more like a food that is offered for you and you choose if you want it or no than a menu that you can choose the dish you prefer.

Maybe this guy is a childhood friend of them, or maybe they used to live next door, I dunno but sometimes you are friends with someone who is different from you, to tell the truth MOST OF THE time that is how it goes.

By the looks of it you are new to this "friendship thing" so my advice is, get use to it since you can't pick friends like flowers if you join a group of friends you will get the nice ones and the *******s.

Kyberwulf

2017-06-21, 09:56 PM

Don't put up with him. Let them especially him know that it bothers you. If the don't like it they will let you know you are the weakest link. You can go on your way. If you actually made friends in the group, they will probably get a hold of you to see if thou will hang out sans "alpha" man. Don't just go along with it. That is horrible advice. That just makes superficial friendships.

About the girl thing. Don't just go along with that either. If he is deceiving her, you are an accomplice. I am not saying take her aside and be all "I have something to tell you" about it. Just don't pretend you like him, or that his "good nature" is normal.

This guy sounds like the token mouthpiece. The kind of guy you keep around because he says and does stuff you want to say but don't have the wherewithal to say it yourself.

Cozzer

2017-06-22, 08:17 AM

Yesterday, we stopped by to eat and when he was in the bathroom one of them joked that he was the “token annoying friend” and every group of friends has one… That puzzled me. Why? Why put up with such a rude and unpleasant person?

Eh. It's true that in most groups there's at least a person who comes of as annoying to "newcomers". They can't all be well-adjusted and likeable, after all. There can be a lot of reasons why the others won't ditch him. Maybe he was less annoying in the past and the others just got used to his annoyingness, since it came gradually. Maybe his particular brand of annoyingness doesn't really annoy the others that much, or maybe he brings something to the table that compensates for his annoyingness.

There are usually several reasons at once, some of them good and some of them bad. It's not my or your place to judge them, though.

Even worse he has a girlfriend and around her he is super nice and friendly, why allow him to deceive the poor girl? Isn’t that immoral? Should she be warned about his true colors?

In general, you shouldn't assume that you know someone who's barely an aquaintance better than his girlfriend knows him. :smalltongue: Or assume that the "super nice and friendly" part of a person is "less true" than his "annoying" part.

Honestly, since you've been talking about the fact that you don't have much experience in social situations, I would greatly advise you to assume you don't know better than others, at least for the time being. Assume the reasons why the other friends don't ditch him are good, or at least reasonable reasons. Assume he's a genuinely good guy with his girlfriend and his annoying traits are just him not being good at social situations and overcompensating.

Keep interacting with the people you actually like, and enjoy their company. Each group of friends has its own dynamics, and they will become apparent to you with time. I would strongly advise you not to take any action before that point.

Winter_Wolf

2017-06-22, 09:23 AM

Dude, The Eye, man listen: that guy is annoying to you. I have a friend or two like the guy you've described, and he's not always like that, but he is like that with his friends. That's generally how people operate. You don't want to hang with him socially, then don't. No one has a gun to your head, do they?

Stay out of other people's relationships. If the guy acts differently around his girlfriend, that's just as much who he is as how he acts when she's not around, and I'm sure she knows that better than you. I act way different around my wife than I do around my friends because I have a different kind of relationship with her; it's not that she doesn't know but trust me when I say she's got her relationship personality and friend personality as well. If you want to act like some kind of white knight, do it in an rpg and not by interfering in real people's personal relationships.

warty goblin

2017-06-22, 09:46 AM

The Eye

2017-06-22, 10:09 AM

Red Fel

2017-06-22, 10:20 AM

Well I'm not planning to do anything guys, call down I apologize if that is what my post made it look like.

I just don't get how people can deal with it and act as if it was something normal, I guess my lack of experience is a contributing factor for me not getting this stuff.

Sometimes, it's because friends have a history. Maybe his becoming a jerk is a relatively recent thing, so they still maintain the friendship based on who he was, as opposed to who he is.

Sometimes, it's because friends are complicated. As others have mentioned, maybe this particular behavior is just one layer, and there is more to him than these jokes.

Sometimes, it's a bit of delusion or misplaced loyalty. By way of illustration, I had a friend who turned out to be a genuinely toxic person. But because of my own sense of loyalty, I didn't want to ditch this friend, and that ended up dragging me down for some time. Eventually, I moved away (for unrelated reasons) and the friendship finally dissolved; distance lent clarity, in that case.

There are a lot of reasons. But perhaps most importantly, none of them apply to you. You don't have that history. You don't have that personal knowledge of this person. And that means that, if you find this person repugnant, or otherwise don't want to give him a chance, you don't have to be friends with him. The fact that other people are friends with him doesn't mean you have to be. The fact that friends of yours are friends with him doesn't mean you have to be (although it would be advisable to remain civil, at least).

Not every circle has a "token annoying friend." That tends to be more true of less mature people than more mature ones, I find, in that the latter are sufficiently self-possessed and confident enough to say, "No, mate, cut that out." A lot of people in their younger years feel that they have to keep the token annoying friend around - either because he whines if left out, or because a parent said they had to include him, or because they pity him, or because they secretly enjoy mocking him when he leaves the table - but as you grow, you realize you don't need that in your life.

Again, however, they are a pre-existing circle. It's not your place to say, "Hey, let's ditch him." They'll realize it on their own time, or they won't.

Winter_Wolf

2017-06-22, 10:29 AM

FWIW he might just be treating you like one of the group because he actually likes you. It may grow on you if you give it a chance. Then again it may not; I've had several friends I never expected to befriend, and several people I've found intensely unlikeable the more I've come to know them despite initially thinking we'd be good friends.

In any case I might come across as belligerent when talking/writing you, but it's me trying to be direct because I get the sense from your posts you appreciate directness. Generally it comes across better when I say things than when I write them. Ironic considering for the most part how little I enjoy talking to people and yet seem to be constantly doing work that relies on talking to people.

Then again I apparently have an abundance of "dark triad" traits. :smalltongue:

Grinner

2017-06-22, 10:35 AM

Not every circle has a "token annoying friend." That tends to be more true of less mature people than more mature ones, I find, in that the latter are sufficiently self-possessed and confident enough to say, "No, mate, cut that out." A lot of people in their younger years feel that they have to keep the token annoying friend around - either because he whines if left out, or because a parent said they had to include him, or because they pity him, or because they secretly enjoy mocking him when he leaves the table - but as you grow, you realize you don't need that in your life.

Funny story. I had a group of friends somewhat like this in high school. One day, we decided to ditch the "token annoying guy" during lunch, and that was the most boring lunch period we ever had. I suppose his juvenile antics would be seen as, well...juvenile, now, but his chaotic input into our social dynamic seemed to provide a sustaining stimulus.

I bumped into him some years later, and sure enough, life seems to have tempered him somewhat.

tensai_oni

2017-06-22, 05:47 PM

A major component of a lot of male friendships is being basically horrible to each other, or one person being basically horrible to the others. This doesn't mean the friendship isn't genuine, or that the people being horrible are actually horrible, it's simply the way that friendship manifests. Quite likely everybody involves basically enjoys it, even if it's not a style of relationship that works for you.

Yeah, no.

The truth is, there's a lot of friendship circles where there's the designated jerk, the designated punching bag, both, or people basically being a-holes to each other. But that doesn't mean these social circles are healthy. They still exist but they need neither encouragement nor propagation.

Anyway, to OP: there are levels of what different people find annoying. Behavior that you find annoying may be acceptable to others, especially if they know the person perpetrating that behavior on a more intimate level.

However, there should be limits. When someone communicates like a typical 4chan /pol/ post, you need to ask yourself - not only do I want to stay in touch with this kind of person, but do I want to stay in touch with other people who are well aware of their friend's behavior but do nothing about it. This isn't just hanging out with the token annoying guy or the class clown. We're talking behavior that is highly unwelcome in normal, polite company.

Unless it's all some kind of joke/ironic meme regurgigation and everyone's in on it except for you, but in that case it just shows the social circle in question is so well-integrated that it might be a problem for an outsider to mesh well with it.

AMFV

2017-06-22, 11:49 PM

Yeah, no.

The truth is, there's a lot of friendship circles where there's the designated jerk, the designated punching bag, both, or people basically being a-holes to each other. But that doesn't mean these social circles are healthy. They still exist but they need neither encouragement nor propagation.

Anyway, to OP: there are levels of what different people find annoying. Behavior that you find annoying may be acceptable to others, especially if they know the person perpetrating that behavior on a more intimate level.

However, there should be limits. When someone communicates like a typical 4chan /pol/ post, you need to ask yourself - not only do I want to stay in touch with this kind of person, but do I want to stay in touch with other people who are well aware of their friend's behavior but do nothing about it. This isn't just hanging out with the token annoying guy or the class clown. We're talking behavior that is highly unwelcome in normal, polite company.

Unless it's all some kind of joke/ironic meme regurgigation and everyone's in on it except for you, but in that case it just shows the social circle in question is so well-integrated that it might be a problem for an outsider to mesh well with it.

Yeah, no.

You do not get to define what social standards are acceptable for other groups. Period. I'm in the military (first active now the guard), and I work in construction, a lot of people who I would trust with my life, who I would literally die for, are way worse than a 4chan /Pol/ post in terms of what they say. And they're good people, they might just be a little rougher around the edges. But it's alright because they aren't in normal "polite" company, they're around their friends in a place where people might die or be seriously injured any day, where being soft is a weakness and there's nothing wrong with rough edges in that kind of environment.

Kyberwulf

2017-06-23, 01:43 AM

Cozzer

2017-06-23, 02:27 AM

Or maybe none of us is even remotely close to having enough info on the situation that they can make an educated guess at its meaning. And both the "No, the situation TheEye described is normal!" posts and the "No, the situation TheEye described is a problem!" posts are people projecting what happened to them on a situation they don't know anything about.

Scarlet Knight

2017-06-23, 08:09 AM

Funny story. I had a group of friends somewhat like this in high school. One day, we decided to ditch the "token annoying guy" during lunch, and that was the most boring lunch period we ever had. I suppose his juvenile antics would be seen as, well...juvenile, now, but his chaotic input into our social dynamic seemed to provide a sustaining stimulus.

This is common in many TV shows where there is one annoying guy/gal who gets the best lines.

In the Battle of 5 Armies movie Bilbo says "I know that dwarves can be obstinate and pigheaded and difficult. They're suspicious and secretive, with the *worst* manners you can possibly imagine. But they are also brave and kind, and loyal to a fault. I've grown very fond of them..."

So with annoying friends, we grow fond of them and accept their faults as the price of their friendship.

AMFV

2017-06-23, 08:22 AM

Yeah, ni.

You don't get to define what's acceptable for other people either.

You expressly just stated you aren't in normal society. Not only that, for the most part. You are in an abnormal situation. You don't get to choose who you are grouped with. You have to make the best out of a bad situation.

First, having to spend time with soldiers and construction workers isn't a "bad situation". And while I might not choose my friends I can tell you that I would much rather have the politically incorrect unfit for polite society folks than anybody else.

Second, I'm not saying that you should be forced to hang out with my friends who call each other slurs and insult each other. I'm saying that if you (as Tenasai did) say that you can judge the quality of these people based on the title of their personal interaction then you're far worse than you are judging them to be.

Third, it isn't an "uncommon" situation it is literally that way in every dangerous blue collar job I have worked, and in non dangerous blue collar fare as well. It's a culture that you may not be a part of or understand which means that you should not condemn it until you do.

Mikemical

2017-06-23, 08:26 AM

So, I have been going out with this group of people in the hopes of finding friendship, it’s been great so far they are nice and interesting expect for this one guy.

He is very rude, the kind of guy who use insults such as “cuck”, “fag”, “beta male” etc..
They invited me to play a silly computer game with them and when I asked for help and advice he just said “get gud skrub” and overall being an annoying and unlikable person.

Yesterday, we stopped by to eat and when he was in the bathroom one of them joked that he was the “token annoying friend” and every group of friends has one… That puzzled me. Why? Why put up with such a rude and unpleasant person?

Even worse he has a girlfriend and around her he is super nice and friendly, why allow him to deceive the poor girl? Isn’t that immoral? Should she be warned about his true colors?

Your opinion is not an objective truth. When you start to understand that the rest of the world doesn't think or feel the exact same way you do, you'll start understanding people a lot better than with your current outlook. What you perceive as mean and rude comments might be his idea of making humor to entertain and make people laugh, much like Stand-Up comedians or Roasters such as Louis C.K., Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, etc.

He may be showing his real colors around the girlfriend, and his annoying demeanor is his 'friends' demeanor. When I'm with my friends, we tend to joke sometimes as if we are sociopaths, but that's a mask that's fun to interact with with one another, not our true colors. This could be similar.
It's a good thing that with both my friends and my girlfriend I can do this. We're admitedly a group where the roles are passed around like it was a game of hot potato. Today's annoying friend might be tomorrow's voice of reason, the guy we make fun of saying he's a lolicon might be the one calling you a pedophile a couple hours later, and so forth. Our (http://i.imgur.com/Cxbup6A.jpg) games (http://i.imgur.com/IMNXZfe.jpg) of Cards Against Humanity are rather fun.

Frozen_Feet

2017-06-23, 11:43 AM

There's different kinds of "annoying". Some people act superficially badly towards their friends because they are friends and can trust that their behaviour won't break their bond. Others act superficially badly as a matter of humour and they either hope or expect there is a shared understanding of what they're aiming for. Yet others act badly because they honestly can't help it, and their friends put up with them despite of it, usually because that person still brings something else positive to their lives.

And some are just ********s who their friends mistake for one of the above.

A lot of this is context-dependant. The annoying person mentioned in the first post is clearly *****-whipped... errr, I mean he is socially conscious to clean his act before his girlfriend, for whatever reason. It could be a ruse, it could be he honestly cares more about her than his guy friends, it could be she has him under her heel. Point is: guys' night out is different social context than "Oh crap my girlfriend is here!" It's pretty unnoteworthy if people act differently in the presence of their romantic interests.

One of my friend's friends asked me about my friend's little sister: "How do you cope with that?" Because said sister is always needling me about whatever. My response was: "I only tolerate her because she's pretty." Very deliberately, as she was sitting right behind me. She responded "why do we put up with you, then?"

The actual answer, though, is that sometimes I feel like roping someone into my crazy schemes, and she's happy to be roped into crazy schemes when it's on someone else's expense. Together, we commit... errr, fight crime. Or something.

ThurlRavenscrof

2017-06-23, 11:55 AM

The friend who you think it annoying described himself as annoying so you clearly aren't overreacting. My question is do the other friends consider him annoying?

2D8HP

2017-06-23, 12:24 PM

...I'm in the military (first active now the guard), and I work in construction, a lot of people....

Yeah, sure.

Just agreeing with AMFV.

I worked construction for over a decade, and now I do building repairs for the City and County of San Francisco, and while I'm not ex-military myself, many maybe most of the cops and deputies, plus a lot of "Engineering" are ex-military or in the reserves, and he's correct that a lot of the banter will seem rude and even cruel to outsiders (I know I have to considerably tone down my humor when communicating with non-coworkers).

In my first month as an Apprentice plumber, a Journeyman told me "Kid, you don't curse enough. We're going to teach you to curse."

He was right, they did!

Yeah, ni...

Heh.

"Ni" still cracks me up.

FreddyNoNose

2017-06-23, 02:17 PM

Why?

Also, don't mess with the couple. At least one of them will get angry with you, and you don't want that.
A quick way to become an social outcast!

Xyril

2017-06-24, 03:08 AM

A quick way to become an social outcast!

Don't listen to this guy, OP. Everyone knows than nothing ingratiates you with a group better than showing them how--in only the short amount of time you've known them all--you were able to resolve a problem that they were either too stupid to notice or too lazy to fix in the long time they've all known each other.

Mikemical

2017-06-24, 09:34 PM

Don't listen to this guy, OP. Everyone knows than nothing ingratiates you with a group better than showing them how--in only the short amount of time you've known them all--you were able to resolve a problem that they were either too stupid to notice or too lazy to fix in the long time they've all known each other.

This is sarcasm, OP.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-06-26, 12:38 PM

It's even a trope: TheFriendNobodyLikes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFriendNobodyLikes)

A.A.King

2017-06-26, 01:41 PM

A lot of judgemental people here. I guess it is nice to know that no matter where you are people who are different, who have different sensebility, will be described as 'unhealthy' and 'unwelcome in normal polite company'. You're having fun, your friends accept you for who you are but strangers will tell you that you're being 'unhealthy', that your behaviour should not be 'encouraged' and that there are limits to what society can accept. Their words may be different, but people are all the same I guess

You have two options really, accept it or move on. The group doesn't mind the guy, what you believe to be rude and unpleasant they either don't mind or even they believe it to be funny. If these are not your types of jokes you simply shouldn't hang out with these people as a group. The fact that they like this guy (or that some like him and others don't mind him the way you mind him) means that one some fundamental level these people are different from you.

As far as his girlfriend goes, as someone said before, men are different when you compare their friend-behaviour and their girlfriend-behaviour. Just assume that he is genuine with her. Hell, it's quite possible he has a third, even softer side that only comes out when he knows it's just him and her. Being sweet and nice is a sign of weakness and you should never show your friends the things you want to say to the girl you like.
To assume/suggest that he is deceiving her, that he is managing to make her believe he is a nice person while he is actually an incredible b*stard is INCREDIBLY patronising. The idea that you, a stranger, figured out her boyfriend after meeting him once while she is still completely in the dark as to his 'true personality' to me sounds like you're believing her to be very obvious and someone in need of protecting. Not a good view to hold.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-06-26, 06:53 PM

A lot of judgemental people here. I guess it is nice to know that no matter where you are people who are different, who have different sensebility, will be described as 'unhealthy' and 'unwelcome in normal polite company'. You're having fun, your friends accept you for who you are but strangers will tell you that you're being 'unhealthy', that your behaviour should not be 'encouraged' and that there are limits to what society can accept. Their words may be different, but people are all the same I guess

You have two options really, accept it or move on. The group doesn't mind the guy, what you believe to be rude and unpleasant they either don't mind or even they believe it to be funny. If these are not your types of jokes you simply shouldn't hang out with these people as a group. The fact that they like this guy (or that some like him and others don't mind him the way you mind him) means that one some fundamental level these people are different from you.

So you are defending a guy who uses racial slurs, “cuck”, “fag”, “beta male” and "get gud" mentality? I guess no matter how horrible you are there will always be someone who will want to genuinely defend you.

On your second point, the op never asked any of that he only wanted to know the reason people put with annoying people, not if the annoying guy should be kicked out or if he should stop hanging out with them.

AMFV

2017-06-26, 07:02 PM

So you are defending a guy who uses racial slurs, “cuck”, “fag”, “beta male” and "get gud" mentality? I guess no matter how horrible you are there will always be someone who will want to genuinely defend you.

Well those are words, I wouldn't say that saying words makes you all that horrible. Again it's part of a culture that you are not part of, and probably don't understand. I've met a lot of people who would say words like that and were not by any stretch racist, or homophobic. In fact they were all pretty tolerant. It's just a cultural thing. Different cultures place offense at different levels.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-06-26, 07:13 PM

Well those are words, I wouldn't say that saying words makes you all that horrible. Again it's part of a culture that you are not part of, and probably don't understand. I've met a lot of people who would say words like that and were not by any stretch racist, or homophobic. In fact they were all pretty tolerant. It's just a cultural thing. Different cultures place offense at different levels.

Words are never just words.

AMFV

2017-06-26, 07:23 PM

Words are never just words.

Oh yes, they are. Again, you're not a part of that culture, so you're talking out of someplace you probably shouldn't be. I have been in both cultural settings both a white collar college type setting where those words would be very extreme and would mean something very nasty. And I've been in a blue collar working setting where they wouldn't really have any meaning at all.

And frankly in my experience, the blue collar setting was just fine at accepting people who were actually like British cigarettes, maybe even moreso because they didn't make a big deal out of it, or if they did it was in humor and not because they were afraid of offending a gay guy. It is possible that this guy is just an ass, but it's equally possible that he's not from the same cultural background as OP and so the value of those words is substantially different.

I can remember when I was first it the military and I realized that the people who make the most racist jokes about black people, were black people, I started to reconsider how I felt about racial humor, and frankly, most of them weren't offended if you made jokes around them, as long as they knew it was just humor, it helped you bond with people.

Guys in many different cultures bond by ribbing, and that can include things like that. Like in blue collar culture and the military people bond by giving each other crap that's how guys make friends, that's how they treat their friends, and these people who literally probably be willing to die for their friends, can you really say that about the folks in college who are so terrified of saying the wrong thing that they're neutering humor and dialogue?

S@tanicoaldo

2017-06-26, 07:38 PM

Oh yes, they are. Again, you're not a part of that culture, so you're talking out of someplace you probably shouldn't be. I have been in both cultural settings both a white collar college type setting where those words would be very extreme and would mean something very nasty. And I've been in a blue collar working setting where they wouldn't really have any meaning at all.

And frankly in my experience, the blue collar setting was just fine at accepting people who were actually like British cigarettes, maybe even moreso because they didn't make a big deal out of it, or if they did it was in humor and not because they were afraid of offending a gay guy. It is possible that this guy is just an ass, but it's equally possible that he's not from the same cultural background as OP and so the value of those words is substantially different.

I can remember when I was first it the military and I realized that the people who make the most racist jokes about black people, were black people, I started to reconsider how I felt about racial humor, and frankly, most of them weren't offended if you made jokes around them, as long as they knew it was just humor, it helped you bond with people.

Guys in many different cultures bond by ribbing, and that can include things like that. Like in blue collar culture and the military people bond by giving each other crap that's how guys make friends, that's how they treat their friends, and these people who literally probably be willing to die for their friends, can you really say that about the folks in college who are so terrified of saying the wrong thing that they're neutering humor and dialogue?

Well, pollution and deforestation are part of our culture and civilization is that an excuse not to end them? Just because something is part of something it doesn't make it less wrong.

You may think words are just words but they aren’t, they have the power to accentuate and perpetuate problems, you are so iinserted in this social context it clouded your views and you can’t see past it or be impartial about it.

Besides an outside perspective most of the time helps, it shows to people inside a context something they are unable to see because they are… Well inside it,.

The Eye

2017-06-26, 08:12 PM

can you really say that about the folks in college who are so terrified of saying the wrong thing that they're neutering humor and dialogue?

Funny how most of the people I consider funny don't need to use this kind of horrible and derogatory terms and they do just fine, why do "blue collar" people can't? I was able to live with out it just fine.

AMFV

2017-06-26, 08:37 PM

Well, pollution and deforestation are part of our culture and civilization is that an excuse not to end them? Just because something is part of something it doesn't make it less wrong.

And words ARE NOT equivalent to either of those things (which are in and of themselves not always problematic), and could not be ended without destroying modern culture and our ability to transport food long distances.

You may think words are just words but they aren’t, they have the power to accentuate and perpetuate problems, you are so iinserted in this social context it clouded your views and you can’t see past it or be impartial about it.

You are mistaken, as I pointed out, I've been both inside and outside of that cultural framework. Frankly the military is the least racist place I have ever been, hands down. Race doesn't affect your promotions, your assignments, your pay, who you spend time with (almost to a degree that unfathomable in our current civilian society). And that's the place where I've heard the most racially charged humor. So it's pretty simple at least to my thinking. Racial jokes and humor don't magic people into being racists if they were not already. They're just jokes, just words.

Sure a racist might enjoy them, but somebody who isn't might also enjoy it if it was funny on other merits.

Besides an outside perspective most of the time helps, it shows to people inside a context something they are unable to see because they are… Well inside it,.

Again, I've been both inside that culture and outside that culture. I don't need you to show me a "context" of what a culture outside of that one is like. I can tell you which one had less prejudice, and you can believe me or continue to ignore the fact that you are dismissing a culture that you really don't understand and likely have never experienced. Period.

You've never been in that military culture (or I would strongly doubt that you have), so you have no idea what it's about. Or how that sort of thing affects bonding.

Funny how most of the people I consider funny don't need to use this kind of horrible and derogatory terms and they do just fine, why do "blue collar" people can't? I was able to live with out it just fine.

And you've said that you had difficulty making friends, which is part of what it helps with. Again, that's part of the way people in those cultures bond, particularly males in those cultures. And you might have a different sort of humor than those people do. But just because you don't understand a different culture doesn't mean that it's a problem.

lio45

2017-06-26, 11:05 PM

Re: the OP, obviously his friends don't find him annoying. People aren't friends with annoying people.

If you plan on trying to continue to bond with the people of this group, you will almost certainly have to get over your dislike (or at the very least, keep a lid on it so it doesn't show) of this particular guy.

Knaight

2017-06-27, 12:16 AM

Re: the OP, obviously his friends don't find him annoying. People aren't friends with annoying people.

This is ludicrous. People are perfectly capable of having friends who they consider to have negative traits, including being annoying. I can think of several people who fit that description among my various friend groups, they just also have lots of positive features.

Zale

2017-06-27, 12:27 AM

@OP

I'd let them know you don't consider that behavior to be acceptable- both the person and the friends. If they don't agree, then I'd just abandon ship.

Everything you've described would be a huge series of red flags to me. Even with a common friend-based understanding, those sort of comments reek of a particularly intolerable flavor of toxic masculinity that I can't stand.

Always remember you get to choose your friends. You don't have to engage if you don't want to engage. Sometimes it's impossible to alter a preexisting dynamic and the only choice is to pick your personal happiness and well-being over it.

As an aside, this is the first time I've ever seen someone invoke cultural relativism to defend calling someone a "cuck". It's really kind of fascinating, if disquieting.

90,000

2017-06-27, 12:33 AM

Better question.

Why are people friends with judgmental people?

Amazon

2017-06-27, 10:55 AM

Frankly the military is the least racist place I have ever been, hands down

Cute, but that's not what the statistics say. (http://www.newsweek.com/black-troops-study-punishment-622334)

2D8HP

2017-06-27, 11:06 AM

Funny how most of the people I consider funny don't need to use this kind of horrible and derogatory terms and they do just fine, why do "blue collar" people can't? I was able to live with out it just fine.

I really don't know.

I do remember that when I worked construction I heard a lot more viscous "humor" than I was used to, but there's something to what AMFV is saying. In particulier I remember a certain Journeyman Plumber who told horrible cringe inducing "jokes" about black people, but when an actual black man come on the job he was friendly and helpful to him.

I also remember another Journeyman who never said such "jokes", and gave no indication of being a bigot until he had a black apprentice working with him who he treated terribly compared to how he treated brown and white apprentices.

Deeds matter more.

I also remember when I entered City employment at Port maintenance being in a room of former construction worker, machinists, and mechanics that were made to watch an "anti-harassment video", every slur that anyone could think of was uttered by the audience about each other during the video, ("Make sure McKinney's not passed out drunk, you know those Irish guys", "Just not Russian tough like you Alex", "Anti-gingerism is Okay right? Everybody knows you can't trust redheads like Mike" etc.)

Making the trainer say "What is with you guys?", to general laughing.

Better question.

Why are people friends with judgmental people?

Again, the answer is years of practice.

Amazon

2017-06-27, 11:16 AM

I do remember that when I worked construction I heard a lot more viscous "humor" than I was used to, but there's something to what AMFV is saying. In particulier I remember a certain Journeyman Plumber who told horrible cringe inducing "jokes" about black people, but when an actual black man come on the job he was friendly and helpful to him.

You know what's better than not being racist but making racist jokes? Not beign racist and NOT making racist jokes. is that so hard?

2D8HP

2017-06-27, 12:07 PM

You know what's better than not being racist but making racist jokes? Not beign racist and NOT making racist jokes. is that so hard?

That's my preference as well.

But there's nothing easy about it.

Unfortunately in the places I have worked, I can get away with not laughing, and sometimes even "I just don't find that funny", but anything else (especially "ratting on someone"), quickly gets one isolated, often unemployed, and worse things "accidentally" start falling near one from great heights.

That is not hyperbole.

It would be nice if I could make a living in a more civil environment, but that is not the cards I was dealt, and I do not want to leave my wife a penniless widow, nor my children orphans.

Here's an idea, why don't you let me work in a bookstore or library like I hoped to as a child?

But really if anyone needs a job change it's not me, it's the folks (including children!) that I've seen picking tomatoes in the fields between Gilroy and Hollister, who were wrapped in cloth despite doing hard labor in the hot sun to shield themselves from the pesticides.

Yes "blue collar cultural norms" are often lousy, please save me from them, by giving me (and most of the world!) a "gravy" job instead (if you don't know, a "gravy job" is blue collar parlance for a white-collar job).

I'd look forward to a time when ditch diggers can trade places with professors every now and then (or at least get educated like them).

I would have us all start with "A Theory of Justice" by John Rawls (one of my wife's, who was privileged with a college education, textbooks).

"Justice" by Michael Sandel is good as well (I found out about it thanks to PBS).

lio45

2017-06-27, 12:40 PM

I can think of several people who fit that description among my various friend groups, they just also have lots of positive features.

Yeah, we just don't have the same definitions I'm afraid. If a person has lots of positive features, and is therefore generally a pleasant friend rather than the opposite, then they're pleasant, not annoying. If it's someone who can on occasion be annoying, then that's very different. But from the OP, I'm getting it's mostly their normal state. So the conclusion is pretty obvious -- the OP and the other people of the group don't agree on what's annoying and what isn't.

If you would define someone as annoying, then it's obvious that's not someone you consider a good friend. Or else your personal definition of friend is warped to also include acquaintances.

Amazon

2017-06-27, 02:26 PM

That's my preference as well.

But there's nothing easy about it.

Unfortunately in the places I have worked, I can get away with not laughing, and sometimes even "I just don't find that funny", but anything else (especially "ratting on someone"), quickly gets one isolated, often unemployed, and worse things "accidentally" start falling near one from great heights.

That is not hyperbole.

I really find hard to believe that construction workers would murder you over your dislike for racial jokes, unless you live in an alternative universe where the construction workers have been replaced by Orcs.

It would be nice if I could make a living in a more civil environment, but that is not the cards I was dealt, and I do not want to leave my wife a penniless widow, nor my children orphans.

Here's an idea, why don't you let me work in a bookstore or library like I hoped to as a child?

I don’t know, have you applied for the job? I don’t think your dream job will fall on your leap like that, you have to go after it.

But really if anyone needs a job change it's not me, it's the folks (including children!) that I've seen picking tomatoes in the fields between Gilroy and Hollister, who were wrapped in cloth despite doing hard labor in the hot sun to shield themselves from the pesticides.

Well, have you considered doing your part and maybe calling the police? Children should not be working on hard labor that’s against the law. If you really care about them you should do something about it.

Yes "blue collar cultural norms" are often lousy, please save me from them, by giving me (and most of the world!) a "gravy" job instead (if you don't know, a "gravy job" is blue collar parlance for a white-collar job).

I'd look forward to a time when ditch diggers can trade places with professors every now and then (or at least get educated like them).

Well, I’m quite aware we won’t be able to change the entire work situation of all people over night but that doesn’t mean you can’t do small things to improve YOUR workplace and the people you know, it all depends on your attitude, I think you are underestimating your co-workers a lot, on my experience(I’m a teacher) people are able to learn and expand their concepts if you are willing to teach in a kind and non patronizing way, never acting like you know all the truth of the world and always respecting the knowledge they also have. We can change the universe but we can do small actions to improve our own microverse.

warty goblin

2017-06-27, 03:14 PM

I really find hard to believe that construction workers would murder you over your dislike for racial jokes, unless you live in an alternative universe where the construction workers have been replaced by Orcs.

I've worked in environments not too dissimilar to that, and I really don't. Attempted murder would, in the setting I was in, have been unexpected, but a general campaign to make one's life living hell would not have surprised me at all. And it would be all too easy to do just that; the one thing that makes sweating your ass off in a 100 plus degree kitchen for next to no money remotely bearable is having fun with one's coworkers. Pull that support, or all the things one person does so the others can get through their day, and the prospect is pretty damn horrifying.

(Would such retaliation be illegal? Yes. Take the amount that matters, add $8.00, and you could have hired me for an hour.)

So between the alternatives of having eight or ten hours of your day be totally horrible instead of mostly horrible in a way you can at least ignore through abusing one another and using some of the world's least appropriate language, what would you do?

Once I got used to that atmosphere, which took a few months, it became sort of oddly fun in its own way. In part probably because I was lucky enough to only be doing it for a year, and in part simply because at some point the things that would generally be coded as abusive simply became a weird expression of friendship and, if not affection, at least appreciation. Sure my boss told me to go kill myself a couple times a week, but for the duration of the time I very much enjoyed the man's company - even though he was at the time in pretty much every way a genuinely terrible person with whom I disagreed profoundly in almost every possible way. Yet that weird and rather hostile environment allowed us to work together quite well for a year, and for me to regard him with no small amount of affection. I still think back to that year, and there's parts of it I rather miss; the camaraderie, the odd freedom and enjoyment of constantly being ribbed and ribbing back as virulently as possible. I don't miss the heat or holding a burned hand over the grill to fry the nerve endings so it wouldn't hurt all evening, but I do miss the sense of brotherhood it gave. I've got good friends now, but it's substantially different, and in many ways not as intense.

I also found it to have some rather substantial mental benefits. After your boss rubbing flesh dissolving chemicals on your arm becomes just one of those things that happens, the super-nice world of academia just stops being intimidating. Sure the professor might be a raging ******* and the material barely in range of my comprehension, but I could survive an environment that would break him and his grossly bloated ego like a twig. And sure it might be hard, but it's not greaseburn to the eyeball hard. In retrospect, I strongly suspect that I only made it through my disastrous first year of grad school because I had that experience, because I would be damned if those people were enough to stop me.

Trekkin

2017-06-27, 04:08 PM

I also found it to have some rather substantial mental benefits. After your boss rubbing flesh dissolving chemicals on your arm becomes just one of those things that happens, the super-nice world of academia just stops being intimidating. Sure the professor might be a raging ******* and the material barely in range of my comprehension, but I could survive an environment that would break him and his grossly bloated ego like a twig. And sure it might be hard, but it's not greaseburn to the eyeball hard. In retrospect, I strongly suspect that I only made it through my disastrous first year of grad school because I had that experience, because I would be damned if those people were enough to stop me.

You and I have very different definitions of what constitutes a mental benefit; I'd consider anything that convinces me I'm strong because I can physically outlast my mentors to be dangerously illogical and anything that equivocates academia with physical pain in every way but scale to be fundamentally misguided and perhaps an indication that academia isn't my forte.

warty goblin

2017-06-27, 05:48 PM

You and I have very different definitions of what constitutes a mental benefit; I'd consider anything that convinces me I'm strong because I can physically outlast my mentors to be dangerously illogical and anything that equivocates academia with physical pain in every way but scale to be fundamentally misguided and perhaps an indication that academia isn't my forte.

The 'mentor' in question had an ego that was probably visible from space, and was one of the worst professors I have ever had. After a semester of putting up with him, my very easy-going classmate would literally start to vibrate with fury when he started talking. A visit to his office hours nearly caused a nervous breakdown in another classmate after he criticized her for needing to leave for a personal engagement. The fact that I had been able to get along well with a much greater jerk than him was a definite asset.

Then I quit that grad program and started another. Turns out I'm actually damn good at this statistics thing. But if I hadn't been sufficiently hammered on by a year of food service weirdness, I strongly suspect I would not have had the fortitude to not just give up and let that dream die. I've certainly seen other people entering Ph.D. programs combust their first year and give up, because they weren't mentally prepared for how hard it was, and at much better programs than the one I started in.

A.A.King

2017-06-27, 07:27 PM

So you are defending a guy who uses racial slurs, “cuck”, “fag”, “beta male” and "get gud" mentality? I guess no matter how horrible you are there will always be someone who will want to genuinely defend you.
Seeing as you seem to be of the extremely judgemental type, not allowing private people to do private things in private I can only assume that the last part of your statement speaks from experience, yet why people are willing to defend you, a person who believes that having a different sense of humour makes you the most horrible person imaginable, is beyond me.

Words are never just words.
Yes they are. If you don't believe me, bring your best words and put them against my sticks and stones, let's see who comes out on top shall we?

Jay R

2017-06-27, 07:40 PM

Because that's all there is to make friends with.

We're all annoying, sometimes, to some people. Including you. And including me.

2D8HP

2017-06-27, 09:35 PM

.
...

I really find hard to believe that construction workers would murder you over your dislike for racial jokes, unless you live in an alternative universe where the construction workers have been replaced by Orcs.

"Falling near one" (three to five feet, twice)

It didn't kill me, but the message was well delivered!

I don’t know, have you applied for the job? I don’t think your dream job will fall on your leap like that, you have to go after it.

Yes, it was a fruitless decade.

I found out then, that my back was employable, not my face or mind.

I'm 49 years old now, and it's too late now.

Well, I’m quite aware we won’t be able to change the entire work situation of all people over night but that doesn’t mean you can’t do small things to improve YOUR workplace and the people you know, it all depends on your attitude, I think you are underestimating your co-workers a lot, on my experience(I’m a teacher) people are able to learn and expand their concepts if you are willing to teach in a kind and non patronizing way, never acting like you know all the truth of the world and always respecting the knowledge they also have. We can change the universe but we can do small actions to improve our own microverse.

Thankfully I'm out of construction, and now do building repair for The City.

Also I'm a poor actor.

Fortunately The City is a bit better than private employment, and improving. Our old boss who often did bigoted "jokes" retired.

Our new boss is better. One result is that a young man (40 is young compared to most of the crew), who often said bigoted "jokes" was sent away to the 9-1-1 Call Center where he just encounters cops, not the Public (we kept telling him to cool it, especially in the Public areas and around DA's and Defense Attorney's, but he wouldn't stop himself). Our old boss, instead of sending him away may have joined in, so improvement!

Why did our boss keep him at all?

He has other qualities that may by meritorious:

Gets along very well with the cops (his brother is one).

Effective in doing the work

Loves overtime (unlike me)

Is cheaper (too new to get some benefits)

Also, you're a teacher? Awesome! I wish they were more teachers..

...because at some point the things that would generally be coded as abusive simply became a weird expression of friendship and, if not affection, at least appreciation.

I've found that true as well, the reaction to the "anti-harassment" video that I eluded to was a bit of that as well.

This may sound bizarre, but when people make it personal ("Hey Irish, you got a hangover?) and trade barbs, it becomes almost comradly (depending on tone, and facial expression). The "jokes" that have bothered me are slurs behind someone's back.

..I also found it to have some rather substantial mental benefits..

I've found pride in repairing things, and when I was building schools and libraries. Work to build or remodel private businesses mostly made me feel abused and underpaid.

Those who I most respect are blue collar, and/or union organizers (before I left construction I was appointed to be the site Steward).

Other effects you may regard as positive or negative. Any time someone complains about janitors being on strike etc., I often find it difficult to bite my tongue and keep from saying something (or just slapping them!).

...and I better stop there, before being further annoying.

On topic:
From nine to sometime in my 20's I had a classmate then "friend" who grew to be very abrasive.

Inertia kept him in my social circle (and he played RPG's and wargames). By my teens I had known no one in my social circle longer.

He was particularly abusive to a second "friend" who playedTunnels & Trolls instead of Dungeons & Dragons, and none of us particularly liked that "friend", but I liked having him around because he would draw abuse from my older "friend" away from me

Eventually his mom's drug addiction became enough of a problem, that he moved into ny mom's house until he was old enough to join the Marines.

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 02:58 AM

Funny how most of the people I consider funny don't need to use this kind of horrible and derogatory terms and they do just fine, why do "blue collar" people can't? I was able to live with out it just fine.

The bolded part of your post sums it up.

You may not think this person is funny, but the other members in the group presumably do, or at least don't find him as annoying as you do.

That's why you are free to choose your friends - you can choose to be friends only with people who don't use terms you don't like, and the others in the group can continue to be friends with people who do use those terms if they like/don't mind them.

You do say that you are trying to make friends (which implies that you do not have many/any) so maybe you should err on the side of tolerance though, instead of being too quick to judge and reject people.

Knaight

2017-06-28, 03:15 AM

You do say that you are trying to make friends (which implies that you do not have many/any) so maybe you should err on the side of tolerance though, instead of being too quick to judge and reject people.

Screw that. There's no point in spending a lot of time with people you actively dislike just because that way you'll at least have somebody. Friends aren't fungible, and spending time with people you dislike prevents you from meeting and spending time with people you actually like instead.

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 03:51 AM

Screw that. There's no point in spending a lot of time with people you actively dislike just because that way you'll at least have somebody. Friends aren't fungible, and spending time with people you dislike prevents you from meeting and spending time with people you actually like instead.

I don't think this post is accurate. First, it is only one person in the group that the OP dislikes. Second, I think that by spending time with a group of people, the OP is actually more likely to meet other people (that he may like) than by hanging out by himself - you mostly meet people through people.

Whether your advice or mine has more merit may require a bit more context than we have though. I have drawn a few inferences.

[[[[Here there had been a paragraph discussing why I gave the advice I did. The OP perceived it as critical of him and politely asked that I edit it out, which is what I have now done.]]]]

Those are the reasons why I suggested to him that maybe he err a little more on the side of tolerance (which is not to say accept behaviour he regards as totally abhorrent, but maybe accept behaviour which is somewhat annoying). I'm not saying that he should spend time with people he doesn't like, but instead perhaps be self-aware if he is overly sensitive about what he thinks of as annoying, and try to moderate that.

Of course, there are plenty of inferences in my reasoning, maybe the examples above are isolated. But that's my take and the basis for my advice.

Knaight

2017-06-28, 03:58 AM

The OP has said that he is trying to find friends, and I think implied that he does not have many. This is the second thread where he has said that he is disenchanted with someone who most other people appear to like (see his thread on why people like attractive people) and he also has a thread where he thinks a waiter was rude and most people on here disagreed with him. Those things taken together suggest to me that he is easily annoyed by people (people who most others are not annoyed by) and not very tolerant of people acting differently to his ideal of how people should act. It seems to me that this may well be the reason why he does not have many (or any) friends - he is too quick to dismiss people as potential friends because he is intolerant of difference (to him) and bothered by things that others aren't. I guess it boils down to me wondering if he is the reason why he has few friends, rather than everyone he meets being the reason.

I don't necessarily disagree with most of this. However, the degree of annoyance has clearly varied heavily - the rest of them have been along the lines of "what's up with that" or "isn't that a bit rude", whereas this one has been pretty close to "seriously, what the %@&* is wrong with this @*&*^#$". The Eye appears easily annoyed, but finding a group where nobody annoys him as much as this particular guy is easy, and it's much easier when not associating with this particular guy.

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 04:04 AM

I don't necessarily disagree with most of this. However, the degree of annoyance has clearly varied heavily - the rest of them have been along the lines of "what's up with that" or "isn't that a bit rude", whereas this one has been pretty close to "seriously, what the %@&* is wrong with this @*&*^#$". The Eye appears easily annoyed, but finding a group where nobody annoys him as much as this particular guy is easy, and it's much easier when not associating with this particular guy.

That may be. I think he should move his line toward being more tolerant - but as you say this particular person may still be on the wrong side of it. Only the OP himself can make that call.

anjxed

2017-06-28, 09:08 AM

Words are never just words.

Words only have power if you give them meaning. Like in Battlestar Galactica they used the word Frack to replace F***.(To go around the censors I think) Yet the intended meaning of it is the same.

Capt Spanner

2017-06-28, 10:12 AM

There's one guy in my circle of friends who is like this, but to a lesser degree.

Maybe it's similar, maybe it's not.

He consistently makes sexist jokes (though rarely using slurs), and will argue that homosexuality should be forbidden, kind of thing.

I never invite him to anything I organise. But others do. Once I asked why.

There were two elements to it.

One was that people commonly took his controversial viewpoints and off-colour humour as a kind of attention seeking more worthy of pity than scorn. When he starts arguing a viewpoint the rest of us find distasteful it makes him centre of attention, and he has some craving for that. Maybe there's something to that.

The other was simple: "when I was really low, and really needed someone to be there for me he was the first to be there". Well, I can't argue with that.

Shamash

2017-06-28, 03:14 PM

[SPOILER=Off topic responses]I'm 49 years old now, and it's too late now.

Well, my father always say that "Unless your dream is to be an Olympic athlete it's never too late to go after it.", he spent his entire life being a truck driver, that's the only thing he tough he knew despite not liking been always form his family and sting down for so long, but that's what he did, he is almost 60 now and decided to go after his dream of working with woodwork, something he always loved.

And he did, he is making new furniture for our house and even selling some pieces and also working with woodcut art, he actually making some good money out of it and even has an exposition booked on a cool art exhibition.

So if you really want to work with books, I say go for it it's never too late.

For people who say words are just words. I recommend this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LHdYTngNxk

AMFV

2017-06-28, 04:15 PM

Cute, but that's not what the statistics say. (http://www.newsweek.com/black-troops-study-punishment-622334)

OH BOY! A REPORT FROM AN ADVOCACY GROUP! I'm sure they don't have an agenda at all! And are probably completely unbiased. Secondly, that's only in reference to UCMJ actions, which deal with court actions and not individual actions, which again you know literally nothing about, because you aren't in the military.

Secondly, as a simple Google search shows, that number is NOT higher than the general population outside the US, in fact, I suspect if you start factoring other mitigating factors, it's probably significantly lower. But I didn't really don't feel like spending the time to dispute with somebody who is literally doing drive-by stat attacks and not actually doing any real research into the whole thing. Particularly if that person doesn't realize that the statistics are probably not any worse and likely significantly better than the general population.

For people who say words are just words. I recommend this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LHdYTngNxk

That video is pretty flimsy on the actual citations. Also you'd be very hard pressed to defend the idea that language shapes our reality in any real way without examining the other possibility, our language is reflective of our reality because... it describes it, we develop and evolve language to describe our reality. Our reality and perception isn't affected in any real way by our ability to communicate it.

Also a LOT of those social science studies he references have very serious methodology issues. It's very difficult to examine them because the sample sizes for sociology studies (being that sociology gets a lot less funding) are TINY, like ridiculously tiny, like some of the sample sizes I've seen for some of those studies are lower than 100 people. That's not even enough to get past noise. And most of these studies have not adequetely reproduced and they haven't accounted for controls.

Let's say I take a random group of 50 people and I test them at math, then I take another random group of 50 people and tell them that people expect them to be worse at math and then test them. That sounds like a reasonable experiment, but there's no way I can properly assess if the second group was just worse. Second of all it is incredibly unlikely that first group was unaware of the stereotype, meaning that whole study is... worthless junk submitted by a grad student who needed to get published, a lot of these are that. But because people are not taught how to evaluate things and peer review in th social sciences has become literally a joke, nobody catches this. And people are likely to be very upset if you bring it up for some reason.

And again, the first half of the video would seem to suggest that people who are bigoted and racist, can use any set of theoretical words and remain bigoted and racist, that's been my experience, and again my experience has included the reverse, people who make jokes that are flat-out racist.

Amazon

2017-06-28, 04:42 PM

OH BOY! A REPORT FROM AN ADVOCACY GROUP! I'm sure they don't have an agenda at all!

Sure, I see that your personal experience as a white male is much more relevant and less biased than an entire research on the topic.

I apologize.

AMFV

2017-06-28, 04:55 PM

Sure, I see that your personal experience as a white male is much more relevant and less biased than an entire research on the topic.

I apologize.

"An entire research"? You mean one study from a biased organization with a clear agenda? That doesn't really sound like the most credible basis for an assertion. Also I'm not sure where my "white male" comes into, or frankly that I've even said I was a white male. Regardless of that, yes, my actual experience as somebody who was in that culture in the military does trump an advocacy groups poor reporting study, which as I've pointed out doesn't actually show any worse racism or bias than the outside world experiences.

Amazon

2017-06-28, 04:57 PM

"An entire research"? You mean one study from a biased organization with a clear agenda? That doesn't really sound like the most credible basis for an assertion. Also I'm not sure where my "white male" comes into, or frankly that I've even said I was a white male. Regardless of that, yes, my actual experience as somebody who was in that culture in the military does trump an advocacy groups poor reporting study, which as I've pointed out doesn't actually show any worse racism or bias than the outside world experiences.

What ever you say dude.

warty goblin

2017-06-28, 05:27 PM

Also a LOT of those social science studies he references have very serious methodology issues. It's very difficult to examine them because the sample sizes for sociology studies (being that sociology gets a lot less funding) are TINY, like ridiculously tiny, like some of the sample sizes I've seen for some of those studies are lower than 100 people. That's not even enough to get past noise. And most of these studies have not adequetely reproduced and they haven't accounted for controls.

This isn't how statistics works. Your probability of falsely detecting a difference due to noise is not a function of sample size. It's literally a thing the researcher sets. The probability of (failing to) detect a difference due to inadequate sample size is. Furthermore, the variance of most statistics decreases as the square root of n, meaning there's seriously declining utility in larger sample sizes.

The problem with small sample sizes is that they make your estimates very imprecise, and are highly sensitive to outliers. However by N = 100, this is generally much less of an issue, particularly in cases of blocking, matched pair designs, and random assignment of individuals to treatments.

Let's say I take a random group of 50 people and I test them at math, then I take another random group of 50 people and tell them that people expect them to be worse at math and then test them. That sounds like a reasonable experiment, but there's no way I can properly assess if the second group was just worse. Second of all it is incredibly unlikely that first group was unaware of the stereotype, meaning that whole study is... worthless junk submitted by a grad student who needed to get published, a lot of these are that. But because people are not taught how to evaluate things and peer review in th social sciences has become literally a joke, nobody catches this. And people are likely to be very upset if you bring it up for some reason.

Again, not how statistics works. If you do in fact randomly choose your two groups, you can properly assess the probability that the discrepancy in results is due to one group just being worse than the other, for any given level of 'worse than the other' you care to name. If you're willing to go Bayesian, and can put a defensible prior on your belief that group A is a priori worse than B, you can even integrate over all possible values of 'worse than'. But you don't even need a fancy model to assess this ; a plain old randomization test will do just fine, and is robust against pretty much any defect you care to name. Assessing whether a difference in treatment groups is likely to be the result of random chance is the one of the major reasons modern statistical methods were invented in the first place, and has been a well understood problem for most of a century now.

Which isn't to say that there aren't plenty of potential methodological issues with sociological statistics, or any statistical analysis for that matter. Lack of proper randomization is a huge one, as is potential over-analysis or over-fitting of the data in order to turn up something publishable. But those are specific issues with specific papers, not a legitimate reason to dismiss both the entire field and the tools it uses just because you don't like their conclusions.

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 05:31 PM

On the topic of the US military, I think that all the arguments given in this thread so far are unpersuasive.

In my opinion AMFV is right to have little regard for Amazon's article. As AMFV said, it was prepared by an advocacy group, and had the tone of advocacy (rather than neutral reporting of the results of research). Also, its findings do not necessarily mean racism (racism is a possible cause for blacks facing punishment more often, but certainly not the only possible cause), and it does not purport to compare the military to non-military (the contention being whether the military is more racist, it being accepted that racism exists everywhere).

But I think Amazon is also right to have little regard to AMFV's own experiences. AMFV is only one person, his experiences of what happened in the units he was attached to may not be representative of the military as a whole. Also, there is some basis to Amazon's point that AMFV, because of his race, will only have one perspective, and there may be others.

Trekkin

2017-06-28, 05:31 PM

Regardless of that, yes, my actual experience as somebody who was in that culture in the military does trump an advocacy groups poor reporting study, which as I've pointed out doesn't actually show any worse racism or bias than the outside world experiences.

No, anecdotal evidence does not "trump" statistical data -- but then, by your logic, since no civilian can apparently know anything whatsoever about the military, neither can you or anyone else not a statistician understand analyses of statistical power, because nobody can possibly understand anything they haven't personally lived through and all attempts at communication are therefore utterly futile. Each of us is an island unto ourselves separated from the rest of the world by unnavigable shallows of unique experience. Words are folly. Meaning is myth.

Besides, if they have a such a compelling agenda to show racial bias, what does that say about your motives for vociferously downplaying it?

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 05:36 PM

Besides, if they have a such a compelling agenda to show racial bias, what does that say about your motives for vociferously downplaying it?

I don't think this follows.

AMFV isn't saying "because they are saying racism exists they have an agenda to show racism exists", which is what you are seeking to analogise with AMFV's own position. He is saying "because they explicitly identify (at least according to the article) as an advocacy group to speak up about racism, they have an agenda to show racism exists", and as far as I know AMFV does not explicitly self identify as an advocate with an agenda to downplay racism.

Zen

2017-06-28, 05:40 PM

AMFV

2017-06-28, 05:44 PM

Which isn't to say that there aren't plenty of potential methodological issues with sociological statistics, or any statistical analysis for that matter. Lack of proper randomization is a huge one, as is potential over-analysis or over-fitting of the data in order to turn up something publishable. But those are specific issues with specific papers, not a legitimate reason to dismiss both the entire field and the tools it uses just because you don't like their conclusions.

I think the bigger issue I was pointing out wasn't really the sample sizes, but controlling for external factors, which is what makes sociology statistics so difficult to actually put into practice. With people being as complex as they are, you can't really control for things very well, and it's very possible that you'd get a group composed of largely outliers in different directions.

As far as the actual study being discussed, I did actually look at a very similar study a long time ago, and there were very clear issues with the study, the sample size being only one of them, and I suspect the most minor. As somebody who is invested in statistics I'm sure you know that one way to deal with strange samples or conclusions is reproducibility, and the problem is that particularly in these kind of social experimentation studies people just don't do reproductions of other studies.

Also I'm not dismissing Sociology as a field, I'm objecting to a trend to produce studies that are intended to grab the attentions of the media and are not very well done and tend to get a huge reaction in the media to something that very well could be a one-off since it's not common that those results are necessarily reproduced. Also with the inherent complexity involved there are serious issues with many studies of this type, that's largely my objection.

And frankly, I'm fine with people doing those sort of studies, I'm not fine with people making broad philosophical claims about how the world works from a handful of non-reproduced studies, with potential methodology issues. For what it's worth I can't find the study that is making the exact claim that the video makes (That women who are told that "women are bad at math" score worse on tests), although I had similar studies, regarding sexist statements and sexism in video games.

No, anecdotal evidence does not "trump" statistical data -- but then, by your logic, since no civilian can apparently know anything whatsoever about the military, neither can you or anyone else not a statistician understand analyses of statistical power, because nobody can possibly understand anything they haven't personally lived through and all attempts at communication are therefore utterly futile. Each of us is an island unto ourselves separated from the rest of the world by unnavigable shallows of unique experience. Words are folly. Meaning is myth.

Besides, if they have a such a compelling agenda to show racial bias, what does that say about your motives for vociferously downplaying it?

No civilian knows as much about the military as somebody who has first-hand knowledge of that culture. Sorry, Charlie. I will say this out of COs I served under one-quarter have been black, that's significantly more than the general population percentage of blacks, out of Sergeants Major I served under, one-fifth were women (much higher than the percentage of women in the military), one-fifth were latino, one-fifth were black (one was a black woman). Out of the Company Gunnery Sergeants I served under, one-half were black, and one-quarter were hispanic. So that's pretty telling. Out of the Sergeants Major of the Marine Corps during the time I was in the Marines, NONE of them were white, not one. And Whites are still the majority in the Marines. If there a racist group seeking to control the military, it's doing a horrible horrible job. There are people of color in pretty much every level of authority, to include the Secretary of Defense at more than one time.

I'm not saying that the study is flawed, I'm saying that there is an agenda behind it's presentation in the forum that was linked, and I'm saying that it does not jive with my personal experience, or with the personal experience of other folks that have talked to military people in the thread. Frankly, no, you don't know as much as I do about this. And the only reason that communication is impossible is because you folks have already made up your minds and are acting sputtering and indignant when people who have actual experience tell you that isn't how it is. That's the issue here.

Edit:

That makes me wonder, what's the difference for you guys from an article that is biased and an article that goes against your pre-conceived notions?

Well for starters an article that went against my preconceived notions would probably have mentioned somewhere that the conviction rate was comparable or lower than that for the general population, in terms of race and conviction. Secondly they would have looked for alternative studies to demonstrate the validity of this opinion, or at the very least had the military's official positions regarding racism, which are very strict, and the military as I've said, has a lot of POC who advance to very high positions.

Yeah, you don't see a lot of POC officers, but the rate of POCs that go to college is drastically lower as well, my experience has been that probably pretty close to a majority of upper enlisted positions are held by minorities, or if not a majority, a clear increase over their normal percentage of the population.

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 05:51 PM

That makes me wonder, what's the difference for you guys from an article that is biased and an article that goes against your pre-conceived notions?

In this context, an article that is biased is one that purports to be a study (which suggest neutrality) but seeks to present a certain view. This can be done in a variety of ways (which need not include any actual misrepresentation of the facts), such as presenting results/facts that support the hypothesis, but withholding those the deny it, setting assumptions in a way that are more likely to favour a certain result, categorising results in a way that appears to suggest a certain viewpoint.

An article that goes against my pre-conceived notions is simply one that differs from my initial understanding of a subject.

For the record, I am not an American and don't have much in the way of pre-conceived notions about the degree of racism in the US military (I assume there's at least some), so neither the article, nor AMFV's anecdotes challenges my pre-concevied notion. Just because an article concurs with you pre-conceived notion, and others are critical of it, this does not mean that they are blindly trying to justify their initial notions.

Zen

2017-06-28, 05:52 PM

Secondly they would have looked for alternative studies to demonstrate the validity of this opinion, or at the very least had the military's official positions regarding racism (...)

What if there is no such thing and the official position contradicts the reality?

In this context, an article that is biased is one that purports to be a study (which suggest neutrality) but seeks to present a certain view. This can be done in a variety of ways (which need not include any actual misrepresentation of the facts), such as presenting results/facts that support the hypothesis, but withholding those the deny it, setting assumptions in a way that are more likely to favour a certain result, categorising results in a way that appears to suggest a certain viewpoint.

And did they do that? How can you tell?

AMFV

2017-06-28, 05:55 PM

What if there is no such thing and the official position contradicts the reality?

Well then they should have discussed things with actual black servicemembers. Who largely from discussion with my peers who were people of color feel that there isn't a lot of racism. Although that may be a biased sample, it's been pretty nearly one-hundred percent. Also of note, racist behavior gets shut down, there is literally nothing that will get chain of command more upset than that.

You can't take one study about one-aspect of something and then proclaim that the whole organization is racist and is wrongbad. It's far too complex for that, and I can't get into the complexities without going outside of forum acceptable topics. But in any case, my experiences have held that people who are racist are quite capable of being so without using slurs, and not all people who do use slurs are racist.

And did they do that? How can you tell?

Generally only citing a SINGLE source is usually a really good indication. Especially if that source gains some sort of benefit from inflaming the situation or presenting as being worse than it actually is. Now I wouldn't argue that UCMJ punishments might not be more severe, but you can't say that's evidence of systematic racism. Particularly when the upper echelons of the enlisted corps are largely people of color, and have a sprinkling of women, when the military had generals being people of color as far back as the 70s. When in terms of promotion and ability to serve race wasn't an issue as far back as Vietnam, or integration was at least achieved. From the one person I've talked to from that era (and not too much personally since he's a LtCol, but he did talk about it), even back then the military wasn't as racist as the outside world.

Zen

2017-06-28, 05:59 PM

Well then they should have discussed things with actual black servicemembers. Who largely from discussion with my peers who were people of color feel that there isn't a lot of racism. Although that may be a biased sample, it's been pretty nearly one-hundred percent. Also of note, racist behavior gets shut down, there is literally nothing that will get chain of command more upset than that.

You can't take one study about one-aspect of something and then proclaim that the whole organization is racist and is wrongbad. It's far too complex for that, and I can't get into the complexities without going outside of forum acceptable topics. But in any case, my experiences have held that people who are racist are quite capable of being so without using slurs, and not all people who do use slurs are racist.

Let's say you are a black person who works on a racist environment, would you be comfortable talk about it to a research without fear of repression? Are you sure this is the best way to find out about racism and there are no other factors that can be analyzed?

AMFV

2017-06-28, 06:08 PM

Let's say you are a black person who works on a racist environment, would you be comfortable talk about it to a research without fear of repression? Are you sure this is the best way to find out about racism and there are no other factors that can be analyzed?

I can say that from the folks I've known in the military they would be absolutely fine with that. People in the military will bitch about anything that there is to complain about; and they will do so without ANY provocation. If somebody's CO is a ****, you will know within three seconds of meeting them (exaggerated of course, but not far off). So again I don't think that's as valid a concern here.

Also only citing one source is a really bad sign, typically that's a sign that somebody only looked one thing up and then grabbed the first thing that agreed with their position. It's like a high school thing. That's why you have to look and see how much research an article has, it should have at least one contradictory source or several sources backing the same idea, lacking that means that it's probably something being blown significantly out of proportion.

Also there are other factors, promotions as I've stated:

http://diversity.defense.gov/Portals/51/Documents/Resources/Commission/docs/Issue%20Papers/Paper%2047%20-%20Enlisted%20Promotion%20Rates%20by%20Race%20Ethn icity%20and%20Gender.pdf

There you can see that the promotion rates are exactly the same (or within five or so percentage points) between POC and their representation overall in military service.

That suggests no great racism, although apparently Marines were slightly lower in FY07 through FY10, which contradicts my personal experience, but I would believe that.

Despite that, it's only a very marginal disparity and certainly the evidence is that as compared to the civilian world (Where blacks make up around 12 percent of the population), 0.8 percent advance to being CEOs, so that would be a much larger disparity.

Also discouraging racism is the fact that there much larger percentages of blacks, and hispanics in the military than in regular civilian life. In civilian life (especially in white collar jobs), you might not interact with more than one or two POC in your regular life, in the military, at least one guy in your squad will be of each of the represented ethnicities, sometimes more. (At least from what I've seen).

Trekkin

2017-06-28, 06:10 PM

I don't think this follows.

AMFV isn't saying "because they are saying racism exists they have an agenda to show racism exists", which is what you are seeking to analogise with AMFV's own position. He is saying "because they explicitly identify (at least according to the article) as an advocacy group to speak up about racism, they have an agenda to show racism exists", and as far as I know AMFV does not explicitly self identify as an advocate with an agenda to downplay racism.

I'm not making an analogy at all. I'm saying that just saying "they have an agenda" is not, ipso facto, reason enough to dismiss their claims; it's just an appeal to bias. How explicitly they identify has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. However, if we're going to throw accusations of bias around as probative anyway (and, given the tenor of the argument so far, it seems inevitable) it's worth recognizing that esprit de corps is a motive too, particularly in groups that vigorously encourage it. The people who doubt reports showing problems in groups of which they are proud to be or have been a member should be regarded with skepticism equal to that reserved for advocacy groups demonstrating their raison d'être. It doesn't mean they're wrong, but if we're going to pretend it does let's at least be fair about it.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-06-28, 06:12 PM

What ever you say dude.

I bet he had first hand experience on institutional racism as a straight, white and male CIS guy. :smallbiggrin: Wait I bet what his "Black friends" in a hostile environment told him everything he needs to know.

AMFV

2017-06-28, 06:18 PM

I'm not making an analogy at all. I'm saying that just saying "they have an agenda" is not, ipso facto, reason enough to dismiss their claims; it's just an appeal to bias. How explicitly they identify has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. However, if we're going to throw accusations of bias around as probative anyway (and, given the tenor of the argument so far, it seems inevitable) it's worth recognizing that esprit de corps is a motive too, particularly in groups that vigorously encourage it. The people who doubt reports showing problems in groups of which they are proud to be or have been a member should be regarded with skepticism equal to that reserved for advocacy groups demonstrating their raison d'être. It doesn't mean they're wrong, but if we're going to pretend it does let's at least be fair about it.

I didn't dismiss their claims. I said that using the claim that higher rates of UCMJ conviction is evidence of racial bias is probably not sufficient information to make that claim. I actually would believe in higher rates of UCMJ conviction, in the same way that I would believe that there are differences in the frequency of civilian convictions (greater disparities there as a matter of fact).

But no, bias doesn't necessarily mean the claims are false, but often it can mean the inferences are greatly exaggerated. As I suspect they are. Here there are discussions of rampant racism when a quick study of other factors (promotions to higher grades as I linked), suggests that there is maybe a more complicated reality.

I suspect that the difference in UCMJ conviction rates has to do with the fact that non-POC service members are more likely to get a lawyer if they are facing negative action, at least in my own limited experience. Although there are probably other factors, and racism may be one of them, but I don't think that's necessarily evidence of widescale racism in the military, as the article (and Amazon) inferred. It is imperative to be very careful of anybody making BIG claims with not a lot of sourcing.

Edit:

I bet he had first hand experience on institutional racism as a straight, white and male CIS guy. :smallbiggrin: Wait I bet what his "Black friends" in a hostile environment told him everything he needs to know.

I'm sorry was the promotion evidence I shared insufficient to disprove the "hostile environment" bullcrap you folks are spewing. None of you have ever been in the military, or anywhere near combat arms, so until you have, you have far less idea about how that works than me a straight white male from that environment. Hell I was in when Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed, and do you know who got harassed when they came out? Do you know who cared? Nobody, not a single person cared if people were actually gay, and this is a world where people are frequently referred to as metaphorical cigarettes.

Also why would you think that my black peers wouldn't be comfortable talking to me? It's not like I was higher in the chain of command or I had an authority to cause them any kind of reprisals, in fact many of them were (and are) my superiors. So they could y'know, discipline me rather than the other way around, hell they could smoke me if they wanted, for very little reason, so I would have every reason to be kind to them. And frankly saying something genuinely racist or pissing them off in that way. Frankly, they could probably get away with beating the tar out of me.

Zen

2017-06-28, 06:21 PM

I can say that from the folks I've known in the military they would be absolutely fine with that. People in the military will bitch about anything that there is to complain about; and they will do so without ANY provocation. If somebody's CO is a ****, you will know within three seconds of meeting them (exaggerated of course, but not far off). So again I don't think that's as valid a concern here.

Also only citing one source is a really bad sign, typically that's a sign that somebody only looked one thing up and then grabbed the first thing that agreed with their position. It's like a high school thing. That's why you have to look and see how much research an article has, it should have at least one contradictory source or several sources backing the same idea, lacking that means that it's probably something being blown significantly out of proportion.

Also there are other factors, promotions as I've stated:

http://diversity.defense.gov/Portals/51/Documents/Resources/Commission/docs/Issue%20Papers/Paper%2047%20-%20Enlisted%20Promotion%20Rates%20by%20Race%20Ethn icity%20and%20Gender.pdf

There you can see that the promotion rates are exactly the same (or within five or so percentage points) between POC and their representation overall in military service.

That suggests no great racism, although apparently Marines were slightly lower in FY07 through FY10, which contradicts my personal experience, but I would believe that.

Despite that, it's only a very marginal disparity and certainly the evidence is that as compared to the civilian world (Where blacks make up around 12 percent of the population), 0.8 percent advance to being CEOs, so that would be a much larger disparity.

Also discouraging racism is the fact that there much larger percentages of blacks, and hispanics in the military than in regular civilian life. In civilian life (especially in white collar jobs), you might not interact with more than one or two POC in your regular life, in the military, at least one guy in your squad will be of each of the represented ethnicities, sometimes more. (At least from what I've seen).

That's not what I asked, I'm talking about a hypothetical situation.

AMFV

2017-06-28, 06:22 PM

That's not what I asked, I'm talking about a hypothetical situation.

Well you can't really remove it from a hypothetical here. You should still make mention of opposing claims even in they are wrong. However in this case, they're both right, it's just too complicated to make the kind of broad claims that the article was about racism in the military.

Zen

2017-06-28, 06:30 PM

Well you can't really remove it from a hypothetical here. You should still make mention of opposing claims even in they are wrong. However in this case, they're both right, it's just too complicated to make the kind of broad claims that the article was about racism in the military.

I'm asking how would you react in that hypothetical scenario.

AMFV

2017-06-28, 06:34 PM

I'm asking how would you react in that hypothetical scenario.

How I would react if somebody presented an article that contained the official position of an organization with regards to racism and that position was racist? I would object to that.

Somebody presents an official position that is not racist, but their organization is? I would likely object to that.

I'm not really sure what is that you're asking, maybe you could spell out said hypothetical scenario a little more clearly and I can tell you how I think I would react.

Zen

2017-06-28, 06:40 PM

How I would react if somebody presented an article that contained the official position of an organization with regards to racism and that position was racist? I would object to that.

Somebody presents an official position that is not racist, but their organization is? I would likely object to that.

I'm not really sure what is that you're asking, maybe you could spell out said hypothetical scenario a little more clearly and I can tell you how I think I would react.

No, let's say you are a race victim of racism in your environment, and your environment (unlike the military) is racist, then the researcher asks you if you have ever suffered racism in your day to day life in this racist organization.

How would you react? Would tell the truth knowing that the results of the research may cause some sort of backlash against you and others or would you lie to keep things from getting worse?

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 08:02 PM

And did they do that? How can you tell?

I don't know if they did it or not. You might be able to see some signs of bias by reading the study itself (which I have not done, and I suspect nobody here has) because they should list their assumptions and you may be able to identify some assumptions as inaccurate. You may have to go deeper (to perhaps discern whether things were catalogued to achieve a certain outcome), or you may not be able to tell at all (if they have simply disregarded data).

I haven't claimed the study was bias though. I said I don't find it particularly persuasive because it undertaken by a group that self-identifies as advocating for particular position on the very issue they are identifying (among other reasons) - the appearance of this conflict raises the suspicion in my mind that the study may have been massaged (int he ways described) for a certain outcome, even though I do not intend to undertake the work to confirm whether or not this suspicion is justified.

It's kind of like a smoking lobby group presenting some research that minimises the negative health effects of smoking tobacco. Even if you didn't go through the study with a fine tooth comb to identify any flaws, you might be suspicious that the study may have been massaged toward that result, and you may therefore give that study less weight than you would a study that appeared to have a more neutral starting point.

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 08:16 PM

I'm not making an analogy at all. I'm saying that just saying "they have an agenda" is not, ipso facto, reason enough to dismiss their claims; it's just an appeal to bias.
That may have been what you meant, it is not what you said.

You are right that it is an appeal to bias. You are right that it is not enough to dismiss their claims as certainly being false. But it is enough to distrust their claims as certainly being correct.

Throwing around a buzz term like "appeal to motive/bias" does not win you the argument - The fallacy is to say "that man is bias so what he says is definitely not true". It is not a fallacy to say "that man is bias, so what he says is not credible and should not be trusted".

How explicitly they identify has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. However, if we're going to throw accusations of bias around as probative anyway (and, given the tenor of the argument so far, it seems inevitable) it's worth recognizing that esprit de corps is a motive too, particularly in groups that vigorously encourage it. The people who doubt reports showing problems in groups of which they are proud to be or have been a member should be regarded with skepticism equal to that reserved for advocacy groups demonstrating their raison d'être. It doesn't mean they're wrong, but if we're going to pretend it does let's at least be fair about it.

That's true, espirit de corp may be a motive to make a bias argument. But that does not mean that it is AMFV's motive here.

It seems to me that there is a clear conflict where a group has self identified as advocating a particular argument then conduct a study to support that argument. My view is that the conflict is less clear when a person at least purports to be neutral but may (or may not) have some affinity with the institution he is commenting on. I acknowledge it may be factor, but I think it is not.

As I said earlier, I don't give AMFV's comments much weight in this debate, but that is because he is a single person making anecdotal comments in the basis of his limited experiences, rather than for the reasons you give.

Luz

2017-06-28, 08:19 PM

I haven't claimed the study was bias though. I said I don't find it particularly persuasive because it undertaken by a group that self-identifies as advocating for particular position on the very issue they are identifying (among other reasons)

That's ludicrous, if a group that fights racism won't be allowed to research about racism, who will be responsible for researching that?

Also, don't forget to edit your posts instead of double posting.

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 08:21 PM

AMFV

2017-06-28, 08:32 PM

No, let's say you are a race victim of racism in your environment, and your environment (unlike the military) is racist, then the researcher asks you if you have ever suffered racism in your day to day life in this racist organization.

How would you react? Would tell the truth knowing that the results of the research may cause some sort of backlash against you and others or would you lie to keep things from getting worse?

I mentioned and addressed this. When the CO was making a negative command environment I bitched to everybody about it, and most folks bitched with me. When my Sergeants were being not great people, I complained about that as well. When even higher command was tying our hands that was also complained about. The military is full of people complaining. So yes, in this hypothetical I would be likely to complain, possibly even unasked.

That's ludicrous, if a group that fights racism won't be allowed to research about racism, who will be responsible for researching that?

Also, don't forget to edit your posts instead of double posting.

They are allowed to research it. But if they're the only source for something and there's no other sources or first-hand accounts and several other trusted sources (like the promotion research one I linked) are contradictory and are excluded, then that's probably a sign of something else.

Also you should probably reread sections of the forum rules as well before correcting others.

Liquor Box

2017-06-28, 08:54 PM

That's ludicrous, if a group that fights racism won't be allowed to research about racism, who will be responsible for researching that?

Also, don't forget to edit your posts instead of double posting.

Sorry I missed this.

Of course they are allowed to research it, just like tobacco lobby groups are allowed to research the health effects of smoking. But, my opinion is that research conducted by any group who has an explicit and clear vested interest in the outcome will be given less weight (or more scrutiny).

As to who else might research racism in the military? Well lots of people.

First the military might - although the military could be said to have a vested interest in finding a certain outcome as well, so their research may also be given less weight (or subject to greater scrutiny. That would depend on whether it was independently conducted and what the terms of reference were.

Also Universities and similar institutions might (and probably have on numerous occasions) looked at racism in the military. Journalists might look at the question (although this would be less likely to be a study, more likely to be anecdotal), as might other institutes looking to publish a book or study on the question.

I imagine the topic is reasonably widely studied.

Chen

2017-06-29, 08:31 AM

Shamash

2017-06-29, 08:57 AM

Uh did anyone actually read that article? Even taken at face value from a possibly biased advocacy group, the article is better support that the military is LESS racist (although still racist to a degree) than the civilian world anyways.

It says black servicemen are 2.6 times more likely than whites to be found guilty at court martial. It goes on to say black people are imprisoned (across the country) at 5 times the rate of white people. Seems regular civilian racism, with respect to crime and punishment is worse than that in the military (since that's all this article talked about).

That's so funny; it’s like a bunch of people arguing if the sun is yellow or white when it really is blue. LOL

AMFV

2017-06-29, 09:40 AM

Uh did anyone actually read that article? Even taken at face value from a possibly biased advocacy group, the article is better support that the military is LESS racist (although still racist to a degree) than the civilian world anyways.

It says black servicemen are 2.6 times more likely than whites to be found guilty at court martial. It goes on to say black people are imprisoned (across the country) at 5 times the rate of white people. Seems regular civilian racism, with respect to crime and punishment is worse than that in the military (since that's all this article talked about).

Well since I pointed this out several times, I would say that I definitely would have had to have noticed it.

Edit: Also I would note that this is pretty strongly a defense of my "the military is the least racist place I've been" statement since it's literally about half as racist in one of it's most racist areas.

Liquor Box

2017-06-29, 05:22 PM

Uh did anyone actually read that article? Even taken at face value from a possibly biased advocacy group, the article is better support that the military is LESS racist (although still racist to a degree) than the civilian world anyways.

It says black servicemen are 2.6 times more likely than whites to be found guilty at court martial. It goes on to say black people are imprisoned (across the country) at 5 times the rate of white people. Seems regular civilian racism, with respect to crime and punishment is worse than that in the military (since that's all this article talked about).

Yes, both AMFV and I mentioned it. The people who were interested in defending the article skimmed past that comment though, so it may have got lost.

Mikemical

2017-06-29, 09:35 PM

Words are never just words.

As many people have said before, yes they are. Being offended about words is your choice. I find it particularly charming that the people who seem to get triggered the most about words spoken are the people said words come nowhere near close to affecting them.

The OP has said that he is trying to find friends, and I think implied that he does not have many. This is the second thread where he has said that he is disenchanted with someone who most other people appear to like (see his thread on why people like attractive people) and he also has a thread where he thinks a waiter was rude and most people on here disagreed with him. Those things taken together suggest to me that he is easily annoyed by people (people who most others are not annoyed by) and not very tolerant of people acting differently to his ideal of how people should act. It seems to me that this may well be the reason why he does not have many (or any) friends - he is too quick to dismiss people as potential friends because he is intolerant of difference (to him) and bothered by things that others aren't. I guess it boils down to me wondering if he is the reason why he has few friends, rather than everyone he meets being the reason.

My sentiment exactly. I don't wanna say the A-word because it might be misinterpreted, but having been diagnosed with it on the lighter spectrum, for people with it to make friends outside their comfort zone can be quite challenging. I would know, most of my actual friends I met because they were the only group of kids who talked about anime, videogames and D&D, and I hanged out with them just because those were my interests. Then I started branching out, meeting other people and making conversation about things other than what I know I like. It was slow work and some times I just wanted to crawl back into my safe little cave of videogames, anime and D&D "all day, everyday" until I realized that wasn't healthy, and I really didn't want to end up being some barely functional individual like Chris-Chan.

Funny how most of the people I consider funny don't need to use this kind of horrible and derogatory terms and they do just fine, why do "blue collar" people can't? I was able to live with out it just fine.

Some people find South Park offensive and vulgar; some like me think it's hilarious and on-point regarding contemporary events and hasn't lost it's charm like other long-running comedy series like The Simpsons or Family Guy.

Some people curse like sailors, some are as tight-lipped as a mime, every head is a world as equally complex as yours.

I would suggest you watch sitcoms like Friends or How I Met Your Mother, so you can get some grasps of how certain group dynamics go. They're also pretty PG-13.

Liquor Box

2017-06-29, 10:30 PM

My sentiment exactly. I don't wanna say the A-word because it might be misinterpreted, but having been diagnosed with it on the lighter spectrum, for people with it to make friends outside their comfort zone can be quite challenging. I would know, most of my actual friends I met because they were the only group of kids who talked about anime, videogames and D&D, and I hanged out with them just because those were my interests. Then I started branching out, meeting other people and making conversation about things other than what I know I like. It was slow work and some times I just wanted to crawl back into my safe little cave of videogames, anime and D&D "all day, everyday" until I realized that wasn't healthy, and I really didn't want to end up being some barely functional individual like Chris-Chan.

I didn't want to say the A word either, but I did wonder about it in my head

Kyberwulf

2017-06-30, 12:34 AM

I just want to say it is pretty ironic. He makes the assertation that we can't understand a culture because we aren't of the culture... the good on to tell how the culture of a group of people aren't affected by that culture he is talking about. I say that because he does come off as white sounding.

By his logic, he agrees with feminists... that men cannot understand what it feels like or anything about that. Same with black lives matters.. or how Muslims or Islamist are like. We cannot criticize the kkk or any other racist organization.

Mikemical

2017-06-30, 07:35 AM

By his logic, he agrees with feminists... that men cannot understand what it feels like or anything about that. Same with black lives matters.. or how Muslims or Islamist are like. We cannot criticize the kkk or any other racist organization.

Don't you know? It's only racist or a hate crime when it's white vs anyone else, the other way around are just fabrications by the patriarchy.

/sarcasm

Cozzer

2017-06-30, 08:30 AM

90,000

2017-06-30, 08:46 AM

I just want to say that the fact that TheEye's simple, straightforward and reasonable request for advice has turned into a outmoralizing-each-other war involving mentions of the kkk and the patriarchy makes me feel noticeably more empathetic towards the feeling he expresses in the title of this topic.

Because you would never play games of emotional or intellectual one-upsmanship, Cozzer.

I really hope you were aware of the irony as you made this post, because I like to give people credit like that.

I mean, I'm aware of it as I make this post.

Cozzer

2017-06-30, 08:52 AM

90,000

2017-06-30, 09:00 AM

Oh, don't worry, I'm the kind of guy who'd play games of one-upmanship about something as trivial as how many things you play games of one-upmanship about.

But seriously, I don't give a crap if saying it makes me annoying too, this whole "let's completely stop caring about the actual issue the actual person is having and let's focus on splitting hairs and out-moralizing each other" thing is unsufferable.

I posit that people are ignoring the actual issue because the actual issue is vapour thin and kind of judgemental.

If you wanna advocate for them to move this to another thread, fine, but as it stands it's an improvement over what the OP was going for.

Cozzer

2017-06-30, 09:59 AM

I posit that people are ignoring the actual issue because the actual issue is vapour thin and kind of judgemental.

If you wanna advocate for them to move this to another thread, fine, but as it stands it's an improvement over what the OP was going for.

Ok, I'm going to be serious for a second and say I think you're really being unfair to the OP here. (While admitting you were kinda fair before, when calling me out on my own judgementalness :smalltongue: )

The OP said he was never very good at making friend and he's making an effort at it. I believe the issue is having is very relatable and has to do with one of the weirdest parts of how social relationships work. It's one of these things that seem obivious after you've built an "instinct" that guides you, but also makes no logical sense when you think about it, since it's more about feelings than logic.

He deserves to be taken seriously and not used as a pretext to start the 51623-th "I'm holier than thou on the Internet" war, that's what I'm saying.

Also yeah, now that you mention it I do believe that discussion should go to another thread (or, even better, no thread at all, especially since it went past Godwin's Law threshold).

Mikemical

2017-06-30, 10:05 AM

Also yeah, now that you mention it I do believe that discussion should go to another thread (or, even better, no thread at all, especially since it went past Godwin's Law threshold).

Nobody has compared anyone or anything to Hitler or Nazism yet, as far as I can tell.

90,000

2017-06-30, 10:17 AM

The OP said he was never very good at making friend and he's making an effort at it. I believe the issue is having is very relatable and has to do with one of the weirdest parts of how social relationships work. It's one of these things that seem obivious after you've built an "instinct" that guides you, but also makes no logical sense when you think about it, since it's more about feelings than logic.

I find it difficult to take him seriously, simply for the reason that his entire premise is based on not taking his friends seriously.

The reality is that he doesn't get to dictate to them whether they find this person unfunny or annoying.

Projecting his judgemental attitude onto them as though there's some discrepancy there is patently ignorant.

He finds this person annoying. The person is not, objectively speaking, annoying.

The OP never suggests that he's aware of this delineation, it's ignorant at best and hugely disrespectful to his friends' opinions and feelings at worst.

I think, for his own good more than anything, he shouldn't be taken seriously.

This isn't an issue that will improve with a hearty dialogue. The only chance it has to improve is if he experiences having his opinions undermined, firsthand, like he's doing to his friends.

I'm sure OP is a wonderful guy overall, I've never met him so I wouldn't know.

But taking his post in a vacuum he really hasn't earned my respect.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-06-30, 11:44 AM

But taking his post in a vacuum he really hasn't earned my respect.

Why? becuase he doesn't like a guy who says "***" and "beta male"?

Mikemical

2017-06-30, 03:14 PM

Why? becuase he doesn't like a guy who says "***" and "beta male"?

What's wrong with calling people names? By all means, that guy could just be some /b/tard who's trying to be funny by using 4chan-speak irl and the group of friends think that's his thing and are okay with it.

It's not like he's Tana Mongeau calling people N***** and then backpedaling when iDubbz called her out on her hypocrisy in one of her live shows saying "I thought it was a way of saying 'friend, I didn't know what it meant until later'."

2D8HP

2017-06-30, 04:32 PM

Why? becuase he doesn't like a guy who says "***" and "beta male"?

Thanfully I don't recognize the meaning of over half of what the OP says are phrases used by the annoying "friend".

Please don't enlighten me.

..especially since it went past Godwin's Law threshold).

Nobody has compared anyone or anything to Hitler or Nazism yet, as far as I can tell.

New rule: Everytime Nazi's are mentioned in a thread, Kitler visits!

http://bcdn.sadanduseless.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/kitler20.jpg

90,000

2017-06-30, 08:18 PM

Why? becuase he doesn't like a guy who says "***" and "beta male"?

No.

I actually gave a reason in that post.

Lacco

2017-07-01, 12:49 AM

New rule: Everytime Nazi's are mentioned in a thread, Kitler visits!

A delivery company once butchered my surname into Kitler... :smallwink:

Liquor Box

2017-07-01, 01:33 AM

I just want to say that the fact that TheEye's simple, straightforward and reasonable request for advice has turned into a outmoralizing-each-other war involving mentions of the kkk and the patriarchy makes me feel noticeably more empathetic towards the feeling he expresses in the title of this topic.

I think most of the people who became involved in the sidetrack about racism in the military actually had already commented on The Eye's issue first.

anjxed

2017-07-01, 02:04 AM

By his logic, he agrees with feminists... that men cannot understand what it feels like or anything about that. Same with black lives matters.. or how Muslims or Islamist are like. We cannot criticize the kkk or any other racist organization.

Actually, it is true though, as I have never been a white male nor am I American I cannot really fathom about how they feel about lets say the KKK or any other organization. Sure there are other kinds of marginalization but every group is different. As I can never feel what the Muslims feel in my country. Nor can my fellow countrymen feel how I feel as an ethnic Chinese in a Southeast Asian country. Can they criticize? Yes they can, BUT, they can NEVER EVER say it to me how I feel is the same, nor can I ever tell them how they feel.

Edit: added something

AuthorGirl

2017-07-02, 09:50 AM

So, I have been going out with this group of people in the hopes of finding friendship, it’s been great so far they are nice and interesting expect for this one guy.

He is very rude, the kind of guy who use insults such as “cuck”, “fag”, “beta male” etc..
They invited me to play a silly computer game with them and when I asked for help and advice he just said “get gud skrub” and overall being an annoying and unlikable person.

Yesterday, we stopped by to eat and when he was in the bathroom one of them joked that he was the “token annoying friend” and every group of friends has one… That puzzled me. Why? Why put up with such a rude and unpleasant person?

Even worse he has a girlfriend and around her he is super nice and friendly, why allow him to deceive the poor girl? Isn’t that immoral? Should she be warned about his true colors?

I have a friend like that - well, my friend group includes a guy like that. This is going to sound so dumb and overused, but he's a good person underneath it all. It by no means excuses his casually derogatory comments towards . . . hmm, every group he does not belong to and every person who is not him. For example, his sexism really gets under my skin!! The thing is, that sort of talk is a habit for him, and he does tone it down when asked to. I'm actually the only person in the group who's truly bothered by the profanity, so it's understandable that he has the habit. Not to say that it's all harmless - it isn't - but his flaws don't make him completely awful.

As for why we "put up with" him. Most of us genuinely like him, and there are family ties, and half the group initially showed up because they like hanging out with him. Personally I find his sense of humour reprehensible, and he knows that; he leaves it entirely out of all conversations that are solely between us. The behaviours that I dislike are a sort of show for the group - one he enjoys, it's true, but not one that actually defines him.

The girlfriend. Plenty of people drop their masks and make an extra effort towards kindness around the people they love most. It's not necessarily deception. Unless she is somehow incapable of making her own life choices, I think it's best to stay well clear.

[edited for clarity]

Jay R

2017-07-02, 12:43 PM

Why do I tolerate folks who don’t tolerate certain people? Because I don’t like intolerance and try to avoid being intolerant.

The world is not split into the “good people” and the “bad people”. With the possible exception of an insignificant number of psychopaths, we all have good impulses and do good things, and we all have bad impulses and do bad things. And we all need forgiveness regularly, and we all need to forgive regularly.

“The brotherhood of man is no mere poet’s fancy. It is a most depressing and humiliating reality."

Oscar Wilde

“Tolerance is important. You never know when you’re the one being tolerated.”

Guardian Angel, Rose is Rose, Pat Brady

137beth

2017-07-04, 10:24 AM

Personally, I don't. There was a time in middle school when I felt obligated to hang out with people, even if they made me uncomfortable and upset and I wasn't getting anything out of my relationship with them. Since then, I've decided that I have limited time, and limited emotional energy, and so if someone is really unpleasant to be around, I won't remain friends with them.

AMFV

2017-07-04, 10:28 AM

Kromp

2017-07-04, 10:33 AM

I am friends with a guy who used to be cool but got more annoying over time. Sometimes it just happens, but you've been friends so long you don't want to just break it off.

Themrys

2017-07-06, 09:02 AM

I heard D&D groups often feel pressured to socialize with socially awkward people who are also nasty because D&D is a refuge for socially awkward people, and sometimes telling the difference between socially awkward and nasty person is not easy. Something similar might be at play here.

Try to meet them without that person. Perhaps ask why they feel they have to have the token annoying friend. But don't push for them to get rid of him; he probably fulfills some role in their emotional wellbeing (making them feel morally superior, perhaps?) and people can get aggressive if their coping mechanisms are challenged.

By his logic, he agrees with feminists... that men cannot understand what it feels like

Which is 100% correct.

You truly think you can accuse someone of possibly agreeing with feminists and thereby make him look bad?

Truly?

I hope I misunderstand you. Would be very shocking to learn that misogynists are allowed to be open about their misogyny on this forum.

thorgrim29

2017-07-06, 10:25 AM

That's sort of rich coming from someone who said in another thread (yesterday I think) that they base their understanding of male privilege on imagining life as a man... Of course it's impossible to 100% understand somebody else's life but you can't have it both ways Themrys, either people are capable of empathy or they're not. Unless you're suggesting that only women can have empathy, which is far more sexist than saying a feminist can be wrong IMO.

Trekkin

2017-07-06, 10:39 AM

I hope I misunderstand you. Would be very shocking to learn that misogynists are allowed to be open about their misogyny on this forum.

Have you been away for a while, then?

This is actually one of the more troubling aspects of the psychology of geeky people, as has been tangentially referenced a couple times in this thread already: many of us, having been made fun of for our interests and so forth, think we're marginalized "enough" to be somehow qualified to speak on broader social problems. When combined with the pervasive myth that being nerdy is a marker for being smart*, you get a group whose position on every issue of inclusion is, in a nutshell, "you can't fool me! I never actively decided to oppress anyone and I believe in an ill-defined "equality" in which I do nothing and you shut up, so your entire position is clearly calculated to empower yourself at my expense! Plus, you committed a logical fallacy, so come back when you know how to think and I'll take you seriously then."

So they make statements like "racism is only against white people /sarcasm" and "feminists can't possibly understand men" (quite forgetting that many feminists are or have been** men). They latch on to the most extreme elements of any given social movement and patiently explain how, because someone once said something silly, every attempt at fixing real social problems is totally invalid now by virtue of being illogical -- a cardinal sin, when the alternative is admitting fault themselves. They spill mountains of ink about how they aren't "really" misogynistic or homophobic or whatever they've been accused of being because they were joking/exaggerating/making a finer point than those silly social justice warriors realized when they said whatever horrible thing they said. They claim in one breath to be anti-feminist (because all feminists are flannel-clad curse-spewing war hippies, you know) and pro-equality, the difference being that they want men's rights fixed first. They point with unerring efficiency at other people responsible for generating the culture they continue to consume; they didn't draw the cheesecake in the comics, so go take it up with the artists who they continue to support or the publisher or anyone else, thanks. Besides, other people do way worse things to women/minorities/GSRM, so why not go solve everything else wrong with the world first before bothering them, eh?

The pervasive lie that all nerds are smart* means their ego stands squarely in the way of any attempt to convince them that the world they know is smaller, simpler, and safer than the world that is, and they will take gatekeeping to ludicrous new heights in an attempt to make you pay homage to the imagined intellectual superiority on which they have founded their self-esteem; further, geek circles are notoriously conflict-averse, and their first impulse is to remove the people identifying the problem for being shouty and uncouth rather than to consider the problem itself. They don't want justice; they just want peace at any cost, including the appeasement of their inner demons. If you get past that, you run smack into their martyr complex, as they just can't believe they're being oppressed and called nasty names "for having opinions" (and subsequently refusing to examine them before acting on them in ways that are demonstrably hurtful).

All of which is to say that, yes, there are many misogynists in geekdom, together with racists, homophobes, transphobes and all of them rolled into one; geek psychology is uniquely resistant to the admittedly uncomfortable truth that our society oppresses people in ways so long established that they're effectively invisible to the beneficiaries half-consciously perpetuating them but so obvious to the oppressed that the people trying to fix them already know they won't hear anything new from the billionth bloviating cis het white guy to "offer a considered opinion from an outsider's perspective" on why their entire movement is a folly founded on a fantasy and the real reason for any socioeconomic or power disparity is because they're just better. I mean, it's not like they've been hearing that for millennia or anything.

And, as this forum is full of geeky people, there are more than a few misogynists here, taking advantage of a social dynamic that empowers them to be open as long as they're sufficiently snotty about it and correctly identify dissent as "ironic."

*many smart people are nerdy. That does not mean anyone's interests say anything about their intelligence; someone can be "interested in" quantum chromodynamics with nothing more than Wikipedia, pop science, and an utter lack of self-awareness.

** to be clear, this latter category is referencing the subset of genderfluid people who transiently identify as men and similar cases of changes in gender identity, not transgender people with a consistent gender identity but variable gender expression. Just...before someone uses this to justify yet more transmisogyny.

137beth

2017-07-06, 10:42 AM

I am friends with a guy who used to be cool but got more annoying over time. Sometimes it just happens, but you've been friends so long you don't want to just break it off.
See, I understand this approach. And I get that some people do it. I just decided that personally, remaining friends with someone who upsets/irritates me to be around isn't for me.

Which suggests that the other people in the group also being adults don't find this guy all that unpleasant to be around.

Or it means the other people in the group do find this guy annoying, but they are more like Kromp than like me and will remain friends with him regardless.

Liquor Box

2017-07-06, 04:46 PM

I think that there are a couple of quite ironic statements in this post.
[quote]Plus, you committed a logical fallacy, so come back when you know how to think and I'll take you seriously then."

I'm not sure, but I think you are the only person in this thread who has explicitly referred to a logical fallacy (and incorrectly applied it as it turned out) and it seems to me that you have quite frequently implied in this thread (including in this very post) and at least one other, that many people do not think as intelligently as you, so you choose not to bother arguing with them.

So they make statements like "racism is only against white people /sarcasm" and "feminists can't possibly understand men" (quite forgetting that many feminists are or have been** men).
They latch on to the most extreme elements of any given social movement and patiently explain how, because someone once said something silly, every attempt at fixing real social problems is totally invalid now by virtue of being illogical -- a cardinal sin, when the alternative is admitting fault themselves.

Your first sentence "latches on" to some of the most extreme statements (on this forum) by people taking a position that may appear to be dismissive of racism or feminism, and then your second sentence lambasts people who "latch on"to extreme positions in social justice movement.
The real problem, in both cases, is that the "latching on posters" (you and and those you referred to) use them as ammunition against people who take a much more moderate stance on a given issue.

Hagashager

2017-07-06, 07:02 PM

I have a friend who's very similar to the one described in the OP.

He is also one of the most trustworthy friends I have, as well as one of the only people in the entirety of my life who has actually been there for me when I really needed support, as well as one of the only friends I've ever had who has never shunted me for fear of how other's may perceive him being friends with a man so physically different from "normal".

The moral is, you don't really know him until you get to know him.

I would also be careful with your use of the word annoying. Everyone's annoying at some point, no matter how suave or cool. It's extremely hurtful to be left behind, especially for something as petty as "being annoying" when no one will tell you what you're doing wrong.

If he's being a jackass, tell him, otherwise, take a step back and see if there's more to him than your surface interactions have lead on.

SaintRidley

2017-07-07, 01:54 AM

Have you been away for a while, then?

This is actually one of the more troubling aspects of the psychology of geeky people, as has been tangentially referenced a couple times in this thread already: many of us, having been made fun of for our interests and so forth, think we're marginalized "enough" to be somehow qualified to speak on broader social problems. When combined with the pervasive myth that being nerdy is a marker for being smart*, you get a group whose position on every issue of inclusion is, in a nutshell, "you can't fool me! I never actively decided to oppress anyone and I believe in an ill-defined "equality" in which I do nothing and you shut up, so your entire position is clearly calculated to empower yourself at my expense! Plus, you committed a logical fallacy, so come back when you know how to think and I'll take you seriously then."

So they make statements like "racism is only against white people /sarcasm" and "feminists can't possibly understand men" (quite forgetting that many feminists are or have been** men). They latch on to the most extreme elements of any given social movement and patiently explain how, because someone once said something silly, every attempt at fixing real social problems is totally invalid now by virtue of being illogical -- a cardinal sin, when the alternative is admitting fault themselves. They spill mountains of ink about how they aren't "really" misogynistic or homophobic or whatever they've been accused of being because they were joking/exaggerating/making a finer point than those silly social justice warriors realized when they said whatever horrible thing they said. They claim in one breath to be anti-feminist (because all feminists are flannel-clad curse-spewing war hippies, you know) and pro-equality, the difference being that they want men's rights fixed first. They point with unerring efficiency at other people responsible for generating the culture they continue to consume; they didn't draw the cheesecake in the comics, so go take it up with the artists who they continue to support or the publisher or anyone else, thanks. Besides, other people do way worse things to women/minorities/GSRM, so why not go solve everything else wrong with the world first before bothering them, eh?

The pervasive lie that all nerds are smart* means their ego stands squarely in the way of any attempt to convince them that the world they know is smaller, simpler, and safer than the world that is, and they will take gatekeeping to ludicrous new heights in an attempt to make you pay homage to the imagined intellectual superiority on which they have founded their self-esteem; further, geek circles are notoriously conflict-averse, and their first impulse is to remove the people identifying the problem for being shouty and uncouth rather than to consider the problem itself. They don't want justice; they just want peace at any cost, including the appeasement of their inner demons. If you get past that, you run smack into their martyr complex, as they just can't believe they're being oppressed and called nasty names "for having opinions" (and subsequently refusing to examine them before acting on them in ways that are demonstrably hurtful).

All of which is to say that, yes, there are many misogynists in geekdom, together with racists, homophobes, transphobes and all of them rolled into one; geek psychology is uniquely resistant to the admittedly uncomfortable truth that our society oppresses people in ways so long established that they're effectively invisible to the beneficiaries half-consciously perpetuating them but so obvious to the oppressed that the people trying to fix them already know they won't hear anything new from the billionth bloviating cis het white guy to "offer a considered opinion from an outsider's perspective" on why their entire movement is a folly founded on a fantasy and the real reason for any socioeconomic or power disparity is because they're just better. I mean, it's not like they've been hearing that for millennia or anything.

And, as this forum is full of geeky people, there are more than a few misogynists here, taking advantage of a social dynamic that empowers them to be open as long as they're sufficiently snotty about it and correctly identify dissent as "ironic."

*many smart people are nerdy. That does not mean anyone's interests say anything about their intelligence; someone can be "interested in" quantum chromodynamics with nothing more than Wikipedia, pop science, and an utter lack of self-awareness.

** to be clear, this latter category is referencing the subset of genderfluid people who transiently identify as men and similar cases of changes in gender identity, not transgender people with a consistent gender identity but variable gender expression. Just...before someone uses this to justify yet more transmisogyny.

Quoting this in full just because of how damn on point it is. If this were reddit, I'd have saved this post on the spot.

And Themrys, you'd be surprised. There's been dogwhistle white supremacy from certain folks on these forums. And the misogyny here is usually far less subtle.

Kyberwulf

2017-07-07, 04:21 AM

Yeah, I meant it. Because feminist, .. or any of the ists out there are inherently bad. The are exclusive by definition. They turn everything into us vs them....then claim no one can understand what it is to be part of that group.

I am not misogynist because I don't hate women. Not liking feminism is not the same. Feminism does not equal females.

137beth

2017-07-07, 08:02 AM

<Snipped by request>
I mostly interact with 50-something adults at work, so and I'm hardly current, but is this a now common practice among young adults?

If so I have another item to add to my list of ways the 21st Century annoys me!

Well, firstly, someone who is "only 40" has lived a majority of their life in the 20th century, not the 21st century. If you wanna complain about generations and/or time periods that annoy you, at least get your chronology right:smallsmile:

As to the substance of your question, I'm not entirely sure. I work at a public university, and regularly interact with a range of people from 18 to 70 years old. I rarely, if ever, hear complaints about "the feminists" in person. Which could suggest it doesn't happen very often, or it could suggest that when it does happen, it isn't on a university campus. For example, it could be that it is somewhat common for non-college-educated young and middle-aged people to make the sort of complaints you are referring to, and that I simply don't hear them because there aren't many non-college-educated people working in a university. I've never worked outside academia, either, so I don't know if it's more or less common in the private sector.

Mikemical

2017-07-07, 08:15 AM

I hope I misunderstand you. Would be very shocking to learn that misogynists are allowed to be open about their misogyny on this forum.

You do realize this is the internet, right?

Also, disliking third-wave feminists doesn't mean I hate women. I just hate stupid people.

I mostly interact with 50-something adults at work, and so I'm hardly "up-to-date". Is this a now common practice among young adults?

If so I have another item to add to my growing list of ways the 21st Century annoys me!

"Modern" (third-wave) feminism is pretty open about its hate for white straight men and "the patriarchy", constantly complaining about perceived "microaggressions" and various forms of implied rape(you looked at a woman in the subway for more than a second without her consent? You just commited stare-rape). It stands for nothing using the name of historical movements which earned women the right to vote and participate in society outside of "stay in the kitchen and make babies". Third-wave feminism preaches that it is about equality, when it really isn't, it's about playing the victim card until you get what you're whining about without working to earn it.

The number of accusations for false rape has increased exponentially since the appearance of Third-wave Feminism, since to avoid some social stigma from owning up to getting drunk and having sex with someone at a party, you can just play the "HE RAPED ME OFFICER" and you'll be a martyr.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that some douches can just go "damn feminists" when they don't get what they want for acting like douches.

A.A.King

2017-07-07, 09:21 AM

While it's certainly an interesting discussion to be had (I know, I know, we can all be shocked together that there are people in the world and on this forum who gasp! disagree with our own narrow view of the world) I think it has a high risk of de-railing the thread.

Ultimately, this is supposed to be a discussion with people who they (or who others) perceive to be annoying. So maybe we can have the discussion about what kind of people we believe to be annoying in a different thread (because it's the kind of discussion it's easy to get swept up in.)

2D8HP

2017-07-07, 11:34 AM

...this is supposed to be a discussion with people who they (or who others) perceive to be annoying....

Okay, the way that I'm "friends with annoying people" is simple, I'm "friendly", but never "friends".

I haven't bothered to call anyone a friend since before the 21st Century.

They are:

People I work with.

My bookseller (who is getting out of the business, much to my sadness, 20% off until Jack calls it quits at Dark Carnival in Berkeley).

Other merchants and service providers.

People my wife knows.

People my son knows.

People I play games with.

Family.

Brothers and sisters in my Union.

Brothers and sisters in my Labor Federation.

Fellow Citizens.

Traffic.

Friends are people who help you move, and you help move.

I no longer own a pick-up truck, and the only recent co-worker who I know has one was been exiled to the 9-1-1 Emergency Call Center (besides he scares me with his bigoted comments, and his giant gun and ammunition collection).

I hire movers now, so I no-longer try to be "friends with annoying people", but when I was young, poor, and strong, I did maintain many friendships in which we helped each other move, so that's the "why".

Amazon

2017-07-07, 11:46 AM

Trekkin

2017-07-07, 12:02 PM

Amazon

2017-07-07, 12:30 PM

If that's directed at me, I'd appreciate some indication of where I went wrong.

No, it wasn't.

A.A.King

2017-07-07, 01:46 PM

I'm so tired of people who don't know what feminism is, keep talking as if they were expects despite the fact they don't really know anything, they are just echoing what some guy on the internet told them.

Good for you, I am sure there are a bunch of people tired of you for the ideas you hold and the things you say so you can all go have one big slumber party for all I care and talk about your ideology there. I'm sure you're the perfect expert on your subject of choice and that all those who disagree with you are copying there arguments and have no actual experience with the people they complain about, absolutely nobody of the many people who disagrees with you has a good reason to and they are all parroting this 'some guy on the internet' (who I guess you, some girl from the internet, believe is wrong.?). Still, your subject of choice is not the subject at hand.

Okay, the way that I'm "friends with annoying people" is simple, I'm "friendly", but never "friends".

I haven't bothered to call anyone a friend since before the 21st Century.

...

Friends are people who help you move, and you help move.

That's certainly an interesting definition ;). Question though: When you say that you haven't called anyone a friend for at least 17 years do you mean you haven't 'made any new friends' or that you have no-one in your life right now you would consider a friend? I mean, I get that there is a whole list of people you have to interact friendly with (because that's what we're all supposed to so after all), people you might introduce as an aquitancs, but what about people from the past? Are there non-family members you've known for a lomg time that you still interact who you would no longer describe as 'friend' now that you are no longer need help moving house?

Basically did the concent of 'having friends' become less important or did the idea of 'making friends' become less important as you got older?

Dr.Samurai

2017-07-07, 02:13 PM

Which is 100% correct.

You truly think you can accuse someone of possibly agreeing with feminists and thereby make him look bad?

Truly?

I hope I misunderstand you. Would be very shocking to learn that misogynists are allowed to be open about their misogyny on this forum.
I think you're just missing what he bakes into "feminists" and why he wouldn't be making a favorable comparison.

He's highlighting the common notion (among feminism and now just about everything else) that if you are not part of a group, you can't understand that group, empathize with that group, or offer any opinion or insight to that group. So he's complaining about AMFV's tone that AMFV can speak on the military while ordinary civilians can't.

It's not misogyny, in any way, even after Trekkin's long diatribe. Maybe it's a sentiment that you don't like, but that's about it.

Re: workplace stuff...

What *some* people have to come to terms with is that there are a portion of society/humanity/the world, that are not as sensitive to things as they are. This isn't an insult. It's just a reality. Some people are thicker skinned than others. Some people can withstand more than others. Some people don't think certain things are as big a deal as other people. It doesn't make them bad. It just makes them different to you. The examples given thus far about language are spot on. Just because you're ready to judge someone and disassociate with them because they say the word "beta-male", it doesn't mean they are evil. It doesn't mean you're a good person. It doesn't mean everyone else shares your feelings and your reactions. You don't get to go around deciding what some people should and shouldn't say.

I work on a construction site. The guys joke around about all sorts of ****. There is a whole psychology about humor and how we form bonds over it. It's not just like "oh, it's the patriarchy teaching men to ridicule each other and be bigots, and if you don't become a monster like them, they destroy you, so it just keeps perpetuating itself". The kind of humor we're referring to actually *breaks down barriers* between people because no one is above it; everyone is no better than anyone else.

If you don't like that, cool. But don't judge other people for it. There is this huge irony that snakes its way through all of this in that the offended people jump to conclusions, demonize, and take action against other people for the language they use. Meanwhile, the guys on my site aren't bad people and look out for each other. But they're the bad guys because they don't speak like they're in PC polite society...?

@OP: If people have been friends for a long time, they'll probably be desensitized to stuff that a newcomer to the group might find irritating. "Oh, that's just Paul!" meanwhile you're like "Man this guy is annoying af!" Or maybe, in time, you'll see that the groups behavior might be different to what you originally knew it as once they get more comfortable with you. It could be that this guy is just too much of a nuisance for you to hang out with. That's totally possible, in which case you'll have to figure something out for yourself. Regarding the girlfriend... no, don't say anything lol. Not your place at this point in time. You've got to get to know people, put your time in, become accepted as one of the group.

I try to weed out "annoying" people from my life. No point in spending your time with people that bug you.

2D8HP

2017-07-07, 04:07 PM

Well, firstly, someone who is "only 40" has lived a majority of their life in the 20th century, not the 21st century. If you wanna complain about generations and/or time periods that annoy you, at least get your chronology right:smallsmile:

Oh sure,, the division is:

Born before 1968 = Old.

Born after 1968 = Young.

So of my co-workers, three are young (born 1969, 1970, and 1980, with the kid who was born in 1976 being exiled to another building), and after the recent retirements (born between 1942 to 1959) they're 11 remaining old co-workers (born 1950 to 1966)

...As to the substance of your.question, I'm not entirely sure. I work at a public university, and regularly interact with a range of people from 18 to 70 years old....,

....it could be that it is somewhat common for non-college-educated young and middle-aged people to make the sort of complaints you are referring to, and that I simply don't hear them because there aren't many non-college-educated people working in a university. I've never worked outside academia, either, so I don't know if it's more or less common in the private sector.

Thankfully, I left construction and have done building/plumbing repair for the City of San Francisco since 2011 so I don't work in the "private sector" anymore (good riddance to all that!), but I seldom encountered academics than or since, except for very brief times spent with former friends. Many City employees are college educated (I think all the younger cops are), but the only college graduate that I've spent most of a work day with is our apprentice (who was born in 1980), and unlike the non-college grad co-worker who was born in '76, I haven't heard him make any of those comments.

My old boss (born in '51) did moan something about "Women's libbers" once or twice, but he was an all-around general nutcase, si my fear was more what the '76 baby may portend about my future co-workers.

....Are there non-family members you've known for a lomg time that you still interact who you would no longer describe as 'friend' now that you are no longer need help moving house?

Many of the friends that I had from before the 2000's unfortunately keep dying, and those that are left I only see a couple of times a decade, so they are now "former friends".

Also, I'm the only middle income blue collar worker out of my old social circle, which creates a class/cultural divide, since they have either found academic success, creative success, or fell into poverty.

...Basically did the concent of 'having friends' become less important or did the idea of 'making friends' become less important as you got older?

Both.

I started as an apprentice (construction) plumber in San Jose during the Clinton administration, and I simply didn't have any time for outside socializing during those years, and after our infant son died what little time I had I devoted to my wife, and then to being a parent to our second, and now third son, so after my work, marriage, and family duties I have too little time for friends.

...I work on a construction site. The guys joke around about all sorts of ****. There is a whole psychology about humor and how we form bonds over it...

...The kind of humor we're referring to actually *breaks down barriers* between people because no one is above it; everyone is no better than anyone else....

I've experienced that as well.

Probably never more so than at the "anti-harassment" class that I posted about earlier, in which the audience mocked each other with amazing creativity, and joviality.

Razade

2017-07-07, 04:19 PM

I'm so tired of people who don't know what feminism is, keep talking as if they were expects despite the fact they don't really know anything, they are just echoing what some guy on the internet told them.

So...a No True Scotsman argument. Insulting people's intelligence, insinuating if they just "got it" they'd agree with you and also under-handedly insulting their intelligence further that they haven't come to these conclusions on their own but are instead just parroting something they heard because again, if they knew what you knew they'd just agree with you.

Classy. Really classy.

Feminism isn't a monolith, you don't speak for every feminist. There are feminists who champion castrating all men on a national holiday and keeping their sperm for making kids, putting the now castrated men in a second class who work until they're dead. There are feminists who champion equality. If you find the former associating with the latter to be a problem, clean up your own house. It's neither my job nor my right to tell people how they identify. I'm not in the in group, I don't get to tell the crazy people they aren't what they claim just because the more reasonable people don't think they are. Because the crazies don't think the reasonable people are real feminists either.

Amazon

2017-07-07, 04:47 PM

There are feminists who champion castrating all men on a national holiday and keeping their sperm for making kids, putting the now castrated men in a second class who work until they're dead.

That's my point! They don't do that, people who say they do are doing the same thing people used to do with the Jews (They eat babies) and the Africans (Their religion is black magic).

This demonizing process is horrible and you are perpetuating it!

Feminism is about gender equality, we fight for women rights and not for men rights because men are not being oppressed and marginalized, but women are. That’s not the same as “they fight for girls to gain rights and remove the rights from the boys” no one does that.

Liquor Box

2017-07-07, 04:49 PM

Amazon

2017-07-07, 04:55 PM

I think some problems are caused by the word "feminism". It means very different things to different people. At its most basic definition, it simply means subscribing to equality between the sexes. At that level I expect that the overwhleming majority of posters (and perhaps all in this thread) would identify themselves as being feminist.

But the word is also applied differently. Some people think of it as only applying those who actively advocate that women are disadvantaged relative to men and campaign for change to that situation. At the more extreme end, there are people who understand the word feminist to mean only people who hold a hatred of men and/or masculinity.

I think that is why you have such misunderstandings. One person will say "feminist" meaning one thing, and another will understand that word another way.

The two first definitions are true, and not mutually exclusive.

We fight for gender equality, and genders are not equal, women are disadvantaged relative to men, take the salaries for example or the right to wear what they want without fear of repression or assault.

A feminist does not hold a hatred of men and/or masculinity, that's a false notion created to discredit it and cause fear and hatred, it's a false notion, a stereotype, that holds no weight.

Liquor Box

2017-07-07, 05:05 PM

The two first definitions are true, and not mutually exclusive.

We fight for gender equality, and genders are not equal, women are disadvantaged relative to men, take the salaries for example or the right to wear what they want without fear of repression or assault.

A feminist does not hold a hatred of men and/or masculinity, that's a false notion created to discredit it and cause fear and hatred, it's a false notion, a stereotype, that holds no weight.

In terms of how I use the word, I tend to agree with you. But others do use and understand the word differently. Whether their use of the word is "wrong" is tricky, and I'd prefer not to go into it after having recently having spent several pages arguing about the meaning of words. But the fact remains that some people mean/understand something different when they say/hear feminism, even if they are incorrect to do so.

And I think by the base definition (believe in equality) we are almost all feminists on this board, even those who sometimes appear to be arguing against feminist positions. Because within the broad definiton of belief in equality there is room for vastly diverging opinions on a whole range of topics. By this definition i expect that most arguments about feminist issues are between groups both of whom self identify as feminists.

Edit: Minor point. The first two understandings of the word are diferent and mutuall exclusive. If feminism is understood to mean wanting equality between the sexes, then a person who believed that the sexes should be equal but never entered into a discussion about it would be feminist. If it is understood as being restricted to those who advocate, then that person would not be feminist. I think the distinction is important because under the first definition I thinkthe huge majority of people in the western world would fall within the definition, but if the second definition was used only a small minority would.

Amazon

2017-07-07, 05:09 PM

In terms of how I use the word, I tend to agree with you. But others do use and understand the word differently. Whether their use of the word is "wrong" is tricky, and I'd prefer not to go into it after having recently having spent several pages arguing about the meaning of words. But the fact remains that some people mean/understand something different when they say/hear feminism, even if they are incorrect to do so.

And I think by the base definition (believe in equality) we are almost all feminists on this board, even those who sometimes appear to be arguing against feminist positions. Because within the broad definiton of belief in equality there is room for vastly diverging opinions on a whole range of topics. By this definition i expect that most arguments about feminist issues are between groups both of whom self identify as feminists.

And that's why I'm tired.

No, they don't, there are people who genuinely think that women has no place in a positions of power for example, some are quite vocal, others don't outright say it, but their actions show what they really think.

Liquor Box

2017-07-07, 05:14 PM

And that's why I'm tired.

No, they don't, there are people who genuinely think that women has no place in a position of power for example, some are quite vocal, others don't outright say it, but their actions show what they really think.

I think you are mistaken to make such a blanket statement about people who disagree with you conception of feminism. You are right that some people (a small miniorty I think) will openly disagree with the idea of equality, and some poeple (also a minority) will pretend to subscribe to the idea of equality but actually do not and use that as a cover to argue against it, but I think that most people would genuinely endorse equality but simply have different idea to you as to what equality means (or whether it has been achieved, or what the best means are to achive it etc etc).

Razade

2017-07-07, 05:18 PM

That's my point! They don't do that, people who say they do are doing the same thing people used to do with the Jews (They eat babies) and the Africans (Their religion is black magic).

Yes (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gkkj5/is-reducing-the-male-population-by-90-percent-the-solution-to-all-our-problems). They (https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20170413112251/http:/www.huffingtonpost.co.za/shelley-garland/could-it-be-time-to-deny-white-men-the-franchise_a_22036640/). Do (http://www.dailywire.com/news/8386/feminist-journalist-all-men-are-rapists-and-should-amanda-prestigiacomo#exit-modal).

This demonizing process is horrible and you are perpetuating it!

No. I am talking about actual people with actual platforms. They exist. They are out there.

Feminism is about gender equality, we fight for women rights and not for men rights because men are not being oppressed and marginalized, but women are.

To you. Feminism isn't a monolith (for like....the 100th time). It doesn't have a dogma. It doesn't have a core set of beliefs. No Feminist is the same in all their opinions. Stop talking as if Feminism is just this one thing when it is demonstrably not.

That’s not the same as “they fight for girls to gain rights and remove the rights from the boys” no one does that.

Except I just pointed out at least three who do and the rabbit hole goes much further.

Amazon

2017-07-07, 05:20 PM

I think you are mistaken to make such a blanket statement about people who disagree with you conception of feminism. You are right that some people (a small miniorty I think) will openly disagree with the idea of equality, and some poeple (also a minority) will pretend to subscribe to the idea of equality but actually do not and use that as a cover to argue against it, but I think that most people would genuinely endorse equality but simply have different idea to you as to what equality means (or whether it has been achieved, or what the best means are to achive it etc etc).

I think you need to expend your perspective; the problem is not so simple, it's actually quite broad just because someone doesn’t want to that doesn't mean they won’t do it.

A lot of people don't want to act in such misogynist way.

They don't want to perpetuate exclusion and discrimination, but they are unable to see that on the little and small things and actions of everyday life they do it!

And when someone try to point out they get out defensive and unable to admit their own faults.

Liquor Box

2017-07-07, 05:26 PM

I think you need to expend your perspective; the problem is not so simple, it's actually quite broad just because someone doesn’t want to that doesn't mean they won’t do it.

A lot of people don't want to act in such misogynist way.

They don't want to perpetuate exclusion and discrimination, but they are unable to see that on the little and small things and actions of everyday life they do it!

And when someone try to point out they get out defensive and unable to admit their own faults.

If I am understanding you correctly here, you are saying people believe that the sexes should be equal but because of their own ignorance unknowingly engage in activities that perpetuate sexism.

That is completely consistent with my post. I think most people believe in equality between the sexes, but have a different idea about what that means. You are saying the same thing, but also rolling in an assertion that your opinion is right, and their's is wrong and damaging.

So I think we are largely on the same page except that I don't necessarily think that people who disagree with you are wrong (although I may agree with you on some issues). To address that any further I think we would need to discuss particular issues).

Are you open minded enough to consider the possibility that sometimes (not always I'm sure) it might be you who gets defensive and is unable to admit your faults? Or are you confident that you are always correct on these issues?

2D8HP

2017-07-07, 05:29 PM

or the right to wear what they want without fear of repression or assault.

As someone who was punched unconscious for as best as I can tell, because of the hat I wore whike being in San Francisco (to see a Rock Band),

I think that's a very good point.

I did write:

London is a much bigger City than San Francisco.

While SF is very tolerant to those "out of uniform" (in some ways it's just specifying different uniforms, but it's still less restrictive), it's still a small area.

When I was a youth, some young men (like myself) would come to "The City" to see bands play, others would come with accomplishes to beat guys up who looked "off". I wore a "Greek fisherman's cap" back then, which was enough to "earn" me a beating. Ironically the uniform of the thugs then is not too different from what "metropolitan hipster" guys wear now.

When I worked as an apprentice in San Jose 10 to 15 years later, I had to bite my tongue when one of the Journeymen told of being a thug as a youth who went with his friends to go "bashing" in San Francisco.

I grew up some in Oakland, but mostly in the "bohemian college town", of Berkeley, and we had different uniforms than the teenagers in the suburbs, and we mostly used "BMW" to get around, that is Bart (our subway), Muni (busses), and walking.

But suburban youths had cars, which they used to go places, and beat up those not in their uniform.

The clothes you described as safe in London, would get approval from guys and girls "in the scene" at a nightclub in "The City". It would also get you beat up by young men enforcing the uniform.

I hope that's not true anymore, but judging by what I've heard during my working life, men still enforce conformity to uniforms.

Women can be cruel as well, but I don't think that they usually enforce dress codes with physical violence.

Red Fel's examples of a black three-piece-suit, and of a red shirt, got me positive attention from women "back-in-the-day" (I never tried both at the same time though!), but eventually staying on good terms with my co-workers (not "looking like a banker"), and just plain fear of physical violence prevents me from dressing "sharp".

The last time I wore a suit was to go to a funeral, and I noted that many more beggars approached me as well.

If you stay in San Francisco, or Berkeley (and London?) it's easier to dress "sharp", or as an individual, but San Jose?

Stay in uniform, the safest is to dress like you're about to play a game of football for the team that's supported in that area.

Yes, if you're not actually playing, you look idiotic, maybe that's the point?

Don't dress for comfort.

Don't dress for style.

Dress to impersonate.

Because "boys will be boys" (young men will be thugs).

Yes I'm bitter., men are also repressed and asaulted for what they wear.

If feminism can make it so that women won't be assaulted for what they wear, maybe they will be some spillover and boys/men will be safer as well.

Mikemical

2017-07-07, 08:33 PM

That's my point! They don't do that...

They do. They're the ones who jump out defending female teachers that are caught having sexual relations with their students, despite the fact that if the genders were reversed, they would be up in arms demanding the male teacher's head.

We fight for gender equality, and genders are not equal, women are disadvantaged relative to men, take the salaries for example

And here's the wage gap card.

or the right to wear what they want without fear of repression or assault.

And here's the "If I go around wearing revealing clothes, I don't want to get unwanted catcalls or men staring at me" card. Yet they also unironically wear hijabs on their heads because they think it's a symbol of female empowerment(it's not, I lived in Kuwait long enough to learn that). Oh, but if a man dares to have a hula girl on his cars' dashboard, that's cultural appropriation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Wv1nX-Pog).

A feminist does not hold a hatred of men and/or masculinity, that's a false notion created to discredit it and cause fear and hatred, it's a false notion, a stereotype, that holds no weight.

Remember the "DIE CIS SCUM" video? I know I do (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKMuR1-yWAc).

Remember the girl who said she was a "free inhabitant" that was arrested and cried "rape" when the officer put the cuffs on her? I know I do (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zHRQn_IShw).

I could also fill this post with links to Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopolus videos discussing the matter, but that might get it flagged for being too political.

EDIT:

I think you need to expand your perspective; the problem is not so simple, it's actually quite broad just because someone doesn’t want to, that doesn't mean they won’t do it. A lot of people don't want to act in such misogynist way.

They don't want to perpetuate exclusion and discrimination, but they are unable to see that on the little and small things and actions of everyday life they do it!

And when someone try to point out they get out defensive and unable to admit their own faults.

And here's the "microaggressions" card. Do you also get triggered by "mansplaining" and "manspreading"?

RazorChain

2017-07-07, 09:23 PM

Friends are people who help you move, and you help move.

Then you have best friends....they help you move bodies.

Artemis97

2017-07-07, 10:22 PM

Then you have best friends....they help you move bodies.

I wish we had upvotes, you would get my +1.

2D8HP

2017-07-07, 10:37 PM

Then you have best friends....they help you move bodies.

Oh for Lolth's sake...

Well played.

Xyril

2017-07-08, 12:20 AM

Feminism isn't a monolith, you don't speak for every feminist.

This is Razade asserting that feminism isn't a monolithic group, and mocking someone for allegedly claiming to have some authority over who is a feminist and what opinions are feminist.

If you find the former associating with the latter to be a problem, clean up your own house.

This is Razade taking that same person to task for not doing a better job policing who is a feminist and what opinions are feminist.

There are feminists who champion castrating all men on a national holiday and keeping their sperm for making kids, putting the now castrated men in a second class who work until they're dead. There are feminists who champion equality.

This is Razade implicitly labeling certain people as feminist.

It's neither my job nor my right to tell people how they identify. I'm not in the in group,

This is Razade disclaiming that he has neither the right nor the responsibility to decide who is labeled a feminist.

I am having trouble reconciling these apparent inconsistencies.

I am also curious what you think the appropriate conduct would be for all involved, since you apparently have strong opinions about what isn't appropriate conduct. For example, as you point out, feminism (and really, pretty much any social movement or group that is loosely united by something other than a centralized hierarchy) isn't monolithic, and there isn't an official litmus test of who belongs. So let's say that there's a group called "gamers." They share some interests and for some period of time could generally reach a consensus on who is or isn't a gamer. The main gamer group grows, becomes more diverse in thought--there is less consensus about who is or isn't a gamer. Some think that a shared history creates a big enough tent to encompass many subgroups with sometimes inconsistent beliefs on certain issues--others demand more ideological purity. Perhaps a small, outside group comes in that also calls itself gamers, but are different enough that even the disparate groups that can't come to a consensus on who is a gamer somehow all manage to agree that everyone in this new group isn't a gamer.

In your view, what is the right thing for everyone to do here? Are the outsiders wrong for usurping the label "gamer," and if so, in a society that recognizes the right to free speech, what actions can the original gamers take to, in your words "police themselves"?

Xyril

2017-07-08, 12:39 AM

They do. They're the ones who jump out defending female teachers that are caught having sexual relations with their students, despite the fact that if the genders were reversed, they would be up in arms demanding the male teacher's head.

Okay, the assertion is made. Now evidence is demanded. It's actually pretty easy on your part--you're not making a claim about the hypocrisy of a movement in general. All you have claimed is that there exist multiple individuals who 1) calls him or herself a feminist 2) at some point, defended a female statutory rapist and 3) at some point, condemned male statutory rapists.

So, just to keep the theme of threes, go ahead and name three of those people, and cite the instances where they did those three things. If it's as prevalent of a problem as you claim, and if it bothers you as much as it clearly does, you probably don't even have to do any research, since you already have folks in mind.

Here's the thing about hypocrisy: It's only meaningful when an individual (or perhaps a very top-down organization) is inconsistent. You don't get to whine about hypocrisy (well, you have a legal right to, but people will just realize you're either intellectual dishonest or just intellectually challenged) just because a bunch of guys who consider themselves libertarians and a different bunch of guys who consider themselves evangelical conservatives expressed different views on an issue, despite the fact that both guys ended up picking the same party from our two party system.

Do you also get triggered by "mansplaining" and "manspreading"?

No, but those words are one of those rare pairs where I often find both the people who use those terms seriously and those who use those terms to mock the ones who use them seriously to be obnoxious human beings. Present case included.

Razade

2017-07-08, 05:34 AM

This is Razade asserting that feminism isn't a monolithic group, and mocking someone for allegedly claiming to have some authority over who is a feminist and what opinions are feminist.

This is Xyril beginning to set up a false argument. This is Razade beginning to counter that. Because what I said there is accurate.

This is Razade taking that same person to task for not doing a better job policing who is a feminist and what opinions are feminist.

Here is the start of that person of straw. Saying something isn't a monolith does not in anyway invalidate the ability to disagree with people in your in group and try to counter what they're saying if it's harmful to your cause. That's not making a monolith, that's pushing out radicals. Which anyone who wants to castrate all men clearly is.

This is Razade implicitly labeling certain people as feminist.

No it isn't. Everyone I linked called themselves feminists. Demonstrably. I've no more labeled them than you have. They've labeled themselves. I am not implicitly doing anything other than using the term they've used for themselves when discussing them. So this is Xyril saying I'm doing something I am very implicitly not doing.

This is Razade disclaiming that he has neither the right nor the responsibility to decide who is labeled a feminist.

I don't and I haven't labeled anyone one. I've only used the labels those people have used to describe themselves.

I am having trouble reconciling these apparent inconsistencies.

The inconsistancies are yours and yours alone I'm afraid. I don't have them and I don't want them.

I am also curious what you think the appropriate conduct would be for all involved, since you apparently have strong opinions about what isn't appropriate conduct.

I don't need to have what's appropriate to point out what's not appropriate. I can point out radical behavior in say...the United Bass Fisher's Union for over-fishing but not have to have a way to fix that issue.

For example, as you point out, feminism (and really, pretty much any social movement or group that is loosely united by something other than a centralized hierarchy) isn't monolithic, and there isn't an official litmus test of who belongs

Because they're not. I don't understand how that is in anyway a controversial statement.

So let's say that there's a group called "gamers." They share some interests and for some period of time could generally reach a consensus on who is or isn't a gamer.

I'd not take part in that and take them to task for the very same thing I'm taking Amazon to task over. It isn't up to another person to tell someone what they are or not. It's up to the person to say what they identify as. If someone who doesn't play games but then calls themselves a gamer uses that label...I'll find it ODD...I'll ask why they use that term but I won't tell them they're not. That's not up to me.

The main gamer group grows, becomes more diverse in thought--there is less consensus about who is or isn't a gamer. Some think that a shared history creates a big enough tent to encompass many subgroups with sometimes inconsistent beliefs on certain issues--others demand more ideological purity. Perhaps a small, outside group comes in that also calls itself gamers, but are different enough that even the disparate groups that can't come to a consensus on who is a gamer somehow all manage to agree that everyone in this new group isn't a gamer.

The former is correct. Labels are wide ranging things. A feminist can be conservative, a feminist can be a neo-con, a feminist can be religious or non-religious. A feminist can want to castrate all men, a feminist can not want that. Wanting (or like Amazon claiming there is) ideological purity is a fools errand.

As for the rest, again it's not up to other people to tell others what their labels are. If both groups identify as gamers then they'll invariably have to actually talk about what they believe and how they see that identifcation working in their every day life instead of using a simple word.

In your view, what is the right thing for everyone to do here?

Mind their own damn business on what labels people use for themselves because they're mostly meaningless?

Are the outsiders wrong for usurping the label "gamer," and if so, in a society that recognizes the right to free speech, what actions can the original gamers take to,

They're not. Words mutate and change over time, they're no more wrong for using language than anyone else is. As for what can the original gamers do? Either use the term still and clarify what they mean when they say gamer or find a different term.

in your words "police themselves"?

I never once used the words "police themselves". You must have me mistaken for someone else. I said for people to clean their own house? I guess you could construe that as "police themselves" but then you couldn't really use "in your words" because those aren't my words. They're your words.

Mikemical

2017-07-08, 11:44 AM

Okay, the assertion is made. Now evidence is demanded. It's actually pretty easy on your part--you're not making a claim about the hypocrisy of a movement in general. All you have claimed is that there exist multiple individuals who 1) calls him or herself a feminist 2) at some point, defended a female statutory rapist and 3) at some point, condemned male statutory rapists.

So, just to keep the theme of threes, go ahead and name three of those people, and cite the instances where they did those three things. If it's as prevalent of a problem as you claim, and if it bothers you as much as it clearly does, you probably don't even have to do any research, since you already have folks in mind.

Here's a handy link (http://www.redstate.com/kimberly_ross/2016/06/04/feminism-silent-on-this-kind-sexual-abuse/) that recopilates several case, and saves me the time from having to write down more.

I could go take a dive in Tumblr to find the cases about women getting a slap on the wrist for having sex with underage boys being celebrated, when I'm feeling like getting some cancer. But I'll just leave this one here, cause it's a classic:
https://i.redd.it/z4ryy4jhh21z.jpg

Amazon

2017-07-08, 02:25 PM

Yes (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gkkj5/is-reducing-the-male-population-by-90-percent-the-solution-to-all-our-problems). They (https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20170413112251/http:/www.huffingtonpost.co.za/shelley-garland/could-it-be-time-to-deny-white-men-the-franchise_a_22036640/). Do (http://www.dailywire.com/news/8386/feminist-journalist-all-men-are-rapists-and-should-amanda-prestigiacomo#exit-modal).

No. I am talking about actual people with actual platforms. They exist. They are out there.

To you. Feminism isn't a monolith (for like....the 100th time). It doesn't have a dogma. It doesn't have a core set of beliefs. No Feminist is the same in all their opinions. Stop talking as if Feminism is just this one thing when it is demonstrably not.

Except I just pointed out at least three who do and the rabbit hole goes much further.

Oh yeah, one girl described as "The Femitheist is a 22-year-old criminology student with a three-year-old." can speak for the whole movement. One young girl who said a stupid thing on her college years is the mouthpiece for thousands of feminists, a girl who probably regretted saying this after she got more mature. Sure… That makes sense.

Is like someone posted "internet is evil and should be banned" but because he's a member of the giant in the playground forums that means ALL members agree with that. Not just… You know… A person.

So let me make it clear, “One person's opinion ≠ What a movement means”.

Before you say “Well, that’s what you do!” my opinions are based on a long history of writers and authors of the movements not “what I think”.

The second one has nothing to do with castration.

Oh yeah, because a joke on twitter totally summarizes what we believe, you got us! Oh dear D:

This just proves me right, some silly biased site post some news that take a small fact out of context and the people who read are influenced by it causing hatred, discrimination and misinformation about what feminism really is about.

Yes it does! Feminism is a school of philosophy with writers and authors.

No, you didn’t; And the sad part is that you think it does.

EDIT:

As someone who was punched unconscious for as best as I can tell, because of the hat I wore whike being in San Francisco (to see a Rock Band),
, men are also repressed and asaulted for what they wear.

If feminism can make it so that women won't be assaulted for what they wear, maybe they will be some spillover and boys/men will be safer as well.

That’s not the same, they are both types violence, but the motivations are different, one is not motivated by gender the other is.

EDIT 2:

They do. They're the ones who jump out defending female teachers that are caught having sexual relations with their students, despite the fact that if the genders were reversed, they would be up in arms demanding the male teacher's head.
And here's the wage gap card.
And here's the "If I go around wearing revealing clothes, I don't want to get unwanted catcalls or men staring at me" card. Yet they also unironically wear hijabs on their heads because they think it's a symbol of female empowerment(it's not, I lived in Kuwait long enough to learn that). Oh, but if a man dares to have a hula girl on his cars' dashboard, that's cultural appropriation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Wv1nX-Pog).
Remember the "DIE CIS SCUM" video? I know I do (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKMuR1-yWAc).
Remember the girl who said she was a "free inhabitant" that was arrested and cried "rape" when the officer put the cuffs on her? I know I do (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zHRQn_IShw).
I could also fill this post with links to Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopolus videos discussing the matter, but that might get it flagged for being too political.
EDIT:
And here's the "microaggressions" card. Do you also get triggered by "mansplaining" and "manspreading"?
I never heard of a feminist defending a person accused of sexual assault incidents.

You know that just putting “card” in front of a legitimate issue won’t make it less relevant right?

I never saw a feminist wearing a hijab apart from the ones inserted in that cultural context, and if you actually bothered to read about their culture and learn about their faith you will see that the idea behind the hijab is actually quite progressive.

Again, that’s one person, it’s like saying all gamers are angry and have no self-control and link the angry German kid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbcctWbC8Q0) as “proof.”

I'm so tired of people who don't know what feminism is, keep talking as if they were expects despite the fact they don't really know anything, they are just echoing what some guy on the internet told them.

I could also fill this post with links to Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopolus videos discussing the matter, but that might get it flagged for being too political.

I rest my case.

Dr.Samurai

2017-07-08, 02:54 PM

Amazon,

There is no "true feminist". Even feminists don't agree with other feminists on every issue. You have different ideas of what equality for women is and means, what's appropriate, what's inappropriate, etc. among the feminist movement. I'm sure some of them don't consider some of their peers to be true feminists.

This started with your response to Khyberwulf, so I'm curious... are you seriously suggesting that there is nothing to be criticized in modern day feminism? Because you took issue with him making an unfavorable comparison to feminism, and with the idea that anyone can make a comparison to feminism in a negative light. So are you really of the mind that there is nothing there to criticize? Nothing that can be done better? Because I'm typically most critical of the things I believe in and advocate for, and I don't know that I consider any of those things to be beyond reproach.

Amazon

2017-07-08, 02:59 PM

Razade

2017-07-08, 03:25 PM

Oh yeah, one girl described as "The Femitheist is a 22-year-old criminology student with a three-year-old." can speak for the whole movement. One young girl who said a stupid thing on her college years is the mouthpiece for thousands of feminists, a girl who probably regretted saying this after she got more mature. Sure… That makes sense.

You failed to understand, or are choosing to ignore, the point. Someone said that it's impossible to make someone look bad by agreeing with a feminist. That person is a feminist, agreeing with her best make you look bad.

Is like someone posted "internet is evil and should be banned" but because he's a member of the giant in the playground forums that means ALL members agree with that. Not just… You know… A person.

I never even began to state that because these people feel this way that all feminists agree with them. Quite the contrary actually. Actually the literal opposite of that.

So let me make it clear, “One person's opinion ≠ What a movement means”.

A movement is the people within it. It isn't just one person. Demonstrably not just one person.

Before you say “Well, that’s what you do!” my opinions are based on a long history of writers and authors of the movements not “what I think”.

They'll say the same thing about you. They do say the same thing about you.

The second one has nothing to do with castration.

Never said it did. Neither does the third.

Oh yeah, because a joke on twitter totally summarizes what we believe, you got us! Oh dear D:

There is no we. There is you. You're not Feminism. You're Amazon.

This just proves me right, some silly biased site post some news that take a small fact out of context and the people who read are influenced by it causing hatred, discrimination and misinformation about what feminism really is about.

Vice is a highly liberal news media site that champions equality in broad strokes. The Huffington Post is probably THE liberal news media. These are not biased news sites. These are not people taking anyone out of context. This is YOU attempting to muddle the narrative as best you can. This is you going "Yeah, those aren't MY feminists and I'M the only right one so I'm still right". Like I said. You can start lecturing us when you clean your own house. Sweeping them under the rug and acting like they don't exist certainly is one way of doing it but it's not the most honest way.

I don't have the solution to the burgeoning radical movement within the broader Feminist talking points. I don't need to have one. I don't identify as a feminist, I hold no truck with them. I have no desire to reform your school of thought. But you seem committed to the movement, so instead of bringing people who agree with you (like me) on how I'm wrong for pointing out the cancer that is eating your movement alive from the inside out maybe you should take some of your own advice and Listen and Believe.

Yes it does! Feminism is a school of philosophy with writers and authors.

No it doesn't. Philosophy isn't set by doctrine. There are competing philosophies of feminism. You know that though.

No, you didn’t; And the sad part is that you think it does.

That's just like, your opinion man.

I never heard of a feminist defending a person accused of sexual assault incidents.

So that means it's never happened!!

It's like when you are dying of dehydration, any water will do, any type of water even if it's kind of of dirty is better than no water.

I'm starting to see the full spectrum of you Amazon and it's honestly a little scary. Accept people who openly call for my death because of what I was born because it's better than a woman making a few less cents on the dollar?

Amazon

2017-07-08, 04:02 PM

You failed to understand, or are choosing to ignore, the point. Someone said that it's impossible to make someone look bad by agreeing with a feminist. That person is a feminist, agreeing with her best make you look bad.

Was that the point? I'm sorry I didn't get that.

I never even began to state that because these people feel this way that all feminists agree with them. Quite the contrary actually. Actually the literal opposite of that.

Ok, good to know.

A movement is the people within it. It isn't just one person. Demonstrably not just one person.

Well, if that's what you believe, I'm fine with that. I don't agree, but I'm fine with that.

They'll say the same thing about you. They do say the same thing about you.

The ones you provide don't. The first one ever said she regretted saying it..

Never said it did. Neither does the third.

Since it was an answer to my "Feminists don't advocate for castration" comment I thought it was fair to assume it was.

There is no we. There is you. You're not Feminism. You're Amazon.

Ok, so you can say what am I or what I'm not better than me? Ok.

Vice is a highly liberal news media site that champions equality in broad strokes. The Huffington Post is probably THE liberal news media. These are not biased news sites. These are not people taking anyone out of context. This is YOU attempting to muddle the narrative as best you can. This is you going "Yeah, those aren't MY feminists and I'M the only right one so I'm still right". Like I said. You can start lecturing us when you clean your own house. Sweeping them under the rug and acting like they don't exist certainly is one way of doing it but it's not the most honest way.

It's like saying that suicidal Christian cults represent all Christian religions.

I don't have the solution to the burgeoning radical movement within the broader Feminist talking points. I don't need to have one. I don't identify as a feminist, I hold no truck with them. I have no desire to reform your school of thought. But you seem committed to the movement, so instead of bringing people who agree with you (like me) on how I'm wrong for pointing out the cancer that is eating your movement alive from the inside out maybe you should take some of your own advice and Listen and Believe.

Well, you seem to care a lot since this is not your first time you are talking about it.

No it doesn't. Philosophy isn't set by doctrine. There are competing philosophies of feminism. You know that though.

And that's good. The problem is that people think that just because people identify as feminist and say what "they think" they are saying what feminism thinks despite the fact that what they say has nothing to do with the academic feminism.

That's just like, your opinion man.

Indeed.

So that means it's never happened!!

No, but I don't have to take your world or the possibility of something existing, why don't you provide examples?

I'm starting to see the full spectrum of you Amazon and it's honestly a little scary. Accept people who openly call for my death because of what I was born because it's better than a woman making a few less cents on the dollar.

To be very blunt and sincere I don't care about what you think of me

Razade

2017-07-08, 04:35 PM

Was that the point? I'm sorry I didn't get that.

Yes.

Well, if that's what you believe, I'm fine with that. I don't agree, but I'm fine with that.

Good for you.

The ones you provide don't. The first one ever said she regretted saying it..

She still believed it at one time. The fact that she's become less radical is good. She's far from the only one.

Since it was an answer to my "Feminists don't advocate for castration" comment I thought it was fair to assume it was.

Except...some do. So again, you're just factually wrong. The fact one of them dialed back doesn't mean she didn't in the past and that others don't currently advocate for it. Do you want me to provide more links? Of course you don't, even if I did you'll just explain them away without actually admitting you're wrong.

Ok, so you can say what am I or what I'm not better than me? Ok.

Not exactly. I'm saying you're not the whole of a philosophical movement. If that's a problem for you well....not much else to say really.

It's like saying that suicidal Christian cults represent all Christian religions.

No! NO! This isn't hard! Stop trying to say I'm saying something I'm not! Parts of a community don't represent all the community! They represent themselves. Just like you represent yourself. Not Feminism. Amazon is not Feminism. Amazon is a Feminist! Just like a Bass Hunter isn't Bass Hunting! Come on. This is logic 101.

Well, you seem to care a lot since this is not your first time you are talking about it.

I never said I didn't care.

And that's good. The problem is that people think that just because people identify as feminist and say what "they think" they are saying what feminism thinks despite the fact that what they say has nothing to do with the academic feminism.

Well that's...certainly a sentence. I've said it once, I'll continue to say it. I can't tell people they're feminist or not feminist. I can certainly tell people they aren't Feminism or any other ism. Because saying you represent an entire and divergent philosophy is absurd and me countering that with "that's nonsense" isn't inconsistant. Identify as what you want, but when you start talking as if you are the voice of a massive group of people...that should be challenged.

No, but I don't have to take your world or the possibility of something existing, why don't you provide examples?

Aside from the fact that posting links to examples wouldn't amount to much with you in light of when I actually bothered to source some examples and you literally said they don't count for one reason or another without even bothering to discuss them? Other than that? I think that's really the only reason I need. Examples mean nothing to you. There's no example I could give to demonstrate that what you claim doesn't exist exists.

To be very blunt and sincere I don't care about what you think of me

That's perfectly fine. You didn't answer the question. Are you advocating accepting radical and racist/sexist mentalities to progress your idealogy? Is that a line to cross in accomplishing your goals or am I taking your words too far? Are you fine with giving and allowing people who advocate for male castration (who you claim don't exist despite the evidence that they do) a platform to lessen the Earnings Gap? Are you fine taking away the rights to vote for all white men for better representation of females and people of color in the halls of power?

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-08, 06:23 PM

asfar as I know, there are many types of feminism with differents views, by what is aw form, your posts you seem to be a follower of Simone, she was a lot more liberal about straight sex than most of the other feminists who believe sex was bad and wrong.

http://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/D&Dladies1.jpg
http://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/D&Dladies2.jpg

As you can see by this funny comic there is no ONE feminist but many views on how to deal with feminist issues.

I used to play D&D with socialists and feminists back at college, and I can assure you that this is an accurate representation of how playing with political people feels like. xD

Razade

2017-07-08, 06:37 PM

Could you spoiler your art please? Nothing worse than a picture that stretches the page.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-08, 07:22 PM

Wow someone must be fun at parties.

Razade

2017-07-08, 07:24 PM

Wow someone must be fun at parties.

Seriously? Asking someone to politely but something that stretches the page and making your post hard to read somehow makes me a killjoy?

2D8HP

2017-07-08, 07:54 PM

Wow someone must be fun at parties.

...somehow makes me a killjoy?

With respect madam and sir, I believe that I am the "Joe Bummer", "Bobby Bringdown", and "Billie Buzzkill" of the Playground, and I have decades of experience as a killjoy!

This seat is taken!

Now please excuse me while I watch "Johnny Got His Gun" again while I take notes on achieving maximum tear-jerking.

Good day.

I said good day!
Get your own sarcasm detector!

Starwulf

2017-07-08, 09:37 PM

Wow someone must be fun at parties.

You're new-ish here(at least going by post count, going by your join date, I'm surprised you aren't already aware of this), so it's understandable you don't already know this, but it is considered the norm(and polite) to always spoiler large pictures to keep load times down on threads, especially for the mobile users. There was nothing rude in Razade asking you to spoiler it ^^.

Cazero

2017-07-09, 03:40 AM

Are we playing Strawman?

I could go take a dive in Tumblr to find the cases about women getting a slap on the wrist for having sex with underage boys being celebrated, when I'm feeling like getting some cancer. But I'll just leave this one here, cause it's a classic:
Picking a extreme personal opinion (optional step : distorting it so it also appears to be insane) and equating it to what a much larger movement actualy wants or does. Yup, we're playing Strawman. Jack Chick would be proud.

Since I'm capable of feeling guilt, I'd rather be a victim of genocide than commiting slavery and rape on a daily basis. I'll have to side with feminism in the imminent War of the Sexes.

2D8HP

2017-07-09, 07:39 PM

Are we playing Strawman?

'Tis the best game of all!

When I was a kid in the 1970's and a youth in the 1980's, I heard about "Feminism",

Definition of Feminism by Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism)

...but I never heard anyone complain about "the feminist" until some professional loudmouths started to on AM radio in the 1990's, then in the 2000's, I started to read complaints about "the feminists" on the internet, which I just thought of as "The internet is a big place with a lot of weird in it", but this year I had a young man (only 40) who worked with me (until he was exiled to another building that the public doesn't enter), that would among other irritating utterances would complain about "the feminists".

I mostly interact with 50-something adults at work, so and I'm hardly current, but is this a now common practice among young adults?

If so I have another item to add to my list of ways the 21st Century annoys me!
Well, firstly, someone who is "only 40" has lived a majority of their life in the 20th century, not the 21st century. If you wanna complain about generations and/or time periods that annoy you, at least get your chronology right:smallsmile:

As to the substance of your question, I'm not entirely sure. I work at a public university, and regularly interact with a range of people from 18 to 70 years old. I rarely, if ever, hear complaints about "the feminists" in person. Which could suggest it doesn't happen very often, or it could suggest that when it does happen, it isn't on a university campus. For example, it could be that it is somewhat common for non-college-educated young and middle-aged people to make the sort of complaints you are referring to, and that I simply don't hear them because there aren't many non-college-educated people working in a university. I've never worked outside academia, either, so I don't know if it's more or less common in the private sector.

In my experience the complaints about feminism are really only common on this Forum.

I mostly interact with 50-something adults at work, so and I'm hardly current, but is this a now common practice among young adults?

If so I have another item to add to my list of ways the 21st Century annoys me!
"Modern" (third-wave) feminism is pretty open about its hate for white straight men....

How have I managed to live 49 years of my life and never encounter this, if it's "pretty open"?

I heard of the "Women's Movement" in the 1970's from my mother and my teachers which worked for legal equality, but hardly anything since, certainly no somehow menacing "Third Wave", I really think that "anti-feminist" are mistaking a few voices on college campuses and the internet as, well really anything.

I look at the dictionary definition of "Feminism" and "Feminist" and I don't see anything to fear, and the acrimony seems ridiculous.

I'd it fear of women having power?

From my grandmother I heard tales of how women pretty much kept the country going while the men were overseas (she worked in the shipyards), the lasting effect?

They could now wear pants ar home and on weekends, then their daughters (my mothers generation) decided to undo some archaic laws.

Maybe a lot of this is young men discovering that, while boys (slightly) outnumber girls in Elementary school, among adults women outnumber men?

In any case, now that I've had my first co-worker (and co-worker is the closest I get to "friend") who's complained about "The Feminist's", they way I still stood working with him is to roll my eyes, sigh, and mock him, "Is that why you spend so much on bullets that you say you need to work more overtime for, because girls and women are going to do what exactly? If any actual female humans come to your trailer you let us know".

Dr.Samurai

2017-07-09, 09:14 PM

Picking a extreme personal opinion (optional step : distorting it so it also appears to be insane) and equating it to what a much larger movement actualy wants or does. Yup, we're playing Strawman. Jack Chick would be proud.

I think you're confused Cazero.

Amazon was saying "Feminists don't do X" and Mikemical was saying "Yes they do". Xyril then asked for him to back up the assertion with examples of three feminists doing as he insisted. He provided a link with some examples, and posted one directly. There is no strawman here.
Respectfully, I think you're being unfair to your coworker. I don't know what his complaints are, but there are certainly things to complain about. It may be that he's just sexist and doesn't like the idea of equality, but I'm skeptical of that :smallsmile:. Bear in mind, many *women* have a problem with modern day "third wave" feminism, and fewer and fewer women are identifying as "feminists" because of it.

If you say "feminism is simply about women being equal to men", of course you're going to scratch your head about anyone making complaints about that. Most people do not actively oppose equality between the sexes.

If people *are* complaining though, it's better to look a little deeper, than assume they're just sexists or worst. And, as I mentioned, it's hard to think "oh, guys are just complaining because they're stupid evil men" when there is significant push-back among women against feminism.

Given your comment that you've only seen complaints on this forum, I'm guessing you're just simply not exposed to this new culture war. But I can assure you this sentiment is not limited in any way to this forum; there is an anti-feminist movement. Really, there's just an entire anti-SJW movement.

It's all in how you do things. It's not enough to have good intentions.

Cazero

2017-07-10, 12:03 AM

I think you're confused Cazero.

Amazon was saying "Feminists don't do X" and Mikemical was saying "Yes they do". Xyril then asked for him to back up the assertion with examples of three feminists doing as he insisted. He provided a link with some examples, and posted one directly. There is no strawman here.
If [movement] is actualy defined, examples of individual people is never going to be what [movement] is supposed to do. It doesn't matter how many you pick. They're still individual persons stating their personal extreme opinion that just happen to vaguely align with [movement]. Them being convinced to actualy be a part of [movement] is just one more delusional detail about their opinion.

When you replace [movement] with feminism, somehow there are people who believe it's not strawmaning. Try putting a nationality, political party or religion here. See what happens.

2D8HP

2017-07-10, 01:10 AM

Thank you for the conversation!

Respectfully, I think you're being unfair to your coworker....

....Given your comment that you've only seen complaints on this forum, I'm guessing you're just simply not exposed to this new culture war. But I can assure you this sentiment is not limited in any way to this forum; there is an anti-feminist movement. Really, there's just an entire anti-SJW movement.
.

Perhaps, but the O.P.'s description of the "annoying friend" reminded me quite a bit of my new, young (born in'76 so the second youngest on the crew), co-worker, and I regarded his mutterings about "feminists" as part of a package along with his loudly using the "N-word", and the "B-word", in public areas while being pale and male, and bellyaching about "illegals" (annoying in private and potentially job ending in public for me because someone could report on "those guys in Engineering".

I worked construction for ten years, and I definitely heard foul language (including odious racial slurs) but that was in places that were usually so loud one often couldn't really hear what anyone was saying a few feet away, but moaning about "feminists" was new to me.

Why would anyone think this is civil discourse in the hallways outside courtrooms?

Too much AM radio?

As far as the anti-feminist having a point, they were no personal anecdotes, and all the links were to YouTube videos, blogs, and "Vice", hardly the New York Times, or the Washington Post, and it was mostly about what happened to some overpriveledged kids at selective colleges, not about what happens in regular society.

Since I can clearly see my own day to day life, the idea that they're "SJW's" who are any kind of danger worthy of an "anti-SJW movement" is absurd. The only "culture war" that I've seen is instigated for radio ratings.

Based on my own life experiences (since I remember how the people who's fists were punching my face looked like) if there's an anti-anyone movement worthy of my support it would be against the bearded and stocky young men of the late 1980's and early 1990's who wore flannel shirts and backwards baseball caps (if you're not a welder, a cameraman, or a sniper why is your hat on backwards?). The worst incident was my getting punched unconscious by stangers after being picked out, and asked "What's happening" (I was waiting outside of Slims on 11th Street in San Francisco trying to see the Flaming Lips perform), definitely left me with a useful prejudice, as when another bearded, stocky, backwards cap, and plaid shirt wearing young man approached me (on Blake Street just off Telegraph Avenue) and demanded, "Give me your money!", I already had pepper spray in my hand. A decade latter, age and working construction in San Jose (and horrible "Silicon Valley") made me stocky as well (though I never grew a damn beard!), and one day a grossly overweight bearded plumber that I was the apprentice of told me a story of how in his youth he and friends went to San Francisco to go "queer bashing" only to be fought off and chased by the "queer" driving a VW bug (my father drove one, so that detail stuck) down the highway that they were trying to escape on, "he was really strong".

That's when it clicked for me. As a teenager I knew some classmates, and friends who were "out" but I thought of any trouble that they may have because of that as something that would have happened in "the bad old days", but I realized that since I:

1) Was wearing a Greek fisherman's hat (I remember getting it knocked off my head) instead of a backwards baseball cap,

2) I was skinny,

and

3) In San Francisco to see a Rock band.

I was selected as a "queer" (someone not wearing a backwards baseball cap) to be "bashed" (sucker-punched to unconsciousness).

That made me realize that LGBT etc, etc folks have real contemporary (OK I would have been at least 21 years old, but it was before I got married because I was alone so 1989 to 1992) violent repression against them.
All the horrible "jokes" that I've heard at work plus the fact that I've mostly lived among (and am married to) non-white folks taught me that they endure violence against them.

Having lived with a women for over two decades has shown me what they endure, but the violence directed against people who look like me? Always by someone who also looks like me except for a beard, and/or a shaved head, and those stupid backwards baseball caps!

If there really is:
hate for white straight men.judging by how violently we treat others, and each other, no wonder!

Not all of us are violent thugs?

Then maybe the statements about "not all feminist" have equal merit, and the statement to
You can start lecturing us when you clean your own house. applies to us "males, etc." as well (or is equally absurd, whichever)

Does that make me self-hating?

No I just don't like being punched, and I remember who was doing the punching and I'd be very surprised if they were "feminist", or "SJW'ers", I have no fear from that quarter, it's their opponents that I fear, as I was punched into becomming a supporter of "social justice" by being "queer-bashed" (my actual sexuality has little to do with it, as without that experience I could easily imagine myself being blase about justice no matter who I wanted to sleep with).

Since most of the complaints cited about "feminists" seem to be about stuff on college campuses, if I was a young, and sheltered privileged college boy, I could imagine myself being annoyed by "feminism" and "SJW's", but since I've lived 49 years outside of the academy, I have a different view of where danger lurks, and if there is a "culture war" (the actual existence of which I'm dubious of) I don't see the violence comming from feminists and their allies.

The co-worker that I mentioned chuckled with glee many times watching what he said were videos on his phone of "hippie protesters getting their asses kicked".

Perhaps because my parents were "hippie" protesters I didn't see the humor.

Liquor Box

2017-07-10, 02:26 AM

Razade

2017-07-10, 04:28 AM

If [movement] is actualy defined, examples of individual people is never going to be what [movement] is supposed to do. It doesn't matter how many you pick. They're still individual persons stating their personal extreme opinion that just happen to vaguely align with [movement]. Them being convinced to actualy be a part of [movement] is just one more delusional detail about their opinion.

K.

If Feminism is actually defined*, examples of individual people is never going to be what Feminism is supposed to do. It doesn't matter how many you pick. They're still individual persons stating their personal extreme opinion that just happen to vaguely align with Feminism. Them being convinced to actually be a part of Feminism is just one more delusional detail about their opinion.

Just...so much to unpack here!!

1. No one is saying anyone speaks for the whole of a movement. Except for Amazon. She's the only one claiming to speak for what Feminism actually is.

2. You know what we call this? A No True Scotsman. Like, the proto-typical case of one. Person X isn't a Feminist because Person X doesn't meet the definition of Feminism as I define it.

3. This statement is...well frankly really insulting to people with mental health issues. They're not REALLY part of a movement, they're delusional and they're only part of that movement because their delusions coincide with what they think the movement says.

4. Amazon very clearly said Feminists don't do X. More than one person (myself included) then provided feminists who did in fact do what Amazon claimed they didn't. That isn't a Strawman. That's a refutation.

*Feminism has multiple definitions and since definitions don't matter, their usages do...I fail to see how "If something is defined as..." is a coherent argument in such a broad discussion. There are as many definitions of Feminism as there are Feminists.

Dr.Samurai

2017-07-10, 07:49 AM

If [movement] is actualy defined, examples of individual people is never going to be what [movement] is supposed to do.
Cazero, I don't think anyone was arguing what it's "supposed to do". And I think using "supposed to do" actually weakens whatever point you're trying to make here.

It doesn't matter how many you pick. They're still individual persons stating their personal extreme opinion that just happen to vaguely align with [movement].
Okay.

1. What is feminism "supposed to do"? You're venturing down "no true scotsman" here. Because there are feminists that think feminism should do all types of stuff. If we're vague and say "make men and women equal", it's clear to see that there can be an number of differing opinions on how to do that, so who is the "real" feminist?

2. I don't think I agree with your sentiment. I mean... technically, sure, no number of people that dissent can change the "technical" definition or goal of feminism. But practically, they sure can. It's why in polls the largest reason that *women* don't identify as feminists is because they think it's too extreme. You'd sit here and say "Well, I mean, that's not real actual true feminism", and they'd say "Oh? The extremism I've heard has come from self-identified feminists." To which you'd, presumably, double down with "They are delusional and no true feminist."

3. Every "movement" is made up of individuals. You're always interacting with an individual, not a force or ideology. So, while I get the point you're trying to make, this is true of everything. You can dismiss any individual.

Them being convinced to actualy be a part of [movement] is just one more delusional detail about their opinion.
Right, so No True Scotsman?

When you replace [movement] with feminism, somehow there are people who believe it's not strawmaning. Try putting a nationality, political party or religion here. See what happens.
How about I just repeat the conversation so you can see again that there is no Strawman here, only a No True Scotsman.

By his logic, he agrees with feminists...

You truly think you can accuse someone of possibly agreeing with feminists and thereby make him look bad?

I'm so tired of people who don't know what feminism is, keep talking as if they were expects despite the fact they don't really know anything, they are just echoing what some guy on the internet told them.

So...a No True Scotsman argument.
...
Feminism isn't a monolith, you don't speak for every feminist. There are feminists who champion castrating all men on a national holiday and keeping their sperm for making kids, putting the now castrated men in a second class who work until they're dead. There are feminists who champion equality.

That's my point! They don't do that, people who say they do are doing the same thing people used to do with the Jews (They eat babies) and the Africans (Their religion is black magic).

This demonizing process is horrible and you are perpetuating it!

Feminism is about gender equality, we fight for women rights and not for men rights because men are not being oppressed and marginalized, but women are. That’s not the same as “they fight for girls to gain rights and remove the rights from the boys” no one does that.

I think some problems are caused by the word "feminism".
...
I think that is why you have such misunderstandings. One person will say "feminist" meaning one thing, and another will understand that word another way.

We fight for gender equality, and genders are not equal, women are disadvantaged relative to men, take the salaries for example or the right to wear what they want without fear of repression or assault.

A feminist does not hold a hatred of men and/or masculinity, that's a false notion created to discredit it and cause fear and hatred, it's a false notion, a stereotype, that holds no weight.

I think you are mistaken to make such a blanket statement about people who disagree with you conception of feminism.

Feminism isn't a monolith (for like....the 100th time). It doesn't have a dogma. It doesn't have a core set of beliefs. No Feminist is the same in all their opinions. Stop talking as if Feminism is just this one thing when it is demonstrably not.

They're the ones who jump out defending female teachers that are caught having sexual relations with their students, despite the fact that if the genders were reversed, they would be up in arms demanding the male teacher's head.

Okay, the assertion is made. Now evidence is demanded. It's actually pretty easy on your part--you're not making a claim about the hypocrisy of a movement in general. All you have claimed is that there exist multiple individuals who 1) calls him or herself a feminist 2) at some point, defended a female statutory rapist and 3) at some point, condemned male statutory rapists.

Here's a handy link that recopilates several case, and saves me the time from having to write down more.

I could go take a dive in Tumblr to find the cases about women getting a slap on the wrist for having sex with underage boys being celebrated, when I'm feeling like getting some cancer. But I'll just leave this one here, cause it's a classic:

Picking a extreme personal opinion (optional step : distorting it so it also appears to be insane) and equating it to what a much larger movement actualy wants or does. Yup, we're playing Strawman. Jack Chick would be proud.

Lord Joeltion

2017-07-10, 01:37 PM

Well, I wasn't planning to respond to this thread, since I'm too late to say anything new to OP.

But it's funny, because this last discussion remembered me of a thing we have discussed me and my girlfriend just this morning. This is all about first hand experience, so you are free to take it as such. But I think it serves to depict something about this "Third Wave issue" some people think isn't real
It is real. Some people are actively reluctant to identify themselves as Feminists, and most of the blame is because of "a few" extremists, who happen to find a much louder voice through internet than they would be in real life (yet sometimes find their way out in real life too). I mean, sure, it is not a "huge scale" anything; but it does exist. And I don't mean Reddit people. I'm referring to "extremists" that happen to own pages, forums, and worse... they have followers and fans of their "opinions". You can find them everywhere. Even people who appear on TV

Thing is, my girlfriend is by all practical purposes, a "feminist person". I don't think I would date her if she was an activist (nothing to do with the movement, but I don't think I would be happy living with a person who isn't entirely focused in her personal life/success) BUT I would probably wouldn't be in love with her if she didn't held feminist values as high as she does. Yet, since I ever known her, she is very reluctant to publicly identify as such. It's not because of fear, yeah, we live in a "patriarchal" country, but most people around us (and most people in general) accept feminism as something good. Specially her own life is very "left winged" if you want to say so.

The issue comes with the fact that, just as she and I know a lot of feminists (activists), and follow/read/watch/listen to a lot of artists/groups who define themselves as "feminists" (and neither of us follow them for that reason, it's just a "coincidence" - Protip: it isn't); we also had the misfortune to find and meet (as in "face to face") feminists holding very radical ideas. Sometimes even "dangerous". "Dangerous" in the sense that, even tho they aren't as bad ideas at their core, they pose a bigger danger than those blatantly obvious because... they aren't blatantly obvious rotten ideas. So even the best feminist in the world might fall prey for them. Which is worse in the long run.

Long story short, we can't identify with feminism, not because of prejudice. But because we regard those specific "radicals" as the philosophical cancer of the movement. Which is sad. I mean, in a perfect world, yeah, I would be dating a feminist, that would be the world Amazon and others have the luck to live in. But we don't live there.

We live in a world where Feminism is (like it has happened to many other movements in history at some point) used as a banner and refuge by people who don't hold feminists ideals, but a slightly different agenda. I don't know what their agenda is, it probably has to do with some mental/sociological issue, but I don't care about that. What we do care, me and my GF, is that Feminism is being spoiled with those people. It is hurting the movement, and their validity in front of non-feminist eyes. The way I see it, I concluded there are three kinds of people about the topic:

Group A: Radicals who uphold silly ideas, sometimes in a coherent/appealing way, and happen to define themselves as Feminists. They wouldn't be a real issue, if it weren't for the fact that media is giving them the space to advocate for terrible ideas and disguise them as "feminist values".

Group B: Feminists who uphold coherent ideas and most of the time gather themselves in a movement that is more than a century old. They may present their ideas in an unappealing way, and sometimes resort to unorthodox methods, but at their core, their values and purpose are all OK. Luckily, those are the more widespread so far, and the ones whose media gave them the most approval.

Group C: People who don't define themselves as feminists. That would be either people who support or give approval to the movement; as well as those who oppose them. Making a distinction isn't useful for my conclusion.

Our conclusion was that only Group B has the tools to remove Group A from existence. Group A is problematic, not only because they are giving reason for "anti-feminists" to exist, but because they are distorting the common idea of what feminism is really about. The same way people "vilify" a certain practice just because of a single practitioner, people may apply the same logic to feminism. And that is wrong. Because feminism is at its core a good movement. It shouldn't be misused or misrepresented by anyone.

But some people from Group B are either oblivious or blind (unknowingly or not) of Group A. Some would argue they are too isolated cases; some deny their existence altogether; some may support them even tho they know they are radicals, because of the "feminist" tag. But for the sole reason they aren't group C most of them are falling on a bias fallacy. Aware or not, they are not taking care of this problem. And I am of the belief that no problem disappears by being ignored. Yesterday I saw yet another video against one of those Radical practices in gaming. At least once or twice a month, I hear about a certain "feminist" ranting about something that isn't gender equality at all. Sometimes it's a case from the media, and sometimes it's first-hand experience.
Heck, once my boss was "rejected" from a Feminist meeting because "he was a man" (that's literally the only argument they gave). I am talking about a real group of Feminists, with hierarchy and all. And political weight. And the work of my boss deals with defending human rights. I mean, if he wasn't allowed to be in for a gender reason... I wonder what their opinion of gender equality is. Of course my boss never asked to assist to a meeting again, but that only hurts THEM, not my boss. So their decision was actively counterproductive to Feminism as a whole!
But this is just all anecdotal, like I said. Hopefully Amazon and the rest get my point across. My advice isn't "clean your house first". Because, really, that's a silly statement
It would be rather, watch out who you hang out with. They might be not the kind of allies you want in your team. Educate them, or reject them, but please, don't overlook their behaviour. They won't simply go away.

That is all. I know, I have weird conversations with my significant other, but, hey, at least we enjoy em.

Luz

2017-07-10, 02:18 PM

WarKitty

2017-07-11, 05:17 AM

Celestia

2017-07-11, 06:51 AM

I don't know. I'd ask my friends, but I don't have any.

Chen

2017-07-11, 08:17 AM

This whole idea of “I identify as” it's silly to me, you can't identify as a feminist, you either are or aren't.

As many people have mentioned, the definition of feminism is not all encompassing or monolithic. Different people have different views of feminism and thus those who call themselves feminists may hold a number of different positions. If you could hammer out a agreed upon definition for feminism among everyone, then you could objectively call people out as "feminists" or "not feminists".

2D8HP

2017-07-11, 08:35 AM

I don't know. I'd ask my friends, but I don't have any.

You're not missing much. I had a lot in my youth, now I don't.
They're overrated.

...If you could hammer out a agreed upon definition...

Here you go:

Definition by Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism)

Seems simple enough.

Q: Why are people friends with annoying people?

A: Mostly out of habit, or the annoying person is part of a larger social circle that you want to participate in, or you want as many non-commercial contacts as possible for mutual assistance (moving).

Kyberwulf

2017-07-11, 11:49 AM

Oh, I would define feminism, as the religion of female supremacy through female victimization.

Chen

2017-07-11, 11:53 AM

Here you go:

Definition by Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism)

Seems simple enough.

Did you even read those two definitions? And how broad and not equivalent they both are?

WarKitty

2017-07-11, 12:03 PM

Oh, I would define feminism, as the religion of female supremacy through female victimization.

I'd define that post as bait.

Lord Joeltion

2017-07-11, 12:38 PM

This whole idea of “I identify as” it's silly to me, you can't identify as a feminist, you either are or aren't.

I may say that I identify as a member of the orthodox church or with Taoism or even with Socratic philosophy, that doesn't mean I'm any of those things, I may enjoy it but that doesn't make me part of it.

The way I see you have to be engaged with it to be part of it, so people who participate of the protests, political militancy or contribute to the “Scientific literature” can call themselves feminists.

Just because you agree with the ideas that doesn't make you one, it's like if I said I'm a Surrealistic Artists because I agree with their ideas and I'm a fan of their work although I don't produce any kind of art.

Or saying that I'm a member of the Greenpeace just because I think nature should be protected.
(Emphasis mine)
Just because you find something silly doesn't make it any more unreal or irrelevant. Most issues in life are "silly" from a certain perspective after all.
But exactly what you said strengthens my point even more. I know people who actively engage and participate in feminist activities while also upholding very "un-feminist values" (as in, totally the opposite of "gender equality"). And I also know people who is very close to me who *do not engage in feminist activities* because of that people, despite the fact that they would like to be engaged, if said people weren't part of the movement.

So what I find "silly" is that people think it is impossible for a "feminist" to uphold very unfeminist ideas, or that it isn't an issue that damages the movement, or an issue that we should overlook as if it didn't exist. Because my every day tells me otherwise, so it's obvious to me. That being said, having that opinion isn't silly in and of itself in any way. It's just a different view from mine. And that's why I wanted to share my experience, that is all.
Anyway, I wasn't attempting to spark discussion again, I just wanted to share my experience on that matter. That's it.

____________________________

ON TOPIC:

I played "faking friends" with people I didn't like in the least when I was younger. I generally did so in order to avoid segregation/quarrels among the group; but then I stopped caring for people so much, then finished school and kept only a handful of friends I truly respect.

Then again my sense of humor is very unconventional to be bothered solely by the way a person speaks or uses slurs in public. The way I understand language is that it is a social activity much more deep and contrived than bare definitions of words and such. A well respected comic writer from my country once argued that there were no words that truly carried "ill-meaning". It is us as speakers who gave them said meaning, despite what the literal meaning of a word would be. Because insults and verbal assault is basically all about intention, not vocabulary. Low class people use a lot of slurs in common life, and that doesn't mean they are verbally (or ideologically) more violent than any of the higher classes. It's pretty obvious once you think about it.

Dr.Samurai

2017-07-11, 12:48 PM

This whole idea of “I identify as” it's silly to me, you can't identify as a feminist, you either are or aren't.
Luz, the problem is that people have very different ideas of what feminism is, or should do. You certainly can't define feminists as "people that participate in activism". I mean, you can. But it's not like the masses will line up behind you and agree. As an example, look to Joeltion's post. His boss was asked to leave a meeting so it can be women-only. Now, some people think that's the direction feminists should take. Others don't. Both groups would call themselves feminists. You'd call neither feminists unless they were in the streets at some point holding up signs.

It's not so simple.

@Joeltion: Great post.

@2D8HP: Yeah, your co-worker sounds like the package deal lol.

Frozen_Feet

2017-07-11, 03:46 PM

@Joeltion:

Your categorization to three groups is pretty loose, but it applies outside feminism as well.

For example, martial arts. We have one group, the genuine practicioners who put the effort to create, maintain and spread the functional skills. The Doers, so to speak.

Then we have wannabes, frauds, quacks etc. who proclaim themselves martial artists, but have dubious motives or technical qualification. The Talkers.

And the we have the outsiders. The Audience. The joke is that to properly distinquish Doers from the Talkers requires some skill in martial arts. Which the Audience, by default, don't have. So they don't see Doers and Talkers. They see just martial artists.

This causes problems when a Talker gains notability over the Doers, as the Audience sees them as representative for the whole field. Or when a Talker coasts on the success of a Doer. These can give the whole field a bad name.

Martial artists approach the problem by strict internal discipline. The exact boundaries and methods vary from art to art, but in general, if you screw up, you get disowned.

If modern feminism has a problem with this, it's the push for too much inclusivity. You get people proclaimed as, or supported by, feminists for things which are only tangentially related to actual women's issues. Such as belonging to some ethnic or sexual minority. This gives undue visibility to fringe ideas and makes them associated with the movement as a whole.

There are no easy solutions to PR problems like this. However, clear delineation of what is or is not feminism must be part of it, as the only real alternative is abandoning serious use of the word as an identifier alltogether. Without such delineation, feminism is doomed to keep devolving into a slur without real meaning, just like fascist and communist.

Speaking of which...

To all people looking at the dictionary definitions of "feminism": you usually get something to the tune of "an ideology concerned with equality between sexes" or "women's issues".

This is only about as accurate or usegul as defining "communism" as "ideology concerned with equality between classes" or "working class issues".

It's true on some incredibly trivial level, but completely omits all the relevant historical details and specific beliefs which are the actual points of contention. For example, in communism's case it would omit the idea of global revolution and unification of the working class, which never really happened and in retrospect was never a really credible idea.

It's not even a far-fetched comparison, since feminism from WW2 on was heavily influenced by international communism. Contemporary feminism shares many of the same notions and hence many of the same problems, whether we're talking on the ideological, practical or rhetorical level.

We can't dwell deeper on that point here, but it's an usefull example of why "argument from dictionary" does not work for large movements.

Lord Joeltion

2017-07-11, 04:21 PM

@Joeltion:

Your categorization to three groups is pretty loose, but it applies outside feminism as well.
That was entirely on purpose :smallwink: My point wasn't that feminism was the only field that could present this problem. It is a common issue for any trend in society that has been around long enough. E.g.: What do people call "rock music"?

For example, martial arts. We have one group, the genuine practicioners who put the effort to create, maintain and spread the functional skills. The Doers, so to speak.

Then we have wannabes, frauds, quacks etc. who proclaim themselves martial artists, but have dubious motives or technical qualification. The Talkers.

And the we have the outsiders. The Audience. The joke is that to properly distinquish Doers from the Talkers requires some skill in martial arts. Which the Audience, by default, don't have. So they don't see Doers and Talkers. They see just martial artists.

This causes problems when a Talker gains notability over the Doers, as the Audience sees them as representative for the whole field. Or when a Talker coasts on the success of a Doer. These can give the whole field a bad name.

Martial artists approach the problem by strict internal discipline. The exact boundaries and methods vary from art to art, but in general, if you screw up, you get disowned
Exactly my point. People who know and practice the "true ways", are the ones who can actually do something to remedy this. Of course, they have the option not to do so, and as such, the original idea of What Once Was would simply evolve. But if you belong to the "Original" group and don't support this change, then you should do something sooner or later.

Whathever the case, you can never blame "the Audience" (outsiders) for having a "misconception" of the "actual definition" of a certain group. Because they are outsiders, they only see people holding banners. There's no way for me to distinguish a real Scot Citizen from a pretender, when I see a person dressed as one. Because I'm No Scotsman :smallamused:

If modern feminism has a problem with this, it's the push for too much inclusivity. You get people proclaimed as, or supported by, feminists for things which are only tangentially related to actual women's issues. Such as belonging to some ethnic or sexual minority. This gives undue visibility to fringe ideas and makes them associated with the movement as a whole.

There are no easy solutions to PR problems like this. However, clear delineation of what is or is not feminism must be part of it, as the only real alternative is abandoning serious use of the word as an identifier alltogether. Without such delineation, feminism is doomed to keep devolving into a slur without real meaning, just like fascist and communist.
(emphasis mine)
I don't agree this issue can be reduced to a single cause. After all, it's only natural for any philosophic current to spawn branches as time goes by. We also live in a globalized world, where people use words and definitions for themselves as if they were Cool T-Shirts, without any regards of their actual meaning or what they represent. Heck, people can do it for the money too. Or fame. Or whatever. Point is, it was expected to happen at some point. What I believe is that feminism shouldn't be "doomed" into anything, because at it's core holds an idea worth defending. One that concerns not only women alone, but society as a whole, IMHO

Frozen_Feet

2017-07-11, 04:58 PM

Dr.Samurai

2017-07-11, 05:08 PM

When I said "feminism is doomed" I literally meant the word. The ideas might live on, but the word will become useless.

There are many examples of such semantic dilution, where the meaning of a word is either blurred to the point it becomes useless and is dropped, or where an initially neutral expression gains so overwhelmingly negative connotation that it ceases to be used as anything but a slur.
Right. Like, I want equality between men and women. But I wouldn't consider myself a feminist because it means too many things. One can easily say they want gender/sex equality without resorting to using a word. And since the word has so much attached to it at this point, it seems pointless to use, as you're saying.

If someone asks "are you a feminist?" you're initial reaction is "what are you asking me?" It's so easy to respond with "well, I want equality between men and women". And if they say "yeah, so you are a feminist" you can just shrug and sort of nod your head noncommittally.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-11, 07:41 PM

Luz, the problem is that people have very different ideas of what feminism is, or should do. You certainly can't define feminists as "people that participate in activism". I mean, you can. But it's not like the masses will line up behind you and agree. As an example, look to Joeltion's post. His boss was asked to leave a meeting so it can be women-only. Now, some people think that's the direction feminists should take. Others don't. Both groups would call themselves feminists. You'd call neither feminists unless they were in the streets at some point holding up signs.

It's not so simple.

@Joeltion: Great post.

@2D8HP: Yeah, your co-worker sounds like the package deal lol.

You do know that there are lots of good reasons for an feminist group to say you can't join because you are a guy right?

Besides we only have his boss word on this maybe they had great reasons to dismiss him but he perceived as being discriminated and started telling everyone that he was kicked out "because he is a guy" rather than a perfectly reasonable reason such as he is a actually a jerk, but he will never say that.

Razade

2017-07-11, 07:44 PM

You do know that there are lots of good reasons for an feminist group to say you can't join because you are a guy right?

Such as? Are there any groups that it'd be ok for no women to join as well?

Besides we only have his boss word on this maybe they had great reasons to dismiss him but he perceived as being discriminated and started telling everyone that he was kicked out "because he is a guy" rather than a perfectly reasonable reason such as he is a actually a jerk, but he will never say that.

He's...the boss...it doesn't matter if he's a jerk. He's the one in charge, he should be present at meetings or have someone representing the company present for the meeting.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-11, 08:09 PM

Such as? Are there any groups that it'd be ok for no women to join as well?

Well, many feminists groups also work as support groups for cases of violence against women's rights; it would be very awkward and unpleasant to share experiences such as rape or abuse with a guy standing right there.

Razade

2017-07-11, 08:15 PM

Well, many feminists groups also work as support groups for cases of violence against women's rights; it would be very awkward and unpleasant to share experiences such as rape or abuse with a guy standing right there.

Right but that wasn't what the question was, now was it. The question was would it be ok, for any reason, to tell a women they couldn't be present in a group of men? You gave the example. Would it be ok for an all male support group for men who are victims of domestic violence by women to exclude women?

This is actually a really important question since there is only one men's shelter for domestic violence in the United States and any attempts to make more have been violently opposed by Feminist organizations. To add on to this, many men are turned away from unisex domestic shelters (and even homeless centers) because they make women uncomfortable. Simply for being men.

Dr.Samurai

2017-07-11, 08:22 PM

You do know that there are lots of good reasons for an feminist group to say you can't join because you are a guy right?
Are you asking me or telling? Because no, I don't know the lots of good reasons to reject men from feminist groups. Please enlighten me.

Besides we only have his boss word on this maybe they had great reasons to dismiss him but he perceived as being discriminated and started telling everyone that he was kicked out "because he is a guy" rather than a perfectly reasonable reason such as he is a actually a jerk, but he will never say that.
You sound like you can't believe that the group would reject him based solely on his sex. So, I suspect your issue isn't with this particular example, and more with us pointing out some bad behavior by some feminists.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-11, 08:31 PM

Right but that wasn't what the question was, now was it. The question was would it be ok, for any reason, to tell a women they couldn't be present in a group of men? You gave the example. Would it be ok for an all male support group for men who are victims of domestic violence by women to exclude women?

This is actually a really important question since there is only one men's shelter for domestic violence in the United States and any attempts to make more have been violently opposed by Feminist organizations. To add on to this, many men are turned away from unisex domestic shelters (and even homeless centers) because they make women uncomfortable. Simply for being men.

*snicker* Hahahahahahahaha... Hahahahahahahahahaha...

Razade

2017-07-11, 08:32 PM

*snicker* Hahahahahahahaha... Hahahahahahahahahaha...

I...fail to see the amusement here...

Are we laughing at the idea that men are abused? Are we laughing at the idea that feminists would shut them down? Are we laughing at the idea that your response only further makes my point?

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-11, 08:36 PM

I...fail to see the amusement here...

Are we laughing at the idea that men are abused? Are we laughing at the idea that feminists would shut them down? Are we laughing at the idea that your response only further makes my point?

https://m.popkey.co/6a8448/rbRE6.gif

Razade

2017-07-11, 08:54 PM

Right so you're not actually interested in a discussion. That's a real shame. For those of you who are intellectually honest.

Here's the National Domestic Abuse Hotline. As unbiased a source as you can get on this. (http://www.thehotline.org/2014/07/men-can-be-victims-of-abuse-too/)

Here's the CDC (Center for Disease Control) report that found that more men than women are subject to domestic abuse from 2010. (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf) It's rather long, 124 pages, but I implore you to give it a read if you're at all interested on the subject.

For a shorter and more condensed read through. Here's a good summary. (http://www.saveservices.org/2012/02/cdc-study-more-men-than-women-victims-of-partner-abuse/)

Here's the CDC website which will give support to the summary above. (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/index.html)

Here's a (probably biased but ya know...give it a read) source from the National Coalition for Men which discusses the problems erecting shelters for men who are abused both by male and female partners. (http://ncfm.org/2009/01/issues/domestic-violence/) It mentions the CDC report which is why I made sure to give as many links as I could to it.

Here is an article about the first (and only) All Male Domestic Abuse Shelter in the United States. Don't read the comment section (http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/first-of-its-kind-domestic-violence-shelter-for-all-male-victims-opens-in-arkansas/). You've been warned.

The owner of (the now shut down) only Domestic Shelter for Men in Canada killed himself. In a four page suicide note he mentioned pressures from feminists towards the government to withhold funding as one of the reasons he couldn't afford to run it. (http://nationalpost.com/g00/news/canada/earl-silverman-who-ran-mens-safe-house-dies-in-apparent-suicide/wcm/b03491c5-ff02-46d7-9b99-c40f0340da53?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googl e.com%2F) His last words further went on to explain how he was told he wasn't a victim and the people he was trying to help weren't victims but the source of female abuse. His name was Earl Silverman, and it's a shame we lost him.

I don't really know what else to say on the matter. Should I link to the various times feminist movements have shut down men's shelters here in the U.S? Would it even matter?

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-11, 09:01 PM

The Eye

2017-07-11, 09:14 PM

You're not missing much. I had a lot in my youth, now I don't.
They're overrated.

That's what I keep saying! But the doctors say that such attitude is not good for your mental health. u_u

Liquor Box

2017-07-11, 10:10 PM

https://m.popkey.co/6a8448/rbRE6.gif

Do you identify as feminist Satan?

Because if so I imagine next time that there's a thread like this, i expect someone will use "feminists laugh at men who are victims of domestic abuse" as another example of extreme feminist positions to discredit the whole.

Razade

2017-07-11, 10:14 PM

Because if so I imagine next time that there's a thread like this, i expect someone will use "feminists laugh at men who are victims of domestic abuse" as another example of extreme feminist positions to discredit the whole.

Since no one has done that this time, I imagine someone will point all this out as reasons not to Listen and Believe, that there are people (I don't know or care of S@tan is a feminist or not. They haven't used that label so I won't use it for them) that...IDK what they're even trying to accomplish with just posting reaction gifs since it's not an actual way of having a conversation. If it's meant to laugh or mock the idea of male domestic abuse victims...well I think that says all that needs to be said about that person really.

Seriously. How many times does one have to say Feminism isn't a Monolith to get the point across that no one is saying one feminist speaks for all feminists? That is, at least my issue, with Amazon and others who are saying they're Feminism. When they're just a Feminist. The strawmen continue to just pile high to the sky though.

Trekkin

2017-07-11, 10:19 PM

IDK what they're even trying to accomplish with just posting reaction gifs since it's not an actual way of having a conversation. If it's meant to laugh or mock the idea of male domestic abuse victims...well I think that says all that needs to be said about that person really.

I created this Satanicoaldo persona to make fun of people and act like a troll

Pretty much, yeah.

Razade

2017-07-11, 10:23 PM

Pretty much, yeah.

Ah, of course. Welp, my point stands. For those who are actually honest those links should provide important. Honestly for those who are actually honest in their pursuits, those links should horrify you just as much as they horrify me.

Thanks though Trekkin, I'll know not to engage S@tanicoaldo any further. Guess the Confession thread spat out something useful after all. Will have to eat crow on that one!

2D8HP

2017-07-12, 07:42 AM

That's what I keep saying! But the doctors say that such attitude is not good for your mental health. u_u

I don't know much about "mental health", but generally for more happiness

spend less time commuting (https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/feb/12/how-does-commuting-affect-wellbeing),

and

more time in deep conversations (https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/talk-deeply-be-happy/),

walking outside in slightly chilly weather (near 57 degrees Fahrenheit) is good to.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-12, 04:55 PM

Do you identify as feminist Satan?

Because if so I imagine next time that there's a thread like this, i expect someone will use "feminists laugh at men who are victims of domestic abuse" as another example of extreme feminist positions to discredit the whole.

Nope, I only identify as a Satanist LOL.

The problem with feminism is that they don't realize that "The wise remain hidden" and "the one who submit rules", they want power and authority but don't realize that we already have it, in the end is not the wizard who has the power but the man behind the curtain.

Pretty much, yeah.

Come on Trekkin! You are no fun, he was getting all angry and hung up, it was hilarious, I also think that what you did is basically against the rule so maybe you should erase that? Please?

Besides that quote is out of context, that was the original intend of this persona but in the end I'm not able to do it, I just end up saying what I think so i won't feel like a hypocrite.

Razade

2017-07-12, 05:03 PM

Come on Trekkin! You are no fun, he was getting all angry and hang up, it was hilarious,

Not...really. I wasn't, and am not, angry. You sorta gave yourself away on the second use of a gif as your sole response. You're not very good at this. Oh, it's also hung up. You get hung up on something.

I also think that what you did is basically against the rule so maybe you should erase that? Please?

Oh dear. Someone should listen to more Alanis Morissette. And re-read the forum rules. The latter at the very least.

2D8HP

2017-07-12, 05:12 PM

Nope, I only identify as a Satanist LOL....

Of course you're not Satan, because that would be Elizabeth Hurley:

https://scdn.nflximg.net/images/1834/11581834.jpg

(She replaced Peter Cook in the job):

http://movieworld.ws/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bedazzled-300x415.jpg

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-12, 05:13 PM

Not...really. I wasn't, and am not, angry. You sorta gave yourself away on the second use of a gif as your sole response. You're not very good at this. Oh, it's also hung up. You get hung up on something.

Yeah I saw it and fixed it later.

Trekkin

2017-07-12, 05:15 PM

Come on Trekkin! You are no fun, he was getting all angry and hang up, it was hilarious, I also think that what you did is basically against the rule so maybe you should erase that? Please?

No. You mocked the victims of abuse to get a rise out of someone. Go away.

Lord Joeltion

2017-07-13, 08:49 AM

You do know that there are lots of good reasons for an feminist group to say you can't join because you are a guy right?

Besides we only have his boss word on this maybe they had great reasons to dismiss him but he perceived as being discriminated and started telling everyone that he was kicked out "because he is a guy" rather than a perfectly reasonable reason such as he is a actually a jerk, but he will never say that.
Welp, given that I am really close to my boss, and that "I am a guy too", I'll trust his word. I mean, if he was actually a jerk to them for jerkness' sake; at least he would have slipped something, or gave me a significant "hint". I know him since long enough. He isn't that kind of person.

If anything, he is the kind of guy that gives the impression of being the male supremacist stereotype (tall, big beard, ubermale manners, etc) at first glance; but once he speaks you realize he isn't that in the least. Quite the contrary. Most of the people in the feminist organization know him for long enough too. They should know better.

Well, many feminists groups also work as support groups for cases of violence against women's rights; it would be very awkward and unpleasant to share experiences such as rape or abuse with a guy standing right there.
If you must know, he didn't ask to be in any particular meeting. He wanted to presence ANY meeting, because he isn't the kind of guy that would go on and talk about what he only read in books/internet. He was actually interested because he wanted to offer his voice on different forums on behalf of them, in places none of those women will ever be present (for the sole reason they are tinier fishes in comparison).

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-13, 11:16 AM

Welp, given that I am really close to my boss, and that "I am a guy too", I'll trust his word. I mean, if he was actually a jerk to them for jerkness' sake; at least he would have slipped something, or gave me a significant "hint". I know him since long enough. He isn't that kind of person.

If anything, he is the kind of guy that gives the impression of being the male supremacist stereotype (tall, big beard, ubermale manners, etc) at first glance; but once he speaks you realize he isn't that in the least. Quite the contrary. Most of the people in the feminist organization know him for long enough too. They should know better.

If you must know, he didn't ask to be in any particular meeting. He wanted to presence ANY meeting, because he isn't the kind of guy that would go on and talk about what he only read in books/internet. He was actually interested because he wanted to offer his voice on different forums on behalf of them, in places none of those women will ever be present (for the sole reason they are tinier fishes in comparison).

But that's the point, normally when you’re a jerk you don't realize you are being a jerk. Maybe he didn't realize he was acting like a jerk and concluded that the only reason he was not allowed to participate was his sex.

Wait, so he wanted to join a feminist to talk rather than sit and learn? Claming that he can do stuff they are not able to do because they are "tinier fish"? Sounds like an ass to me.

Lord Joeltion

2017-07-13, 01:34 PM

But that's the point, normally when you’re a jerk you don't realize you are being a jerk. Maybe he didn't realize he was acting like a jerk and concluded that the only reason he was not allowed to participate was his sex.
They don't allow men specifically. He works with other women. They are allowed, he isn't. Neither those who happen to have his gender. It's pretty straightforward. :smallconfused:

Wait, so he wanted to join a feminist to talk rather than sit and learn? Claming that he can do stuff they are not able tpo do because they are "tinier fish"? Sounds like an ass to me.
Those were my words not his. Up your trolling, grasshopper

:smallcool:

Dr.Samurai

2017-07-13, 05:07 PM

But that's the point, normally when you’re a jerk you don't realize you are being a jerk. Maybe he didn't realize he was acting like a jerk and concluded that the only reason he was not allowed to participate was his sex.
Sure. But since we don't have any reason to believe this, there is little use in speculating. We only have his word. Since we know that some feminists believe that men can't even be feminists, and some feminists believe in excluding men from the movement, let alone things like concerts and theaters, it's not a stretch of the imagination to take the man at his word.

Wait, so he wanted to join a feminist to talk rather than sit and learn?
You can do both at a meeting. Obviously. Meetings typically have more than one person, by definition. It isn't just one person speaking the entire time. Sometimes one person speaks while the other listens, and then the one that was listening gets a turn and they speak while the previous talker listens. It's an incredible social interaction called "conversation". Look it up. It isn't limited by gender or sex.

The notion that a man has nothing to say at a feminist meeting is ****ing stupid as ****. To put it mildly.

Claming that he can do stuff they are not able tpo do because they are "tinier fish"?
Maybe you're just bad with context clues. Clearly the job his boss does provides him with more exposure, and he was hoping to hear their message/goal/platform so that he could help by reaching more people than they could without him.

Sounds like an ass to me.
See, you undermine yourself with this type of nonsense. You call him an ass because he deigned to speak to women, and because he had the audacity to realize he could reach many more people than they could and wanted to offer his help. That's makes him in ass in your eyes.

And you want us to take your speculation seriously that he might just be a jerk and doesn't know it. Because you're such a deep thinker lol.

Razade

2017-07-13, 06:37 PM

And you want us to take your speculation seriously that he might just be a jerk and doesn't know it. Because you're such a deep thinker lol.

Don't think they do. They intentionally mocked those who suffered domestic abuse to attempt to get a rise out of someone. I don't think they want to be taken seriously at all, I think they want to be as absurd as possible to further frustrate people.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-13, 07:35 PM

Don't think they do. They intentionally mocked those who suffered domestic abuse to attempt to get a rise out of someone. I don't think they want to be taken seriously at all, I think they want to be as absurd as possible to further frustrate people.

Someone sounds butthurt.

Not someone, you! The point is that I find your confrontational attitude hilarious, this is the Friendly Banter, FRIENDLY but you act like you have to prove how smatter and superior you are to everyone else, every single Thread in here that you post is you trying to prove how someone is wrong, rather than just, you know... Having a conversation. Understandably more than once people got mad with you.

I find that hilarious, not everything is an attack against you(mine were but that's not the point) not every single point has to be dissected and proven wrong, not everyone is interested.

Razade

2017-07-13, 07:51 PM

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-13, 07:57 PM

Trekkin

2017-07-13, 08:02 PM

Not butthurt, you should stop trying to ascribe feelings to others...you're bad at it, just trying to point out that you're not really honest in your engagement. It's less me being upset and more just trying to save others the time. Why engage with someone who isn't actually interested in the conversation?

Well, there's the humor value of watching someone try desperately to simultaneously claim she is no longer a troll and has also expertly trolled you and everyone, but that has worn thin, I think.

There is also, merely as a point of curiosity, the question of what happens when the worst con artist in town realizes that they've been playing their shell game with glass bowls for their entire career, if you will -- but, again, not very exciting.

EDIT: Ooh! And watching someone insist, repeatedly, that everyone's laughing with them when no one is laughing at all.

Razade

2017-07-13, 08:05 PM

Are you sitting down S@tanicoaldo because this is going to come, I can only imagine, as an incredible shock to you. I don't care if you think I have a confrontational attitude. I know, it's staggering. The idea that I don't care what a random internet person thinks of me. In the months after you read this that it takes you to recover, I hope we can be friends though. X's and O's.

Well, there's the humor value of watching someone try desperately to simultaneously claim she is no longer a troll and has also expertly trolled you and everyone, but that has worn thin, I think.

There is also, merely as a point of curiosity, the question of what happens when the worst con artist in town realizes that they've been playing their shell game with glass bowls for their entire career, if you will -- but, again, not very exciting.

EDIT: Ooh! And watching someone insist, repeatedly, that everyone's laughing with them when no one is laughing at all.

I don't know Trekkin. That's a pretty confrontational attitude you have there. :smalltongue::smallamused:

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-13, 08:06 PM

Well, there's the humor value of watching someone try desperately to simultaneously claim she is no longer a troll and has also expertly trolled you and everyone, but that has worn thin, I think.

There is also, merely as a point of curiosity, the question of what happens when the worst con artist in town realizes that they've been playing their shell game with glass bowls for their entire career, if you will -- but, again, not very exciting.

EDIT: Ooh! And watching someone insist, repeatedly, that everyone's laughing with them when no one is laughing at all.

I did such things? Oh, well.

Razade

2017-07-13, 08:08 PM

I did such things? Oh, well.

That also sounds pretty confrontational to me S@tanicoaldo. This is FRIENDLY Banter.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-07-13, 08:09 PM

That also sounds pretty confrontational to me S@tanicoaldo. This is FRIENDLY Banter.

https://media.giphy.com/media/QgixZj4y3TwnS/giphy.gif

Jormengand

2017-07-13, 08:26 PM

This is FRIENDLY Banter.

This time, she might even be justified in laughing.

Dr.Samurai

2017-07-13, 09:20 PM

Don't think they do. They intentionally mocked those who suffered domestic abuse to attempt to get a rise out of someone. I don't think they want to be taken seriously at all, I think they want to be as absurd as possible to further frustrate people.
It's quite possible. Honestly, we're just in that place and time where it is difficult to determine the difference between sincerely held beliefs and opinions, and the parody of those things. So maybe she is trolling when she says the guy is a jerk because he wanted to help feminists out, but who can really know? I've heard crazier things.

I don't mind getting "trolled". If, in the middle of a conversation, I squint at the screen and realize it's happening, I'll slow clap over here and think bravo, then move on lol :smallcool:. And if I don't realize it's happening, *shrugs* not much I can do or think about it.

But, it's easy to get backed into a corner after saying something completely stupid and then say you were just "trolling".

Razade

2017-07-13, 09:29 PM

It's quite possible. Honestly, we're just in that place and time where it is difficult to determine the difference between sincerely held beliefs and opinions, and the parody of those things. So maybe she is trolling when she says the guy is a jerk because he wanted to help feminists out, but who can really know? I've heard crazier things.

I don't mind getting "trolled". If, in the middle of a conversation, I squint at the screen and realize it's happening, I'll slow clap over here and think bravo, then move on lol :smallcool:. And if I don't realize it's happening, *shrugs* not much I can do or think about it.

But, it's easy to get backed into a corner after saying something completely stupid and then say you were just "trolling".

Oh sure, easy to just fall back on the "I was only joking!" defense. I don't think that's this time though.

Kyberwulf

2017-07-14, 05:44 AM

Forgot about this thread.

Not it wasn't bait.

I don't respect any religion that gets power through fear, intimidation, coercion, and fear.

90,000

2017-07-14, 08:06 AM

I hope The Eye is comfortable with what he wrought.

FinnLassie

2017-07-14, 08:29 AM

To answer to the original subject:

Everyone is likely someone's "annoying" friend, and/or there will likely always be someone that regards you annoying.

Mikemical

2017-07-14, 08:30 AM

I hope The Eye is comfortable with what he wrought.

I love how every thread of his starts with people telling him to look at himself in the mirror before passing his judgement on other people and quickly jumps off the rails straight into 4chan-tier argumentational chaos because some people have wet paper-thin skin.

Keep doing God's work, The Eye.
https://68.media.tumblr.com/c7df88b223aebbb9d709aaa35f5873e4/tumblr_nreno0duJh1td0of9o1_500.gif

I never heard of a feminist defending a person accused of sexual assault incidents.

I linked you an example, didn't I?

You know that just putting “card” in front of a legitimate issue won’t make it less relevant right?

It does because it isn't an issue. The number of women in higher paying positions within companies in the US has increased in the past 10 years, with fewer female CEOs making more money than male CEOs that outnumber them. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2017/05/31/new-report-women-ceos-make-more-than-men/#452879d82da9)

From the same article: "This isn’t new—women CEOs have made more than men in six of the past seven years. And three of the 10 highest paid executives are women."

I never saw a feminist wearing a hijab apart from the ones inserted in that cultural context, and if you actually bothered to read about their culture and learn about their faith you will see that the idea behind the hijab is actually quite progressive.

Lady, I lived in Kuwait in 2010. I was a practicing Christian back then, and I couldn't even wear a cross under my shirt because if someone noticed it they would begin harrasing me. Add to that I was an immigrant so if I reacted in any way against a Kuwaiti citizen, I would've been deported. It's the reason why I left before I punched someone in the face. I saw a lady get punched by her walrus of a husband because she accidentally bumped into another man at the mall.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, do you know about the "Punishment Channel"? They broadcast live as they conduct sentences on any criminal, going from branding them like cattle using hot irons to amputating their hands while citing passages from the Quran. And it wasn't some Pay Per View service you could rent, it came with the basic cable in my apartment complex.

The reason feminists don't pursue or bash Islam is because if they did, it would show how little they have to actually complain about at home. In the United Arab Emirates, husbands have the right to beat their wives to discipline them - "Provided that the beating is not so severe as to damage her bones or deform her body," in the words of Gulf News. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot vote, drive, show their faces in public or talk with male non-relatives in public.

I rest my case.

"I don't like or agree with your sources, therefore your arguments are invalid."

90,000

2017-07-14, 08:35 AM

Mikemical

2017-07-14, 09:02 AM

I couldn't decide between these two replies.

You can pick which one you want.

Yeah, especially on this board

or

What the heck is that supposed to mean? You're saying I have thin skin!?

https://68.media.tumblr.com/de0441b20b57f1824ba418bf536c8635/tumblr_inline_nyd838EOZI1t342m8_540.png

2D8HP

2017-07-14, 09:53 AM

I love how every thread of his starts with people telling him to look at himself in the mirror before passing his judgement on other people and quickly jumps off the rails straight into 4chan-tier argumentational chaos because some people have wet paper-thin skin.

Keep doing God's work, The Eye.
https://68.media.tumblr.com/c7df88b223aebbb9d709aaa35f5873e4/tumblr_nreno0duJh1td0of9o1_500.gif[/SPOILER]

...What the heck is that supposed to mean? You're saying I have thin skin!?[/SPOILER]

By all the wisdom of THAC0, I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

http://abload.de/img/untitled-1foshn.gif
(More seriously, anytime the word "gender", or even the letters "fem" are in a thread lately, it somehow causes this Forum to lose it's... composure.

Amazon

2017-07-14, 04:31 PM

@Mikemical

I hope this helps expend your views on what the hijab really is:

https://68.media.tumblr.com/aff7fe9c96e874f102c8a400ae30832a/tumblr_ossfq7TVeM1veme87o1_1280.jpg

Mikemical

2017-07-14, 05:33 PM

@Mikemical

I hope this helps expand your views on what the hijab really is:

https://68.media.tumblr.com/aff7fe9c96e874f102c8a400ae30832a/tumblr_ossfq7TVeM1veme87o1_1280.jpg

Cute, but having lived in Kuwait, I learned that for most women, that is not a choice, but an imposition from their fathers or husbands, and even the state law. And I would know from a good source, since my aunt is living there and she went from being a free-spirited working woman living in Australia to a shut-in because women aren't allowed to hold a job, drive a car, and if they want to study, they'll be put in segregated classrooms away from the male teachers and use buzzers to ask any questions.

Also, any woman not wearing a hijab in countries under the Sharia law tend to become targets of Muslim men, religious police and vigilantes in one way or another. Like the several rape cases in Europe from the supposed refugees that go unpunished because "where they come from, it's how they do things", or the Saudi religious police hindering the rescue of schoolgirls from a fire because they were not wearing hijab, which resulted in 15 deaths in 2002 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1874471.stm), the Iranian penal code prescribed in 1983 punishment of 74 lashes for women appearing in public without Islamic hijab (hijab shar'ee). In 2014 the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was reported to have executed several women for not wearing niqab with gloves. And then there's the acid attacks against women not "properly" covered in India that obviously go scot-free, because hey, they're not "properly" covered, how dare they tempt us poor, weak men with their ankles?