So, when a prominent figure such as JK Rowling starts both talking about “protecting women” and the “trans mafia”, they become concerned about what influence she might have on the debate on the rights of trans people. They criticize what they believe to be false or harmful beliefs about trans people and believe that her words are actively doing harm by promoting those false beliefs.
People on the left generally do not believe strongly that “more discussion leads to correct beliefs”. They point to the many moral panics, bigoted movements, and real harm done to certain groups in history and do not believe that what some call “open discussion” has historically always led to the least harm.
People on the left generally do not believe that all discussion needs to be censored or tightly controlled. Rather, they view certain beliefs and viewpoints as actively harmful because they spread harmful beliefs about particular demographics. They believe that political discussion can, and does, go beyond what is useful or helpful sometimes.
The problem, of course, is that "Awareness and acknowledgement of the true nature of society" can be interpreted to mean a thousand different things, some of which are more accurate and actionable than others.
Whether this is seen as a good or bad thing depends in where one falls on the left/right spectrum.
And/or where one falls in the social hierarchy and power structures.
This has always struck me as a fatal messaging problem. When you couch the problem as being one of unearned advantages, the obvious implication is that you believe the solution is to take away something from the "privileged" group, which immediately puts many people on the defensive, especially if they feel like they're already having a tough time of things.
The real problem isn't that [men / white people] may indirectly get propped-up when others are artificially held down -- it's that people are being held down. The current (and disastrous) progressive messaging often sounds like "we want to hold you down, too".
That's one possible interpretation, yes. Not everything works that way, though. Gay people getting married didn't take anything away from me. As the meme goes, "it's not pie".
Generally the people saying that really mean "more (listening to what I say) leads to (what I believe) beliefs".
I'm not fine with my hard work being dismissed because of my sex, ethnicity, or whatever other 'privileges' I had. When I see someone online speak about privileges, it's often being used as a cudgel to silence someone. It wears away at my empathy.
Step 1 - recognising an advantage e.g. "I am straight/white/Asian/tall/short/whatever".
Step 2 - recognising that it's unearned "I didn't choose it, I was just born that way".
Step 3 - is to hold the belief that because it's unearned that no advantage should be assigned to it, we cannot claim that it's preferable, etc.
To me, what it means to be woke requires the belief in step 3.
That's what makes it a kind of funny insult word, because it's logically unworkable and runs counter to well, literally the entire world. It feels like the kind of classic autistic technical gotcha.
If you're stronger and faster you don't get eaten by the tiger. If you're more attractive you get the better mate. At the end of the day it's just like, you know, grow up, deal with it.
The Case for Reparations [1]
People are right to react with vigour to these sorts of large-scale redistribution plans. This is a design of the far-left in academia that has its roots in the communist movements of the early 20th century in Europe and Russia, whose worst excesses led to the deportation and execution of millions of Kulaks in the Soviet Union [2].
You might call this a slippery slope argument but the historical precedent was exactly that: a slippery slope where society slid all the way to the bottom. Once enough people have convinced themselves that it is good and right to use the political process to take property away from a group they consider to be their enemies, there is no limit to the amount of destruction they can achieve.
F.ex. I regularly have a problem with the cookie-cutter (and utterly meaningless) "advice" of many privileged HN programmers saying "Never had to look for a job" when I told them I am a senior who struggles to find a job currently. Never maintained a network, never had relations that last with former colleagues, never had college buddies etc. As far removes as the classic successful USA dev as I can be really.
Yet these people still think their advice applies and is actually worth anything.
Back on your topic, I don't want to silence them but I want to tell them that their severely filter-bubble-limited take is not very interesting, or even at all helpful.
It's really the same as the topic of this thread as well. Privileged people exist and their takes can still be useful, however, their usefulness can be limited. And again, from where I am standing, I would not want to ever silence you. I only want to make you aware of your bias. We all have them. All "sides" of any debate have bias but hey, that's a completely different (and much bigger) topic.
This is simply a statement against being prejudiced (racist or sexist). We never needed a new concept or word if thats all "woke" meant.
> That's what makes it a kind of funny insult word, because it's logically unworkable and runs counter to well, literally the entire world.
You're completely misunderstanding what someone means when they use "woke" as an insult. I agree with PG here - as an insult, its basically the same as calling someone a prude / prig.
In context, imagine a statement like this: "Ugh shut up woke people, yes - I know you hate kevin spacey. I don't care right now. He's still an incredible actor and American Beauty is still a masterpiece. Shut up. I'm trying to enjoy the movie."
You can replace "woke people" there with "prude" in that statement and the meaning is unchanged. Essentially, I think there's two separate things: First, being against discrimination in all its forms and second: being really annoying about it. Its that second part - the annoying puritanical finger wagging that people are referring to when they hate on "woke people".
It's also radically different from what "privileged" originally means.
In an apolitical context, to have a privilege is to be consciously treated specially, in highly specific and well understood ways; this is because you have done something specific to earn it; and it's mutually understood that this is not an entitlement and it can be revoked at any time if you violate what's expected of you.
Whereas, in the modern sense, to "be privileged" is to be unconsciously treated specially, in vague and nebulous ways, because of nothing you did but rather because of facts of who you are and what you look like; this is just because life isn't fair; and the only way to fix the problem (if you see it as one) is (supposedly) to enact sweeping social change that will indirectly take it away from you.
"Not racist", i.e. what was in the 90s called "colourblind".
If you describe yourself this way nowadays, and hold to and espouse those principles - not taking race into consideration when making decisions; considering people a priori to have equal moral worth regardless of race, etc. - self-identified "anti-racist" people will call you "racist". This has happened to me on many occasions. It is nonsense, of course. But sometimes they have social power. It's functionally what happened when I was banned from the Python Discourse forum, except they went a step further and claimed (utterly groundlessly) that I was accusing them of "reverse racism" (a term which I do not use, and which I view as an invention of self-identified "progressives" to strawman the views of those opposed to them) in taking other moderation actions against me.
It's still illegal in half the world https://www.hrc.org/resources/marriage-equality-around-the-w...
Posters on this site and elsewhere often assume anti-victimhood messages imply the speaker is a member a privileged class. They assume the speaker's identity based on the ideology they perceive. At the same time they're claiming a moral high ground and chiding their perceived opponent's lack of empathy.
The Baron Von Munchausen, pull yourself up by the bootstraps is especially relevant if you lack privilege. Yet, the would be saviors will assume that I'm not sufficiently aware of my own condition when I mention it. Where's the empathy in that? What could be less empathetic than incorrectly presuming someone's identity and telling them what is the highest social good for their actual identity? Empathy for the individual is dismissed in lieu of talking points about categorical identity.
If you look at a map of the world, it is only really a thing in Europe, the Americas and Australia/New Zealand. The only country in Asia with it is Taiwan, which is largely unrecognised and contains less than 0.5% of Asia's population. In Africa, only South Africa–arguably Africa's most Westernised country, and less than 5% of Africa's population. In the Middle East, only Israel – like South Africa, very much the "odd one out" in its neighbourhood – and Israel only recognises same-sex marriages performed overseas, they aren't legal in the country itself.
Not only is it only legal in less than 20% of the world's countries, countries in which it is legal are only around 20% of the world's population
Are we suppose to pick who to agree with (you or the mods) merely based on tribalistic priors? You didn't post any documentation, there's no way for anyone to fact check whether or not the mods are actually acting in bad faith, or whether or not you were unjustly banned.
Take me as an example: I'm in a very enviable and privileged position. I worked really hard for it. But if someone were to tell me "you're privileged", I don't get my feelings hurt.
I recognize that 1) someone else working 10 times as hard as me still would be extremely unlikely to get where I'm at if they were from another group. 2) If I were in a disadvantaged group, all the hard work I have put in is unlikely to have been enough. 3) Therefore, the fact I'm sitting here, no matter how hard I worked, is ALSO very much down to luck.
The first time I thought about it in those terms, my ego took a hit. It is an uncomfortable upending of the way I used to see the world and my place in it. But it is nonetheless true. Trust me, I am not trying to dismiss your hard work, but make you see it in its true context.
And after some time thinking about this I have a much greater respect for those that struggle as hard as, or harder than, me because they don't have the privileges I was born with.
I've talked about it before. I came to HN because of the Tim Peters suspension, which was related to my situation. I have archives of my related post content (since much of it got deleted) on my blog. Regardless, the burden of proof would be on them to establish that I made any such accusations (the fact of those accusations is clear: https://discuss.python.org/t/im-leaving-too/58408/11 ).
They should probably educate themselves by listening to what she says about women's rights then. Maybe then they'd understand her perspective and her principles.
That would be much, much better than what they actually did: call her a cunt and wish death and rape upon her. Which really is not the most convincing of counterarguments.
These are massive, hand-wavey statements based on assumptions with no basis. 10 times? Really? Flip your skin colour and add 10x the hard work and you would still be worse off?
I completely agree with point #3, that we are all hugely lucky (and unlucky) in many many many visible and less visible (and, hey, invisible) ways.