Oh I disagree, look at the brilliant counter ripostes above, where they lay out a well thought out argument to why Peter Tatchell is indeed a transphobe and racist, and I was deeply wrong to support him. The citations and evidence were devastating.
magnet
1782
The most amusing part of your argument is that you are trying to accomplish exactly what you claim is impossible. You want us to accept a new definition of “religion” that can encompass feminism. And you can’t make anyone else agree with you.
Because that’s what’s been happening darling - the SJW-o-sphere tend to want to de-platform and silence critics, prevent them from talking to anyone, rather than blocking them from their personal world.
Find one example of the SJW-o-sphere preventing someone from talking to the conservative media.
tis but a short step from de-platforming to the itchy tentacle trigger on the nuclear button.
People have been de-platforming other people, one way or another, since the beginning of history. This has led to armageddon exactly zero times.
So I think your “short step” is actually quite a long step. In fact, lots and lots of long steps. Practically a journey of a thousand miles.
magnet
1783
Peter Tatchell is a UK activist with basically zero visibility in the US, even compared to other gay rights activists or other British leftists.
So the real reason why nobody here is commenting on his soap opera is that nobody here gives a fuck.
CraigM
1784
Or maybe some of us have no idea who this Peter guy is, and so don’t really have strong opinions here.
Or how about your concept of ‘no patforming’ seems to have no political bounds. After all it wouldn’t take long to cite examples such as Anita Sarkesian being no platformed (through threats directed at her an her venue), or the Wheaton College professor who was forced out for expressing support for people in the west bank, or any number of places where people critical of Israel have been no platformed.
But maybe it’s simpler than all that. Maybe there are simply ignorant people all across the political spectrum. Maybe there are people willing to use what access to power they have to shut down people they feel are wrong. Maybe, in any given area, there are simply just assholes everywhere. Your need to ascribe this as a new phenomenon, and one limited to the ever nebulous ‘SJW’ crowd simply rings hollow.
I’d bet you are a younger fellow who did not really live through the 70s and 80s. It’s hard to explain how crazy you sound to someone who lived under the threat of actual potential nuclear war.
Every once in a while I take a look at this thread and it’s like opening up some ancient cthulhuoid tome. I don’t understand most of it, and it leaves me feeling anxious and queasy.
So… somebody no one cares about is making statements that no one is listening to, and that’s… a problem.
That sounds like the average day of every single person on Twitter and Facebook.
Alstein
1788
While I think “no platforming” is a card that is used way too quickly, there is a point where no platforming makes sense because what someone is saying is that batshit.
As usual, there is no objective standard, what I consider reasonable is different than what others considerable reasonable.
Tortilla
1789
No way, he goes on about communism waaay too much to not be a child of the cold war.
I attack their politics, they attack me. It’s the only consistent pattern in the thread for a year now. I can see why they don’t want to discuss the points I raise, because the discussion is much like criticising the Scientologists or evangelists, lots of smiling faces “we’re doing it for good!” and a different face behind the curtain. Its not as if I wasn’t linking Alinskys “attack the personal” advice back in autumn 2014.
Their debating style is summed up perfectly here.
The posts are verbal airhorns, thats all it is. They can purge their other spaces to their hearts content but not here, so are just left with personal attacks.
Correct. And for most of the period of the Cold War during which I was alive (I was born 3 years after Khruschev’s secret speech), I was a socialist.
Cue Clemenceau (or whoever it was, nobody seems sure) ;) And Santayana.
Good thread summary, yep.
Glad you confirmed that this thread was designed to be your safe space.
Exactly this. I think all this SJW stuff is only a big deal on Twitter, and it fizzled out in 2015. Here in the real world, no one cares.
Alstein
1795
It has gone beyond that into the general atmosphere some. I’ve heard SJW outside of the internet some places.
I’d say in general, most millenials know what one is, and know the term is not a compliment.
Right but so long as you avoid their strongholds they really aren’t a problem anymore. I can’t see something like Cancel Colbert having any traction again. No one cares anymore, the public has realized it’s nonsense.
It had no real traction then either; it was just noise.
What, you mean like most of the universities in the US these days?
Precisely. Just like any other time since… well, I guess since universities became a thing. When you have a bunch of young, partially idle, young people gathered together in one place they’ll come up with a bunch of wacky ideas.
Sometimes the really interesting ones bubble out of one university and spread to others and occasionally they will erupt out into general cultural consciousness and VERY occasionally they will lead to great, wonderful things. But 99.9% of the time the ideas are stupid or unworkable and they die on the vine without getting more than a passing mention in the local college paper.
It’s just an artifact of modern technology that the college papers are also on-line and searchable, so we (the general culture) get to see all the silliness via the Twitterverse.
tl;dr: The “SJW” stuff is as old as the hills.
