A beginner's guide to the Redpill Right

[pjcamp]

Sounds like garden variety Ayn Rand.

I used to like Ayn Rand. Then I turned 13.

[Thebarton_Gamer]

On topic: But I'm A Nice Guy on Vimeo

@andy_hilmer

Fuck hats.

YOU TAKE THAT BACK!!

As a proud owner of several Akubra fedoras, what shits me about the MRA/PUA headwear is what these assbiscuits are wearing aren’t fedoras - it’s a godamned trilby!!!1!!!

.#NOTALLHEADWEAR

[aeon]

@milliefink

Conversations about poverty (which are often de facto conversations about white poverty) happen all over the place, including BB. Imagine someone coming into a conversation on problems faced by black people (or by women) and saying, “You know, we really shouldn’t be talking about black people (or women) here. You should change the topic; stop talking about black people (or women), and start talking about poor people.”

I thought this was a conversation about the redpill right rather than black people and women? In which case a discussion of poor white male disenfranchisement is a pointer to why it and hard right politics are attractive.

[matt_t]

@pixleshifter - so what? ‘Other people are assholes too’ doesn’t change one iota that there’s a gigantic pool of privileged white male assholes. Yes, we know there are other assholes. We’re also not talking about them right now. We’re talking about these assholes in particular. It’s not ‘disingenuous’ to ‘single out’ that group for discussion. We can’t always talk about everything all at once. Go write your own article if you want to talk about your claimed ‘overprivileged…black women (and) ancient aborigines’.

[Elusis]

@aeon

But you are trying to avoid the point I’m making. Which is that poverty sucks for everyone who is stuck in it. Do something about that and everyone wins. Except the super rich, but they just get cut down a peg or 3.

No, I’m trying to expose your underlying argument, which appears to be “class is the most important locus of analysis and gender/race are irrelevant.” Which is a fool’s argument - just because class isn’t shown on those graphs doesn’t mean class is absent - that data shows employment rates and pay gaps for all classes, aggregated around different variables. It shows that no matter what your class status, your best chance of being employed and being at the top of the pay scale is being a white, Christian male. It is, literally, the lowest difficulty setting there is in terms of trying to earn money, which doesn’t mean that you don’t still have to work hard, just that you don’t have systemic barriers thrown in front of you the way someone else on another “setting” would.

Now, if you want to argue that poor white, Christian males have the hardest time moving from the bottom of the bottom of the income tier up to higher tiers, or that poor WCMs are on average the poorest of the poor, I invite you to get some data to back up your assertions. Perhaps from that enormous .pdf I linked you to, that systematically studied pay gaps and poverty? Is there any assertion anywhere in there about WCMs being a particularly disadvantaged group if you slice the data in any way?

p. 42 - “The penalties for women are greater than those for equivalent men at every age, whether they are single with no kids, or married with children. The penalties are greatest of all for married women with children. At all ages men can still expect to be paid more than otherwise similar women.”

So even in young people, who are most likely to be unskilled, men are better off than women, even if they have kids.

p. 47 - “Among men with no qualification who work in elementary occupations, only those who are Pakistani and Bangladeshi seem to suffer a pay penalty compared to White British Christian men. All men belonging to other ethnic minority groups do not seem to experience pay penalties relative to White British Christian men. 17 For women with no qualifications, the results clearly suggest a large gender pay penalty compared to White British Christian men. Only White British Jewish and Black Caribbean Christian women do not seem to suffer a pay penalty compared to White British men.”

Suggesting that, in fact, at low-skilled jobs (and presumably low-paying ones), Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim men are the ones who are really screwed, not to mention nearly all women, compared to WCMs.

Even regardless of marital/cohabiting status:

p. 56 - “When we focus on workers with no qualification, working in elementary occupations (Table 5.3a and Figure 5.3a) we can see a clear gender pay penalty for single women compared to single men and married/cohabiting women compared to married/cohabiting men.”

Well what about men who try to pull themselves up from low-pay, low-skill jobs? Surely women and people of color do better then as well.

p. 50 - “The comparison between workers with no qualification working in elementary occupations (Table 5.1 a and Figure 5.1 a) and workers with level 4 or higher qualifications working in professional occupations (Table 5.1 band Figure 5.1 b) is particularly interesting. In almost all cases pay penalties are reduced among the highly educated workers, suggesting that higher levels of education might (at least partly) reduce ethno-religious pay penalties for women and men.”

So the women and minorities catch up, but they certainly don’t surpass white males.

I’m going to go out on a limb here, rather than spending time digging through the data (you’re welcome to if you like), and guess that, in a system where at least some uni is paid for by the state, there is still a significant racial gap in who attends higher education, though it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a slightly widening gap between women and men. But since p. 49 shows a pay gap for even White British Christian women compared to WBC men in skilled jobs, that’s still not going to hold water in terms of an argument that men have it harder pulling themselves up.

Well maybe it’s something about generation and age? Maybe it’s the younger white men in unskilled jobs who are getting screwed relative to women?

Nope, they’re still doing better than their white female age-mates, except in the teen years where they’re about equal:

And it’s worse when they’ve got children; just look at page 66!

Page 73 and 74 pretty much demolish a lot of your argument - there’s a penalty relative to white males for any ethnicity other than Pakistani at all income quartiles. There’s a penalty for being any religion other than Jewish. There’s a penalty for being born outside the UK.

And from their summaries, starting on p. 80:

“In many circumstances, and especially when they have low education, women suffer a pay gap compared to men of the same ethnicity, religious group, age, disability status and sexual orientation.”
“In terms of ethnicity, more highly qualified Bangladeshi and Pakistani men do not seem to experience a pay penalty relative to higher qualified White British men, but those without qualifications experienced a substantial pay penalty relative to White British men without qualifications.”

So, you know, feel free to go dig out some more numbers, and again, I’m sorry you’ve had it rough personally, but you’re not disadvantaged by virtue of your gender and race. You’re just not.

[sprocket]

@AcerPlatanoides

In this case the redpill right are a group of people who are trying desperately to cling to values FROM THE PAST as regards the role of women, minorities, class, etc…

Conservative in this case needs to not be willfully confused with republican. nor with libertatian. It is, rather, SOCIALLY conservative, where rights are not equally shared, and playing fields tipped in favor of the powerful., That is the sense of ‘conservation’ being implied by the phrase ‘redpill right’

Yes, but the graph that the author is showing is not showing the redpill right and that fact that you think so tells you something about the article under discussion. My argument is that a lot of people that are on the author’s shitlist are in fact socially liberal, and he willfully confuses them with their right-wing fringe in order to make a larger ideological point. The group of right-wingers that are branching off are less interesting than the split within the left (within social liberals) that have different ideas about how progress will be made, and that’s the real context of the piece.

The graph shows the political spectrum within the GamerGate movement, which the author would like to conflate with redpill right. Gamergate is motivated (among other things) by pushback against politicization of gaming and an emerging class of ideologically-driven moral guardians on the “Social Justice Left”. This opposition is compatible both with social progressivism and social conservatism, so the easiest and least conspiratorial way to read the graph is to take it at face value. Except, some people don’t want us to view that way. They’d prefer if we call everyone a right-winger who opposes or criticizes their niche ideology, because then they stand unopposed.

There’s a false dichotomy regarding social justice that BoingBoing has done a great job of propagating, which basically boils down to “You either for us or against us”. I feel that what the author is really trying to do since he joined BoingBoing is the left-wing equivalent of what Fox News does when it calls Obama a communist.

And you bloody well know it.

Or, I may be arguing in good faith. If you take off your political battle armor for a second and listen you may find out what I’m trying to say. I’m not approving in any way of the actual right-wing movements that the author describes, I’m just saying that author seemingly conflates much larger ideas and values with these groups that have nothing to do with being right wing.

[popobawa4u]

@Elusis

It shows that no matter what your class status, your best chance of being employed and being at the top of the pay scale is being a white, Christian male. It is, literally, the lowest difficulty setting there is in terms of trying to earn money

Sure, assuming that employment and pay are even desirable in the first place. Maybe they just have lame goals in life and should be left to them. I’d want better for most people.

[Jonathan_Hendry]

@jhbadger

By definition the scientific approach is the best for solving any problem because if there was evidence that a better approach existed, that would be the new scientific approach

Thinking science is the solution to any problem is scientism. Science is not the answer for many, many problems. The problem “How do I repair my relationship with my wife” is not amenable to the scientific method, for example.

[Jonathan_Hendry]

@morganmay

I think scientism is a perfectly fine term for people who like to use the trappings of science (citing papers, appealing to scientific authorities) without regard for the substance of science (whether the findings of the papers they cite are supported by a larger body of evidence, whether the “scientific authorities” are people who actually know what they’re talking about and can provide evidence to support their positions). For a good definition of scientism for people who value actual science, see here.

This is a pretty good description of what I’ve seen in “smart drug” forums. They’ll latch onto some obscure paper, and it’s off to the races. From then on it’s a festival of confirmation bias.

[sprocket]

@Jonathan_Hendry

The problem “How do I repair my relationship with my wife” is not amenable to the scientific method, for example.

If someone did a large scale study evaluating the effectiveness of various interventions in at-risk relationships, that’d be pretty useful for a lot of people. Just because experience of human relationships is largely non-analytic doesn’t mean that they are beyond analysis.

[Jonathan_Hendry]

@Mister44

Maybe this was answered - but serious non-snarky question, why is this labeled “The Redpill Right” when the chart they gave shows the groups they are talking about fall mainly on the left?

For one, I assume many of the respondents answered the questions that produced the data with an interest in producing a left-leaning result, in order to provide support for the claim that their movement isn’t right-wing.

[jhbadger]

But it is amenable to science. That’s what I mean by science not being just in the lab. A scientific approach to repairing relationships is very possible. For example, look at the data, draw conclusions, and react. Why do you have a problem? Does she say you don’t listen to her? Well, try listening to her, and ask questions so it’s clear you aren’t just spacing off. Does she say you never take an interest in her hobbies like pottery? Take an interest, attend a pottery class even if pottery isn’t really your thing. Then you will at least understand her hobby even if you don’t pursue it further. What wouldn’t be a scientific approach would be just to hang out in the bar with your friends moaning about how your wife “doesn’t get you”, which is generally what people end up doing when they have relationship issues.

[popobawa4u]

@jhbadger

A scientific approach to repairing relationships is very possible.

Maybe it begs a more fundamental question: Is there a valid scientific reason to get married or have romantic/sexual relationships in the first place? Saving science for the end result just encourages people to rationalize decisions which were based upon emotional impulses in the first place.

[sprocket]

On what evidence you assume that? Is it possible that the author is successfully appealing to your sense of tribalism and inviting you to hate on an outgroup, or did you actually engage with the GamerGate movement to an extent where you have a clear sense of the political affiliation of those who identify with the movement?

There’s a bit of research on how when you’re presented with a false claim, evidence to the contrary will make you believe in the false claim more.

[sprocket]

Science isn’t concerned with reasons, except in the sense of causality. That doesn’t mean that your emotional decisions can’t take science into account.

[the_borderer]

All I know is that they are conspicuous by their absence from many left wing campaigns, at least in the UK. If they are truly as left wing as they say then we need them fighting against austerity and unfair sanctions by the DWP, not wasting their time on non-issues like “ethics in games journalism”

Or does fighting for the working classes also mark you as an SJW?

[Jonathan_Hendry]

Where’s your control group?

There’s a difference between acting on evidence and making educated guesses, and actually doing things scientifically.

[sprocket]

That’s an utterly weird demand: You’re talking about a loosely defined online movement.

I don’t self-identify as a gamergater, but I’m sympathetic towards some of the concerns within the movement (I still think “ethics in videogame journalism” is bunk, except for a tiny subgroup who actually cares). What do you know about my political involvement in other issues?

[popobawa4u]

@sprocket

Science isn’t concerned with reasons, except in the sense of causality.

Science is used to address causality. And other motives as well. Many complex systems appear to be acausal when there are too many nonlinear relationships and/or feedback loops. You can isolate a section so that you have an arbitrary frame to analyze, without it telling the whole story.

But yes, if you want to get analytic enough, you can study the motivations behind human decision making.

[the_borderer]

@sprocket

That’s an utterly weird demand: You’re talking about a loosely defined online movement.

They are two of the major problems for the working classes in the UK right now. People are literally starving to death, we’re having a resurgence in diseases like rickets and scurvy, and we have a group of self identified left wingers complaining about SJWs like there is nothing better to do. Now that’s weird.

@sprocket

What do you know about my political involvement in other issues?

I don’t know about you. I do know that when I have been involved in working class campaigns recently it has been SJW types doing the work and making up the numbers, not redpillers.