That’s what tends to happen when you set society up as a veritable zero-sum “pyramid” with yourself on top of everyone else, and then you spend most of your time and energy trying to prevent anyone else from ever reaching your level.
11 Likes
In this particular context, again, it’s impossible for me to imagine a broflake feeling hurt if someone calls him that (much less driven any closer to suicide).
4 Likes
Okay. How many of those people who are fond of calling the rest of us snowflakes contribute to those suicide numbers by hounding and dogging white men/boys who don’t quite fit in?
[ETA] And how many women just constantly suck the shit they have to deal with up on a daily basis, because we feel as if we have others depending on us to take care of them (our children, our parents, our partners)?
Suicide is a complex phenomenon, of course, and throwing numbers around out of context doesn’t really help us to get a better understanding of it.
19 Likes
Right? Not to mention the suicide numbers of the girls and women they harass.
11 Likes
Here are some numbers, in case we’re all interested in suicide rates as broken down by various demographics:
11 Likes
Indeed. No one should have to feel like they have no other choices in life, but too many people do. People who take it as a point of pride to harass others don’t help.
9 Likes
And how many people end up killing themselves because they just can’t ‘keep up with the Joneses,’ or meet any of the unrealistic material standards that supposedly determine one’s success?
Word.
11 Likes
Well, I do think both sides should treat each other the same, i.e. well. That way there soon wouldn’t be two sides and things would go great. But that’s a tall order.
But you misunderstand badly: I am not suggesting being nice because I want to impose fairness. I am suggesting being nice in this instance is good no matter which metaethics you subscribe to.
If acting like jerks to our political opponents helped one blind bit then there’s an utilitarian argument to be made that it’s best to do it in order to win in some way and make the world a better, fairer place, after which we’ll stop acting like jerks. But that’s a big ‘if.’ In fact, the way you present your position, with the people you’d like to call ‘broflakes’ not perturbed by it, the only reason to do it is to give vent to your own frustrations by calling the outgroup nasty names.
That’s not a very good reason.
I think that practicing niceness even towards very bad people (but not towards very very bad people whom it is often necessary to fight with more than garden variety meanness) is good for the bad people (who are very likely just broken, not evil), good for the person practicing it (because tribalism is mind-poison), and good for the cause of the person practicing it because if one person is a jerk and you are relentlessly courteous and nice, the person being a jerk loses in the eyes of a great many people. Exactly the people you want on your side, in fact.
Yeah. That’s a pretty big part of the reason. That’s hierarchical capitalistic society for you.
That depends entirely on how you define ‘broflake’ doesn’t it? By the official definition a broflake must be hurt if called that because that’s what defines broflakes, no? Their fragility? If you define it as ‘terrible person whose pain I am allowed to dismiss and beneath contempt’ then…
I’ve been called many bad things by every possible side of the present kulturkampf and I’ve struggled with depression. Does it hurt? Yes. Does it make the specter of suicide loom closer? Yes. I am told that sexist language has a similarly abrading quality on one’s ability to hold on in a world that’s sometimes quite hostile. It’s why I’m against that as well.
Quite a lot. Those men and boys who don’t fit are also part of the people calling others snowflakes. Being hurt and broken makes it harder to be a good person. Much harder.
All I advocate is not making this bad situation worse for no benefit but for a brief flash of recreational outrage and no excuse but ‘but they do it to.’ Yes. They do. This is why they must be fought.
That seems like a particularly uncharitable and cold view of the sucidial. Do you imagine that people not women, most of whom are men have no-one they take care of? Or that they kill themselves out of, what, selfishness? privilege? rather than pain that passes understanding?
Please tell me I’ve gravely misunderstood you.
Agreed. I threw my number purely provide contrary evidence the notion that white men are somehow immune to emotional anguish which, complexity or no, is intimately bound up with suicide. Admittedly I could have just said ‘psychology’ and left it at that, but I confess, I wanted a dramatic example.
I’m sure that some do, and it is an absolute tragedy when they do. But this is not a suicide competition. It’s just an argument towards the notion that all humans have feelings and can be hurt and that avoiding doing that, insofar as it is possible, is a good way to live. Hardly a radical position, I would have thought.
Seconded. I used the same source myself.
I agree completely.
Why do you believe—if, indeed, you believe this—that using words like ‘broflake’ helps this terrible state of affairs in any way?
1 Like
Easy: just remember to emphasise the “moan”.
That depends on who you’re trying to communicate with. As an insult that you hurl at an opponent, it’s not terribly productive, but as a satirical way to encapsulate a certain pattern of misbehavior—as a way to define a “thing” that others can recognize and reference in the future—it is useful. It’s easier to express and more memorable than a sentence-length explication of how some people confuse equality with oppression. You can say to someone “don’t worry about the broflakes on 4chan, what you’re doing is great.” And, in that sense it serves to deflect, rather than mirror, the same animosity that motivated the term “special snowflake.”
I’m a big fan of humor as a way to convey meaning and as an inoculation against the negative energy that people are continually sending. I’m envisioning using “broflake” in this way, rather than as a cudgel for use in pointless arguments. And, in fact, I’d question its facility as such. The sort of bleeding contempt that “special snowflake” conveys is mostly lost when its meaning is transformed into “you’re being that thing you always call us.”
But mostly it depends upon context.
12 Likes
I don’t necessarily think it helps. But I’m not sure much can help, honestly. Does it matter, honestly? Do you think they care if we use this term, or call them the most respectful term we can think of? It’s irrelevant to them. Utterly and entirely, because it’s coming out of the mouth of someone they don’t see as human. the question is, I think, how far should we be willing to contort ourselves into knots to be inclusive of people who think they are above us and are not at all interested in hearing us in the first place?
Also, this is a good point! Thanks for bringing it up.
8 Likes
See, I can absolutely see the use in using it to mean ‘this is what you do to us, sucks? Really? then stop doing it yourselves.’ In practice with terms such as that I see the second half to be all too often misplaced and it just becomes meaningless abuse.
Still. Point taken.
I think it matters.
I’ve met a few people who you’d likely call broflakes and their point of view was that, basically, feminists were terrible horrible abusive doxing &c &c &c people and that they were unfairly abused, dismissed, and dehumanized and, so, tried to find refuge in the anti-feminist sphere of videos and blogs and things. And having placed this thick filter between themselves and reality their position went from ‘aggrieved’ to ‘hateful’ with considerable alacrity.
I managed to convince them to peek out of their shell and to get them back to normal by applied niceness and persistence. Admittedly, these were people I knew and lost contact with, and so there was some measure of trust involved already which helped. But it does show that they aren’t all pure creatures of hate. Some, sadly, doubtless are. But a great majority are broken and I feel that a good way to make them less broken is to be unfailingly nice to them. It’s hard, yes, but most worthwhile things are.
And it’s not just to their benefit: people are always watching online and seeing our side, the side we want to win display conspicuous gallantry is great PR.
Lastly, practicing this is good for—for lack of a better word—the soul. I think in the long run, it’s good for the harassed most of all. Obviously, they are human and I would be astonished to the point of speechless admiration if someone really did manage to rise above it all all the time when they are the target of hate, but it’s something to aspire to. I’d certainly not positively encourage the opposite.
Please note, that I do not advocate against self-defense. If someone starts interfering with the way you live or, worse, makes you actively unsafe, you are beyond justified to shut them down in whatever manner is most effective. I just don’t think that garden variety meanness works in such circumstances.
2 Likes
That’s great and I’m glad that you were able to do so. I guess the rest of us just aren’t up to snuff. But that’s par for the course in my life…
6 Likes
True, but then you have to bother with getting them to care enough to overthow the european patriarchal imperalists and to abandon their consumerist culture so that the weak can live without the fear of empires conquering their land and enslaving their people like they are now.
Though that depends on how far they’re on the political spectrum; even the moderate can still do harm simply by purchasing goods that legitimize the use of child laborers.
3 Likes
I have no means of measuring your achievements and abilities nor the right to judge them, but I’m not particularly persuasive nor do I possess any particular talents worth mentioning in this wise—I am no more eloquent in my native tongue than in English. Thus, I strongly suspect that it’s simply my good fortune to have known the people I managed to help. It does show, however, that it is possible, which was my intention.
My apologies, I am not entirely sure I’m reading your reply right: who’s ‘them’ in this?
1 Like
I’m not sure what you want me or others to say here? Can people be persuaded to be less dickish? Sure thing. Should we do our best to facilitate that? Sure, when we can and when it makes sense to do so, okay.
But you’re missing that the people historically oppressed are being asked to (once again) do most of the heavy lifting in this scenario (not a scenario, but real life, actually). We have to be ever more tolerant, peaceful, and understanding, while the “other” side needs to be given greater latitude.
At some point, people need to be told, in no uncertain terms that they are being hurtful. They need to be called out for their behaviors, rather than everyone else being expected to rise above. Because that’s kind of the point… none of us are perfect or immune from doing things we shouldn’t. But we all should be allowed to be what we are, which is fully human and complicated.
14 Likes
Naturally. As I said a few times, I cannot possibly expect someone who has difficulty piled atop difficulty in their life to then also act with charity every time. If they did I’d consider checking for miracles to see if there’s a sainthood in the offing. I’ve certainly said some deeply unkind things about, say, people trying to kill me—I live in a part of the world with, ah, interesting times a-plenty, and I’d be quite annoyed if someone were to suggest that more restraint was expected of me under the circumstances.
My qualm here is simple: the post we’re having this discussion is actively promoting a lack of charity. “Hey, guys! Look at this brand-new insult we’ve invented!” We are—and by ‘we’ I meant all of humanity—in a hole and it is grossly unfair to ask the people who’ve had the least with putting us there to be the ones to get us out. But I see no harm in advocating, at least, not digging any deeper.
That someone should be so terribly put upon that they can’t help but rail against the abusers and harassers and hurl abuse of their own is the most understandable, human thing possible, but it is still a sad thing that should happen less. I do not advocate for excessive self-restraint, certainly not to the detriment of the abused of the world. Merely that we do not make posts excitedly telling the world about a brand new way to make the hole deeper.
As for what I expect you to say… What you think? I guess? I mean I’m not asking for a concession if that’s what you mean.
That’s a rather unkind way of putting it, isn’t it? Why?
Either way, I promise I did try to listen to what you had to say and answer as I best could. Perhaps we’ve a fundamental incompatibility in the way we frame our opinions? And I certainly hope your day goes better than mine has done. I shan’t bother you any further if, as seems clear, you do not wish to speak with me.
3 Likes
Suicide is a violent crime act. The violent criminality action of white men is part of the issue, because we have a society that looks the other way for them more often and punishes them less harshly than it does !white !men when those “groups” are violent. Signed, a white man.
eta: my point is we don’t get extra credit for better reasons for suicide, as well as better everything else.
3 Likes
is that a show of empathy, because it sounds extremely condescending for someone with such unsharpened words as yourself.
That’s… a baffling view of suicide. Because men that commit violent crimes are punished less harshly—they are! but the least harshly punished group is white women, it’s one of the few examples where the system is bent the other way and white women kill themselves a lot less—other men, who may have never raised their hand towards another in their life decide to take their own lives. Because… they’ll not be punished for it?
I do not understand.
