I'm a victim, too!

[popobawa4u]

@Phrenological

Would you say you’re the true victim here?

No, I would not, for several reasons. You would have read me saying so if that were the case. Why do you ask?

[Medievalist]

@singletona082

You’re very much a prime example of why I genuinely wonder why I don’t feel welcome here and wonder why I show up. You constantly act like you’re better than anyone and everyone that doesn’t agree with your particular rhetoric, that often comes across as cartoonishly man hating

My recommendation is to hang out only on the craft threads, and other than that only look at posts from Mark and Pesco (and Xeni, if they are about space).

You’ll miss a few interesting items from Cory, and some .gifs and .jpgs and other suchlike copypasta, but the tenor of the whole site will improve for you immeasurably so it’s totally worth it.

@singletona082

it’s a one note orchestra where no solutions are being offered and there’s no real reprieve.

I figure that if people want to vent they can vent, but you don’t have to listen to it, or answer it.

[milliefink]

@Medievalist

I figure that if people want to vent they can vent, but you don’t have to listen to it, or answer it.

Yeah, those people who seemed to be carefully responding to what you were saying? No need to listen, let alone reply. They’re just a bunch of silly, irrational venters.

GIFSEC

[bibliophile20]

Ditto’ing the above, and adding that your (addressing @popobawa4u ) ideas never seem to address the “and then what?” question of non-compliance. They’re just expected to work, and no provision for people not going along with them is ever addressed–even in circumstances where the advice given would invite hostile backlash.

To give an illustrative example, telling people to harass cops and bureaucrats into doing their job descriptions to your satisfaction, on the logic that “they are public servants and therefore answerable to you”–occasionally reaching such degrees of absurdity as instructing people to threaten the cops with the shutdown of a police station. Said advice never includes a proviso for “and then what do I do when the cops arrest me for harassment?” Presumably, it includes shouting “but you’re public servants! You answer to me! La la la!”, but this is conjecture, because, as I’ve pointed out before, you seem to live in active denial of existing power dynamics and I don’t know if such a “and then what?” would even occur to you.

[popobawa4u]

@bibliophile20

In addition, your ignorance is so very consistent that, from my perspective, you are either willfully ignorant or willfully obtuse in both or either the realities of power dynamics or the realities of semantical communications.

As human constructs, they are no more nor less than we make of them. I do appreciate a descriptive account of how they have often been, but for people to not put forth also a prescriptive model seems literally irresponsible. I agree that consensus is key, but not that consensus needs to be unconscious and accidental.

@milliefink

It’s downright rude of you, at best, to hijack yet another thread like this. @ChickieD did the good thing of setting up this useful forum on a particular and vexing topic, and it would be polite, at least, of you to get back on topic, or else get out of the way.

Several people have asked what do we actually DO about oppression, so apparently pragmatics are relevant to some of the other people here. Nearly all of us have acknowledged that there are problems. I would be interested to know how many people here think that awareness of the problems alone is sufficient. Should I just accept that some people are powerless, or should I try to help them in the struggle to attain agency and autonomy in their lives? How the hell is that not relevant?

[bibliophile20]

@popobawa4u

As human constructs, they are no more nor less than we make of them. I do appreciate a descriptive account of how they have often been, but for people to not put forth also a prescriptive model seems literally irresponsible.

Yes. It is irresponsible. But no less irresponsible than giving advice that blindly presumes that a descriptive job description is also a prescriptive one.

And, of course, I have one response to you now: And then what? So, if it is irresponsible, and your current methods are either A) self-defeating or B) ineffective in the face of inertia and resistance, then what are your other options?

@popobawa4u

apparently pragmatics are relevant

Except for the very pragmatic fact that your statements are frequently the opposite of actually pragmatic analysis, being unsupported pseudo-utopian pontifications. Pragmatics are in relation to practical applications and real-world feedback on effectiveness. Your statements betray a profound lack of both.

Or, to be even more blunt: If I wanted a pragmatic discussion on the topic of dealing with oppression, yours would be the among the last voices on this forum that I would ask for their opinions, because your stated beliefs are so anti-pragmatic as to be actively counterproductive, if not actively harmful.

As I put to you in that PM that I am still waiting on a reply on after more than four months, a discussion with you is like two hunter-gatherers talking about getting food, and the first wants to figure out what to catch and with what–and instead of acting as a useful sounding board to the other hunter-gatherer on what tools to use, you’re busy discussing how to prepare the meal. Potentially of interest, for sure… but it doesn’t help answer the question of what to hunt and with what. (Please note that this is a simile for illustrative purposes)

Furthermore, I’m in agreement with @milliefink on this: you are in the habit of hijacking thread after thread for your pseudo-philosophical egocentrism soapboxing, frequently killing productive avenues of discussion in order to again push for your iconoclast agenda. However, I would not advise you to try creating your own thread on such, as I’ve noticed that there is genuine distaste and disinterest in getting dragged in when you do start them–another way in which you are apparently willfully ignorant of social dynamics. Specifically, when most people seem to go out of their way to avoid interacting with you, intruding on and derailing what they are talking about in order to put forward your own pet theories on how the world should be run is the height of rudeness and smacks of narcissism.

[popobawa4u]

@bibliophile20

As I put to you in that PM that I am still waiting on a reply on after more than four months…

You are? I had forgotten about that, that was a good critique.

It’s great that others here think that they have an informed understanding of real-world power dynamics. How is that working out for you? Lots of topics about how rights, economies, lives, countries, ecologies are being destroyed - yet lets admonish people to keep doing things the same way and hope for different results. I could just as readily ask “then what?”. What it appears I am ignorant of does not seem to be very functional.

It sounds like simple dismissal when strategies fail to be effective upon the basis that people refuse to even try to do anything differently. That’s what some people call conservatism, but that word carries a lot of unfortunate baggage.

[Melizmatic]

@popobawa4u

It’s great that others here think that they have an informed understanding of real-world power dynamics.

Saying shit like that is exactly why people avoid talking to you; just FYI.

[Israel_B]

@anon50609448

I think maybe it needs to break down into tiny little pieces, pieces so small that people can no longer blame distant others for their problems

That’s working out ever so well for Europe…

[bibliophile20]

@Melizmatic

Saying shit like that is exactly why people avoid talking to you; just FYI.

Ditto. It’s rude, confrontational, dismissive and utterly counterproductive, and a wonderful example of the false equivalence fallacy–i.e. “If I am ignorant and ineffective, then why haven’t they, in their apparently superior wisdom and insight, managed to accomplish what I have not?”

And I’m not surprised that you forgot about it. Hard to grandstand in a two-person PM.

[Melizmatic]

Aye; exactly what is it that supposedly makes that individual so much more “informed or knowledgeable” than any other random person here?

The audacity therein is beyond overwhelming…

[bibliophile20]

Indeed. I don’t claim to having additional insight–which is why I ask other people for insight and attempt to incorporate it into my worldview so that I can act in a more informed manner in the future. I have very few topics on which I feel at all knowledgeable, and I will chime in on those topics, but, mostly, I’m here to learn and have productive debates–including calling people out for bad faith debating when I see it (and, even then, I’m always interested in refining those models of what good faith and bad faith debate are).

Popo, on the other hand… seems to be more interested in getting people to agree with them via argument ad nauseum and sheer petulance than of refining their models.

[popobawa4u]

I resent that people here presume to act as enlightened gatekeepers of discourse, yet make little effort to persuade others to their way of thinking. That was one of the reasons Chickie said that they made this topic, to feel out ideas for less adversarial discussion of social issues. To resist the temptation to other and belittle and insult those who you don’t agree with. Which sometimes includes those who try to be polite and who are genuinely interested in communicating and sharing here. That’s how I see myself and my attempts at involvement here, and I am sorry that others can’t or won’t accept that.

It is easy to say that you know The Real Way that societies work, and maybe you do, but the burden of proof always seems to be one-way against those who don’t already share it. I can appreciate if that does not seem adversarial to you, but it can be seen as working that way.

[milliefink]

@popobawa4u

That was one of the reasons Chickie said that they made this topic, to feel out ideas for less adversarial discussion of social issues. To resist the temptation to other and belittle and insult those who you don’t agree with.

Um, no. You’re still derailing. Just as a reminder, so you don’t have to scroll all the way up to see how you’re wrong (not that I think you’d actually do that, “Chickie” asked us much more specifically to discuss not how to form a new society, but rather:

Has anyone else been encountering this when talking with the Fox News crowd? The, “I’m a victim, too” mentality? Like, I have recently had one friend say, “But if I say anything, I’m a racist.” I’ve also heard, “Even though my great grandfather literally was a founding member of the KKK, and the Confederate flag is actually my heritage, I’m not allowed to use that symbol.” Then I’ve also had another former classmate write about how his rights as a Christian are being trampled by gay people getting married.

I’m just very interested in how this narrative of rights is being flipped so that it’s the people who already have rights who are being somehow trod upon by the minorities who are demanding their rights.

Anyone else seeing this?

Can we get back on topic, please? Instead of, popo, trying to find ways to construe the OP so that it suits your agenda?

[Israel_B]

@chgoliz

City people do not sit around saying such things

Heck last time I was in NYC years back i knew he lefty of fine folk who constantly looked down their noses at anyone with even a rural background

[popobawa4u]

That’s true about the OP, but it’s not the only post they made here.

[Missy_Pants]

I live in the largest City in Canada. Its the national hobby to hate my city and me by nature of the fact that Im from here and I live here.

When I lived in Alberta i heard so many insults about Toronto, the people from there and how we’re all stuck uo snobs who think we’re better than everyone else. (Its a running joke across the country that Toronto is the centre of the universe.)

One day I got a little sassy and asked my friends if they wanted to know what we really thought of our prairie neighbours. If they wanted to know what we really said about them when no one else was around. Of course they all said yes. So I said…

“Nothing. We never talk about you at all. You never come up.”

In my limited experience city folk can be as ignorant of country folk ways as they are of us. But I dont think city folk look down on country folk. Not that Ive seen anyhow.

[Melizmatic]

@popobawa4u

I resent that people here presume to act as enlightened gatekeepers of discourse

Well then, the feeling of resentment is very mutual; because that’s how you come across, pretty much ALL the time.

You constantly talk down to people and put on airs when you inject yourself into any conversation, as if you somehow “have it all figured out” and the rest of us lowly cogs are just too slow on the take to ‘keep up.’

O_O

That’s off-putting and won’t endear you to anyone.

For instance:

I made a post not too long ago bitching & complaining about my recent experiences with male/female romantic relationships, and what do you do?

You come sauntering into my thread, pontificating about how YOU “don’t believe in or see the point of binary gender constructs;” totally ignoring the actual topic at hand, and attempting to divert it onto yourself and your own personal beliefs, which have no relevance at all to the conversation.

That is what repels other people.

On my old site, we used to say “Consider the source.”

It’s not that you don’t have the same right to have an opinion or to express it just like everyone else here; it’s that you genuinely seem to think your perspective is the only one that matters, and frankly, that shit gets fucking tedious.

Newsflash;

###It’s not always all about YOU, Marcia.

Tumblr: Image[quote=“milliefink, post:450, topic:90681”]
Can we get back on topic, please?
[/quote]

I’d love to, but I pretty much said all I have to say.

The bottom line is that many people can’t talk about inequality and other sensitive topics without getting their feelings hurt, because examining one’s biases often undermines the personal mythos that we all craft for ourselves.

[milliefink]

@Missy_Pants

“Nothing. We never talk about you at all. You never come up.”

Well, that in itself…

After all, Trump got a lot of mileage out of referring to rural folks (and at a more implicit level, I think, of white folks more generally) as “the forgotten ones.”

[Missy_Pants]

Well i was trying to be funny…

But yeah. Alberta was the heart of conservative Canada for years for a reason. And some of it is that was that ignorance and apathy. I still say its less disdain and more just not knowing.