Wait, so all of a sudden hermaphrodite is a slur instead of a biological term to refer to someone with both …?
Wait, that person was confusing ignorance with hate, removing context, and disregarding intention. My bad. Funny how a willfully hostile tone can dissuade me from getting to know someone’s viewpoint and consider their argument. Almost like it’s a poor rhetorical tactic doomed to backfire. Huh.
Maybe, but I have plenty to attack Trump on besides his tone.
Sorry didn’t see that! Thinking the same thing I guess and hate it, I’d like to listen in on the conversation of anyone on here telling their boss to change his tone.
I like my tones! My friends, work colleagues and family know exactly what mood I’m in and if I mean what I’m saying or just having a laugh. Cos you can’t say what you mean if you don’t sound like you mean it.
As regards to having a condescending tone on occasion, all I can say is they deserved it at the time and do not use that particular tone frivolously.
It is also important to note that the person you are arguing with might be a lost cause. There is nothing that will sway them. The point of your continuing is NOT to convince THEM, but to convince OTHERS who are watching/reading later.
Not exactly.
This comic points out that “oops, you got worked up over an issue that hits close to home, therefore your whole argument is invalid” is a bullshit argument. It also alludes to the fact that when people object to activists’ “tone”, they are actually objecting to uncomfortable truths.
Listen or don’t listen, but don’t dismiss someone’s argument just because that person is bothering you.
Emotions are a central part of all activism, otherwise you wouldn’t have much reason to become activist. I understand the point the comic is trying to make, that these emotions are valid, and I agree. But that doesn’t mean expressing them in an (reasonably) unchecked manner is effective.
I’m talking about effectiveness as much as I’m talking about other things.
Completely agreed! That’s why I don’t think it’s so much to ask fellow activists, i.e. people on the same side of the debate as you, to try and moderate themselves a little.
Yes. And since you know that now, your certainly won’t use it in the future in a hurtful manner, yes?
Yeah, that’s a real problem.
It’s possible my original post didn’t carry enough context. The moments I’ve urged people to self-moderate are moments when in their anger and frustration they alienated would-be supporters. That’s a huge difference from responding to hate speech with equal amounts of volume and agitation.
I don’t have a ready-made reply that fits all types of activism situations, everywhere.
What I’m trying to get at is this: activism should have a purpose other than to voice your emotions, and that’s to effect change. If it is to effect change, you cannot be seen as an unreasonable radical. Sadly, that means moderating yourself is an imperative of effective activism, whereas giving voice to your frustration simply is not.
That’s a far cry from saying your emotions aren’t valid. That’s what got you to activism in the first place, after all, so they’re core to your activism. It’s just a different way of saying channel your frustration in positive ways.
The biological term has been intersex for years now (it was first used 100 years ago), unless you are talking about invertebrates.
Oh, totally, tone policing as a method to keep people quiet exists, no doubt about that. I don’t agree with that tactic one bit either. I thought I had made that clear 
The guy in the middle of the front row has “hermaphrodites” written on his shirt.
Yup.
If some person starts yelling at you about vaccines and fluoride and autism, there a few paths you can take:
I know from personal experience that the first two options don’t work.
But since you’re probably not always going to be talking to that particular individual, best to stick to the community standard.
Your emotions are valid and I dont get to dictate the ways you talk about your experiences.
However, you dont get to dictate my reaction, nor force me to listen.
The difficulty comes when we have to try (as we often do with politicians) to distinguish between real and bogus emotions. There are people who simply use anger as a tactic to get what they want (let’s not get too started on the other techniques or we’ll be here all day.)
There are also other people who produce inappropriate emotions (such as getting angry and frustrated when failing to communicate with people, or taking out anger about something else on others.)
The comic makes some very valid points about a particular tactic, but human behaviour is very complex and it starts out from the simplistic point of view that the person with the emotions is in the right. The problem in some cases is distinguishing the false positives. And often the only way to do this is to get the person to calm down and talk them through it - though talking over is not the way to do it.
I can’t say for certain what their motivation for doing that it (reclaiming it, probably). It’s still not a good idea to use hermaphrodite though.
From the linked wiki article
The distinctions “male pseudohermaphrodite”, “female pseudohermaphrodite” and especially “true hermaphrodite” are vestiges of outdated 19th-century thinking, reflecting histology (microscopic appearance) of the gonads. Medical terminology has shifted not only due to concerns about language, but also a shift to understandings based on genetics.
Maybe pointing out that hermaphrodite (in regards to humans) is an pseudoscientific term would help. It probably won’t though.
If you’re an activist, you have to think, act, and speak strategically. You are going to have to moderate and modulate your emotions and you might as well install a drain under your pillow for all the tears you’re going to spill when you finally get home.
However, I think what a lot of people in the comments right now are missing in this comic is that most individuals aren’t activists. You can’t simply dismiss concerns because someone is upset or angry. Would you do that with a spouse? Would you do it with your boss? Listen to their argument or their concerns, and deal with that. This is the logical way to handle people’s concerns. If I was upset that an asteroid the size of Texas was hurtling towards the earth, and I was crying about it, the appropriate response is to send rockets with gravity tugs towards the asteroid, not to tell me I’m being emotional and refuse to do anything until I calm down. Is it possible for someone to be upset about something and for that person to propose counter-productive solutions? Sure. But you deal with it on a logical level, what do their emotions have to do with anything? You can just as easily be emotional and wrong as you can be emotional and right.
So absolutely advise your activist friends who are having a hard time reaching people while they do activism to tamp their emotions (if that’s the actual problem). But telling the people you encounter in your day-to-day life to “be pragmatic” when they’re just talking to you one person to another? That’s kind of a dick move.
The thing is, yes, the term “hermaphrodite” is indeed a slur to the intersex community, who have had it applied to them for generations. They have had their bodies medically manipulated and mutilated against their will because they did not fall into the accepted gender binary on a biological level, treated as broken and deformed, and were referred to by that term, so they have every legitimate reason to find it abhorrent in (and this is key) in reference to them. Which is something that I support–they have the right to say “this is upsetting to me because of my history with it.” But this is not widely known, and, yes, I am not sure what happy medium can exist where the word is legitimately and deeply offensive when applied to certain people, and yet is also the technical term for many plants and animals in relation to their reproduction. I suppose, as always, consideration, empathy and understanding are key.
My former friend, on the other hand, you quite correctly diagnosed as treating the term as (ironically) a binary thing, where it is either universally acceptable or universally forbidden, with no shading of circumstance, context, nuance or intention. Ergo, it is the term to use in reference to the World Of Darkness group known as the Daksha, who are essentially a mage Legacy (i.e. a “prestige class”) who literally reshape their bodies into a hermaphroditic expression of perfected humanity (according to their ideology; they also have a third-eye in the back of the head…). I have one NPC that is a member of that group, and their child, who is biologically also a hermaphrodite, but didn’t join the Legacy themselves, causing conflict that has drawn in the PCs, and describing this was the context in which the term was used.
I think the key differences here in terms of tone policing, though, is that my former friend was not a member of the aggrieved group, and her attitude presupposed that I was malicious instead of ignorant, or at the very least was not willing to distinguish between the two. Ironically, though, it didn’t backfire; I did my own research, found that it was, in that context, a slur, made a note, integrated that into my knowledge base, educated myself further on the topic, and am willing to speak up on their behalf.
checks before posting And, whoa, did I derail the thread. Dammit.
Sometimes, people’s emotions and therefore tones are the only issue. There are no other real, tangible issues other than perhaps how we became so misinformed. For example, when we have “fears” of things that are trivial, it is very tempting to tell us to just calm down. But even then, when that’s the only thing that is truly required, it fails dismally 99% of the time.
On another note, people who are very emotional with respect to an issue are often (but not always) personally affected by the issue (or at least feel that they are). It may be useful to consider whether those people are actually conflicted and unable to offer rational input to the solution. For example, someone who has just been robbed by a person of some identifiable social/ethnic/“racial” class is perhaps not in the best position to offer good advice on how to best deal with severe inequalities in police attitudes and actions with relation to that category of person.
I’ll also listen to and respect those who stand up and say “this doesn’t affect me personally (they don’t need to say this bit - but it has to be true), but it’s important and it’s wrong, and here’s what I’m going to do about it”, just as I will listen to and respect those directly affected. But I think it may be possible to be too close to an issue to be rational and most effective in addressing it. The “Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” counter argument is rendered moot when dealing with someone unaffected by the actual issue.
There are also examples of where emotions are really the only thing to address at all: Is the best solution to the widespread irrational fear of terrorism to try reduce that already trivial risk still further (I dunno, take off our shoes to board an aeroplane, maybe export the brown people?), or to somehow get the irrationally fearful to just calm the fuck down? See also “stranger danger” (that isn’t a thing) and the cotton-wool kid raising (that may not also actually be a thing, of course) that results .
