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So I was woken out of bed at 11pm by a plot bunny, and in my search for a bit of paper found the rest of my notes for The Trouble with Normal.
And here they are:
There is no sex/love dichotomy. Pretty much everyone is in favour of both sex and love, under the right circumstances. Yes, even fundamentalist christians and prostitutes (respectively).
Members of oppressed groups are divided into "good" and "bad".
Good: conventional, don't rock the boat, polite, asks for small easy changes, express appreciation for status quo
Bad: unconventional, make people uncomfortable
The subtext is: Being in group X is inherently bad, but some members manange to transcend this by being good in all other ways. EDIT: Obviously this is only bad if being in group X is not inherently bad eg as in the original example of queerness. See comments.
It's important to distinguish this from simply dividing people up into good and bad people by a measure genuinely unrelated to Xness. (Assuming you do so objectively and fairly)
Normally I don't post at such an absurd hour, but it's just typing stuff I wrote up already.
And here they are:
There is no sex/love dichotomy. Pretty much everyone is in favour of both sex and love, under the right circumstances. Yes, even fundamentalist christians and prostitutes (respectively).
Members of oppressed groups are divided into "good" and "bad".
Good: conventional, don't rock the boat, polite, asks for small easy changes, express appreciation for status quo
Bad: unconventional, make people uncomfortable
The subtext is: Being in group X is inherently bad, but some members manange to transcend this by being good in all other ways. EDIT: Obviously this is only bad if being in group X is not inherently bad eg as in the original example of queerness. See comments.
It's important to distinguish this from simply dividing people up into good and bad people by a measure genuinely unrelated to Xness. (Assuming you do so objectively and fairly)
Normally I don't post at such an absurd hour, but it's just typing stuff I wrote up already.
no subject
e.g. Let X = "being a murderer". Should we divide people up into good and bad based on X-ness?
I'm not convinced that you can find an "objective" and "fair" measure with which to divide people up morally. Moreover, if you could, then there would exist a predicate X for which it would be equivalent to dividing people up based on X-ness.
no subject
And that's what I'm talking about in my second last sentence: there's nothing wrong with saying "All murderers are bad. Therefore disabled people who commit murder are bad"(*). But it is wrong to say "All disabled people who want to be on tv are bad" unless you apply the same standard to all non-disabled people too. (This is not a hypothetical example :/)
And yeah, I gues there are issues with any attempt to divide the world into good and bad people. But some are much worse than others!
(*)Well, you could argue it's a bit dogmatic. But it's certainly not ablist.
no subject
If you're going to be arguing for changes to the way society treats groups of people, you run into a problem: there is no single logical principle which everyone will agree on for deciding what changes should be made. People are going to disagree on what is wrong and right when it comes to interacting with other people. A sociopathic serial killer may argue that people like himself (or herself) should be treated with respect and admiration. Hard-line fundamentalist Christians may argue that homosexuality is a sin and should not be tolerated in a civilised country.
Most arguments in this area are going to boil down to "I have different fundamental values from that person"; at which point society has to decide which values it accepts and which it does not. And it's far from a binary accept/reject decision, too - traits like greed are generally unpunished by the law but frowned upon by individuals in many social groups.
there are issues with any attempt to divide the world into good and bad people. But some are much worse than others!
Sure, but people are still going to disagree about which are better and which are worse! It is impossible to please everyone and (I think) unwise to even attempt to do so. Choosing who gets to be unhappy is necessarily difficult and controversial.
(Hm. This still feels kind of waffley-without-a-point. For which I apologise.)
no subject
Sure, but people are still going to disagree about which are better and which are worse! It is impossible to please everyone and (I think) unwise to even attempt to do so. Choosing who gets to be unhappy is necessarily difficult and controversial.
I could be wrong, but it seems like you're arguing that since it's impossible to come to a complete consensus about the best way to behave or to make everyone happy we should never criticise other people's behaviour/moral framework at all, which I strongly disagree with.
no subject
What if that division is being based on 'make other people uncomfortable'? To be clear, I am thinking here of making people uncomfortable by being rude, demanding things that are to the detriment of the majority etc., not of making people uncomfortable just by being X.
Most of the people I know who object to 'Bad' X's object to their social behaviour, not the mere fact of them being X. All too often I think the left tend to dismiss this, they assume that anyone who objects to loud, impolite activist behaviour, or reverse discrimination, or whatever, is actually using it as a cover for homophobia, racism etc.. I would never describe myself as left wing but I have made the same mistake myself a few times, so I do sympathise. But when you actually talk to people and discover what they are really objecting to and are made uncomfortable by, you can get some surprising answers. My general conclusion is that there is a lot less homophobia (the topic I have mostly talked about this over) than there appears to be. I assume the same holds true for sexism, racism etc, although I haven't as much direct experience.
The thing is that the majority of the population are conservative, made uncomfortable by impoliteness, etc. so it is hardly surprising that they should object to people who contravene those rules. And unfortunately the subset of any group who shouts loudest is the set who gets to characterise the group as a whole, so again it is unsurprising if people who don't have any direct experience of a minority will then tend to think of those aspects first in association with that minority. As I think I've remarked to you before, however much we object that expecting politeness etc. is a 'privilege', in the real world the demands of the responsibility not to deny that privilege are not something members of any minority can choose to lightly ignore. (And frankly, it's not as if being polite and un-awkward is actually much of a burden for most of us.)
I guess this puts me in the 'Good' category ;)
no subject
I think that depends on how you apply such a rule. If it's "deliberately making people uncomfortable for no good reason" well that's not so bad (though it can easily go to a bad place), but if you paint people as morally bad for making others uncomfortable for things beyond their control that's just unfair.
To take a fairly unambiguous extreme: parents pressured for this tv presenter to be fired because they feel that her amputated arm made their children uncomfortable. She can't help being an amputee, and it's not fair to expect her and others like her to hide away out of the public eye because it makes people uncomfortable.
The sort of thing you're talking about is more ambiguous, but in my experience(*) a lot of the time the "uncomfortable" rudeness is in fact a fairly low level of assertive behaviour which is exacerbated by subconscious racism/sexism/homophobia etc. For example, studies have shown that if women talk more than something like 30% of the time, they are perceived (by people of all genders!) as "dominating the discussion". So any attempt at having equal airtime will seem like rudeness.
That said: I have seen feminist/anti-racist etc people who I do consider too rude, to an extent that I think of them as less of a good person than I would otherwise. But I don't authomatically see them as a Bad Person who deserves to be totally ignored.
I went into this stuff in detailed tl;dr length in my post Why can't we all just be nice?.
(*)And I think we just see things differently in this respect, it's hard to argue about "in my experience" stuff
no subject
e.g. Let X = "being a murderer". Should we divide people up into good and bad based on X-ness?
I'm not convinced that you can find an "objective" and "fair" measure with which to divide people up morally. Moreover, if you could, then there would exist a predicate X for which it would be equivalent to dividing people up based on X-ness.
no subject
And that's what I'm talking about in my second last sentence: there's nothing wrong with saying "All murderers are bad. Therefore disabled people who commit murder are bad"(*). But it is wrong to say "All disabled people who want to be on tv are bad" unless you apply the same standard to all non-disabled people too. (This is not a hypothetical example :/)
And yeah, I gues there are issues with any attempt to divide the world into good and bad people. But some are much worse than others!
(*)Well, you could argue it's a bit dogmatic. But it's certainly not ablist.
no subject
If you're going to be arguing for changes to the way society treats groups of people, you run into a problem: there is no single logical principle which everyone will agree on for deciding what changes should be made. People are going to disagree on what is wrong and right when it comes to interacting with other people. A sociopathic serial killer may argue that people like himself (or herself) should be treated with respect and admiration. Hard-line fundamentalist Christians may argue that homosexuality is a sin and should not be tolerated in a civilised country.
Most arguments in this area are going to boil down to "I have different fundamental values from that person"; at which point society has to decide which values it accepts and which it does not. And it's far from a binary accept/reject decision, too - traits like greed are generally unpunished by the law but frowned upon by individuals in many social groups.
there are issues with any attempt to divide the world into good and bad people. But some are much worse than others!
Sure, but people are still going to disagree about which are better and which are worse! It is impossible to please everyone and (I think) unwise to even attempt to do so. Choosing who gets to be unhappy is necessarily difficult and controversial.
(Hm. This still feels kind of waffley-without-a-point. For which I apologise.)
no subject
Sure, but people are still going to disagree about which are better and which are worse! It is impossible to please everyone and (I think) unwise to even attempt to do so. Choosing who gets to be unhappy is necessarily difficult and controversial.
I could be wrong, but it seems like you're arguing that since it's impossible to come to a complete consensus about the best way to behave or to make everyone happy we should never criticise other people's behaviour/moral framework at all, which I strongly disagree with.
no subject
What if that division is being based on 'make other people uncomfortable'? To be clear, I am thinking here of making people uncomfortable by being rude, demanding things that are to the detriment of the majority etc., not of making people uncomfortable just by being X.
Most of the people I know who object to 'Bad' X's object to their social behaviour, not the mere fact of them being X. All too often I think the left tend to dismiss this, they assume that anyone who objects to loud, impolite activist behaviour, or reverse discrimination, or whatever, is actually using it as a cover for homophobia, racism etc.. I would never describe myself as left wing but I have made the same mistake myself a few times, so I do sympathise. But when you actually talk to people and discover what they are really objecting to and are made uncomfortable by, you can get some surprising answers. My general conclusion is that there is a lot less homophobia (the topic I have mostly talked about this over) than there appears to be. I assume the same holds true for sexism, racism etc, although I haven't as much direct experience.
The thing is that the majority of the population are conservative, made uncomfortable by impoliteness, etc. so it is hardly surprising that they should object to people who contravene those rules. And unfortunately the subset of any group who shouts loudest is the set who gets to characterise the group as a whole, so again it is unsurprising if people who don't have any direct experience of a minority will then tend to think of those aspects first in association with that minority. As I think I've remarked to you before, however much we object that expecting politeness etc. is a 'privilege', in the real world the demands of the responsibility not to deny that privilege are not something members of any minority can choose to lightly ignore. (And frankly, it's not as if being polite and un-awkward is actually much of a burden for most of us.)
I guess this puts me in the 'Good' category ;)
no subject
I think that depends on how you apply such a rule. If it's "deliberately making people uncomfortable for no good reason" well that's not so bad (though it can easily go to a bad place), but if you paint people as morally bad for making others uncomfortable for things beyond their control that's just unfair.
To take a fairly unambiguous extreme: parents pressured for this tv presenter to be fired because they feel that her amputated arm made their children uncomfortable. She can't help being an amputee, and it's not fair to expect her and others like her to hide away out of the public eye because it makes people uncomfortable.
The sort of thing you're talking about is more ambiguous, but in my experience(*) a lot of the time the "uncomfortable" rudeness is in fact a fairly low level of assertive behaviour which is exacerbated by subconscious racism/sexism/homophobia etc. For example, studies have shown that if women talk more than something like 30% of the time, they are perceived (by people of all genders!) as "dominating the discussion". So any attempt at having equal airtime will seem like rudeness.
That said: I have seen feminist/anti-racist etc people who I do consider too rude, to an extent that I think of them as less of a good person than I would otherwise. But I don't authomatically see them as a Bad Person who deserves to be totally ignored.
I went into this stuff in detailed tl;dr length in my post Why can't we all just be nice?.
(*)And I think we just see things differently in this respect, it's hard to argue about "in my experience" stuff