u/dellitsni, with their #NotAllStraights and #AllLivesMatter garbage, needs people to get through to them

Submitted by An_Old_Big_Tree in mediation (edited )

I don't have the time or energy to explain to them that reverse racism doesn't exist now on top of my attempts to point to how their other politics are dodgy, and that their vociferous defence of the privileged is nothing short of queerphobic and racist. There's only so many times I'm willing to point out their behaviour to them and introduce the directions they need to go to overcome them. They seem adamant that they will not imagine things beyond liberal individualised interpersonal relations.

re queerphobia, and completely missing the point and repeating the queerphobia in their apology

re racism

dellitsni, you don't get it, you need to go fix your shit.

There are few circumstances under which this wouldn't automatically result in a global ban; this seems to be one. Users invested in this user need to step up and do work with them right away.

Edit: Changed the title to reflect a a less threatening position after u/selver accurately pointed it out in the comments.

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____deleted____ wrote

To ban them for this would be a huge overstep in response and in wielding your power.

"Reverse racism" or whatever the dumb shorthand is doesn't carry weight on Raddle, or really... exist, yeah. Its bullshit overall.

BUT, I still think insulting or judging someone for the way they are born is wrong regardless of any circumstance and will stand by them in both cases, even if calling it racism is a bit strong.

Whether its a cleft lip, a flat chest, dark skin, a big nose, light skin, who the fuck cares, it shouldn't be held against someone unless in the case of whiteness they abuse the privilege they would have. But in the case of the average Raddle user, generalizing and insulting an entire race should still be avoided for the above reason; not one based in race relations but one based on the fact that features out of an individuals' control should not be held against them.

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[deleted] wrote

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zombie_berkman wrote

As a cishet white dude, ill go farther and say people that say all lives matter say it because they want to dismiss the claim that black lives matter and are stating that black lives dont matter because "all lives" matter. If it was the other way they would at least admit black lives do matter then sufix it with but so do all alive or some shit. Its a standpoint of pure dismissial period.

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____deleted____ wrote

Oh, yeah, agreed. I just feel like the comment by c0mrade was also problematic, though not racism.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote (edited )

Belsima, you're in the same boat as dellitsni (except in that you appear to be interested in learning more about it when it's made plain to you). This is part and parcel of the same thing you admitted you didn't understand in matrix.

Going to learn this stuff as opposed to continuing just to say the same things is what I want from both of you.

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____deleted____ wrote

I only want to get across that c0mrade's comment was problematic, though not racism. I tend to avoid touching 'racism' for above reasons, but also try to look down upon most insults or generalizations based on physical characteristics. Again, it wouldn't be racism on c0mrade's part but a more mild issue.

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surreal wrote

He misses the point alright, many of us used to have this mindset and many still do, but banning for queerophobia and racism is far fetched. Are you sure you're not abusing your power as an admin? What would you do differently in this situation if you weren't an admin? I think it has affected your judgement, patience and actions. Don't make this just another proof that power corrupts, always.

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____deleted____ wrote

Don't make this just another proof that power corrupts, always.

Do we really need more proof? I think its already more than clear that under no circumstances does anyone with more power than the average person hold it carefully.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote (edited )

We have banned people on raddle for less. The point of raddle was to get rid of shit like this. I don't enjoy any of this.

If I weren't an admin I'd be raising hell about it, instead of making a mediation post in as measured a manner as I can manage. And if dellitsni weren't banned, I would have lost faith in the admins.

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surreal wrote

You don't enjoy disagreement and people having illusions that can easily be shattered? Is this really what raddle was all about? I think raddle was about changing our perception and illusions about what we have learned till now. Don't make this an echo chamber, it will be boring and noone will evolve.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

If they were easily shattered, then they would have been the first time I sent this to mediation.

Nobody wants an echo chamber. This is about a persistent unaddressed problem.

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surreal wrote

please explain what is the problem, i am really trying to follow your train of thought. aren't we supposed to try and change peoples minds about stuff they haven't even realised about. this is what raddle is for me. it makes me think consciously and practice my empathy so i can understand what someone is saying and why. some people come here without ever having thought about some of these matters. and yea repetition is the mother of wisdom.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

It's simple. Anything in the infinite world within the w/terms_of_service is fine.

racists can be here, so long as they aren't being racist. They can even acknowledge their position and ask to learn.

This is a mediation post, so that people can show dellitsni how they are being racist and queerphobic, how they don't understand the superstructural nature of oppression, exactly for the purpose of changing their mind. Re-read what I said, if you like. I'm literally asking people do do what you're saying we should do, while saying that their current behaviour is not acceptable.

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dele_ted wrote

Since so many people that i respect are disagreeing with me on this, I must be going wrong somewhere - but I can't see where. Here's how I'm interpreting all of this:

/u/c0mrade called for the systematic killing of all white people. I told them to get out, that we should stop grouping people based on something they're born with and not in control of altogether. T_W came to defend c0mrade, saying that i was wrong to not want the systematic slaughter of people based on their skin colour. A few hours later, c0mrade said their original comment was all just a joke, but T_W keeps defending it.

Why is it that everyone thinks i am in the wrong for not letting characteristics that you are born with, that are out of your control, have any say in who you are or how you should be treated?

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md_ wrote

It was mentioned by others to, but really the point here is that "it is okay to make fun of those in power". There are power imbalances out there, that change how we react to a joke. Me making a joke about some person or group of people (or a characteristic robustly associated with said person/people) who are subjugated, is problematic. Me making fun of a person, people, or societal structure that has power over me, is the least I can do to resist. That's how we tease apart bad-taste jokes, from actually problematic jokes. Do they punch down, or do they punch up?

Of course that's assuming that the comment was indeed a joke, but trying to tell jokes and sincere opinions apart online is increasingly a frustrating task. To me it looked like very transparent trolling, but you can hardly now any more.

In short though, of course, if it's not a joke and someone sincerely holds the opinion that white genocide is a valid political program, of course that's problematic bullshit and clearly authoritarian. But it will get us nowhere to try and guess if they were joking all along, because of the medium. But find me a political group that claims to be anti-authoritarian and be pro-genocide, and of course things there will be pretty clear-cut.

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dele_ted wrote

As i said in the original thread, and multiple times in this thread, I didn't think c0mrade was joking. I also explained why in my response to Dumai.

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md_ wrote

Fair enough, it is frustratingly hard to tell, especially because claiming "it was a joke bro" has been used, with surprising success, by a lot of authoritarians online when they were punching down.

Incidentally, this is why I do not want to seize the "memes" of production. So many products of internet culture (including the "it was a joke" after-the-fact defence) are authoritarian by design, and we only taint ourselves by trying to use them.

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[deleted] wrote

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dele_ted wrote

I explained in the same thread that I didn't catch it as a joke. I've seen stuff like that thrown around here every now and then, and didn't get the sarcasm. Sarcasm isn't easy to get when it's in written form, mild aspergers makes it that much harder.

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[deleted] wrote

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dele_ted wrote

I replied to T_W from the inbox, and didn't see c0mrade's comment saying that they were joking until now.

I called it racism because that is what it is (if it's not interpreted as a joke). Racism means nothing more than discrimination or prejudice based on race. Of course racism against white people is practically non-existent, but it is nonetheless the definition of the word.

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md_ wrote (edited )

Racism means nothing more than discrimination or prejudice based on race. Of course racism against white people is practically non-existent, but it is nonetheless the definition of the word.

This is the part where a lot of people criticise you for.

First, appeals to the dictionary are not by themselves enough to establish something. The dictionary, even if it's the most descriptive (and they often aren't), and the most up-to-date with current usage (again, they mostly aren't), it's still not going to include nuanced analysis of political concepts. It's not a dictionary's job to do that.

Racism, in the sense most of us here seem to understand it, is not "discrimination against a person or a group of people, based on race". It's a system that uses discrimination and biases, to benefit another group, the privileged group in a given context. (For a similar example, see "patriarchy". It's not a refutation of the critique of patriarchy to point out that there are women prime-ministers and CEOs).

Just bias and discrimination are not racism. You also need the power to turn that discrimination in a benefit for your own "group". It's pretty clear how colonialism used "race science" to extract value from most places of the world that weren't Western Europe.

Now, for what it's worth, I want to share a point-of-view from my region, which is at a grey zone between the West and "the rest of the world". Racism truly doesn't have to use the abstraction of "race" to do its job - it does so in the West and its settler-colonies like the US of course. But where I live, there's systematic exploitation of undeniably white-skinned blue-eyed people (from the post-USSR countries) by a clearly non-white masters. And there's no Nazi Germany like "Slavs are not actually white" justification at play, it's just that a different abstraction is used as a justification. Etymologically the word racism might be confusing, but words don't mean what their parts mean (see butterfly).

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dele_ted wrote

That's a simple matter of definitions. Words have different meanings in different parts of the world and in different communities, and in the case of "racism", as all of this proves, the differences can be pretty vast.

To me, the example you're giving is very clearly racism. I've never known anyone (IRL, that is) who understood the word racism as what you're describing. If that's what the word means to most people here, then I see why they're pissed at me - I would be, too. But please remember that we are not all the same, to me racism has always meant just what i described above. We are not some uniform mass, and I'm fucking glad we aren't.

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Pop wrote

Your profile is six months old

how in that time you have maintained your racist definition of racism is something i'd b quite interested to learn

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md_ wrote

If in a conversation we do not agree on the definitions of our terms, we will never get anywhere. And if you insist on not accepting the definition of the people you are conversing with, you will never understand their arguments.

We can call that system of exploitation "Jonathanism" if you want though (although I don't know what have Jonathans done to deserve this), if it helps us actually have the discussion we want to have ("is making fun on white/straight people in a Western context problematic?").

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dele_ted wrote

I'm not insisting on disagreeing on a simple word, it's just never occured to me that racism means something completely different in this community. I'll gladly adopt your definitions if it helps me communicate with other people here.

Thanks for taking your time to explain it, I've rewritten my definition of racism.

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[deleted] wrote

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dele_ted wrote

Of course i have. Some words have different meanings in different regions.

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Pop wrote

you know you can google why #alllivesmatter is shit, right?

why when people say #notallmen they are missing the point?

instead of acting dumfounded you can actually just go find out

it's like you're expecting people to spoonfeed you

There's probably a stack of articles on raddle about both...

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dele_ted wrote

I've never defended that bullshit, and I am tired of people putting those words in my mouth.

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Pop wrote

you not seeing it as the same thing is the problem, then

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Fossidarity wrote

Let's disregard if you actually said or meant those things for now, do you see the problems inherent in these movements (#AllLivesMatter, etc.)?

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dele_ted wrote

Of course I do. #AllLivesMatter has appeared in respsonse to #BlackLivesMatter, which is problematic because there is very clear evidence that black lives seem to matter less in the face of law enforcement, government and a good deal of ordinary people. White people do not need to fight for their lives to matter, they already do; the #AllLivesMatter movement is absolutely meaningless, and i never defended it (quite the opposite).

My comment was in response to someone calling for the systematic killing of a people based on their skin color. Yeah, it was apparently a joke, but I didn't catch that (I explained why in my response to Dumai).

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revolt wrote

Why are people downvoting a sincere request for mediation?

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____deleted____ wrote

The original proposal was 'or face a ban', which gives me the feeling this is simply another way of trying to push the 2-week (reverted) ban for /f/lobby further rather than anything else.

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revolt wrote

If you refuse to mediate and overcome your harmful ideas then yeah, a ban is logical.

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jaidedctrl wrote

I don't think they've done anything worthy of a global ban...
The comments they've made may be stupid, but there're definitely not queerphobic or racist. This is a serious overreaction.

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Rum_Rabbit wrote

TW It's pretty obvious that you and your toxic privilege politics are the biggest remaining problem with this site. Admins are for eliminating spam and trolls, not for thought policing on good faith contributing users like dellitsni that are trying to bring something positive to the community here (ie konsent) for not towing the same ideological line as you do. As long as you can act like you're the moral leader of everyone on the site and that your politics, which you clearly get from the latest trends in bourgeois academia and the generic liberal sites that you constantly spam here, are an unquestionable truth from which any deviation or critique is OMG LITERALLY FASCISM!!1!!, this site will continue being a toxic shithole which serious leftists should avoid.

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revolt wrote

"Serious leftists" lmao.

That's some high horse you're on, fam.

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