h a l f b a k e r yWhat's a nice idea like yours doing in a place like this?
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Fall asleep watching woss'ername's infomercials, again ? |
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Well, at least it's not in other: general... |
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[let's-all] and [advocacy] - see help file. |
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So, if I understand correctly, the idea here is that
lesbians should wear short hair as a statement? Or
have I somehow missed the other 90% of this idea? |
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[Edit. OK, I googled "cisgender" and it basically
means "straight". So the invention is for straight
women to wear their hair short as a statement of
international issues. I still don't get it.] |
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(Didn't the French do this to collaborators at the end of WWII. ) |
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Crew cuts have strong political meaning. And crew cut wigs look extremely silly. |
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Suggest bowl cuts instead.
Bowl cuts just mean your too poor to afford a barber/hair stylist. And wigs are more believable. |
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Barbers with acetylene torches as a fall back. Let them eat slightly burned and smoking cake. |
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I don't see how this deals with religious headdresses in
any way. Also, I'm sure there's a culture where crew cuts
or something similar are traditional (well, the military,
but surely a natural culture too), so you could still be
accused of cultural appropriation. |
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Despite that, though, I'd bun this if not for the let's-
all/advocacy aspect (though I'm open to convincement
that it doesn't qualify as those things). |
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// I googled "cisgender" and it basically means
"straight". // |
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I see some confusion possibly starting. I'll try to clear it
up and probably cause more confusion. (And this is just
for general clarification purposes. We have cisgender and
straight members here in addition to our LGBT members
and all seem to be well accepted, so I'm not especially
concerned.) |
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No, gender and sexual orientation are orthogonal.
Cisgender is the opposite of transgender (the prefix cis-
meaning "on the same side of" and the prefix trans-
meaning "on the opposite side of" or "going through (some
threshold)"). |
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Transgender (minority): your identified gender is not that
typically associated with your sex determined at birth. |
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Cisgender (majority): your identified gender is that
typically associated with your sex determined at birth. |
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Homosexual/gay/lesbian (minority): you prefer to have
sex with people the same gender and/or sex as you. |
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Heterosexual/straight (majority): you prefer to have sex
with people whose gender and/or sex isn't the same as
yours (typically, the opposite within the male/female
binary). |
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There is some correlation between where someone is in
the first two and where they are in the second two, but
it's not 100%. (And there are other things like bisexual,
asexual, etc., but those are less relevant to this.) |
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So, basically, all this labelling equates to "Everybody's
different and we could really just move on"?] |
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I'd like to self-identify as a transbiologist. My soul is
that of a physicist, but I was born with the brain of a
molecular biologist. |
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We understand from the Intercalary that you also have the body of a 19-year-old. |
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And we don't believe you have a soul - if you ever did, it was sold long since. |
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Clearly some confusion. I have do a 19 year-old with
a great body, but it's a single malt. You should never
listen to the intercalary - he's the most nonreliable
member of the family, and that really is saying a
great deal. |
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So wht's in the big locked chest freezer in the little brick building behind the Old Southern Stables, the one that no-one's ever allowed in to ? |
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Which Old Southern Stables? The Elizabethan ones or
those new Georgian ones? |
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Anyway, if it's the freezer I think you mean, that'll be
Findus Crispy Pancakes, and they're Sturton's from
1979. Don't ask why. All I ever got out of him was
"...global shortage..." and "...corner the market...". |
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But as the crew cut is historically a men's style, couldn't this
be misinterpreted as an obliviously self-denigrating attempt
to gain respect and opportunity by trying to appear more
masculine? Of course the wearer could also have a disclaimer
tattooed on her forehead. |
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Not only is the cultural appropriation/culture war conversation nonsense, it's also not real. By which I mean, it is real, but only in the way that Captain America or Spiderman is real - they
exist as fictional entities that we can talk about, but in practical day-to-day, lived experience sense, it's pretty much all made up. That being said, if someone walked into the office in
black-up, a Native American headdress and a swastika emblazoned pyjamas, they might consider thinking twice before expecting success at a job interview. It's just common sense. |
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/People should be allowed to express themselves however they want.// |
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In case nobody's been paying attention, people *are* allowed to express themselves however they want. But sometimes, we set boundaries of taste and expectation. Sometimes those boundaries are
deemed appropriate, and other times they're not. I think the whole "wearing ties" thing a bit much sometimes for example. |
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It's just a repeatable way to sell newspapers/generate clicks/keep idiots in positions of political power. All these outrage stories are themselves outrageous on account of their flimsily
concocted heritage. |
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Now, there are in-group definitions of taste and sensibility - but that's entirely up to you to adopt whatever cultural in-group you personally identify with. That's the freedom of today's
identity politics - so, if you want to identify as a no-nonsense gentleman of a certain age with a readily enflamed sense of moral outrage, then be your own guest. |
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And by that, I don't mean you specifically, but in the more general *youse* sense. And nobody can take issue with me on this, since I've already stated that you can all do whatever you want,
identify with whatever you want, and hold whatever opinions and beliefs you want (even when they are second-hand inherited from whatever media you choose to consume based on your choice of
identification and its overlap with the available media channels). All of those things, you are entirely at liberty to do, feel or otherwise engage in. As you were. |
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I don't know about that - "hate crimes" exist (and they have legally done so since 1998) and there are fairly reasonable arguments and
definitions about what they constitute. The only new thing with that Sadiq Khan quote (and this is the first time I've heard it) is to
add gender to the list of "protected characteristics" - which doesn't seem all that contentious to me - apart from the obvious
constitutional/legal bit I'm missing where a mayor gets the power to define law.
Probably in this instance, "recording" is just in reference to an administrative policy thing. In which case, it's just a statement about data-labelling/tagging policy.
TBH, I'm not in the corner of the internet that gets upset by whatever Sadiq Khan says or doesn't say. Though I know such corners do exist. |
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That's a large chunk of hyperbole - along the lines
of "These days, if you say you're English, you get
arrested and thrown in jail" - i.e. entirely made up. |
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[big] you're conflating a customer service announcement with law there. |
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From a person's behavioural point of view, the first test of whether to take action against
anything is whether it's emotionally upsetting to them. Littering may be against the law, but
you might only expect someone to report it to the police if it upset you in some way. I don't
think it's *sweet* necessarily to express that nuance. It's a fairly economic starting point (in
terms of explanatory text) to humanise some instructions by setting out a fairly uncontentious
starting motivation. e.g. A similar piece of text might say, "If you want to print, press Ctrl-P" -
First you set out the human motivation, then the steps they need to take to carry out an
action that supports that motivation. Also, I can't expect a print to magically happen if I haven't plugged it in, turned it on or met a thousand
of other conditions that set the context of the interaction. An instruction is different from a Genie's wish. |
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The individual is then encouraged to report it, either to the cops, or the website admin, or to
the hosting company. Again, there's no explicit or implicit link between someone being upset
by something and it being illegal. Just a series of procedural options for doing something
about content that might cause a person harm. If I saw public content that recommended
hurting my children, I would be offended and upset by that - and would expect to be able to
do something about it. Anyone trying to look after their family would feel the same. |
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And there is nothing wrong with any of that. It's not a case of there being a slippery slope, no
political correctness gone mad - it's just a right of reply and (hopefully) due process taken by
the appropriate source (police, admin, host) to look into it. And by look into it, apply whatever law or policy
might be in place, using the normal levels of discretion
and process to enact those pre-existing laws or policies. There is nothing more contentious there than
encouraging someone to write a letter to their newspaper. If no policy or law is found to be broken, then that's that. Report finished, no
action,
job done. Having an instruction saying "if you want to take this content down, here's some ways", there is an implicit context here that the
content doesn't pass a legal or policy test of legitimacy. It wont magically disappear just because you wished it away. The world doesn't work
like that, and I don't think anybody seriously expects it to - do you? |
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The law isn't determined by tweet or decree from the mayor
(instead, it's determined largely by decree by the current openly corrupt occupiers of the
government and their unassailably democratic 80 seat majority - which based on the evidence,
is far more worrying) and has remained fairly static on this kind of thing since 1998. All the
rest is pure hyperbole. |
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What incidents, and when? |
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If you report something and it doesn't meet "the bar" then you get done for wasting police
time. I don't know the law that defines when and how that's measured, but it is a thing. |
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But we're talking here about a fairly technical issue regards the balance applied in the
application of hypothetical boundaries and burdens on the system - more importantly
though, in practical, actual terms, we're spending time here discussing a problem that
doesn't actually happen. The police aren't swamped with such spurious claims. Free speech
is still very much alive and kicking - and whilst hypotheticals are sometimes valid things to
get right, I don't think free speech is even remotely threatened by any of the points you
raise. |
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Certainly not as much as how free speech is being eroded by the current push on
traditionally right-leaning channels to fluff up the so-called "culture wars". |
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Free expression, is under threat perhaps not always in law (unless you include the recent
actual laws against conducting demonstrations) but certainly through a concerted and
organised social-pressure involving newspapers, online commentators and other expensive,
coordinated channels. All in line with the current government's aims and strategies. |
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Creating this paid-for, mythical social justice warrior persona and using it to sow worry
amongst normal, decent people into thinking their rights are under threat is a very, very
old trick - but doing so under the auspices of "freedom of speech" is Alanis Morissette levels
of irony. Using it to create an identity politics of the fearful, and aligning it with the flag-
waving, dissent quashing, nationalist, populist mindset seems to me so clearly
problematic, so clearly in-line with the authority currently in power wishing to remain in
place despite all the clear and present (not hypothetical or imaginary) corruption and
failure - that it upsets, surprises and offends me. Unfortunately, in terms of doing anything
about it, I have no recourse other than to speak my brains out on a relatively anonymous
website where I ought to be discussing the merits of actual ideas and inventions. |
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But yes, if you are concerned about free speech, group think and all that, then I'd be more
wary of this pretend culture wars narrative, it seems to me to be almost the opposite of
what it purports to be. |
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No it doesn't, it suggests if you post stupid things on a public platform, you can be held responsible for your actions by
your employer. That's not a freedom of speech issue, it's a personal responsibility issue. And I think it's reasonable
people should take responsibility for their actions. It's certainly difficult to escape those responsibilities when they've
been specially written down and contractually agreed up front as part of an employment arrangement. |
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Being an atheist, or reading "The Blind Watchmaker" are neither offensive, nor against ASDA's social media policy, so I
doubt either would result in summary dismissal. If however, whilst on a break, I enjoyed a Dawkins book and decided
to post something insulting about Jesus on the Cross, then who knows? It depends on the policy, and whether any
people following me on social media were insulted enough to be motivated to report me. I'd certainly be taking an
informed risk though, having known up front what kind of standards of public discourse I'd already agreed upon. |
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Facebook's a horrible cesspit of villany though, I've found myself distinctly more content since getting out. I try to
limit myself to maths-twitter and sea shanties these days as best I can. |
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You are *allowed* to do all that. Nobody will put you in
prison for any of that stuff. But you also have to allow
companies and individuals to make their own policies and
agreements, and expect people who agree to adhere to
them to stick to their agreements. |
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Similarly, so called "grooming gangs" do need to be dealt
with by police forces who are empowered to do so. Raising
that as a social issue and associating it with an ethnic group
stops them from being able to do that. |
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You can be arrested and detained for anything given a credible enough
accusation. I don't see the difference. If the accusation turns out to be
spurious, vindictive or otherwise wasting of police time, then there are
consequences for that use of free speech as well. |
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The grooming thing was a terrible ongoing fuck up exacerbated by a toxic
mix of misogyny and racism - but certainly not the product of political
correctness - it's specious to suggest it was censorship that caused the
problem - though that claim is the one most often made -which seems
strange to me. Far-right political activism continues to muddy the waters
and if anything stops the justice system from being carried out - like in the
Tommy Robinson farce. His brand of social justice does pay very well, but it
doesn't do anything other than make matters worse. |
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//a nanny state who used to have a monopoly on media// |
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Wait a minute; when was this historical period when a nanny
state had a monopoly on media, in any of the English- speaking
countries? |
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It's possible you're confusing "monopoly" with "consensus",
[bigsleep]. There are at least three reasons why a strong
consensus may emerge in favour of a proposition P, viz., |
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1. P is true.
2. There is a conscious system of coercion to enforce assent
to P, enforced by people who are indifferent to truth.
3. P forms part of an ideology which many people find
comforting, so that they believe it to be true. |
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The consensus that the world is not flat is probably an
example of case #1. The consensus that Stalin played a
pivotal role in the 1917 revolution (a consensus which could
be found in the Soviet Union in, say, 1930), is probably an
example of case #2. Some aspects of the current
consensus, from which you dissent, are probably examples
of case #3 while others are probably examples of case #1. |
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If you characterize these as if they were mostly case #2,
and propose a "get angry" agenda appropriate to case #2,
then it gets harder to unpick the tangle of cases #1 and #3
which, I suggest, is where most elements of the consensus
can be found. |
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#2 #3 also have gain and inertia from the great economic system flywheel. |
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