Quote from: Will;799492Well, the Gamergate issue feeds into tensions in the US between conservatives and liberals, so that's one reason for side topics.

You dudes and Your li'l soapboxes...

Quote from: jhkim;799489How the heck did we get to Israel and Islam? I've been super busy at work, so I haven't kept up. I'd still like to get back to what the problem is with liberals buying games, but I suppose I'll bite...

The strange thing to me is how attitudes on Islam have flipped.

Conservatives have always been pro-Israel, but radical muslims used to also be heroic freedom fighters against the communists - James Bond and Rambo were portrayed fighting alongside radical Afghani resistance. Conservatives complained about the Ayatollah or perhaps arabs more broadly, but not about Islam as a whole. Prior to 9/11, it seemed to me that the only people complaining about the Taliban were liberals complaining about education of women and the destruction of Buddhist statues.

My perception is that it was the invasion of Iraq solidified that shift. Liberals were all solidly against Bush and his push for war against Iraq, which they viewed as needless war-mongering. So movement against war-mongering and imperialism took precedence over complaints about Islam. Conservatives then took up all sorts of previously liberal complaints about Islam.

I think the consistent attitude should be "Yes, there are problems with radical Islam - but that doesn't mean that war-mongering or imperialism against them is OK." However, that easily gets twisted into emotionally being perceived as on their side and/or actually defending them.

I think conservatives are simple creatures, and it makes sense that they would flip from "these guys are on our side vs the Soviets - great!" to "these guys destroyed our World Trade Center - they suck!".

Left-Liberal attitudes are more complex, I could easily get into another flame war on this, but I'll note that most US Liberals are actually pro-Israel (whereas the European Left is strongly anti-Israel) and have a fairly 'nuanced' view of Islam & Muslims - but the general tendency is to see the Muslims in the USA/West as Good, unless actively engaged in terrorism - and the cute younger Tsaernev brother (Boston bombers) seems rather popular even while being a terrorist. This support seems to come from the idea that Muslims in the USA & the West are  designated Victim Group and therefore should be supported vs US/Western conservatives/racists/right-wingers.   But the Left-Liberal view tends to deprive Muslims and other Designated Victims of moral agency; in this view the Victim Group exists as a stick to beat the conservatives/racists/right-wingers with. Understandably, regular Muslims IME tend not to be too keen on left-liberals.

Quote from: jhkim;799489I think the consistent attitude should be "Yes, there are problems with radical Islam - but that doesn't mean that war-mongering or imperialism against them is OK." However, that easily gets twisted into emotionally being perceived as on their side and/or actually defending them.

I would say that even if you don't like people or their culture, it's not ok to wish them harm. I've been told such horrible things about Gulf Arab culture by a renegade princess (really!)... It doesn't make me want to hurt them or invade them. Leave them alone, and get them to leave us alone.

I dunno. Killing every single IS member would probably be mainly positive.

Ditto the Saudi royals but that'd be murder, etc.

Quote from: The Ent;799545Ditto the Saudi royals but that'd be murder, etc.

I think one of my students this year is an Al-Saud. I wouldn't want to kill her either.
Of course the Al-Saud leadership are a nasty bunch, but I don't see how killing them would help. Whoever took over might well be even worse. I'm pretty firmly of the opinion these days that dropping bombs on people does not help anyone. The only time killing works is when it is specific reprisal for specific acts, primarily because that can deter future aggression.  So eg Mossad's assassinations of the PLO terrorists involved in the Munich massacre was effective, because cause & effect were clearly linked.

Agreed, S'mon.

What I'm mainly worried about re: IS is my countrymen going off to join them then returning as ticking bombs.

Quote from: TristramEvans;799324I've no idea who coined the phrase SJW as a pejorative, but I first encountered it on this site in relation to the RPGnet tangency clique. I do think that Pundit's "pseudo-activists" moniker fits better, mainly because it doesn't rely on sarcasm to get across its point.

Strange, I first read the terms "Social Justice Warrior" and "White Knight" ON RPG.net.  Similar to how the Right quit embracing the term "teabagger" when people told them what it meant.

QuoteI don't think any of these groups existed until after "geek chic" became a thing in popular culture. Make of that what you will. In regards to the Simone board, I amusingly identified a majority of their more vocal supporters as a group of formerly hardcore Objectivists (Ayn Randians) that frequented the Byrne Robotics mb in the early aughts.

Well, I always found it deliciously ironic that the more one despises Ayn Rand, the more prone they are to espouse "black and white" thinking.  

JG

Quote from: Will;799360I've always found it odd how anti-Islam conservatives are and pro-Israel, given radical Islam is WAY more consistent with conservative policies than Israel is.

Particularly given conservatives really worked hard to install radical Islam so they could push out socialist-leaning moderates.

Like, the whole 'Obama is a secret Muslim!' when he supports policies the Muslims being referenced hate.

It's called "projecting."

JG

Interesting TwitLonger by the cynical Brit, TotalBiscuit:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sihieb

QuoteTheir logic, which I'd be interested to see if it has any basis in academia, is that you can't be "ist" against the people with the power, that the power dynamic is what leads to oppression ergo, "ism". It's an interesting idea that certainly feeds into the oppression narrative but, when I read Miracle of Sounds tweets I noticed a constant in a lot of what these people said.
It's so goddamn American.

I think there are some pretty awesome American exports, but our narcissistic bullshit isn't one of them.

Quote from: novastar;799615interesting twitlonger by the cynical brit, totalbiscuit:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sihieb

Quoteyou'd maybe be surprised (i hope not) at how many people genuinely want equality for all races, genders, creeds and sexual-orientations, they just maybe don't think your way of going about it is the right one.

...
Naaaah.

Quote from: Novastar;799615Interesting TwitLonger by the cynical Brit, TotalBiscuit:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sihieb

I'd respond to TotalBiscuit myself, but I'm not on twitter. Perhaps someone could link this to him if they think he might find it useful.

Quote from: TotalBiscuitThe current popular narrative from some people who believe in what they call "social justice" (which still ultimately confuses me since it's such a nebulous concept and seems to mean different things to different people), is that sexism against men isn't real and racism against white people isn't real. Their logic, which I'd be interested to see if it has any basis in academia, is that you can't be "ist" against the people with the power, that the power dynamic is what leads to oppression ergo, "ism".

The origin of this lies in "institutional racism", the idea whole societies are racist in that they are structured so as to advantage some favored element and disadvantage some other unfavored elements. It is a concept that operates at the level of whole societies, and is distinct from the common definition of racism, which is about individual attitudes (let's call this attitudinal racism).

Naturally if you are a member of a discriminated against group in institutional racism terms you cannot be an institutional racist because your group is the one without the social power to be racist. Of course even as a member of the dominant group, you can't be an institutional racist because institutional racism is an attribute of societies.

The confusion arises because institutional racism/sexism/X-ism, let's call it "institism", uses the word racism (or sexism) that usually refers to individual attitudes. The result is the two meanings get conflated, and a society level attribute gets applied to every member of the dominant social grouping, and then gets mixed up with attitudinal racism (attitism?). The end result is the view that what is true at the societal level where institism is concerned is also true at the individual level of attitism.

Needless to say this is bollocks, but it appears to b seductive bollocks because plenty of folks have bought into it.

QuoteMore recently, we've had the government-driven violence with its Fast-track land reform, in which land is being taken from white people (a 5% or lower minority in Zimbabwe), often by force. Supporters of Robert Mugabe, calling themselves the "War Veterans Association" literally went around murdering white farmers, according to the organisation Human Rights Watch.

Technically this would be institutional racism against whites in Zimbabwe, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's explained away somehow.

QuoteThe concept of white privilege is very American too.

This is another case of a misappropriated word. "X-privilege" really means "a subconscious favoritism of people belonging to a certain group, that operates at the level of individual attitudes (but has its origins in social portrayals)". The Implicit Association Test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/iatdetails.html) is based on this idea (and confirms the social origins part of my definition above, since African-Americans also score as biased against blacks, though to a smaller degree), and research looking into renting/hiring/college applications/etc. decisions where the race of the applicant is the only difference between two applicants is pretty consistent in showing that when all else is equal there is a bias in favor of whites (i.e. an application with a stereotypically white name) and against blacks (i.e. an application with a stereotypically black name). Of course it isn't just names that are used as the differentiating variable.

Again, the problem lies in appropriating an existing word rather than making one up out of Latin or Greek or whatever.

QuoteOur towns were vast white majorities but I can safely say we had no privilege, no advantages for being white.

Correct, you had no material advantage due to wealth, class, power, influence, social connections, etc., what privilege means, but all else being equal you might get a more positive subconscious response from another member of your society. E.g. the guard in the store who is concerned with shoplifting might be more likely to follow the identically dressed black guy than the white one without consciously being aware of what they were doing.

QuoteWhen looking from our perspective, the American white-privilege thing doesn't make a lot of sense, because we grew up in countries where race was less of a factor. What I've noticed, is that there seems to be an incorrect conflation between race and class. Now from a British perspective, privilege is very much class-focused and the idea of class warfare is very much in our minds. People are privileged and have more opportunities because they live in middle or upper class families vs living in a working class family. People living in council houses are probably going to have less opportunities in their lives and there are a huge variety of social factors for that. Even just pointing at "class" is intellectually lazy thinking, it's so much more complicated than that. So when I see Americans point to "White privilege", I instead think, "well, do you mean it's a class problem? A lot of these black people you're pointing to seem to be working class, so maybe that's got a lot to do with their limited opportunities, right?".

And while this makes intuitive sense, it is completely wrong. X-privilege has nothing to do with limitations on opportunity due to material factors*, it's all about attitudes most people aren't even consciously aware of. The problem is the post-modern social philosophizing (it isn't rigorous enough to qualify as western academic philosophy, and it doesn't test it's ideas so it isn't science) is so confusing the people who buy into it don't understand what they are buying into, and conflate material privilege with subconscious favoritism because someone made the terrible word choice to use X-privilige for their concept.

Both cases are essentially the same thing, examples of category errors in which words with established meanings in one context (attitudes and racism, material advantages and privilege) are misappropriated by academics to describe phenomena at a different level (societies and institutional racism, positive subconscious bias and X-privilege), and then when they filter back to non-academics the terrible neologisms are misapplied to the original context.

As an academic, it's ridiculously frustrating. I mean come on, how difficult is it to come up with institism or something along the same lines?

*Note that this has the side effect of splitting people without material privilege into groups that do or don't have X-privilege, setting them at each other rather than uniting against their common foe.

Quote from: Alathon;799635I think there are some pretty awesome American exports, but our narcissistic bullshit isn't one of them.

Narcissistic bullshit and faux outrage are some of the last things we can still manufacture in America.

Quote from: apparition13;799668And while this makes intuitive sense, it is completely wrong. X-privilege has nothing to do with limitations on opportunity due to material factors*, it's all about attitudes most people aren't even consciously aware of. The problem is the post-modern social philosophizing (it isn't rigorous enough to qualify as western academic philosophy, and it doesn't test it's ideas so it isn't science) is so confusing the people who buy into it don't understand what they are buying into, and conflate material privilege with subconscious favoritism because someone made the terrible word choice to use X-privilige for their concept.

I have another pet peeve about privilege, ironically enough perfectly demonstrated by this comic that "perfectly explains white privilege."

The comic says, "When it comes to school, I'm 78% more likely to be admitted into a university because of my race."  You see this kind of comment all time.  Some studies find that, all other things being equal, a white candidate is selected over a black candidate X% of the time, and people will say things like, "If you're white, you are X% more likely to be selected."

That's not how probability works.  Those studies find in an affect in the aggregate.  Which is great, but means fuck-all to the individuals in each subset of the sample.  It's all well and good that someone from the white subset has a better chance of being picked, but it doesn't mean that any one white person in that subset has that chance.  Each person's chance is mitigated by all the other white people in the group.

So it's like, I can see the idea and even agree with it in many respects, but I wish people would be more mathematically robust in their expression of it.  Along those lines, one or even two studies do not a statistic make.  Especially in psychology and sociology studies, where experimental power is often low and effect sizes relatively small.

Back in 2003, when I first heard the term in a cultural psychology class, I suggested that the terminology was probably more harmful than helpful from the perspective of education and persuasion of people regarding the issue.  I suspected it would linger in the halls of academia as a shibboleth, never breaking out into the mainstream.  Obviously, I never expected the internet to become the freakin' meme factory it is now.

Edit: Oh and one more thing.  I wish more people understood that everybody has privilege of one sort or another.

I don't like the term privilege mainly because it's one of those words that started in one context (IE: psychology) and then got appropriated. And, in a different context, it invariably leads to misunderstandings (but I'm not 'winning' or a fat cat, or have power, what the hell?) that then take a long conversation to get past.

I have yet to see a good word for 'nested perspective issues that cause certain people to have advantages, other people to have disadvantages, and causes folks to be unaware of these issues because of their limited experience. Also, this unawareness helps foster the issues.'

I mean, obviously, when someone says that I have 'privilege,' I think 'well, shit, that sounds like I didn't work hard for anything or never had bad luck! But I had a series of dead-end jobs after I left college early, and I once ate terrible instant mashed potatoes for a month and had to get someone's old shoes because I was already borrowing from friends to make rent.'

Or worse.

But hey, I have advantages compared to, say, a blind guy growing up in a literal war zone. Or a dwarf. Or someone growing up very poor. Or a black transwoman lesbian hispanic Jew. And my privilege makes it easy to overlook any issues they face unless I TRY REALLY HARD to be aware of them.

The thing is, privilege isn't a point score. But it's a lousy term because it sounds like it is.