#discourse discourse

So, I've been getting a bit of flack for some of my posts (what else is new?) that I think have been misinterpreted where I essentially said that I think that the real issues that affect plural systems, particularly major political powers that will make acceptance for any marginalized communities difficult, need to be playing in the back of your mind when you are making syscourse posts.

I think what this was interpreted as was me saying that it's morally wrong to partake in syscourse or similar discourse while there are worse things happening in the world.

"How dare you argue about this thing that doesn't matter on the internet while we are losing our rights?"

My actual point that I want to make is more about perspective and the dangers of losing it. The dangers of getting so lost in the escapism of online discourse to the point where you are treating your opponents as if they are the worst thing in the world, and pretending the actual threats don't exist.

Political insulation... Building walls to separate you from external enemies...

The outside world sucks sometimes. There are people out there who are trying to take your rights away. People who will bully you and abuse you for what you are. You want to get away. So you join communities that can give you that escape you are looking for.

And those communities are great! Within them, you don't have to worry about being judged for being you. The people around you are just like you. You have built a tiny little empire of those who most share your beliefs and viewpoints, protected by walls to keep outsiders at bay.

In theory, this should be great.

But wait! There are some people in this insulated empire you've built that don't think exactly like you do. Maybe they share a lot of the same views and interests and goals for society at large, but they are still different.

And that needs to change. You need your little isolated empire to be perfect.

So discourse begins within the community.

Discourse, to be clear, is not an inherently bad thing. You need discourse to improve your community and make it the best that it can be.

The danger comes in...

When perspective is lost...

As you discourse within your insulated empire, people separate into their given sides. Debates turn into arguments which turn into vendettas and grudges and wars and harassment campaigns. And at some point along the way, your enemies that you have walled yourself off from are forgotten while you are in this little world of discourse.

You now treat the discourse as if it is something that exists with an a vacuum.

Which means that those people who share mostly the same views as you are suddenly the absolute worst threats imaginable and need to be destroyed at any cost.

And while you allow yourself to forget the real enemy, you can make these people in your insulated empire into scapegoats for oppression that you experience in real life too.

It's not the fault of singlet-normativism and sanism that plural systems aren't taken seriously. It's the fault of all of those endogenic systems and tulpas!

You being made fun of for having a name that is from another culture? That's not because there are hundreds of millions of people in groups based on xenophobia and hate who spread that to their children. No. That's because of the 0.001% who identify as transracial and "appropriate" your identity.

Regardless of somebody's view on transIDs, I don't think it should be acceptable to treat transID people as being on the same level as those who are actively causing and promoting oppression. And yet more often than not, I see them treated worse.

Queer discourse in particular is rife with exclusionism that often results in bullying and harassing of other queer people for being the wrong type of queer or having the wrong opinions on queerness.

And the same goes for other discourse topics, from syscourse to shipcourse.

Discourse that is largely just small matters of opinions are escalated into major conflicts, and disagreements turn to hate.

Let me just talk about one of the most infuriating examples.

Rebecca Sugar

Rebecca Sugar is perhaps one of the single greatest queer heroes of our generation.

A non-binary animator and showrunner who brought queer representation to children across the world, normalizing queer relationships for children with a show that destroyed gender norms and featured the first major gay wedding on children's television.

And she did most of this during the first Trump administration while battling against corporate executives who wanted to shut her down.

And yet... This wasn't good enough for some people. Her show drew criticism from these politically insulated communities that objected to some of the themes.

In particular, the focus on redemption of the villains left some fans feeling like she was defending the fascist intergalactic Empire or that they got let off too easy for their crimes. These fans felt like you can't defeat fascism by simply holding hands and forgiving each other.

And personally, I don't think that is necessarily an unfair criticism of the media. I myself have been very critical of major Democrats for trying too hard to get along with the other side, and I think that you could make the argument that a show like Steven Universe reinforces a strategy for dealing with fascism that will prove counterproductive, and that real fascists will take advantage of.

It would be silly of me to say that how she handled it should be immune from reasonable good faith literary criticism.

But Rebecca Sugar did not receive reasonable literary criticism. She received harassment and an endless stream of hate from people within these insulated queer communities. She, a Jewish woman, received accusations of being a Nazi simply for promoting pacifistic values.

And I will reiterate again, Rebecca Sugar, even if you don't like 100% of the themes of her show, is still a hero for the queer community who has done far more to spread queer acceptance then any one of her critics will ever do!

We cannot pretend like discourse takes place in its own world

No discourse exists in a vacuum.

And while it is great to be able to escape from outside politics, we can't afford to forget it either. We can't hide behind a wall and just wage civil wars against each other with no concern of the consequences.

Again, this is not to say that you should not engage in discourse. Discourse has an important place in any community.

But you also have to maintain perspective.

You have to be willing to take an honest look at the things that you are getting angry at with a larger perspective of the world and the political climate and ask yourself if this insulated discourse that seems so terrible to you actually matters that much.

And if you find yourself in a position where you are angrier at groups of people who are just trying to exist as themselves, or that one discourser who just gets under your skin, than you are at actual oppressors... Maybe you've lost your perspective somewhere along the way and it's not actually that big of a deal.🤷‍♀️

Consider the following obviously wrong reasoning from generalization. Do all squares have four sides of equal length? Well, we know the square is merely a particular case of a rectangle, and a rectangle doesn't need to have all four sides of equal length, so clearly the answer is no. Or this faulty specification. Are all quadrangles composed of right angles? Well, a rectangle is a quadrangle, and a rectangle is composed of right angles, so the answer is yes.

In their simple form these are invalid syllogisms. But once we're talking about a broader conversation, one that isn't mathematically precise, I don't think it makes sense to think of it as a failure of syllogism anymore. Induction and abduction aren't logically airtight either, it makes sense to consider the possibility that a claim that isn't logically guaranteed is still valid. The problem is not that of believing that generalization or specification is possible, of course, they're just doing it wrong.

I think the best way to think about generalization and specification is as a special kind of conditional clause. Everything that falls under a generalization, everything that is derived from it, is only as reliable as the generalization is true and relevant. If a specification is invalid, the entire argument derived from it should be annulled. If the conclusions we're drawing from a generalization are based in things that are true of the general case but not true in what is being discussed, then the conclusion is nonsense.

One important facet is that anyone staunchly on one side is - whether purposely or not - grossly oversimplifying the issue.

Why? For one, things are more inflammatory that way. They spread easier and lend themselves better to moralizing. They're easier to understand. They don't require serious thought or critical thinking; they can just be treated as an absolute moral principle. The problem is this destroys nuance.

Every complex issue has nuance. Extremes are rarely correct. Nuance requires a higher level of understanding of an issue, but it's important nonetheless.

Let's take pro- and anti-shipping as an example. The extremes here are "it doesn't matter because it's just fiction" and "if you're proshipping you support abuse" - neither of which are healthy! They spread virulently and facilitate arguments. They're both hard and fast, and allow for little to no wiggle room based on the particulars of a given situation.

What might nuance look like here? Maybe it would be "fiction does affect reality and how people view it, and some viewpoints are toxic in fandom spaces. That said, fiction needs to be able to tackle serious topics, whether fanmade or not, as part of what makes us human. We shouldn't rid fiction of what makes it multilayered and interesting in our haste to root out content we find unpleasant, but there are some subjects that must be handled incredibly carefully or not at all. However, at the same time, I'm able to recognize that anger directed towards the other side or people who create things I disagree with is not and will never be constructive."

That's a lot longer, isn't it? That's because a nuanced view on any given issue isn't and should not be able to be summed up quickly. We must allow for complexities. On complicated subjects, our opinions should take time to explain and have taken time to think about.

People on here will constantly tell you that they're right, no ifs or buts about it. By doing so, they seek to rid you of your own critical thinking and instead recruit for their viewpoint, shutting down important dialogue entirely. Strangers on the internet are not, and will never be, a good source for your own morality. Be informed by the facts they present, but never take anything else without a healthy heaping of salt.

It is your task to determine what you believe is morally sound on a given issue. This requires a good deal of thought and reflection in order to form an opinion with true nuance, and this is the best way to develop your own moral compass and a better understanding of the world. Your opinions should be your own and come from a place of your own wisdom and compassion. You can't grow as a human otherwise.

Ruins the whole thing. Like an ice cream sundae topped with a pinched off dog doo.

And you see that kind of behavior, and know that their parents or grandparents or someone else who should have treated them better taught it by example. I always feel sorry for them, because they’ve probably been manipulated like that their whole life.

if you think people should have to be nice to deserve human rights...ur wrong. asshole queer people get rights too. PoC who say the most horrible nonsense get rights. mentally  ill people who will never contribute meaningfully to society get rights. every. single. human. person. gets human rights. 

Yeah, I...

I think part of that is just the tenor of the fandom as much as of the books themselves? Like, there’s a lot of work on Tumblr that does into humanizing Ron’s struggles, and that’s a really good thing and I love it. I wish Hermione got more of the same treatment.

I think Hermione’s insecurities less clearly communicated in the books, as much as anything, because JKR expected it to be... obvious? People complain about Hermione being an author-insert, which is an odd way to react to an author saying they put a lot of themselves into a character. (Don’t we all put a lot of ourselves into all our characters?) But I think that as much as that, Hermione is in many ways a reader insert. Like, if you’re a girl in your early teens who’s reading a series of 700-page fantasy novels, what are the chances that you identify with being socially awkward, intelligent, and not having a lot of friends? (Hmm...) Of course Hermione feels alienated from her peers. Of course she feels pressure to perform at a level commensurate with her Gifted (tm) status. Of course she sometimes sees other girls’ easy embrace of traditional femininity as implying there’s something wrong with her, of course she’s uncomfortable feeling romantic attraction to one of her guy-friends, of course she’s afraid that her friends don’t actually like her but keep her around because they need her. I can easily imagine JKR assuming that the average Harry Potter reader wouldn’t need that laid out for them explicitly... 

Also, I hate to be that person, but it really wasn’t strictly relevant to Harry’s journey. Part of the reason we see so much of Ron’s inner life laid bare is that one of the themes was that Harry and Ron each has what the other wants most, and Harry learning to see Ron’s point of view in that was important to Harry’s growth as a character. Whereas Hermione’s insecurities don’t really bear on Harry’s personal growth--she’s her own person, and that’s part of the reason that (in a Harry-centered narrative) she ends up as a bit of a cipher. I think books in which Hermione’s humanity was as important as Ron’s would have been better, but here we are.