Are ethnic jokes inherently wrong, racist, or offensive?

[Simon Paynton]

Here’s a very interesting recent article by Helen Pluckrose, comparing liberalism and “critical social justice theory”.

… liberalism is not a political position. It is a set of values that seeks to defend every person’s freedom (individualism), tolerate and even appreciate difference (pluralism) and recognise and value our shared humanity and see in it a moral responsibility to ensure that the same rights, freedoms, and responsibilities belong to everybody (universalism.)

[Simon Paynton]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

We can ask ourselves if an “impartial observer” would approve of our actions and would empathize with our emotional responses to said actions.

That’s an interesting idea.  It’s like the objective voice of the group: a representative of group norms.

But if we tell people to pull up their socks and become responsible for themselves while complaining that some members of our society should not have the same rights as us or that Justice should not be afforded to them as it is to others, then you are reneging on your duty to other members of your society.

Yes, but if someone refers to me as “she”, they’re not going to be prosecuted.  JP has never said that transgender people shouldn’t have their due human rights.  He’s questioned some modern orthodoxy, on the grounds that he sees it as authoritarian.  As I’ve said, I think it was a mistake to choose this target, keep going on about it, etc.

 

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

What JP did was to take an inflammatory position on the C-16 Bill.  He met with Trans students and suggested that their activism was going to turn things ugly. He said there were some awful people lurking in the shadows and then compared such people on the “radical left to the Nazis”.

The tone was one of condescension in a “Oh, where will this political correctness all end”.   He called them “irrational social justice warriors”. This is a common mode of attack by those that fear change, i.e., conservatives.

He deliberately misread the C16-Bill. I say “deliberately” because he is an intellectual and would not accidentally arrive at the position he took. “If they fine me, I won’t pay it. If they put me in jail, I’ll go on a hunger strike”. Really? How brave of him. These words were used to generate attention. Would he organize a campaign or a protest march? No. This is because his YouTube channel was now getting thousands of views per hour and he was making an extra $80K a month from views, I suspect 80% were cisgender males who feel so alienated by those pesky postmodern Marxists.

[—]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Fellow Unbelievers, Am I the only one in the world who responds to Jordan Peterson with “Meh?” Everybody is either: “He’s like a modern-day Amos, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist rolled into one!” or “He’s the shit I scraped off my bicycle tires after the Critical Mass ride through CHAZ/CHOP!”

Peterson himself? Sure. Heck, I wish him well on the self-help thing which people say has helped them.

It’s more the social phenomena around him. It’s like you’re a parent to a new born. Tired and haven’t slept much. Baby’s had ear aches and been crying. Finally, middle of the night, your child goes to sleep and you think “I can get some rest,” but that’s the very moment your neighbour decides it’s time to blast the music and turn it up to eleven. And your other neighbours? Instead of telling them to turn it down or at least saying nothing, they turn it into a bloody block party. And the music is shit.

Except, it’s not crying baby. It’s the legal recognition of your human rights.

Yes, he, like anyone else, has a right to free expression and forced expression is as dangerous to free expression as supressed expression. As often as I encounter–and sometimes engage in–accidental mis-gendering (it’s easy to do with babies and toddlers,) I would never want that to be considered something worth One Penny’s fine or one minute’s incarceration.

There isn’t a fine or incarceration for misgendering. It wasn’t on the table for consideration. Not here at least.

 Jordan Peterson as The Red Skull? That’s going a bit far.

It’s a graphic novel. Of course it’s going a bit far.

[—]

Simon Paynton wrote:

He’s questioned some modern orthodoxy, on the grounds that he sees it as authoritarian.  As I’ve said, I think it was a mistake to choose this target, keep going on about it, etc.

To me that’s a bit like watching someone someone drive their truck into a crowd of people and saying ‘It’s a shame they were driving a truck; a compact would have done less harm.’ True, but also not driving your vehicle into public might be optimal.

He engaged in the politics of alienation and division. It’s a disingenuous ploy. It is not at all unique to him, neither is it unique to any part of the political spectrum, but it is what he did. You can’t really swap out transgender people with some other variable and redeem the behaviour. Even flipping the script to go tit-for-tat isn’t good. It’s a downward spiral.

[jakelafort]

I wonder whether JP is compromised in spending years to reconcile his religious views with his views of reality. Instead of having the integrity to embrace apostasy with its attendant honesty and sense of liberation he spawned another fantasy world. Truth did not serve him and he does not serve the truth. Once having opened Pandora’s box of BS he is perhaps more calculating, vicious and self-serving.

I had a problem as a new attorney with lying. It just did not feel right to me. I would not take a case that i found reprehensible. On the other hand there are many attorneys who are heartless mercenaries. Politicians fall into that same vein except probably to a greater degree.

Speculating here but i suspect that once a person sells out they are never the same. There is a willingness to engage in shameful and self-serving behavior regardless of the consequences.

[Simon Paynton]

I think JP’s original mission was sound: promoting intellectual freedom and diversity.  Helen Pluckrose’s article is probably a better way to go about it.

[—]

Simon Paynton wrote:

I think JP’s original mission was sound: promoting intellectual freedom and diversity.

When would that have been?

[Simon Paynton]

Here’s one:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10277617-without-free-speech-there-is-no-true-thought

 

[—]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Helen Pluckrose’s article is probably a better way to go about it.

While I can’t say I align much with the author’s position, certainly it is better.

[—]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Here’s one: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10277617-without-free-speech-there-is-no-true-thought

Unfortunately, my book budget is going to other things. Maybe the library will have a copy. I think I’m more interested in how Stephen Fry weighs in. In the Munk Debate which seems to be related to this, I know he stood on the same side as Peterson, but I don’t seem to recall that much of the debate. Actually, I don’t recall any of it, save for Fry’s opening statements which I just rewatched now.

[Simon Paynton]

Kristina wrote:

While I can’t say I align much with the author’s position, certainly it is better.

Do you not find identity politics divisive?  I do.  To me, it looks like a recipe for causing division and trouble, for people who enjoy that kind of thing for its own sake.  If it really isn’t – then it gets hijacked by those people.

[Davis]

Do you not find identity politics divisive?  I do.

You are overgeneralising again. Identity politics are unconstructively divisive when they are being pointlessly divisive. Not when they aren’t. You are likely focusing on examples which you have read in the media or on social media which seem excessive. It’s like a camera focusing on ten violent activists at a protest when there are 10,000 people peacefully marching. It seems like you are wilfully blind to the other 10,000 people.

Having said all of this…marginalised people are not the ones who created the original division. If visible minorities, LGTBQ+ people and other marginalised groups were simply left alone, didn’t face discrimination and fewer opportunities and weren’t the object of scorn and insults then so called “divisive” identity politics wouldn’t be necessary in the first place. Complaining that people engage in “divisive” identity politics is sort of a form of victim blaming. “Even though you are the subject of unfair discrimination and hate…I don’t think you should should help develop a political agenda that puts enabling or helping your race, gender or identity at the centre (to make life more tolerable for you) reasonable. That is divisive”.

That kind of position is super fucking ridiculous Simon. The divisiveness will go away when marginalised people can live their lives in equity and peace. Marginalised people doing what it takes to achieve this is only unreasonable when their tactics become highly toxic. And such behaviour represents a tiny minority of identity politics in general. You, perhaps under the influence of people like JP, are highly highly highly exaggerating their role (and even influence). It is easy to do this when you don’t face the challenges marginalised people do and have nothing to lose in this debate. By your logic…the black civil rights movement in the 20th century (including overcoming segregation laws and blatant discrimination) would have been bad “divisive” identity politics.

In effect, your resistance isn’t all that different to people who called African American rights activists in the 20th century “the greatest threat to American society” at the time. Were they Simon?

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Davis.
• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Davis.
• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Davis.

[—]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Kristina wrote:

While I can’t say I align much with the author’s position, certainly it is better.

Do you not find identity politics divisive? I do. To me, it looks like a recipe for causing division and trouble, for people who enjoy that kind of thing for its own sake. If it really isn’t – then it gets hijacked by those people.

The division started before ‘identity politics’. Maybe it feels like it started after for so many because they find it unpleasant to hear about it so often now. This is not to suggest I agree with all modus operandi for current social/ political movements, but to me it’s like someone getting bit by a dog after stepping on its tail every day. It’s not good for dogs to bite people, but maybe I’m more likely to question why that person seems to be incapable of watching where they are walking.

Some of the things in the article are defined in strange ways. For example, saying heteronormativity is “assuming most people are heterosexual” is incomplete to the point of being incorrect. Most people are heterosexual (unless a shit ton of people are lying, and we have little reason to believe that many people are closeted).

The issue is the assumption of heterosexuality as the default setting, especially when it is unnecessary. For example, asking a man if he has a wife instead of, perhaps, asking if he is married. Or creating a form for student admissions that asks the names of the mother and father instead of the names of parent(s)/ guardian(s). Those are fairly innocuous examples, but hopefully it at least illustrates that the issue isn’t the assumption that most people are heterosexual (or other assumptions about family structure in the latter).

That’s one example where she and I don’t align. In fairness, she’s talking about complex things at a very broad, so there is no way she can be perfectly accurate and in depth, but there is a difference between generalization/ brevity and biased portrayal.

(N.B. Quotation marks below aren’t being used sarcastically or dismissively. These terms just aren’t part of my lexicon and likely won’t be incorporated at this point in time).

There are a number more spots where I don’t think her characterizations of ‘critical social justice’ are accurate. And while there are some places where I may be more aligned on balance with ‘liberal social justice’, I’d say there are also places where it’s been excellent at standing still, and probably a number of cases where it retroactively accepted progress after actions that would have at one point been ‘critical social justice’ had taken effect. Though truth be told, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as all that.

[—]

Oh, I had my nota bene regarding quotation marks below forgetting I had used them earlier around ‘identity politics’. This is a term I am highly unlikely to ever adopt. It’s not that it has no valid use. It just seems to be misapplied so often. I typically see people use it to suggest that identity is the tail wagging the dog. But in many cases people are responding to actual harm or inequality, and identity largely comes into focus because identity is what has been targeted, excluded, or otherwise discriminated against.

I do think that sense of harm and injustice can over-fire. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. In my formative years, bigotry and ridicule toward queer people was quite open. Heck, I participated at times. I do think that likely has had an impact on how I see and experience the world even today. So even as things improve—and despite vocal backlash from certain group, I do believe Canada has greatly improved wrt LGBTQ+ rights and equality—it’s difficult not to always retain a certain level of caution and skepticism beyond the norm. But that doesn’t equate to identity politics.

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