So this One Time, at Hate Camp…
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day: Being the enemy of your enemy doesn’t make you your friend.
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Anybody notice how the partisans of ACM and Vox were so careful to avoid one another? As far as I know, they didn’t even acknowledge each other’s existence in their own playpens, let alone here.
Let’s begin with ACM. The idea is that I represent misogyny in my books, not because I’m critical of it, but because I like it. The evidence for this claim seems to boil down to the fact that I am male who represents misogynistic cultures in his books. Any argument I raise to the contrary is labelled ‘mansplaining’ (with little, if any regard to what Sady Doyle means by the term). I can’t help but think my sin is really one of calling ACM out.
She has to be a fraud, doesn’t she?
I introduce her to Theo Beale, the prolific and well known Vox Day, someone who vigourously promotes views like this, who is in fact the very antagonist she wants me to be (or at this point, needs) and still, she only has eyes for me.
The question is why this is the case. Why would ACM and Vox so studiously avoid each other?
This got me thinking about trolls, and how they’re exclusively interested in earnest interlocutors. One of the things that has always puzzled me about this fracas is the way the Hate Camp is so bent on perceptions of my ‘emotional distress,’ the idea that they are ‘getting to me,’ or causing me real emotional anguish. And I realized, these are people who want to hurt people they deem ‘immoral.’ They want, quite simply, someone to punish – or a ‘punching bag,’ as ACM has it.
Now this is more than a little troubling. But it does explain why they have no patience for nuance or debate. It’s hard to hurt people when their guilt is aired as an open question. If they’re innocent, then you being so bent on hurting them says some pretty nasty things about you.
Think about it. ACM is utterly incapable of acknowledging that she has made any mistakes, as are any of the partisans of the Hate Camp. Why? Because the violence of their condemnations entail (for most people) emotional distress. Acknowledging they could be mistaken would be tantamount to acknowledging that they could be hurting innocent people. Their careers. Their reputations. Their emotional well-being.
Any reference to lists like this is bound to make the Hate Camp itch, bound to make them come back to the well time and again. Given what we know about moral outrage and human cognition, it would be nothing short of a miracle if ACM hasn’t made more mistakes than otherwise. So the question I would pose to her is simply, ‘Given that you’re just as error prone as the rest of us, how many innocent people do you think you have harmed with your insults and accusations?’
Odds are, you won’t be seeing an answer to that question. But who knows? Maybe she has ‘super-intelligence’ like Vox!
Passing moral judgement on a person, especially in public, is a very serious thing. If you’re wrong, then you’re the bad guy. So you quite simply have to be right. If you don’t have the argumentative tools to silence dissent, you go on a hate-mongering campaign—you try to inflict even more harm, scare people, friend or foe, into minding you. If you do have the argumentative tools, you begin gaming every ambiguity you can, and cherry-picking like there is no tomorrow.
You just gotta be right! Otherwise, you just fucked up huge…
Which is why, I humbly submit, that TPB has become that pesky chicken bone the Hate Camp just can’t seem to swallow. Vox feels it. So does ACM. That’s why they both came back. The more names they call me, the more they make my point. I mean, really, my argument against them boils down to ‘How do you know?’ I could be twice as full of shit as they are, three times – more! – and still my point stands. I could bite all their bullets: “Yes, ACM, I’m a feces-clad-serial-masturbator…” “Yes, Vox, I’m pseudo-intellectual retard with homosexual tendencies…”
“But I was, um, like just wondering, given, you know, that you say such hateful stuff and all, um, How can you be so sure?”
Moral certainty is required to punish people.
Which begs the question: why not punish Vox? Why not attack someone who pretty much exemplifies all the things they claim to hate? At least in his case they don’t run the risk of becoming the bad guy!
Well, because, quite simply, he can’t be punished…
And why is that? Because, in a strange sense, he’s one of them. He too belongs to the Hate Camp, albeit the one that hates them.
It’s like two rabid dogs, bent on spreading their particular brand of hate-rabies… They would be wasting their time on each other, and they both know it.
Stop for a second. Try to imagine a debate between the two…
[Sorry… had to take… a short break… to recover my wind…]
Honest debates are the ones where you trade cockpits, fly each other’s hopes and ideas around for a while. The only way to do this is set aside your hate, and to acknowledge from the outset that you could be wrong. But these guys aren’t interested in trading cockpits, they just want to break in, either pilot you to some hostile nation, or fly you straight into the ground.
Hate is a one way emotion. It locks doors to better kick other doors in. Vox and ACM don’t bother with each other because they know all about the dead bolts. They implicitly recognize that they have no interest whatsoever in openly discussing or debating anything whatsoever…
This is Hate Camp for real, people. No victims, no fun.
Three Pound Brain 
No, they implcitly understand there’s no point debating with each other. That’s quite a different thing.
How did they arrive at this mutual understanding?
ACM’s interested in calling out those who make claims to feminist or progressive values — like you — because they’re the ones who require resources to interrogate. What does she get out of interrogating Vox, who is a cartoon caricature of misogyny and far-right paranoia? It doesn’t take any talent or careful reading to understand that Vox has misogynistic views, and it doesn’t take much exposure to know he’ll never change them — and, very likely, never persuade anyone of sound mind to join him.
ACM’s responsive to criticism – she’s been called out for the use of homophobic language and she promptly apologized and stopped using the term in question.
I think you’re right about the seductive appeal of moral outrage and certainty, but as someone well-versed in cognitive biases, your counter-arguments aren’t doing anything to settle my misgivings about the way you handle gender and rape. In particular:
“I mean, really, my argument against them boils down to ‘How do you know?’”
Misogyny is not a mark of Cain that can be located and revealed. It’s not simply present or absent as a binary. Unless you’re a cartoon villain like Vox, misogyny creeps into behavior and attitudes through the same pathways of post-hoc rationalization you’re so concerned with dissecting.
People don’t have to KNOW with 100% confidence that you are a misogynist to find misogynistic readings of your text. There is no easy disconfirmation that you can use to escape these accusations; all you can do is ‘do worse’ or ‘do better’. Your criterion question seems to predicate a black/white binary view of misogyny – which, ironically, nicely fits the old schema model we’ve discarded so thoroughly in cog psych in favor of prototypes.
And your claims here, on this blog, that you write for a male reader, that you believe the great challenge to modern feminism is that women act slutty to please men, that it is deceptive to write a female character with agency because that would disrupt your mission to write a text so perfectly and indistinguishably mimetic of misogyny that it somehow becomes a critique of it, read to me as post-hoc rationalization. You make the mistake of recruiting dubiously scientific evo-psych just-so stories, which is a hallmark of those working backward from the present state to build a foundational, explanatory past.
I think that you’re gaming your own interpretations of your work to avoid self-confrontation. You ask ‘how do you know?’ – and then hammer the point that we constantly deceive ourselves – and then describe how you try to write unchallenged misogyny in order to critique it. Do you see the danger there?
Don’t you think you’re hanging yourself with your own rope here? When your mimicry of misogyny is so impossible to distinguish from the real thing that even those most experienced with misogyny can’t tell the difference, don’t you feel like you may have erred?
As for your concerns with ACM’s name-calling: do you believe for even one moment that people would read her blog if she were polite? Would you have ever entered into this discussion? Maybe I’m being unkind, but I don’t think you would have given her a passing thought. Both you and Watts have responded to her by trying to suggest she is irrational, emotional, animalistic — there’s an ignomious history to this strategy.
Cognitive psychology and feminism are not players in a zero-sum game. If you’re correct about cognitive biases (and I think you are), that doesn’t make ACM wrong about misogyny in your writing (and I think she isn’t).
I guess I’ll add, in specific dialogue with your points:
If you want to write a scene that creates discomfort by juxtaposing prurience with revulsion, why is it necessary to throw the female character and the female reader under the bus? Aren’t there other equally effective tactics you can employ – tapping fears of homosexuality, for instance, or castration, or…?
“Don’t you think you’re hanging yourself with your own rope here? When your mimicry of misogyny is so impossible to distinguish from the real thing that even those most experienced with misogyny can’t tell the difference, don’t you feel like you may have erred?”
There’s two points here:
1. I’m relatively sure Scott’s admitted he may have erred.
2. Whether or not he made a mistake in his portrayal, he’s made his *goal* quite clear. In light of the goal, the charge that Scott is personally a misogynist is pretty off-base.
“As for your concerns with ACM’s name-calling: do you believe for even one moment that people would read her blog if she were polite?”
Yes? I would have kept reading her blog if she was even a little bit pleasant to interact with.
It doesn’t take any talent or careful reading to understand that Vox has misogynistic views, and it doesn’t take much exposure to know he’ll never change them
Some people don’t even know about Vox. Why just put effort into ‘careful’ reading, when just a ‘and hey, this other dude is a mysogynist as well’ would help readers know?
Misogyny is not a mark of Cain that can be located and revealed.
Then why is ACM just calling ‘MYSOGYNY’ as if she has located and revealed it?
People don’t have to KNOW with 100% confidence that you are a misogynist to find misogynistic readings of your text. There is no easy disconfirmation that you can use to escape these accusations;
And there is no 100% way to CONFIRM it either.
How about dismantling your prefered sides ability to 100% confirm these things, as well as dismantling the other sides ability to disconfirm?
Otherwise just state that actually while you have this non binary thinking in terms of disconfirmation, in terms of confirmation it is indeed binary.
read to me as post-hoc rationalization.
Reads to you. Do you have a method of confirming or disconfirming this? Or is it that every time the first thing you think also also 100% happens to be true?
If you think there is no real way of testing and so, when what you care about is under threat, you’ve taken the conservative bet that it is pos-hoc, just say so.
I think that you’re gaming your own interpretations of your work to avoid self-confrontation. You ask ‘how do you know?’ – and then hammer the point that we constantly deceive ourselves – and then describe how you try to write unchallenged misogyny in order to critique it. Do you see the danger there?
Do you see the danger on both sides? That both parties skate on thin ice?
If so, then there’s some ground to talk.
If not, your just saying only one side can be wrong.
Don’t you think you’re hanging yourself with your own rope here? When your mimicry of misogyny is so impossible to distinguish from the real thing
That’s part of the issue – were talking about ink on paper. How does that mimic someone in real life punching a woman in the face?
If you want to talk about texts encouraging such shit behaviour, or even seeding the idea, we can talk on that.
But how does a text mimic the RL physical brutality of mysogyny? It doesn’t – it’s ink on paper. To say the book somehow mimics it is to reduce the seriousness of that physical harm.
Please, talk only on whether a text can encourage real life behaviour. Otherwise this mimicry argument is delusional and reduces the seriousness of the issue.
As for your concerns with ACM’s name-calling: do you believe for even one moment that people would read her blog if she were polite?
If she’s completely empty of content without the name calling, then say that.
I would charitably imagine her readers would stay – are you saying all her commentators stay simply for the name calling? Would you stop reading her if there was no name calling?
Honestly, you don’t seem to think much of her blog if the name calling is the only real feature worth reader it for?
Would you have ever entered into this discussion? Maybe I’m being unkind, but I don’t think you would have given her a passing thought.
Nah, Scott posts about all sorts of newspaper articles as well (look through the archive) that have no name calling. I’d even guess he can’t help but engage arguments.
Anyway, do you have some test for if he would. It’s a bit purile of both of us to just assume were right.
tapping fears of homosexuality
Perhaps have some character (a main one, not a side one), like a bad ass barbarian, who is in denial of his homosexuality for decades and tries to be the most violent of men to compensate for his fear of it? Sounds cool!
If you’re correct about cognitive biases (and I think you are), that doesn’t make ACM wrong about misogyny in your writing (and I think she isn’t).
What does it make her? Are you just going to assume ‘right’?
This sort of rationale could go on forever. Seth, are you prepared to admit that your own cognitive biases may be infiltrating your reading of Scott’s work? Am I prepared to admit that MY cognitive biases are infiltrating both my reading of Scott’s work and my reading of your comments on Scott’s work?
We are literally trapped inside the thing we are arguing about, and so an unbiased look at specific instances (or lack thereof) is impossible. We are ALL biased. We are all biased in our perception of other people’s biases. We are all biased in our perception of other people’s perception of our biases.
It never ends. If we can admit that, it’s at least a start. Personally, my perception is that Scott has admitted that. But that could just be my bias talking.
“Dead horse pâté?”
“No thanks, my good man, I’m watching my figure.” 😉
Scott, do you think ACM has any legitimate points about depictions of women/PoCs/LGBT persons in genre? Or more specifically, depictions of women in your books?
Because it seems like it would better to address those points – whether accepting or rebutting them – than to keep at this goal of attempting to discredit her. I think everyone’s staked their positions on what they feel about the Requires site.
You ask: “Scott, do you think ACM has any legitimate points about depictions of women/PoCs/LGBT persons in genre? Or more specifically, depictions of women in your books?”
I would think the answer to this is clear by now. Or, rather, the answer to the following question is clear: “Are there any legitimate points to make about depictions of women/PoCs/LGBT persons in genre? Or more specifically, depictions of women in your books?”
Of course! Now, it’s trickier, I think, to pinpoint just what the ‘point’ of ACM’s remarks are (‘shaming’ seems to belong on the list), but I’m not all that familiar with the bulk of what she’s written. Regardless, what Scott objects to vis-a-vis ACM is her tactics, not the legitimacy of questions “about depictions of women/PoCs/LGBT persons in genre” or of “depictions of women in [his] own books.” He keeps trying to make the case that, whatever it is ACM is trying to accomplish, she’s going about it all wrong. An at-least-implicit attitude I sense in many of her supporters (perhaps this is unfair — it’s just my own sense) is the view that taking issue with ACM in any way entails taking issue with the legitimacy of the issues her supporters see her as championing.
But there’s no necessary connection here.
I’m reminded of a scene from a great documentary called “The Century of the Self.” In the nineteen-teens, tobacco companies decided that they had to find a way to break down the societal stigma against women smoking. After all, the stigma was costing them half of their potential clientele. They ended up consulting with a Freudian who told them that, for women, cigarettes were like penises, i.e., they represented power. (Let’s all take a moment to roll our eyes at that. Okay, continuing…) So what the tobacco companies did was to link women-smoking-cigarettes with female-empowerment, which in the nineteen-teens meant women’s suffrage. They staged an event at a women’s-suffrage rally: a bunch of young starlets all ostentatiously, before a group of gathered reporters, took out cigarettes and lighted up in the name of a woman’s right to vote. The goal, which apparently worked, was to link women-smoking-cigarettes with women’s rights such that one could not oppose (or even call into question) the former without being seen as opposing the latter.
But, of course, these two things have nothing intrinsically to do with each other! Now, sure, you could say: “But women should be allowed to smoke just as much as men do!” Fair enough. But I speak for many nowadays when I say that smoking is bad. I think people should have a right to smoke, sure, but in general, one oughtn’t to smoke — men or women. Linking a good cause (women’s suffrage) with something bad (smoking cigarettes) is deeply unfortunate. It probably lay behind tens of thousands of women’s deaths.
The analogy here ought to be plain. You can support a good cause (feminism, etc.) while also criticizing something it has become associated with (in this case, ACM and her tactics).
I think people are seeing this as a sort of bait and switch. As in, a protracted tone argument and second guessing of her motives used to distract people from criticisms about the books.
Now, obviously there are people who feel like Moon has sacrificed validity for one reason or another -> Regardless, I don’t see people switching sides either way.
A far better use of pixels at this point, IMO, is to discuss what may have worked well as written in the books, what changes might have resulted in better cues as to the intended subtext, and to compare and contrast them with other works.
The problem, though, I think, is that ACM does not seem interested in fostering dialogue and rational discussion about Scott’s books. I think Scott has amply demonstrated his willingness to discuss these things, as well as his willingness to bite bullets as to the effectiveness of his execution.
So I guess I fail to see where the baiting or the switching has gone on here — if not on ACM’s part (“bait” being the promise of a review, the “switch” being to uninformed opinions, vitriol, and shaming tactics).
Well, I’m trying to guesstimate the opposition’s motives, but it seems to me that this protracted “I am not a misogynist!” campaign, conducted from here to Mamatas’s LJ to Valente’s blog, has been regarded by many as evidence supporting Moon’s original claim.
When your very defense is fodder for the prosecution, seems like a change in tactics is required.
Note that many people, from across the globe and coming from different genders/sexualities/races/religions, simply believe Moon has a right to her anger even if they don’t share in every aspect of it.
Personally I don’t think I have a right to say she can’t be angry at something even I’m not angry about it.
So it seems like attempting to question her posting style, her anger – whether performance or honest, and/or her motives is a losing game. I suppose we could start making “Team Moon” and “Team Bakker” shirts, but perhaps the following questions are more interesting:
1) What makes PoN, Neuropath, and AE problematic subversions where The Handmaid’s Tale and Lolita are lauded by many as successful ones?
2) Is the pornification of Western society a genuine problem? If so, how does one address it? Is it fair to connect all cosmetic concerns with a threat/obstacle to feminism?
3) Are there biological factors, such as some kind of “rape module”, which are obstacles to the goals of feminism? What solutions are being proposed in the works?
4) What SFF works do people find to be supportive of the goals of feminism? Which works detract from this goal, and with regard to the latter how might they improve?
Personally I don’t think I have a right to say she can’t be angry at something even I’m not angry about it.
What about those US soldiers photographed abusing Iraqi prisoners? Weren’t those soldiers angry? When we tell them to stop doing that, are we telling them to stop being angry?
On question #1, wasn’t the author of Lolita dragged over hot coals for quite some time, probably even to this day (although a large segment may now laud the work)?
Well, we’re entering that territory where the comments just go everywhere. Hopefully you’ll find this Roger.
“I don’t even know where to begin, since they won’t let me get a word out without shouting me down. It’s especially frustrating for me given my conviction that understanding best arises from dialogue, not from one party passively taking in what the other party thinks.”
This seems like a worthy topic for a post then. State what you think is happening, asking the opposition to state their perception of events. Quote conversations and explain where you felt the break down occurred, asking the other side to explain where they felt you took a wrong turn.
It’s a better tactic than anything that’s been tried here as of yet.
And if you want a calmer arena, to see what others think of at least part of this kerfuffle, check out Gender and Genre III on Westeros.
I’m not sure even that strategy would work, but it’s definitely worth a shot.
However, I don’t think I’m prepared to pursue it. Notice that none of my posts here have touched on any of this — that’s been on purpose. Yes, I’ve gotten sucked into the whirlpool on a few discussion boards, but already I have some cause to regret it. I mean, shit, I haven’t even put out a novel, and yet I’m pretty sure there are at least a few people out there in the SFF world who hate me! It’s depressing, frankly.
I do think these attempts at inter-ideological discourse are important and worth pursuing. I also hope one day to make some progress myself, to try to foster dialogue. But I’m not sure now’s the time, for me at least.
“I do think these attempts at inter-ideological discourse are important and worth pursuing. I also hope one day to make some progress myself, to try to foster dialogue. But I’m not sure now’s the time, for me at least.
I’ve found the meeting of minds of genre fans of differing opinion to largely be found on Westeros.
Saajan, are you saying there is no such thing as a troll? Or no such thing as a troll blogger? Okay, you don’t think ACM is. But your saying ‘touch on the legitmate points’ as if it’s rediculous for anyone to think someone else is a troll – as if that were impossible.
Check on Westeros, a few posters there think Bakker is a trolling for page views with these posts. Which goes back to my point, everyone has their positions decided on Moon. There’s a wide variety of opinions among readers and authors alike. And it all amounts to little and less.
I think the important subjects are real life sexism and misogyny and the challenges facing feminism, along with what depiction in fiction has to do with those topics. I certainly don’t think convincing the SFF community that ACM is evil is important, and even if I did this series of posts on TPB hasn’t done that in the slightest.
It’s like this weird idea that once ACM is seen as a troll we’ll….what? Get to the good stuff then? Scott mentions the essays he could write about what he meant to do in the books…hey, crazy thought, post of fucking essays Ese!
Jemisin has several posts exploring gender issues, Abraham has the Dog Project, Valente talks about responses to criticism varying with gender, Alex MacFarlane talks about passion and subversion in Le Guin, Netwon & Bullington talked about accepting criticism for depiction, the Vandermeers are going to edit the Feminist Speculative Anthology…
Heck, we’ve burned through a ton of posts on Westeros coming at this shit from all kinds of angles.
Is it just me or has everyone else found something interesting to talk about? I mean if TPB is supposed to be a Limbaugh-style rallying base for the tried and true fans that’s fine, maybe I didn’t get the memo…
…but given all the past talk about the importance of SFF as a meeting of the minds and TPB’s place in that dialogue it seems like a lot of the valuable discussion is happening elsewhere.
I agree that there are any number of important and worthwhile discussions that are not being pursued here in favor of the whole Vox/ACM Axis-of-Dogmatism thing. I also agree that a great many of those conversations would no doubt prove more fruitful (and certainly a helluva lot easier, and probably friendlier) than those taking place around these parts lately.
Even so, if you’re convinced, as Scott is (and as I am, for that matter), that dogmatic certainty is a real problem — a sort of meta-problem, in the sense that it underlies so many other, more specific problems, including “real life sexism and misogyny and the challenges facing feminism” — then who better to engage than people who are nothing if not dogmatic?
The goal, recall, was to try to approach extremists with an experimental mindset, as Scott put it; to try and find a way of getting through to them, of fostering some sort of dialogue, of trying to get people to call into question the things they take for granted, to think more critically, etc. Has it worked? Well, that’s hard to say. I think it quickly became evident (no big surprise!) that Scott was not going to change Vox’s or ACM’s mind about anything, nor the minds of their more extreme followers. But we can hope that, as a commentator here recently put it, it just might be that the discussion has had some positive impact on those following it, even if not on those engaged in it.
But who knows? Maybe this whole experiment has been an unmitigated failure. It all depends on how you want to measure it. But it seems to me that there can be no question that, at least here at the TPB, we’d like to do better. I know I find the whole thing — both on the Vox side and the ACM side — alternately frustrating and perplexing. I very much want to figure out how to do better. I want to know whether it’s possible to communicate through ideological walls or (ideally) to build bridges across them. It might be impossible, but it strikes me as worth the effort to try.
In other words, it strikes me as an “important subject,” a “valuable [if frustrating] discussion.”
Saajan,
Yeah, but if you want to offer advice to Scott but ignore taking into account his view that ACM is a troll, then the advice…doesn’t take that into account.
It’s like this weird idea that once ACM is seen as a troll we’ll….what? Get to the good stuff then?
Depends if she’s doing any harm. If not, you’ve got a good point.
If she is fucking up feminism somehow, say by driving men with a poor attitude into the arms of Vox who reinforces their poor attitude into a misogynitic one, well then that is a concern, right? It’s kind of like how the joker makes more villains, but you skipped out on taking him down early on because he didn’t seem important.
It’d be good if that wasn’t the case. It is just a guesstimate, after all.
…but given all the past talk about the importance of SFF as a meeting of the minds and TPB’s place in that dialogue it seems like a lot of the valuable discussion is happening elsewhere.
And if it wasn’t the case, good point.
But if it is the case, then its worse – yes, all the discussion is happening away from the people who are making things worse.
Again, it’s a guesstimate. I don’t invoke the old ‘Hey, it’s dangerous I tells yas, so yas have to believes me!’ rite. Though I do invoke the rite of ‘hey, it might be dangerous, so roll the idea around for awhile even if you end up dismissing it’
Hey, it’s Scott’s blog, if he wants continue wrecking trains that’s up to him. I doubt his detractors find his arguments anything more long-winded sophistry.
As to how this is long defense seen by the opposition, here’s a good window.
Appeals to reason don’t work if people don’t think you’re reasonable. Accusations of dogmatism don’t work if people see them as attempts to silence dissenting women.
If it’s so easy to dismantle the content of her arguments, then show us instead of telling us. She’s quoted enough of Scott’s work, quote her posts and show the flaws in reasoning. Roger, you’re a TPB guest blogger, this seems up your alley no?
I’m not sure ACM makes arguments. At least, I haven’t seen her make any arguments about Scott’s work, though maybe I missed something. It seems to me that she just points at stuff and mocks it. What can I say to that?
Vox at least pretends to be rational (though as we’ve seen, sooner or later he too ends up simply pointing and mocking). ACM, along with some defenders of her I’ve come across, seem to consider rational argument a form of misogyny — at least when it’s not used to univocally support everything they happen to believe. “This is not a debate, this is life!” is one comment I recall. Over and over again, I’ve encountered, as an immediate reaction to any attempt to engage them rationally, the response, “Shut up, you stupid misogynist pig!”
And I’m not even exaggerating! On the basis of virtually nothing, I’ve twice — nay, three times — been accused of misogyny by ACM supporters and more than twice been accused of being stupid. The first I take offense at, given the paucity (indeed, the nonexistence) of the evidence against me. The second I find fascinating, since I cannot recall anyone else, besides Vox and ACM supporters, concluding that I was stupid. Plenty of people have thought I’m wrong, of course, but not stupid. Why not? Because, well, I’m not stupid, not by any objective measure out there. But these people, well… if you don’t agree with them — if you simply ask them questions — then they’re very likely to call you an idiot. It’s… weird.
Anyway, I don’t know what to say to ACM and her ilk, honestly. I wish I did. I don’t even know where to begin, since they won’t let me get a word out without shouting me down. It’s especially frustrating for me given my conviction that understanding best arises from dialogue, not from one party passively taking in what the other party thinks.
Appeals to reason don’t work if people don’t think you’re reasonable.
She’s quoted enough of Scott’s work, quote her posts and show the flaws in reasoning.
That would require appealing to reason to do so.
The thing is, just because A doesn’t think B is reasonable, doesn’t mean A has a reason for it, it could be utterly knee jerk. How you’d determine which is which, I don’t have a good answer for right now. But it’s entirely possible.
Or just say if you think everyones always legitimate when they act as if someone else is unreasonable *shrug*
She’s a bully, Scott, and she’s targeted you because you let her. If she targeted Vox, she’d likely ellicit less than a chuckle, and she knows it, so what would be the point? You, on the other hand, seem to have made her the centrepiece of your online persona, and she LOVES IT.
“Don’t you think you’re hanging yourself with your own rope here? When your mimicry of misogyny is so impossible to distinguish from the real thing that even those most experienced with misogyny can’t tell the difference, don’t you feel like you may have erred?”
Though I agree with much of what you say, I am having trouble swallowing this. There are two reasons. First, I thought he admitted (many times) that he may have erred. Even if we ignore those admissions, or consider them disingenuous, I still don’t understand how misogyny in a novel can be impossible to distinguish from the real thing. I feel that very few readers have encountered a rape scene in one of these books and thought, “god, she SO deserved that.”
I mean, where is the textual evidence that these books not only depict, but promote misogyny? At what point does the rapist become a sympathetic character?
I’m specifically concerned with three points:
1) Women rapists and rape victims are exposed and eroticized; men in either position never are
2) Women rapists and rape victims are damaged or destroyed; male victims retain control and agency. (This is particularly egregious in Neuropath.)
3) Women who use sex tactically generally fail or are constrained to this single tool; men who use sex tactically often succeed and are rarely punished for it
And I guess I’d add a fourth:
4) Women characters are not treated as subjects with agency even in the bounds permitted by their societies; the narrative does not empathize with them as it does with the men, and they are defined by relationships to men above and beyond what I think can be considered psychologically realistic even in a deeply patriarchal society,.
And Bakker bit the bullet. He concedes many of those points (and acknowledged that they trouble him), but it still fails to make HIM sexist. It makes Earwa sexist. In a world that is literally supernaturally ruled by something out of a Vox Day wetdream, would you really expect any different?
To reiterate what Scott has already said: why should he write comfortable fiction? Why should his fantasy novel that takes place in a world far removed from out modern one conform to contemporary expectations and sensibilities?
I should add that some of your criticisms may be more valid when considering Neuropath, although the rules of morality in THAT world are also bent with regards to our modern sensibilities, albeit in the opposite direction.
I’m not really concerned with whether or not Bakker is sexist, because all I interact with is his fiction. The strongest allegation I would make towards him personally is ‘a producer of fiction dragged down by misogyny.’
Seth – do you think it’s reasonable to make an extreme portrayal of a situation, in order to make an effective critique of that situation?
I can see how you might think that the portrayed misogyny makes his work ‘worse’. I also think you are wrong to believe so, but at this point we’re getting into aesthetic judgements, and de gustibus non est disputandum…
That did make your position more clear.
It’s interesting how different readers perform vastly different readings of the same work. I, for example, took the fact that women rapists/victims are exposed and eroticized to be a kind of commentary on or criticism of the reader’s inherent voyeurism. Its the moment when Freddy Krueger pauses to smile and wink at the camera before he commits a murder. To a certain extent, I think readers of a fantasy novel expect an erotic sex scene. And they get it, but it makes them uncomfortable and, hopefully, makes them question their assumptions about genre, about reading, and maybe even about sex.
I also don’t read control and agency into ANYONE in the novel – except Kellhus. I think the men in the novel often project confidence. Many of them think that they are in control, but I feel it’s pretty plain that they are not. Also, I think Mimara’s vision of Galian’s tormented soul suggests he is the one who is ultimately destroyed. And she makes the CHOICE to forgive him, whereas he seems driven by a kind of animal desire – too dumb, desperate or unhinged to stop himself.
Also:
“Women characters are not treated as subjects with agency even in the bounds permitted by their societies; the narrative does not empathize with them as it does with the men, and they are defined by relationships to men above and beyond what I think can be considered psychologically realistic even in a deeply patriarchal society”
I am curious about your textual evidence for this. I didn’t think anyone had agency, really. Of course there is Kellhus – and because of him we get to see just how totally blind and useless everyone is. In my view the narrative (though I think it is really the reader, not the narrative, that empathizes), portrays Esmenet and Mimara as the most sympathetic characters.
When do we get to step back and remember that this is fiction? Scott, nor any author, is under any edict to write what other ppl want them to write. It is utterly w/in our power to buy/read/consume the output from artists.
Last i checked Scott hasnt held a gun to anyones head to read his stuff. If ppl are so offended by a work of fiction than that to me is their problem. Either accept it for what it is or dont.
I see this as a complete waste of time and circular firing squad. It is fiction ppl, move along.
Charles, what I think is going on is that many readers (and almost all professional critics I can care to recall the names of) have some kind of unspoken assumption that goes along the lines of “works of fiction are behavior and belief modification devices” (or something like that).
That, being exposed to, oh I don’t know, “Handmaid’s Tale”, or “The Color Purple” would make Vox less mysoginistic, or that reading n+1 Gor books in a row would turn an average nice person into a date rapist, or, at the very least, into Vox 😉
Silly as it is, this weird belief underlies a lot of discourse as to “proper” management of various “issues” in fiction.
I don’t honestly know where those folks have got that from, but I guess this kind of belief confers a great deal of ego boost and importance both to the critic and to the author, and imbues the whole endeavor of “writing books that one would like to read” with a kind of purposeful gravitas – you know, “We’re (re)forging minds here!”
LOL 😀
I’m not really concerned with the portrayal of misogyny, either – this is not a problem of depiction vs. endorsement. I’m arguing that the work itself is misogynistic.
Did you get to my original reply, Seth? I couldn’t find any response, but things have been, ahem, busy around here. I ask because the questions you pose on this post are similar to the ones I answered previously.
Just to be clear, what are your criteria for a work ‘being misogynistic’? All the examples you’ve cited are scenes I paid alot of attention to (how could I not, given the heat I’ve taken from the very beginning?), and are thoroughly marbled with critique. I could write essays… especially about the issue of ‘agency’ and the problem of bootstrapping…
I don’t think we got very far, but I did post your response in Gender and Genre III at Westeros. Site’s down but it was I think around page 3? 5?
I’m not really concerned with the portrayal of misogyny, either – this is not a problem of depiction vs. endorsement. I’m arguing that the work itself is misogynistic.
As you said your not focused on Scott, then your focused on the book. Books cannot be misogynistic! And your thinking they totally can be! What, do the books walk around, treating women badly? At most the reading of them by people might encourage a bad behaviour in actual people – books themselves can’t be misogynistic, but they can potentially be encouraging.
Let’s clear up the language used, because saying an inanimate object can be misogynistic is not helping discussion.
You know, the whole “encouraging” angle is wanton speculation.
Is there any evidence that any work of fiction has reliably and repeatably induced such effect ?
Do areas where Handmaid’s Tale is part of the curriculum have, I don’t know, lower domestic violence, less rape, larger female wages, better support net for single mothers, compared to areas of similar economic and legal organization where the book in question is not a part of mandatory reading in educational facilities ?
Did printing of some relatively popular “mysoginistic” paperback correlate with a spike in any measurable mysoginy-related events?
01,
I think it’d be a very interesting science experiment (a genuine science experiment, ala like the stuff refered to in Cordelia Fines ‘A mind of it’s own’).
I mean the pivotal issue is Scott is trying to aim for a change in readers (for the possitive). If a possitive change is possible, is not a negative change also possible? I’d love it if it were racheted towards the positive, but I’m skeptical I’ll get what I want.
The Turner diaries were supposed to have encouraged certain negative behaviour, as atleast one example (one example not being much of a representation in a scientific test, but hey, it’s a start!)
Really I think this ‘a book can be mysogynistic’ is essentially superstition – it doesn’t make sense, but alot of people buy into the phrase, no questions asked. What I want is to move on from superstition on this subject.
Well, yes, it would be interesting to investigate in a rigorous way. Mind you, I don’t discount the possibility of constructing a very special work of fiction in a manner that would allow it to significantly affect a large population in an at least somewhat directed manner.
However, “it might be possible” is different from “it is happening” and even more different from “all books manifest this effect”. Irrespective of authorial intent, which is all nice and all, I just see no reason to conclude that any of fiction works (be it litfic or “genre”) have the ability to reliably change the reader in a coordinated way.
So, if we are willing to claim that Scott “fails to succeed” in the noble task of making readers seriously reconsider their misogynistic tendencies (if any are present) then, evidence suggests, we would be quite justified in saying similar thing about any author who has ever written (I think I already did tell the personal anecdote about the “Handmaid’s Gilead is oky society” dude, didn’t I ?)
Methinks that generally, “grown up” readers tend to read fiction more or less the same way people with tinted contact lenses look at the world (everything is RED I’m tellin’ ya!), whether we like it or not.
Yes. Forgetting for a moment things like green slave women and the dramatic necessity to nearly always have a love interest every week for one character or other, Star Trek is approaching fifty years of age. It reached and still reaches a lot more people than Mr. Bakker’s work. And yet do we have anything even close to a non-interference directive? No. Quite the opposite.
It is usually economics that drive inequality, often combined with xenophobia (another thing that old TV show tried to tackle various ways that from time to time has had entire conventions dedicated to it, has inspired filk, fanfic and the wearing of costumes, it’s own SCA-like groups, etc.) and yet society looks nothing like it. Racism, sexism, Islamophobia and homophobia are on the rise all over the western world.
Really, I think Callan provided the confirmation to the question. Though I might dispute the effectveness and the details, saying that ACM is in effect a “joker” explains not only her behavior but that of her apologists. It is (irony again since this has been an argument against most SciFi these same apologists claim to dislike) nihilistic or anarchistic. Whether or not the desire to actually see a society rebuilt once the current one is “burned” is an open question. The point seems to be, an agent of change for change’s sake without a real care for the damage inflicted in the effort. That they are still, in my opinion, targetting the wrong person for that (probably due to it being easier that taking on actual power) means it’s largely fantasy mixed with cowardice.
It’s interesting to a degree, I suppose. And if it drives more people here and to read Mr. Bakker’s books, then it makes sense. But it is fairly obvious an answer (wasn’t that exactly what Peter Watts suggested?) and not, again in my opinion, worth his time to pick it apart further otherwise.
But it’s his blog. He can do whatever he wants just like Vox can on his. (I wasn’t here eight months ago. Can anyone point me to Vox’s question re: belief in uncertainty? Sounds like an interesting read).
Yeah, I find it kinda remarkable how good Star Trek is at making people wear weird costumes and study synthetic languages, and how impotent it seems at making people abandon our good old friends racism and interventionism
Sad, really.
Oh, and Callan, regarding Turner Diaries… while it’s a clear example of a work intended to induce certain attitudes in the reader, it’s also a clear example of totally failing to fulfull this purpose (to the best of my knowledge, circulation of TD was not correlating with any remarkable spike in racism or anything what could be considered related to it – in fact, it’s quite easy to find online, and yet nothing particularly remarkable seems happening)
lulz
Very, very good! I could just imagine Scott as the road runner…instead of meep meep, it’d be doubt doubt! Equally annoying! 😉
I don’t know anything about ACM, but you’ve addressed Vox personally a number of times.
I said in a previous thread that Vox’s behavior puts me in mind of nothing so much as Dwight Schrute from the Office, but that comparison left me feeling unsatisfied. Upon further reflection, he reminds me quite a bit of what we know of Nathan Holn from Brin’s Postman, which makes me quite a bit uneasier.
Now this is more than a little troubling. But it does explain why they have no patience for nuance or debate. It’s hard to hurt people when their guilt is aired as an open question. If they’re innocent, then you being so bent on hurting them says some pretty nasty things about you.
Is that so? You couldn’t find any of the extensive debates on my blog? Very well, to prove you wrong, I’m pleased to challenge you to a written debate on the causal relationship between certainty, as you have defined it, and war. I suggest three rounds of no more than 2,500 words per person each, and since you have made the claim, I suggest that you go first.
Do you accept?
The question is why this is the case. Why would ACM and Vox so studiously avoid each other?
As is your wont, you’re demonstrating factual ignorance. I haven’t avoided her. I even posted a comment on her blog to compliment her on actually reading a bit of your work before attempting to psychoanalyze you, something you didn’t bother to do before attempting to psychoanalyze me.
Anyhow, I look forward to our debate. Is one week per round sufficient for you?
Hey there.
To your first point I’d like to say that your ‘debates’ as I have seen and participated in them have largely consisted of name-calling and assertions of superiority using facile rhetorical tactics like purposeful misunderstanding. Here’s an example and it has to do with your second point:
Scott was asking why you have written blog after blog on him and not on ACM.
Posting a single comment wasn’t what he had in mind. Did you really think it was? If so, why?
I’m waiting. . . .
No, they implcitly understand there’s no point debating with each other.
Oh, I’d be happy to debate her if she wished once my debate with Scott is complete. Of course, most feminists have learned to be silent, hold very still, and hope that I’ll pass by without addressing their hapless arguments and ineffectual posturing. Women tend to harbor inordinate fear of public humiliation. Scott, on the other hand, appears to have some sort of masochistic desire for it.
Of course, most feminists have learned to be silent, hold very still, and hope that I’ll pass by
Unless you tell her that, it seems like your doing the same thing? I mean, what, you don’t want to impose on this feminist? Seriously, you seem to have strong views, but suddenly your shy of even leaving a business card, so to speak? And you’re going to say “Your provocation wont…etc etc”. Well, sure it’s provocation. That doesn’t mean it’s not true, though. Seriously, you’re telling us you know a womans place, yet you wont even leave a note at this ones door. What’s the plan – is there some sort of D-day where you just take over, no notes beforehand?
I’ll pay to watch you and ACM debate, Vox. And I think many others would, as well.
I thought they engage earnest people because earnest people won’t write them off. They want to be heard, just like everyone else, only they don’t want to listen.
Just like everyone else.
While I can only speak for where I live I do believe that globally people are becoming very poor listeners.
By the way, all of the women I have introduced to your books who have read them (I can think of five at the moment) have enjoyed them, and this charge of misogyny has never surfaced. The idea that your intention is to degrade women because you get off on it is so absurd that it never crossed my mind. Frankly it seems like crying wolf, which is to say that people damage the gravity of such an accusation by tossing it around so casually. And of course this is a huge disservice to women the world over.
Moral judgments require certainty, and while I’ve always known this I’ve never made the connection “If you’re wrong, then you’re the bad guy. So you quite simply have to be right.” It seems obvious, but then if it was people would be much less prone to pass moral judgment.
Always learning something new here!
To your first point I’d like to say that your ‘debates’ as I have seen and participated in them have largely consisted of name-calling and assertions of superiority using facile rhetorical tactics like purposeful misunderstanding.
You have neither seen them nor participated them. I’ve engaged in a number of formal written debates, some with a team of judges, and there wasn’t any name-calling or purposeful misunderstanding involved. Answering a few questions here in the comments isn’t a debate. But I do appreciate the way you’re trying to give Scott an excuse to run and hide while simultaneously claiming that I’m the one with no patience for debate.
That “no patience” accusation will provide great amusement to the Dread Ilk. I mean, the Great Japanese Invasion debate alone lasted over a month and still causes the longtime regulars to shiver with horror when it is mentioned.
Scott was asking why you have written blog after blog on him and not on ACM.
Because Scott is the one who has been making absurd and provably false claims about me for eight months now, and because as incoherent as his arguments are, they are at least something out of the usual Red-Blue divide. Why would I write anything about a random person I’ve never heard of and know nothing about? Anyhow, based on Scott’s descriptions of her, I very much doubt she’s going to produce anything I haven’t seen before from Amanda Marcotte.
Its pretty clear that, by “your debates,” he meant the debates between you and Scott. However, way to include purposeful misunderstanding and assertions of superiority in your response to accusations of using purposeful misunderstanding and assertions of superiority!
A math-y girlfriend once told me that fractals would be “infinitely sharp” if they were ever to be “manifested” as actual tangible constructs.
I think that’s what he wants – make his replies infinitely incisive 🙂
🙂
That doesn’t answer the question I asked, does it? I was wondering why you thought a single comment on a blog constituted the sort of debate you have with Bakker, or why it merits saying “As is your wont, you’re demonstrating factual ignorance.” when he is being, at worst, hyperbolic?
I believe it is because you practice a sort of intellectual dishonesty motivated by vanity. After all, you evaded the main question I posed.
“I even posted a comment on her blog to compliment her on actually reading a bit of your work before attempting to psychoanalyze you, ”
that was the extent of your engagement. Despite the fact that your beliefs are diametrically opposed to ACM and people of her camp, you choose to engage Bakker. In this blog he asks why.
So I’ll ask again:
“Scott was asking why you have written blog after blog on him and not on ACM.
Posting a single comment [on ACM’s blog] wasn’t what he had in mind. Did you really think it was?”
As for the written debate thing, I honestly did think you were referring to your blog as debates when you asked Bakker “You couldn’t find any of the extensive debates on my blog?”
My mistake.
Posting a single comment wasn’t what he had in mind. Did you really think it was? If so, why?
Ah, so Scott is going to redefine the term “studiously avoid” as well now? Regardless of what Scott had in mind, what he said obviously was not true. My assumption was that Scott simply missed my comment over there, just as he previously missed the two questions I addressed to him
I was wondering why you thought a single comment on a blog constituted the sort of debate you have with Bakker,
I don’t. I don’t even consider this discussion to be a debate.
“Scott was asking why you have written blog after blog on him and not on ACM.
I know nothing about ACM except that she thinks Scott is misogynistic and obsessed with rape. I have no opinion on the former and tend to agree with her on the latter. Scott is a pompous ass, an academic, and an intellectual charlatan. ACM is just a feminist. I find exposing the argumentative flaws of the former much more amusing than the latter. Arguing with a feminist is about as interesting, and difficult, as correcting elementary school addition.
“Yes, you see, 2+2 just doesn’t equal 17.”
Ah, so here we have it! From the lips of the Super-Intelligence Himself: Vox doesn’t consider this discussion to be a debate!
Let’s assume for a minute that he understood the clear meaning of the term as it was used in this instance (i.e., let’s assume he’s not thinking of ‘debate’ in the narrow sense of some sort of structured activity with judges and time-limits). In that case, then it would seem that he thinks — despite the mountain of contrary evidence to be found in various recent threads on this site — that we’re not in fact engaged in the activity of presenting and defending competing views and arguments.
How can that be? All I can think is that he sees himself as simply dropping Truth Bombs on us from thirty-thousand feet, well out of range of our puny guns.
So I’m officially calling it. It’s 6:54 PM Eastern Standard Time. The part of this discussion involving Vox is dead. Cause of death: Vox’s inability or unwillingness to engage in debate. All he’s here to do, it seems, is preen and name-call.
Why am I surprised by this? Well, perhaps because Vox at least tries to pretend to be rational, to be interested in debate, to have an intellectual conscience. But of course it’s all a sham. Too bad.
Perhaps this is insane, but I’m stubbornly committed to doing everything I can to foster constructive dialogue. To that end, I want to invite Vox to read my two earlier posts on ancient skepticism.
I do not expect you to sympathize with Pyrrhonism, Vox — in fact, I despair of you giving the view the courtesy of genuinely trying to understand it — but if you’re actually interested in at least beginning to come to grips with views that reject the sort of dogmatic arrogance you’re so proud of, then you could do worse than reading my posts. They’re intended as mere thumbnail sketches, but as such, I think they’re about as successful as I could hope for.
Still, I found that many people had difficulty understanding the view, especially the positive side adumbrated in the second post. Since you’re a super-intelligence, though, the view should be clear to you.
I don’t expect you to take the time to do this, but still: in the interests of “getting at the heart of the disagreement,” I invite you (a) to explain what the view is, and then (b) to explain why it’s wrong. I’m particularly interested if, after reading, you still want to charge skepticism with incoherence. If so, (a) what do you think the incoherence consists in? and (b) in what way does Sextus’s argument against peritrope fail?
boom. headshot!
I know nothing about ACM except…
Except that she’d bloody mindedly try and put anything you say down (whilst beating her chest) and wouldn’t give you any material for you to put her down. Likewise she knows if she came to your blog, you’d put her down (whilst beating your chest) and not provide any material for her to put you down.
The weird thing is how you uncannily recognise each other for what you’ll do? You’re like a pair of vampires – you need someone to be genuine for the way your both hollow. If you tried to drink from each other, it’d be like sucking on dust.
Irrelevant.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/157/784/39aw.jpg?1312394893
Thanks.
Wow, Theo comes across a lot more together on his blog. This is just getting sad.
Yeah, from all the pixels Scott spilled about this guy I was kinda expecting something more.
How much more do you need, Saajan? Sure, sometimes he just posts laughing at some guy who was killed by the animals he was attempting to care for, rather than anything super explosive. RL villainy involves banality as much as anything.
Maybe it’ll show up in the debates on certainty and war, but I was expecting something a bit more serious than what I’ve seen so far.
but I was expecting something a bit more serious than what I’ve seen so far.
Wah? How often have you argued over ink marks on paper that symbolically suggest problematic dealins with women, when that’s just…ink marks on paper? What he’s said here is living and breathing? I’ll throw in his ‘there is no rape possible in a marriage’ bit, even though seriously that’s another huge log to an already big bonfire.
I meant I was expecting someone who was an intellectual heavyweight, I’m not saying his views aren’t dangerous. I’m just not seeing the rigor.
We’ll see how his debate with Scott goes.
Oh, right. Yeah, but it’s kind of like zombies – they don’t need to do kung fu rigor. Flailing around will pass on the infection (rigor-mortis?…plz don’t kill me for that pun…)
I’d left a link to some of Vox’s comments over at ROH. The reply ‘the Vox-Bakker feud is excellent free entertainment.’. It is funny who gets ignored, given the apparent concern is mysogyny, not ‘secret mysogyny’. What, when it’s open mysogyny it’s fine?
And I’m surprised she’d remembered me (flattery behind the name calling). Perhaps she has a rollerdex.
ACM’s style clashes very starkly with Mr. Beale’s. Mr. Beale is readable, even if his opinions diverge greatly with what most people around these parts believe, at least he makes an effort to COMMUNICATE. In the meantime, our favorite ‘rabid animal’ is just… very skilled at trolling. I literally couldn’t get past the first 200 words of her Neuropath review without starting to feel my blood boil.
Yeah. It’s kind of odd how Seth seems to think if it wasn’t there, no one would read it.
As for your concerns with ACM’s name-calling: do you believe for even one moment that people would read her blog if she were polite?
That actually seems quite a cruel thing to say about the blog.
Do people actually desire to read neckbeard 200 times and feces used in small fiction pieces?
Wait a second… Scott has written something misogynistic, but really isn’t, but you wouldn’t know this unless you possessed specialized literary training? Sounds like literature. Just kidding! I actually found Scott’s writing to be misandric at points. I don’t like the depiction of men as slavering rape monsters and was genuinely saddened by the fate of the skin eaters. I thought, after all this??? I find Scott to be compelling when
he writes about the attitudes behind beliefs, rather than the beliefs themselves. When you criticize anothers political beliefs or views you simply betray your own conditioning. How can you be certain he’s wrong? I wish he’d lead with the science behind how our minds work and reference the studies done to back up his assertions. When he provides a link to an article with the attitude that we should be disgusted by it he is pandering to another ingroup and his own arguments can be turned against him. Like a starving dog, chasing an oh so meaty tail. I have purchased his books and will continue to do so, but I think with all the pot stirring, the waters are getting muddied. I lost my previous comment and had to retype it, sorry if it shows up twice.
I feel like Joshua Knobe’s studies on intentionality and moral judgements are very relevant to the kinds of reactions you’re provoking, but my “summing up long talks” circuits are currently burnt out, so you’ll have to read/listen to it yourself if you’re curious.
I’d be interested in being one of the arbiters of a structured debate between Scott and Theodore. I wouldn’t claim to be impartial given that Mr. Beale all but thinks my people to be disgusting mongrels bent on corrupting his beautiful society (you should read HP Lovecraft Mr Beale, he’d have agreed with you on so many things… and he was secular!). Nonetheless, he’s rhetorically skilled and it would be worth reading just to see the linguistic and logical gymnastics performed by both sides.
The only thing that seems bad is that this would take time away from the completion of The Unholy Consult.
Rather than trolls or rabid dogs, I’m starting to think vampires! Meme vampires! They can produce nothing to actually attract other people to their blog (As Seth says, if ACM was polite, do you think anyone would read her blog? And seriously, Vox’s commentators are there because of his two books? Nay!). So they feast upon the living, nom nom nom, banking on/stoking moral outrage to provide the life into their otherwise dead works. I mean, say neckbeard 200 times – it’s pretty lifeless, right? It needs to hinge on some sort of moral outrage, or it’s dead and worthless. A desicated husk. Stalking the dark of the internet with dead eyes, ash where creative spark would have been. Hell, I think I’m doing it myself now! *aroooo!*
Ah, so here we have it! From the lips of the Super-Intelligence Himself: Vox doesn’t consider this discussion to be a debate!
No, of course I I don’t. You guys don’t answer questions, don’t define your terms, ask as many as 15 questions in a row in a manner that is clearly rhetorical rather than substantive, and leap from tangent to tangent away from the issue at hand. When you’re provided with empirical evidence, you then announce that you don’t believe in the standard metric or question its universality with no basis for doing so. When you complain that I’ve missed a question and I offer to respond to it in substantive detail where I can more effectively do so, you announce that you won’t read it there.
In a real debate, I wouldn’t have answered a single question until my first question was answered… which you will note still has not been answered. In a real debate, all of your theories about me and amateur psychoanalysis would be relentlessly mocked by the observers due to their complete irrelevance. With the possible exception of Delavagus, who appears to be more shady than clueless, it’s quite clear that none of you guys have any notion of how to go about a substantive debate. Most of what you’re doing is attempting to posture for each other’s benefit.
Why am I surprised by this? Well, perhaps because Vox at least tries to pretend to be rational, to be interested in debate, to have an intellectual conscience. But of course it’s all a sham.
Please. The discussion has been a sham since you, and everyone else here, decided to pretend that Scott’s first answer, when he swapped “involved” for “caused”, was legitimate. If you had any serious intellectual integrity, you would have called him on it. My readers certainly would have if I ever tried to pull a cheap stunt like that. That’s one of the big differences between VP and TPM. The Dread Ilk like nothing better than to catch me making a mistake and calling me on it, it’s a point of pride for them. You guys won’t even admit Scott has blundered when it’s repeatedly pointed out to you.
I do not expect you to sympathize with Pyrrhonism, Vox — in fact, I despair of you giving the view the courtesy of genuinely trying to understand it — but if you’re actually interested in at least beginning to come to grips with views that reject the sort of dogmatic arrogance you’re so proud of, then you could do worse than reading my posts.
I did read them. They were quite interesting. You might be amused to know that I read Outlines of Pyrrhonism by Sextus Empiricus last year and didn’t think much of it. I tend to have much more regard for the Stoics than the Skeptics. But I should be clear that I’m not charging all skepticism with incoherence, I am charging Scott’s particular expression of it with incoherence and expect to demonstrate that incoherence to you and everyone else in our upcoming debate. Can I have your permission to post large parts of them on my blog when I respond to them? I’ll link to the originals at TPM, of course, but otherwise, I fear that my responses won’t make sense to anyone but you.
I meant I was expecting someone who was an intellectual heavyweight, I’m not saying his views aren’t dangerous. I’m just not seeing the rigor.
In some blog comments? Really? I’m certainly more rigorous than all of you, none of whom noticed that “involved” != “caused” and that “pretty much all” is an evasive answer intended to provide wiggle room in the case of substantive examples.
you should read HP Lovecraft Mr Beale, he’d have agreed with you on so many things… and he was secular!).
I’ve read his complete works. Great stuff. My most recent short story, published in the current Stupefying Stories, was an attempt to write in his style. I don’t think I pulled it off, but it was a fun exercise.
@Vox: I did say perhaps something would shine out in the debates. I think you present pieces of arguments that can be debated, such as economic concerns about instituting an amnesty program for illegals while in a recession. (Or heading toward a second dip?)
The questions about culture, and what it means to accommodate a foreign belief system or whether integration of immigrants in a democracy threatens certain ideals, are again things that can be debated.
Heck, there was an article in the Telegraph by a liberal minded person about how the UK welfare system abets Islamic fundamentalists – that’s something that can examined and debated via examination of data.
But then you casually throw in stuff like *Africans are barbarians who can’t drive*, *Assimilation of blacks is a failure*, *women shouldn’t vote or work outside the home because it doesn’t create new consumers*, and it all seems to rely on anecdotes or, at best, questionably applied data.
It’s a mix of moral certainty and amoral (and from where I stand as a person of color naturally immoral) pragmatism, seemingly switching from one to the other at your convenience.
It’s like someone remarking about factors in inner city violence, and then suddenly saying, “And also we should take into account blacks are the children of Cain and Lilith” as if this wasn’t a massive shift in the conversation.
And seriously, Vox’s commentators are there because of his two books?
No, they’re there because of my WND columns. I started a blog as a means of efficiently responding to my column-related email and it has worked very well in that regard. But you may wish to note that The Return of the Great Depression was, for more than 18 months, one of the ten bestselling books in Amazon’s Economics category. And I’ve published 7 books, not two.
There because of your first blog, effectively. Do you make anything beyond investment advice (which isn’t you creating something, it’s someone else creating something)?
I’m particularly interested if, after reading, you still want to charge skepticism with incoherence. If so, (a) what do you think the incoherence consists in? and (b) in what way does Sextus’s argument against peritrope fail?
Yes, as it happens I do.
I’m going to ignore the whining about haters and haters not hating each other as much as they’re hating on you AND the bit that it’s really about hurt feelings and ‘ingroup cognitive blindness’ and such nonsense because it doesn’t even make sense.
It is disingenuous and seriously self-indulgent at this point to suggest that this is what the criticism is about. A number of arguments have been advanced, several critical readings of your books and your blog have been discussed at length, and I think among the most damning responses have been your own words on the subject. You haven’t answered the bulk of these accusations/opinions which I’ve seen, and you cap it off by suggesting that no-one here (or elsewhere) is interested in honest debate except yourself.
That’s not just wrong but cringeworthy after a collective outpouring of something that must be nearing a thousand posts or more, spread across half-a-dozen blogs. NO ONE IS INTERESTED IN … Oh, I can’t even say that a second time. I really can’t.
However …
I have no idea who Vox is. And I doubt he’s all that familiar to Requires Hate. But I have a feeling he doesn’t claim to be (a) a champion of feminism challenging established ideas in society and genre fiction with a series of books which appear to do the reverse, or (b) “playing Nabokov’s game” with our expectations. I’m not aware he writes books at all, which I seem to recall is what kicked off this whole thing over six months ago when Requires Hate first took your writing apart as deeply misogynistic.
“A number of arguments have been advanced, several critical readings of your books and your blog have been discussed at length”
List them.
What have I missed, em? You vanished the last time, where I answered more questions than I can count. But if memory serves, you’re one of these guys who’s almost painfully invested in appearing superior. Sweeping declarations of ‘such nonsense’ without any real track record of making sense tends to feed that kind of impression. All vocabulary and gesticulation.
If you want to be taken seriously here, set aside the attitude and deal honestly.
Vox, who reaches far more people than I or ACM (let alone you) could ever hope to, is actually the only significant player in this game, as far as numbers are concerned. He claims to have empirical proof, moral, and rational warrant for forcing women to fulfill their reproductive role. He writes about the moral responsibilities women bear for rape, the forced relocation of immigrants, stuff like that – and he’s a far older foe here than ACM.
So by all means, let’s ignore him, em. He’s only the guy who uses ACM and her ilk as his recruitment officers. Hang out on his blog for a while if you don’t believe me.
But I have a feeling he doesn’t claim to be (a) a champion of feminism challenging established ideas in society and genre fiction with a series of books which appear to do the reverse
So what, your just around to vet your own flock? You don’t care if Vox is garnering up an army over there. Just a matter of ‘no fakers’ amongst your ranks?
How is that caring about feminism, when you willfully ignore how an army against it is growing? Even if you think Scott is an orc, fucking Sauron is right here and you’re ignoring him!
More importantly, what is wrong with being a pseudo-intellectual retard with homosexual tendencies? (If by tendencies we mean 90/10). That’s how I spend most of my day.
Oh, Theo, your implied assertion that women should stay at home and wear burkas is a gay man’s wet on-the-down-low dream. Hide the ladies away so the upright moral brigade can play (in secret). I see what you’re up to, naughty boy. Spanky-spanky (“Thank you, Ayn Rand! May I have another?”).
“I’m a feces-clad-serial-masturbator…[and a] …pseudo-intellectual retard with homosexual tendencies…”
Neither of which would make you a bad person, per se, although it would make you smelly.
I’ve said this before: don’t mess with Vox. His website has 28 terms and conditions. And he is a genius.
I could agree with that (suppose I agree he reads like a smart fellow), but the whole libertarian / objectivist failure on internal consistency is a problem (I know, who’s consistent all of the time?).
For examples:
Biggest surge in spread of HIV/AIDS in NYC in the 90s was from married male Christians who had sex with each other but failed to use condoms because somehow the logic was, “If we use condoms, that’s admitting that we are gay/bisexual.” The result was it spread to their wives. (This was, from my recollection of the NYTimes expose on the topic the origin of “on the downlow”).
The Taliban in Afghanistan have a similar strict view on how women should behave, dress, etc. and the rate of homosexuality among them was through the roof (as was child rape).
Then you’ve got everyone Teapublitarian’s favorite company, Halliburton, employees of which gang raped a female employee, locked her in a box when authorities arrived to hide the fact, and when the Senate was faced with the option of trying to instill some law and order in the Wild West that contractor heaven Bagdad was, cinservatives voted it down. Money—and love of it—won over the sin of rape from people who claim to like the whole book, not just the parts that allow them to put up straw men issues to hide their rampant greed. “Eye of a needle,” and all that.
Not difficult to poke holes in a philosophy of hate when the main message of the book is allegedly love.
But then you casually throw in stuff like *Africans are barbarians who can’t drive*, *Assimilation of blacks is a failure*, *women shouldn’t vote or work outside the home because it doesn’t create new consumers*, and it all seems to rely on anecdotes or, at best, questionably applied data.
But I did nothing of the kind. Let’s take the first example. There is a massive and expensive and lethal problem with unlicensed Hispanic drivers in the USA. This is well known, although the full extent is not. I simply provided an example of something I have personally witnessed which explained how the problem manifests itself.
Assimilation of blacks has clearly been a failure in the USA by many metrics; despite 40 years of forced integration, the races are as self-segregated as ever. Choose your favorite metric, it usually won’t be hard to demonstrate it. And while there are many solid arguments for why women shouldn’t vote and certain CLASSES of women shouldn’t work outside the home, the fact that they don’t become new consumers is only partially related to the latter. If you’d like to question the data or the logic, fantastic, please do so. But before you do that, you need to look at what I’m actually saying and not what you mistakenly think I’m saying. And if there is any doubt, you have only to ask for clarification, which I’m quite happy to provide.
They drive unlicensed because they can’t get a valid license if they are illegals. And before you say something like “goddamn straight they shouldn’t the filthy border-hopping beaners!” consider that the socio-economic realities of many States has encouraged illegal immigration. This is different than “License? I don’t need no stinking license!”
Let’s assume for a second that you are right and assimilation of blacks has been a failure. Is it really some inherent failing in their culture or genetics, or is there a simpler explanation: the descendants of freed slaves never accrued ‘escape velocity’ capital. Even poor Asian immigrants from countries like Vietnam bring some kind of capital (often just a strong social network and education, but that’s a start) with them when they get off the boat. Asians and Hispanics, who have not been hamstrung by the legacy of slavery have done much better at succeeding and integrating with the larger society.
As for women… dude, I don’t even know where to begin. Your position there is so fundamentally abhorrent to me that I don’t know if I even want to see your arguments. Acrackedmoon may be a ‘rabid animal’, but I still support her right to vote, equal wages, and the capacity dictate her own life. Denial of these principles I think is not just a complete cultural throwback, but deeply philosophically flawed.
“Is it really some inherent failing in their culture or genetics, or is there a simpler explanation: the descendants of freed slaves never accrued ‘escape velocity’ capital.”
I like the term ‘escape velocity capital’. That is such a great way to describe something I’ve struggled to articulate.
For one of the savages, you’re kinda bright Jorge. 😉
Need a like button! 🙂
They drive unlicensed because they can’t get a valid license if they are illegals.
No, it’s not just illegals who drive unlicensed. Also, the license itself is irrelevant, the point is that too many of them can’t drive to US standards, they can’t get insurance, and they are much more prone to drinking and driving than Americans. These are all problems and costs that don’t exist if they are not in the USA.
Is it really some inherent failing in their culture or genetics, or is there a simpler explanation: the descendants of freed slaves never accrued ‘escape velocity’ capital.
Why does it matter? I simply echoed the observations of men such as Fred Reed and others. Given that the trillions of dollars in attempts to fix the problem have not worked for more than four decades, but actually made it worse, the problem appears to be intractable. However, the failures of African self-rule from Detroit to South Africa tends to suggest that US slavery that ended more than 150 years ago is unlikely to be the problem.
As for women… dude, I don’t even know where to begin. Your position there is so fundamentally abhorrent to me that I don’t know if I even want to see your arguments.
Well, that’s certainly convincing. Do you find that approach conclusive when someone else takes it concerning the legality of homosexuality or the age of consent? I note with some amusement that it’s exactly the opposite of the uncertainty approach advocated by Scott here. Possessed of such certainty, you must be a dangerous man indeed, Jorge! Frankly, I’m a little scared now….
“Why does it matter?”
Because maybe the reason the problem hasn’t been solved is that the true cause has never been properly addressed. I also disagree that Africans can’t self-govern. South Africa is a poor example because the colonial mentality also set the terms of that society!
“too many of them can’t drive to US standards”
I’d wager there’s more death from citizens drinking and driving. The failure of the illegal immigrants to comply with standards also stems from their ‘second class’ status. When they are marginalized why should they bother to comply? Scott actually wrote about this a while back, the way people at the margins are given incentive to disregard or exploit the social systems in place. If the root problem could be addressed, then it could be fixed without resorting to an isolationist mentality.
“Possessed of such certainty, you must be a dangerous man indeed, Jorge! ”
Yes. That’s the point of this blog. One aspires to keep an open mind, it doesn’t always come easy. See, my worry is that by properly engaging with you, I legitimize your position in a way that imbeciles like A Cracked Moon can point at and say “SEE! Look at the neckbeards! They’re even bothering to engage with a blatantly sexist pig!”
My ‘certainty’ is simple: I am certain science is the way forward, and that it can dismantle any problem. Many women have made tremendous advances in science, so therefore any political or social position that stifles women is to be repudiated on the strongest terms.
He claims to have empirical proof, moral, and rational warrant for forcing women to fulfill their reproductive role.
Yes, I do.
He writes about the moral responsibilities women bear for rape,
No, that’s not true. You don’t appear to have actually read The Morality of Rape.
the forced relocation of immigrants
Yes, since I find that vastly preferable to seeing them killed. Are you really not aware that every European country is now actively engaged in the forced relocation of immigrants, with the partial exception of Britain?
You know what is the greatest mystery and the holy grail of all tiem intertubes, Scott?
Well, per my humble opinion, it is “finding ways to hurt people over standard TCP/IP”.
You see, it’s pretty damn hard. Fist-over-TCP was never implemented, and same goes for genital tunneling, so raping and beating up is out of the question.
Science so far has failed internets in coming up with Langford Basilisks so that we could kill and maim with as little as tag.
All you gotta work with is words. Words words words (also malware, but that requires a modicrum of knowledge and dedication – something most people seeking to hurt strangers over network are lacking in, and even then, malware usually has a very limited ability to actually reach that other person who is typing words at you)
And it’s very hard to hurt a modern man with words.
The reason people send women rape threats over internet is because there’s a significant chance that those women will be upset, hurt or even scared (and when they write in their blog about how unpleasant that is, the troll gets all the confirmation needed that, yes, this tactic is working). Try sending a man some rape threats over internet – you’d be laughed at, possibly in ALLCAPS (LOL UR PEENOR SO SMALL IT FITS IN A SINGLE TCP PACKET LO LO LO LO LOL).
Now, trolls kind of tend to interpret any response as confirmation of success (and they are more often right than wrong about that), and since hurting people makes them happier, they are all too eager to charge on since they believe that (given that you’re still talking about it, and posting comments about it, etc.) they’ve “really got you there”.
The winning move, quite frankly, is not to play. Assuming you don’t enjoy baiting and feeding the buggers out of purely aesthetic considerations.
Just my 2 cents.
Why, are men somehow incapable of being sexually assaulted?
Or, much like 20 year old drivers are the ones who get killed the most because they think they are invulnerable, do they just think they are invulnerable to rape?
Mr. Beale laid his cards on the table in the previous posts’ discussion:
“Look, I speak four languages. I live in a society where people have vastly different views from the one in which I grew up, some of which I’ve adopted, most of which I have not. But what I’ve learned from living in America, Europe, and Asia is that most people are idiots, so their different views are almost always ill-considered, poorly reasoned, unevidenced, and easily invalidated. I understand that your views are different, but unless they are both logically consistent and empirically supported, they’re not equally valid with my own.”
He comes pre-loaded with the assumption that he’s smarter than you. He might be correct, but he also might just be off-the-chart arrogant. Beale walks into a room, knives out, and essentially forces his interlocutor to speak to him in his own terms so he may safely sheath those blades. He makes the rules for the game and forces you to play by them or he will take his toys and go home. He might just call you an intellectual savage. (I’m totally stealing this phrase to market my book.) Finding common ground is quite obviously painful for him (because the rest of us are so stupid), and he acts as though it is beneath him.
The above quote is enough to condemn him, but after a bit more research, I’ve found that he is also a man of faith. He has lashed out at people for not being sufficiently rational while he himself is an “evangelical” believer. His arguments on the morality of rape use the Christian idea that adultery is a sin on par with rape. Trying to use arguments based on faith to prove rational points is where I draw the line. His arrogance and faith undermine his online persona.
But he’s still fun to fuck with.
Yeah, it’s like the cockpit analogy. If a vegetarian were to say he’d like some food, Vox would say how stupid vegetarians are. While most other omnivores would pause, imagine being a vegetarian and try and remember a resteraunt that does some vegetarian food or a vegetarian resteraunt they could direct them to.
He makes the rules for the game and forces you to play by them or he will take his toys and go home.
Damn Vox, you’re the guy who made the rule that arguments should be both “logically consistent and empirically supported”? My hat is off to you.
He’s also the smartest guy in the room. Just ask him.
I think you may have missed what I was getting at.
It happens frequently. 😉
You guys just love a good straw-man, don’t you? You love a good little rhetorical jab, a nice satisfying bit of mockery.
From where I’m sitting, it’s pretty pathetic — doubly so given your (speaking generally now, of course) professed superior grasp of logic and rationality!
Who’s on first?
Is the straw-comment directed at me? I ask because some of the reply comments have shown up in the wrong places, and if it is to me, I’m confused as to where the professed superior grasp of logic and rationality bit is coming from. Also not sure what the straw-man would be.
Yeah, my snarky comment was directed at you. The “professed superior grasp of logic and rationality” is “coming from” my experience with Vox and his supporters. (I take it you’re one of them. Am I wrong?) The straw-man would be your tendentious misreading of the remark about how Vox “makes the rules of the game” (or whatever exactly the phrase was). Clearly, the person who made this remark (I forget who it was) was not commenting on Vox’s ‘invention’ of ‘logical consistency’ and ’empirical evidence.’
Hence: Straw-man. No attempt to understand what the other person is trying to say. Just ham-fisted, mocking dismissal. Entirely typical of Vox and his ilk, in my (admittedly limited) experience.
Well to quote in full (I’ll try and get the tags right this time).
Mr. Beale laid his cards on the table in the previous posts’ discussion:
“Look, I speak four languages. I live in a society where people have vastly different views from the one in which I grew up, some of which I’ve adopted, most of which I have not. But what I’ve learned from living in America, Europe, and Asia is that most people are idiots, so their different views are almost always ill-considered, poorly reasoned, unevidenced, and easily invalidated. I understand that your views are different, but unless they are both logically consistent and empirically supported, they’re not equally valid with my own.”
He comes pre-loaded with the assumption that he’s smarter than you. He might be correct, but he also might just be off-the-chart arrogant. Beale walks into a room, knives out, and essentially forces his interlocutor to speak to him in his own terms so he may safely sheath those blades. He makes the rules for the game and forces you to play by them or he will take his toys and go home.
The only rules that I see in Vox’s comment are “I understand that your views are different, but unless they are both logically consistent and empirically supported, they’re not equally valid with my own.” So perhaps there is a different reading, but you can hardly accuse me of making a straw man. The “professed superior grasp of logic and rationality” on the other hand is the definition of a straw man as that is a claim I’ve never made nor intend to make. I don’t know if my grasp of logic is superior to Jonathan Hontz’s or not. I just found the fact that he took issue with the “logically consistent and empirically supported” bit to be delightfully absurd.
Well, I can’t speak for Jonathan Hontz — perhaps the context of the remark was indeed as narrow as you suggest (I doubt it, but I’m not going to take the time to look just now) — but regardless, it seems to me that the evidence of Vox’s “assumption that he’s smarter than you” and his “off-the-charts [arrogance]” (and the impact of both on his argumentative style) goes far beyond the one passage of Vox’s you quote. The evidence is mountainous, even just in Vox’s comments on this blog. Indeed he does assume that he’s smarter than (virtually) everyone else. Indeed he is off-the-charts arrogant. I have not the slightest doubt that he himself would readily agree on both counts.
Given Vox’s arrogance, and his default presumption of superior intelligence, what it means to say that he “makes the rules of the game” and “forces you to play by them” is something far more than just that you have to be ‘logically consistent’ and backed up by ’empirical evidence’ in order to convince him of something. Now, if that was all that Jonathan was saying, then you’re right to think it’s absurd. But I seriously doubt you’re right. But regardless, even if you are, the same point can be made in much stronger terms, as any charitable reader should know (or so it seems to me). Mocking the “delightfully absurd” may have its place, but so does ‘attempting to understand’ and ‘giving the benefit of the doubt.’
The most devastating critiques, after all, are always those based on firmer, stronger formulations of the very arguments one attacks. Mocking is just (as I said) kind of pathetic. Fun, perhaps. Flattering and enjoyable, sure. But still — limp and pathetic.
Uhhhh…
The origional post is just 2 above my own. It’s less text then this thread. I know you’re busy and all, but you could read it in under a min, and by doing so could actually know what you’re talking about before talking.
Sorry if that came off as mocking or pathetic. But you literally just accused me of misrepresenting a post that you admit to not having read.
But to seriously address your other points:
it seems to me that the evidence of Vox’s “assumption that he’s smarter than you” and his “off-the-charts [arrogance]” (and the impact of both on his argumentative style) goes far beyond the one passage of Vox’s you quote
I didn’t quote it. Jonathan Hontz did. Didn’t you read his post? Sorry, trying to be serious. But also, I’ve never made any attempt to defend Vox against the charges of arrogance.
Mocking the “delightfully absurd” may have its place, but so does ‘attempting to understand’ and ‘giving the benefit of the doubt.’
The most devastating critiques, after all, are always those based on firmer, stronger formulations of the very arguments one attacks.
I’m sowwy. From now on I’ll treat lines like His arrogance and faith undermine his online persona.
But he’s still fun to fuck with. with the seriousness and scholarly rigour that they deserve.
* original post, not origional
I’m typing up an after-action report on the exchange I had with Beale that led to the comment you two are discussing. I’m not going to keep hijacking Bakker’s discussion area with my own stuff; my welcome is probably wearing thin. Not to mention it’s off-topic.
In short: delavagus pretty much read my comment as I intended it to be read. I tried to get Beale to explain why he believes that civilization is an advancement from uncivilization. He couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. The manner in which he did (or didn’t do) this is a black mark on his character as an individual and his proficiency as a logician.
I repeat: his arrogance and faith undermine his online persona.
I’ll post here when I finish the write-up. 😉
Here’s my post about this: http://falsedivision.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/on-intellectua…false-division/
Enjoy.
Daniel Abraham on Sexism/Racism and Historically Accuracy in Fantasy
The OP has links to the post, discussion follows.
Damn relativity linkage! Try this:
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/65321-daniel-abraham-debunks-the-idea-of-historically-accurate-epic-fantasy/
Just wanted to post a musical interlude. Anytime there is a discussion regarding ROH/ACM, I think of the song “A Tract for Valerie Solanas” by Matmos. I think the reason for this is that I had similar reactions to the S.C.U.M. Manifesto and ROH; confusion on whether the material was serious or an attempt at satire/parody.
Is Moon so hard to understand? She hates what she perceives to be exploitation, erasure, and privilege.
She’s part reviewer, part entertainer. If nothing else, she’s fostered a lot of discussion and made people think about varied issues, if only indirectly.
She’s not even the first person to be put off by what Scott calls his “E-Stink”. I recall one woman poster at Westeros mentioning Bakker’s last foray there turned away 80% of his female readership.
None of her positions or even her anger at “grimdark” works are that uncommon, even Sady Doyle who Scott apparently admires essentially accuses GRRM of being sexually attracted to teenagers and possibly having a rape fetish.
“I recall one woman poster at Westeros mentioning Bakker’s last foray there turned away 80% of his female readership.”
A heavily researched claim, I’m sure.
Hahaha, I think she meant out of the known female posters on those forums.
I just don’t get the fascination with Moon over eight months. Nothing she’s said or been angered about is in anyway that surprising, nor is that level of anger over depiction exclusive to RoH or Scott.
Time to move on to something more interesting, like this idea of the pornographic future Scott mentioned in a prior comment. (It’s sad that the interesting stuff, stuff that used to get top billing at TPB, ends up buried in the comments now.)
I agree wholeheartedly that the blog should get back on track. Oh for the days of the Semantic Apocalypse.
Is Moon so hard to understand? She hates what she perceives to be exploitation, erasure, and privilege.
I don’t think she does. Well, not as an end in itself, merely hating and stirring hate as a means to an end.
Say there was an opportunity to argue with someone who is a boss (perhaps even without swearing?) and they would, because of being argued with, start paying a female worker an equal wage where they didn’t before. But to spend time doing so would reduce the number of visitors to ones blog.
With you, Saajan, I’m basically 100% certain you’d take that opportunity to argue (do you even have a blog?).
I’m not so sure with ACM.
To me, Vox is right here (in an environment he can’t just delete posts). I mean, I guess I’ve mostly argued in the past on petty subjects, like someone saying for example ‘In roleplay, if the players don’t know they are being railroaded, then it’s not a railroad!’ and bang, I just haveta reply to that person! I don’t somehow studiously avoid them or think someone else arguing with them is ‘free entertainment’. I want to be a force for change (even if it’s a petty subject) – I don’t just want to talk to people on my blog that will already agree with me.
So she hates. But does she care?
Will reply below, feel bad for dragging in Dhrama. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the Entourage ref.)
To me, Vox is right here
‘Right here’ as in near and present – I don’t mean he’s right! Heh!
“Is Moon so hard to understand? She hates what she perceives to be exploitation, erasure, and privilege.
She’s part reviewer, part entertainer. If nothing else, she’s fostered a lot of discussion and made people think about varied issues, if only indirectly.”
I guess my initial thought in regards to ROH/ACM was that she must be attempting humor ‘cos if not, if she’s trying to do something constructive, then I think her tactics need changing. Shame just doesn’t cut it. As a gay man, I’ve used the shame card when I’ve encountered folks who think of me as lessser than, and it’s never worked.
Then there’s the whole passing judgement on Scott based on a six page misreading of the Darkness that Comes Before and an interview. If you read only six pages of something, you should be able to accurrately state what happens in those six pages (I’m referring here to her claim that the boy in the prolgue was repeatedly raped).
I haven’t spent that much time on the ROH site but I’ve read enough to come to the conclusion that my online time can be better spent elsewhere, like watching Mind & Life webcasts (these are dialogues between the Dalai Lama and Scientists, my favorites are Wolf Singer explaining quantum computing and Adele Diamond explaining executive/cognitive control) or reading the essays Scott has posted and then trying to figure out what they mean (I’m a college droupout with no philosophical training…thank god for Wikipedia and the Stanford Encycolopedia of Philosophy). At least I learn something from these activities. Other than new ways to insult people, I haven’t learned (learnt?) anything from ROH.
Oh, I think humor is a big part of it. Personally I’d like to see her do more positive reviews, others seem big on her performance rage bits.
But, as you say, if there’s no value in her site for a person then the best thing to do is move on.
Vox: When you’re provided with empirical evidence, you then announce that you don’t believe in the standard metric or question its universality with no basis for doing so.
And you don’t question why the standard metric is the standard metric. The standard just is the standard and it’s the standard, with you. And don’t bother with self referencing logic where a conclusion made that’s derived from that standard is then used to assert the standards applicability. That’s the sort of thing that makes us chuckle each time ‘super intelligence’ is trotted out (side note: That’s chuckling, not ostracising you – you don’t forgo a space in the life rafts (so to speak) because of it. Though possibly some people in your history would mean to ostrify you by such an action).
@Callan:
So you think Moon’s doing it for the lulz and page views? That’s an even better reason not to keep up this…whatever this is that Scott’s doing.
I think she cares a great deal about rape culture, about sexism, about homophobia – I actually dare to say she’s actually picking her battles, as SFF is a small enough community that she has managed to get people talking. She’s affecting change in a microcosm she can ably influence.
Heh, as to having a blog, I have one on Blogger but it has like one post from years ago. I think the post was about magic items in D&D. Blogging just ain’t my thing.
So you think Moon’s doing it for the lulz and page views? That’s an even better reason not to keep up this…whatever this is that Scott’s doing.
Well, it’s like identifying a Ponzi scheme in action. Do you just walk away while other people get sucked in?
But I guess it does raise the point about how much does one do? Sure, putting out the warning every so often is good. But you can’t convince everyone it’s a Ponzi.
She’s affecting change in a microcosm she can ably influence.
If you have no doubt on the matter, what can I say?
Blogging just ain’t my thing.
No need to boast! 😉
“If you have no doubt on the matter, what can I say?”
Think about her post on Joe A’s character Terez. That spawned all the Gender in Genre threads, the two Sexual Assault + Violence threads, the appearance of Morgan and Joe A in those threads, Abraham starting the Dog Project based on those two threads, the LGBT depiction thread, and a thread on Censorship in Art, the discussions on Rifters and, if we want we can include Valente’s post on Birds, Bees, and Priest.
It’s not an opinion about whether she’s good or bad. It’s a note about her efficacy which seems indisputable.
I see other people doing those things you talk about.
But looking past that, it is about good and bad (or more exactly, good in terms of a certain cause) if she’s making more people either act like her (or atleast acting how they think she acts).
Remember the joker? How he said society/were okay when a gangbanger gets killed, or a soldier gets killed were all okay, but threaten to kill one mayor and everyone gets upset? I think he made an incredibly good point. I just don’t think the sort of people he makes/the way he prompts them to act is good though, even if he is makes some good points.
And I’m having a duh moment – I can just as much refer to Kellhus, who uses truths, not because he cares about that truth, but simply because of the effect it’ll have on the listener. That doesn’t make his truths false. Doesn’t mean he cares about those truths when he speaks them, either.
So is it bad when Sady goes after not just the Song of Ice & Fire books but also cast aspersions on the author himself?
Is it bad when Lewis Black or Maher or Stewart mock a politician based on sound bites? Are “Bush is Dumb” jokes bad?
Is all lampooning of public figures based on small bits of information a sign that the world is coming to an end?
Surely there are examples beyond Vox and Moon of this dangerous phenomenon that is destroying the last vestiges of human reason?
There’s a point when you drop the shovel, stop digging, and let shit go.
Saajan,
In the spirit of the OP, have you tried flying in my cockpit, so to speak? I’ve tried yours – ie, ACM is an instigator for a bunch of critical thinking on the depiction of women in fiction. I think it’s physically possible.
Vox is right in that I think ACM’s views are not mysterious, seems simple enough to pilot that craft.
She thinks straight white male creators get more of a pass than others, that the genre rewards grimdark (rape, excessive violence, male gaze), that the Western world’s culture overly influences the globe, that most works of fiction posit hetero as the norm and homosexuality is, at best, a side show to be pitied.
What strange to me is that none of this unique (see Seth, Alex MacFarlane, myself, Kalbear for people criticizing the books), nor are the reactions to Scott’s books that uncommon among people or women who share some of ACM’s morality. I’ve seen variations of telling Scott to fuck himself, of people not wanting to go into detail about issues on the books they see as patently obvious. (Scroll through Scott’s Amazon reviews)
The point being yes, you write controversial work (and use lines like “Plain in the Way of Abused Children”) you will make some friends and some enemies.
Shit happens, you try to do X and people see Z. I would contend Sady had valid points, for example, I would even understand how she’d be skeeved out by Martin’s story.
Then I’d move on, as many authors have done after Moon’s pieces savaged their books – Jemisin, Elaine Cunningham, Saladin Ahmed, Morgan, Abercrombie, even Valente.
Fuck, sorry I misread what you wrote about flying in which cockpit…
Dear Callan,
Please explain in detail how Mr. Bakker’s work results in lower pay for female employees. (Please show your work.)
Rather, what I think results in lower pay for female employees is those who actually decide such things paying them less coupled with supposed activists with a stated interest in changing that pretending that harassing authors makes more sense than harassing those who actually decide such things.
I’m not sure how you’ve read me – the boss in my example is just some random boss with an unequal view on womens pay. The example boss is not connected to Scott? I don’t think what you said, you’ve just missread me (which I did with someone else in a previous thread, oops!)
Though it probably matter not at all: Pow! Score 1 for the Bakkinator. Whoo Whoo Whoo Whoo. (dunno, the name just came to me, its bad i know).
Your post made me quite happy that I didnt stop coming around here. Thanks for rejuvenating my hopes in this site. Seriously, I was beginning to worry that this blog would just continue to be mired in such…. pestilence ? worthless posturing? I dunno, mired in whatever it was/is mired in.
There’s some hope now, for me, the casual non-intellectual bakker fan looking for a pseudo-fansite of some kind with which to interact with their favorite author and other similarly like minded individuals.
By the way if you’ve got another site, I’d love to know.
Wilshire wrote:
“casual non-intellectual bakker fan”
I can’t wrap my head around this. If you read his books and enjoy them, you cannot call yourself ‘non-intellectual’. You can take the plot at face value and enjoy it (I’m certainly a fan) but the thematic motifs are so dense that I imagine it would bore people not looking to think about things. Not to mention horrify and disgust them.
I can’t say for sure, but it seems to me that Wiltshire is being sarcastic. Just more mocking by the Vox crowd. Or perhaps the ACM crowd. Hard to tell the difference, really (except that Vox’s numbers are vastly, frighteningly superior — so I assume it’s the work of a Voxyite).
If the poster is sincere, well, perhaps there’s a significant language barrier getting in the way.
Moral certainty is a sign of intellectual stagnation. As much as Vox or ACM might scream certainties at the sky, the fact that they are so dogmatic in their beliefs only leads them to never challenging their beliefs. Not challenging their beliefs means they are not challenging themselves, which leaves this notion of engaging them in anything approaching a discussion pointless.
Vox is too entrenched to change his views, in the areas where he may be right that is fine, but in the areas where he is blatantly wrong he’ll simply twist the marker in order to continue on as he has before. The end result is that nothing will happen and a great deal of time will have been wasted spent yelling past each other.
As much as Vox or ACM might scream certainties at the sky, the fact that they are so dogmatic in their beliefs only leads them to never challenging their beliefs. Not challenging their beliefs means they are not challenging themselves, which leaves this notion of engaging them in anything approaching a discussion pointless.
This is amusing. I’m the one whose been completely open to challenges. I’ve answered dozens of questions here, whereas Bakker still hasn’t answered the very first question I asked him. I’ve invited Scott to debate his belief in uncertainty, and he still hasn’t responded. And despite all this, you all are so wedded to your false beliefs about me, so certain, that even direct evidence to the contrary isn’t enough to change it. Will any of you even hold Scott accountable if he runs away from a public debate? My readers assuredly would.
And you call me the dogmatic one who won’t challenge himself… that is indeed funny.
You’ve answered only those questions you’ve chosen to answer… which makes sense. But think about it: sure, you’ve posted a lot of words up here — good on you! In itself, however, that proves jack and shit about your willingness to be “challenged.” You even went so far as to admit that you don’t consider any of the discussion on this site to constitute ‘debate’! Why? Because we’re all so very far below you, presumably little more than ants.
How, then, can you claim to be ‘open to challenge’ here? How can mere ants challenge the Super Intelligence?
“Roger, you’ve not activated your targeting computer!”
“I’ve got this” – flys down the trench, sends a proton torpedo right down the exhaust tube…
You’ve answered only those questions you’ve chosen to answer… which makes sense. But think about it: sure, you’ve posted a lot of words up here — good on you! In itself, however, that proves jack and shit about your willingness to be “challenged.” You even went so far as to admit that you don’t consider any of the discussion on this site to constitute ‘debate’! Why? Because we’re all so very far below you, presumably little more than ants.
I’ve answered dozens of questions, most notably the three in which you said you were “particularly interested”. I still haven’t received a relevant answer from Scott on my first question posed eight months ago and you yourself are currently trying to avoid two direct and very pertinent questions about your thus far unjustified claim that Pyrrhonian scepticism cannot be charged with being self-refuting without charging all philosophico-rational thought with the same… a claim made in the post that immediately succeeded the one in which you wrote that “if a claim to knowledge cannot be justified, then the claimant is rationally constrained to withdraw it.”
It is totally absurd to assert that a demonstrated willingness to questions proves nothing about one’s willingness to be challenged, especially coming from someone who is refusing to answer questions himself.
You even went so far as to admit that you don’t consider any of the discussion on this site to constitute ‘debate’! Why? Because we’re all so very far below you, presumably little more than ants.
No, it’s because you guys are clearly unwilling to answer my questions. Debates are not one-way interrogations. In a debate, both sides are expected to respond to the other. That hasn’t happened here. And while it’s true that you’re less intelligent than I am, I’m not at all unwilling to be challenged by you or anyone else, or to debate anyone. I invited Scott to a debate. I’ve offered you the chance to discuss your posts on ancient scepticism in detail.
But you guys keep running away, evading questions, looking for excuses not to have your beliefs and assertions challenged, and then firing these ludicrous Parthian shots about how I’m the one who isn’t open to having my beliefs questioned or my arguments challenged. It is absolutely absurd, and you can rest assured that it isn’t only the VP readers who find your comportment thus far to be astonishingly ironic.
How, then, can you claim to be ‘open to challenge’ here? How can mere ants challenge the Super Intelligence?
Anyone can challenge me. I’m entirely open to it and many have. The real question is: can you challenge me successfully. By this point, it’s apparent that Bakker can’t, and at this point, the odds aren’t looking so good for you either. But run away if you like, as doing so will only further feed my arrogance.
“Ask yourself, Vox – for once set scripture aside and truly ask yourself – whether the feeling within your breast now, at this very moment – is wicked or righteous.”
I’m sorry to ask more questions of one who is convinced to have already fielded so many, so deftly. I have to know though. What fuels your certainty, Vox? Are the Dread Ilk really more inquisitive, more rigorous in their pursuit of knowledge than others? Is all this just a matter of faith?
I know which of us will murder in the name of God first. Righteous, then, is it?
Interesting arrogance feedback loop where even people ignoring him would feed into it.
I’m going to agree with Vox on this much -> You can’t really think of conversation in comments as a debate. It’s not organized enough, and people can easily throw out so many responses it becomes impossible to track every question.
Vox, back to assimilation of blacks, to take one topic rather than the seven or eight we have running. When I go to the movies, and I watch everything from indies to blockbusters, I see black people. Same with the places I go eat (ranging from fast food to high end restaurants), I see black people. I met a young African American woman who was a PhD candidate for computer science at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, which seems to be a pretty highly regarded university last I checked. It’s near Bucknell right?
I’ve met black doctors, accountants, public health officials. I’ve worked in DC government and DC schools, and I don’t any of the problems there have to do with race.
So I don’t see this inability to assimilate, honestly I find it baffling anyone can claim that. Nor do I see how you can conclude that there is some genetic flaw in black people. Admittedly I don’t have any metric at the top of my head, so feel free to provide one.
As always, data is best.
“Ask yourself, Vox – for once set scripture aside and truly ask yourself – whether the feeling within your breast now, at this very moment – is wicked or righteous.”
My present feeling is a mix of supreme annoyance, severe irritation, and mild contempt. I think this would have to be placed in the wicked category. However, most of the annoyance and irritation has to do with the newly discovered need to return a poorly manufactured machine that was leaking oil all over inside the box to the retailer. I didn’t really expect much more from Bakker’s fans than from the man himself.
What fuels your certainty, Vox? Are the Dread Ilk really more inquisitive, more rigorous in their pursuit of knowledge than others? Is all this just a matter of faith?
Successful predictive models. The more success, the greater the certainty. For example, most of the VP regulars and I assumed that what passed for attempts at argument here would be evasive, tangential, inept, and irrelevant. So it was and thus is one’s certainty strengthened. Yes, the Dread Ilk are far more inquisitive and rigorous in their pursuit of knowledge than most others on average, and certainly than anyone who has been commenting here. You have only to compare the difference between an intra-Ilk debate with the pathetic showing thus far presented by Scott and others here to see that. No, it has absolutely nothing to do with faith. An atheist or agnostic member of the Ilk would carve up anyone here almost as easily as I can.
You see, you guys don’t appear to challenge each other very much. I haven’t seen anyone here calling Scott on anything in my various visits here; I’m sure it must happen from time to time but it isn’t a constant thing like it is at VP. What almost no one here appears to understand is that VP is very close to the exact opposite of an echo chamber, my readership is transcreedal and mostly consists of people who love to challenge and be challenged, on everything from theological matters to the ideal handgun caliber.
Nothing wrong with a .22 (the caliber of choice for filthy latino thugs, excellent for killing innocent and honorable white cops).
In the past I’ve argued with Scott about his ‘semantic apocalypse’ (mainly: is it really a bad thing?), his idea that “value” will be an obsolete concept (indeed ‘concepts’ themselves may die out), and whether or not the argument is even sound. I find the idea interesting, but I’m still pro re-wiring one’s brain all the way to the bank.
Scott has cool reductionist theory of consciousness. There are implications he thinks it has that I somewhat disagree with (the main idea though is that consciousness is very limited in the information it accesses and that the structure of the information access is such that even incomplete information seems absolute, and that premise is well-supported).
Scott has economic and political ideals that are somewhat to the left of what I advocate, although his position is very nuanced and he does have some seething resentment of the academic wankfests that would probably upset you as well.
I think that by engaging people like ACM (and to a lesser extent, you) publicly on his blog, he’s doing himself something of an economic disservice. He doesn’t care because he likes to communicate with his critics and try to see what he can learn from them. He has bitten more bullets from ACM than he has from you, but that’s only because to us you seem to be exactly like so many characters from The Darkness That Comes Before.
There is one area though in which I’m a complete fanboy: his writing is fantastic. As a supernerd I’ve read a lot of fantasy and his simply stands out as being miles better than anyone else currently working, Martin included (DWD is still sitting unfinished on my table)
I know which of us will murder in the name of God first. Righteous, then, is it?
You do? Are you certain? After all, “the Pyrrhonian assents to nothing that is unknown.” Bad skeptic! Bad!
Interesting arrogance feedback loop where even people ignoring him would feed into it.
No, people who ignore me don’t feed into it. People who make noise about the importance of challenge me, then retreat into silence rather than answering my questions and defending their claims against my critiques do. It’s so common there is even a term for this behavior in the VP lexicon: Silence That Gun.
I didn’t know who R. Scott Bakker was and had never heard of him until he criticized my views on the flaws of modern fantasy. Delavagus and numerous others have been the ones asking me questions, not the other way around. To claim that they were “ignoring me” is blatantly and absolutely false.
I met a young African American woman who was a PhD candidate for computer science at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, which seems to be a pretty highly regarded university last I checked. It’s near Bucknell right?
Tell you what, I’ll check out the relevant metrics and give your assimilation a detailed response on my blog sometime within the next two weeks. As for bright and well-educated young blacks, of course they exist. I couldn’t possibly claim they didn’t given that one of my good friends in college was a black soccer player who went on to become a doctor like his father.
On the other hand, I saw many of my black teammates struggling in classes for which I didn’t even study, even though they were putting in four hours per day in the library. They shouldn’t have been at Bucknell, they should have been at a university where they could have progressed at a more reasonable rate. They worked their asses off and still often found it very hard to obtain passing grades. The best intentions of providing them with the best possible educations went horribly wrong for many, if not most of them there, even though they were mostly children of the black elite. Perhaps the girl you met is like my soccer-playing friend, or perhaps she’s desperately hanging on by her fingernails.
Either way, one example says no more about the macrosocietal situation than one grocery store does about the national economy.
I’ll look out for your post on this subject.
“Tell you what, I’ll check out the relevant metrics and give your assimilation a detailed response on my blog sometime within the next two weeks.”
What are the relevant metrics?
Nothing wrong with a .22 (the caliber of choice for filthy latino thugs, excellent for killing innocent and honorable white cops).
Sure there is, blasphemer… it’s not .40!
In the past I’ve argued with Scott….
That’s to your credit. But surely it’s readily observable that despite the purported commitment to uncertainty and intellectual discussion here, very little actual back-and-forth debate takes place at TPB in comparison with VP.
The positions you hold are more extreme, and more committed. It’s only natural. Bakker’s position on many things can be summarized as: “Well, yeah man, but how do you KNOW?” which can actually be used to attack things as disparate as a strong commitment to Christianity or a strong commitment to materialistic reductionism.
Out of curiosity… what is the epistemological basis for your commitment to a particular religious ontology? (I’m not looking to argue religion, just genuinely curious about what the central lynchpin of your worldview is.)
I’m a fairly regular reader of this blog, am on the left, am an atheist, and even have a philosophy degree. I probably disagree with many if not most of Vox’s ideas. Nevertheless, in my view Vox is winning his ‘debate’ with Bakker and his fans by a wide margin, and if I remember correctly he won it the first time around as well. His interlocutors, I hope, would be ashamed of the feeble responses they’ve made if they were able to read them with any objectivity. Instead of mustering substantive and logical arguments, Bakker’s fans are reacting with the senseless passion of an in group attacking a hated outsider. Exactly the kind of thing Bakker likes to rail against. Ridiculous and sad!
And you also happen to be Vox!
Ah, but the truth of that is something that only he and I know… and I suspect we’re both laughing right now. Thanks to you, Mr. B, at least two of us have attained certainty.
Well, then, what are your biggest arguments against Vox’s position?
Accusations of sock-puppetry? That’s rich, coming from you Scott…
Touche! But read the thing. You have to admit it’s hard to credit.
Scott, can you see the IPs of people posting here? (No guarantee due to proxies, of course, but hey…)
Um… could you please post a quick rundown/summary, as opposed to vapid speculations and claims of background (BTW, I’m a self-aware murder of crows typing via pecking the keyboard of an abandoned macbook after chasing away the owner. Just saying 🙂 )
Can I just what a joy it is to have TPB graced by Pinhead aka the Crow Flock aka 01?
Ah, believe I just did.
LOL I am flattered 😉
Possibly using the same computer network/router, ie both are at the same workplace or home. Theo’s wife?
Instead of mustering substantive and logical arguments, Bakker’s fans are reacting with the senseless passion of an in group attacking a hated outsider.
And this is easy enough to say even if it didn’t happen to be true. I think I’ll ask how you’d measure that, but ironically in me wanting to hear how you do things at the very least, to me that seems an act of someone not just interested in attacking.
Out of curiosity… what is the epistemological basis for your commitment to a particular religious ontology?
Empiricism. I find that Christianity works extraordinarily well as a predictive model of human behavior. While I respect the religious rationalists, and Summa Elvetica is literally an argument written according to the philosophical structure of Thomas Aquinas, my religious beliefs are not based upon conventional theological logic.
So, you have run replicates and performed Student’s t-test on variable-controlled human populations and found that the results line up with The Holy Bible?
Impressive.
All kidding aside (was that crispy enough strawman for ya?), sure. Narratives (even fictitious ones) allow us to do ‘test runs’ of human behavior given different sociological contexts. I just don’t get how you jump from ‘the Bible teaches me to predict human behavior’ to “therefore the Bible must be a correct model of metaphysical matters”. Enlighten me.
I wonder as to protocol per which you tested Christianity as behavior-prediction tool. No, seriously. That’s a pretty impressive claim you made, and I’m sure lots of people would like to know more about your…investigation.
Why is it hard to credit? You think it’s going well?
The idea that Vox has made anything approaching a convincing case. Do you think he has?
It’s been ugly, otherwise, no doubt.
No, of course he hasn’t. Neither has the KKK. But I was expecting his “empirical case” to be demolished within a few posts, when instead it almost seems like the feeling has been “oh facts aren’t the point.” He’s barely even been called on describing Detroit as “African self-rule”. He seems to be having the run of it, to be honest.
I’ve barely had time to skim the posts, there’s been so many and I’ve had so little time (my pop was in the hospital)! But it seems to me that a number of people have been hammering him with questions.
A convincing case for what? I’m not even sure what we’re arguing here. That you’re an idiot for advocating skepticism regarding moral certainty? He has certainly (ha!) not convinced me even a little. On VP he did address Roger directly and raise the question of self-refutation, but other than that I’ve seen very little productive engagement here.
It’s hard!
It’s very difficult to come into a debate with someone like him because one is immediately on the defensive: he starts with the assumption that he is smarter (he has attained The Absolute by studying the Bible apparently) and indisputably correct. Why should I even bother? Furthermore, many of his positions are intrinsically repellent to a desire for communication: he vilifies certain races. How am I supposed to talk to someone who not only thinks of me as an intellectual inferior but also inherently genetically inferior (I’m making assumptions here, I’ll admit, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were correct)?
So, yes. There’s a dilemma: We’re aware of how nicely we lock ourselves up into our little internet boxes where we can be comfortable with in-group consensus, but when you try and break out of these boxes all you get is a shitstorm. I think it’s an unfortunate byproduct of the structure of forums and blogs: they encourage dogpiling, not discourse.
How am I supposed to talk to someone who not only thinks of me as…
With pity?
Yeah, it’s a shade toward the paternalistic to do so, but the certainty level is so high his is almost a mental condition.
Vox: But you guys keep running away, evading questions, looking for excuses not to have your beliefs and assertions challenged
I’m looking at where I answered five of your open questions (ie, not those aimed at Scott). No reply from you. But that’s the thing, you use the mess of comments to simply assume yourself right and game the ambiguity to declare yourself correct – you don’t think in the mess of comments there could be replies you missed and that you aughtn’t just bulk dismiss because of that.
And you also happen to be Vox!
I don’t do the sock puppet thing. I’m much too arrogant for that.
I just don’t get how you jump from ‘the Bible teaches me to predict human behavior’ to “therefore the Bible must be a correct model of metaphysical matters”. Enlighten me.
Excellent question that deserves more space than I can provide here. Perhaps I’ll address it on the blog sometime after I finish the existence of gods debate.
The idea that Vox has made anything approaching a convincing case. Do you think he has?
I haven’t presented any case at all this time around, I’ve mostly been shooting down various false statements and answering various questions. But that’s not the point, which is that I show up and answer questions addressed to me. You and others here (mostly) have not. One thing that is clear thus far is that I’m not afraid to make a case and permit it to be challenged, which explodes a number of your previous statements. You, on the other hand, don’t appear to be willing or able to defend your claims at all.
It’s very difficult to come into a debate with someone like him because one is immediately on the defensive: he starts with the assumption that he is smarter (he has attained The Absolute by studying the Bible apparently) and indisputably correct.
Come on, you don’t think our various PhD candidates don’t think they’re smarter than most of the interlocutors? That’s why the superintelligence thing stings them so much whereas most people don’t give a damn or find it amusing. It should be obvious that I don’t think I’m indisputably correct as I’ve even pointed out a few of my past errors here.
But after eight years of having intelligent and educated people challenging my published opinions every week, I have earned the right to assume that I am smarter than those who challenge me because I am usually able to force those who do so to either concede or retreat into silence. Which, of course, is precisely why Scott and Delavagus are so leery of allowing me to pin them down by answering my questions.
I’m looking at where I answered five of your open questions (ie, not those aimed at Scott). No reply from you.
On this post? I just ran through all of your comments and I don’t see a single question from me that you’ve answered. It appears you do not know the difference between a question and a statement.
But that’s the thing, you use the mess of comments to simply assume yourself right and game the ambiguity to declare yourself correct – you don’t think in the mess of comments there could be replies you missed and that you aughtn’t just bulk dismiss because of that.
No doubt I have missed a few. That’s why this isn’t a debate. And to be blunt, your attempts to respond to both me and others have been so reliably off-target and irrelevant that it didn’t occur to me to pay any more attention to them than I would to a dog barking.
But if you have a specific question, I’ll certainly be happy to answer it. I tend to doubt it will be difficult.
On this post? I just ran through all of your comments and I don’t see a single question from me that you’ve answered. It appears you do not know the difference between a question and a statement.
I like how you ask ‘on this post’, yet without the answer to the question, you still come to a conclusion. Not even using an ‘If so, then…’. Perhaps it’s unconcious, uncontrollable. Anyway, answer: no.
No doubt I have missed a few. That’s why this isn’t a debate.
Nor you accepting any sort of a challenge to your values. This porridge is too hot to be debate, this porridge is too cold to be debate. Hello Goldilox.
have been so reliably off-target and irrelevant that it didn’t occur to me to pay any more attention to them than I would to a dog barking.
Not good enough, Beale. I am not your father, I don’t indulge your childishness.
I think that many retreat into silence because there is no point debating with you. Not because you are likely to win, or because of your self-proclaimed superior intelligence, but rather because you are such a creature of absolutes – many of them repugnant – that there is little to gain from talking to you, let alone engaging you further. Personally i’m only here because i’m bored.
I think that many retreat into silence because there is no point debating with you.
No doubt. What a remarkable coincidence that this always seems to happen right after I’ve asked a question that exposes their ignorance or flaws in their logic….
There’s that absolute again. You definitely exposed that! But you’re also totally a guy who thinks he could be wrong! So it’s not definite – but it is definite, but it’s…
Or it could be because after your own ignorance or logical flaws are exposed you respond by going into full-on, spittle-projecting, ad hominem-slinging attack mode.
You know, either one.
[…] called Three Pound Brain. ACM wrote this post, as well as this post, and he’s responded with this post, among others. It goes […]
One thing I noticed about pyrofennec is that some of her old friends on live journal were conservative (one of them had a bruce bawer book on goodreads and were themselves attached to somewhat extreme republican views.
I want to propose a theory.
I think people who can’t write anything but criticism tend to project certain views on the author (for example, misogyny) for a variety of reasons. But I think a lot of it comes down to one elementary thought.
They don’t view works of fiction as venues for exploration, instead they view them like single-player role-playing games. They think writers create, rather than synthesize. They think to themselves “If I could make a world, I’d make it (gender-equal/race-equal/more tolerant of coin collectors)” They figure that when an author does *not* do so, that they’re shirking some sort of responsibility.
To whit, they think of writing as a way to send a message, and that message must come through clear and perfect. Sort of like the Fundamentalist Christian authors who fill their works of fiction with straw men and characters who serve as mouthpieces for ad hominem arguments. It’s not that they can’t conceive of works that eschew complete Aesop-esque moral coercion, it’s that the concept that someone could create a *flawed* world and publish it is anathema to them.
That, I think, is why many get so offended by “endorsements” (what readers refer to as “depictions”) of atrocity. It’s not enough for people to look at the Second Apocalypse, the Wheel of Time or whatever and say “boy, these characters are moving through worlds with messed-up value systems.” They have to play armchair psychologist too.
Interesting diagnosis. The bottomline, I sometimes think, is just that people are loathe to think they miss things. If they don’t see it, it’s either not there or it wasn’t clear enough. If you ask them whether this should be a yardstick for all writers, ‘making all subtexts clearly visible to all readers’ (which is tantamount to banishing all subtexts), they fall back onto some version of ‘Who do you think you are?’
The criticism isn’t the problem so much as is the intransigence: I acknowledge what I’m doing is problematic, but rather than taking that as an invitation to meet in the middle, they demonize even this. If you get a chance to read Haidt’s book, especially the stuff on value sacralization, I think you’ll find it fascinating.
> The Morality of Rape
> by Vox Day
I came across the article a while back and I made my own response in newsgroup format:
> “Ethical men have always been opposed to rape,” declares
> Camille Paglia, the brilliant iconoclast who has herself
> been accused of being a rape apologist, in “Sex, Art and
> American Culture.” But on what grounds have they done so,
> if this is indeed the case? I found myself considering this
> question after inadvertently sparking a minor eruption in
> the blogosphere with a post reflecting on what I consider
> to be the dubious nature of “date rape.”
> It is, I have been reliably informed, nauseating, vile and
> hateful to assert that women are capable of bearing
> responsibility for their actions – there are many
> individuals who sincerely believe that a woman must be
> allowed to behave however she likes without being forced to
> endure a word of criticism.
No. A woman should be allowed to behave as she likes without being forced to have sex.
> This is called “blaming the victim” even when the woman has not
> yet managed to be victimized.
It is “blaming the victim” if one asserts that any alleged bahavior of a woman justifies rape.
> And yet, despite reading hundreds of missives featuring
> varying degrees of hysterics, it remains a mystery as to
> what grounds these rape mythomoralists have for objecting
> to rape in the first place.
That it’s a mystery to Day indicates only a personal problem.
> The criminality of rape in this country is beyond question,
> but as I have pointed out with regard to other matters,
> legality is not morality. It is illegal to walk across the
> street when a specific light is red, but this is not an
> immoral act. It is immoral to seduce your friend’s wife,
> but it is not illegal. Furthermore, there are no shortage
> of countries where rape is not only legal, but an
> established policy of the government authority, so the
> criminal aspect is obviously irrelevant with regard to
> questioning the fundamental morality or immorality of the
> act.
> But which morality? The Judeo-Christian moral ethic is
> clear – rape is a sin, a willful pollution of a temple that
> rightly belongs to God. Neither the Jew nor the Christian
> need hesitate before asserting the act of rape to be evil
> and justly holding the rapist accountable.
Actually, the Judeo-Christian moral ethic does not lead to a general condemnation of rape.
In Numbers 31 (RSV), Moses gives his orders about women and children taken captive during the genocidal war against Midian:
“17. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him.
“18. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
Moses authorized his soldiers to rape little girls taken captive.
Moses does give his own laws about rape:
Deuteronomy 22:
“23. ‘If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her,
“24. then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you.”
This means both rapist and victim must die if the victim is betrothed or married and raped in a city and the rapist is able to silence her.
“25. ‘But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die.
“26. But to the young woman there is no offence punishable by death, for this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor;
“27. because he came upon her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.
Only in the country is the victim let off the hook.
The rape of a betrothed virgin or wife is thus seen as a crime against the intended or current husband, not against the victim, particularly in light of what follows:
“28. ‘If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found,
“29. then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days.”
In this case, the rape is considered a crime against the victim’s father.
Thus the punishment of the rapist is forced marriage to the victim.
I searched in vain for any Mosaic law that punished those who rape non-virgins who never married.
The Judeo-Christian moral ethic is the source of the notion that only virgins or married women can be raped, that all other women are open season.
> But this ethic does not offer a blanket excuse to victims,
> near victims and would-be victims either, since the element
> of consent – which today draws the dividing line between
> sex and rape – can also provide a contrarian condemnation
> of the woman’s own actions.
Even if a woman’s actions can be morally condemned, none of such actions justifies rape.
> (Here one must note the intellectual poverty of the rape
> mythologists. If rape concerns power, not sex, then how is
> it possible for the simple absence, or worse, withdrawal,
> of consent to immediately transform a “date rape” situation
> from an inherently sexual one to one where sex plays no
> role at all?)
(Once consent is withdrawn, sex can be continued only through force. Power is involved when consent is unnecessary.)
> To put it more clearly, if a woman consents to extramarital
> sex, she is committing a moral offense which is equal to
> that committed by the man who engages in consensual sex
> with her, or by the man who, in the absence of such
> consent, rapes her. Christianity knows no hierarchy of
> sins. Since only the woman who is not entertaining the
> possibility of sex with a man and is subsequently raped can
> truly be considered a wholly innocent victim under this
> ethic, it is no wonder that women who insist that internal
> consent is the sole determining factor of a woman’s
> victimization find traditional Western morality to be
> inherently distasteful.
Day argues that a woman who considers an adulterous affair becomes the property of the other man to do with as he likes, or more generally, women who stray from the straight and narrow become the property of men who want to have their way with them.
> But what of the other moralities that one could insist are
> equally applicable? And what of other religions?
I have shown that the Christian and Jewish religions do not provide a basis to condemn rape per se. Day shows that Judeo-Christian ethics are not unique in that aspect.
> The Quran does not mention rape per se,…
After listing various unlawful couplings like incest, etc, Quran 4:24 states, “Also forbidden are married women unless they are captives (of war).”
The Quran explicitly legitimizes rape of female POWs.
> …and while the hadith of Wa’il ibn Hujr appears to be even
> stricter than the Old Testament in relating the account of a
> death sentence passed upon a man who admitted to attacking his
> accuser, I suspect few mythomoralists would draw upon Islam
> for intellectual support. Nor upon Hinduism, as the
> Brhadaranyaka Upanishad eerily prefigures Nietzsche:
> Surely, a woman who has changed her clothes at the end of
> her menstrual period is the most auspicious of women. When
> she has changed her clothes at the end of her menstrual
> period, therefore, one should approach that splendid woman
> and invite her to have sex. Should she refuse to consent,
> he should bribe her. If she still refuses, he should beat
> her with a stick or with his fists and overpower her,
> saying: “I take away the splendor from you with my virility
> and splendor” (6.4.9,21).
> While they might find genuine solace in the wisdom of the
> Buddha, where rape, the rapist and the victim alike are
> naught but Mara, it leaves no material grounds for
> condemning the perpetrator. And the Taoist slogan might
> well be: If rape is inevitable, relax and accept it.
> Drought burns basins to dust,
> Light rain is a dew of mockery.
> Receive without complaint,
> Work with fate.
> – Deng Ming-Dao
> It is ironic that mythomoralists show a predilection for
> paganism, given the historical pagan approach to rape. For
> example, one of Rome’s most important founding legends was
> the Rape of the Sabine Women, which one can see celebrated
> in stone by Giovanni Bologna in Florence. Ovid, too,
> commemorated the event, albeit in verse:
> The ravished girls were led away to marriage;
> Their very shame made them more beautiful.
> And when one struggled hard against her captor,
> He carried her away in eager arms,
> And said: “Why spoil your pretty eyes by weeping?
> Your father took your mother, I take you!”
> As for Greece, the Greeks not only worshipped gods given to
> rapine, but as Nancy Baker Worman points out in her review
> of “Rape and the Politics of Consent in Classical Athens”:
> Omitowoju focuses primarily on the issue of consent, a
> central concern of modern discussions. She demonstrates
> that this concern is largely absent from the ancient
> discourse …
> Not only were the pagan Vikings notoriously enthusiastic
> about the concept of rape as sport – the historical account
> of a Viking chieftan’s funeral makes for truly appalling
> reading – but a study of their increasingly post-Christian
> descendants offers some interesting points of analysis for
> anyone questioning mythomoralist rape dogma.
> Despite being acknowledged as the most pro-feminist country
> in the world today, during the 50 years from 1950 to 2000,
> the rate of reported rapes in Sweden rose 356 percent.
> While the mythomoralist would assert that this is due to
> empowered women being increasingly willing to come forward
> and make complaints they previously failed to make out of
> shame, this baseless assertion is eviscerated by the fact
> that reports for all criminal offenses rose 424 percent
> over the same period and the increase in reported rapes is
> dwarfed by the concomitant increase in robberies reported,
> 3,604 percent.
This would indicate that the increase in rape is part of a general increase in violent crime. It further supports the claim that rape is violence.
> As I have previously asserted, most atheist and agnostic
> morality is parasitical, the cultural residue of previous
> generations.
Religious-based morality is cruel, savage and barbaric. I have shown that about Judeo-Christian morality. Day himself demonstrated that about other religions.
The extent that today’s Christianity is benign and civilized is entirely due to secular, non-religious influences. That would make Judeo-Christian morality parasitical, the cultural residue of previous generations.
The specific influence, the one that took Western Europe from the Dark Ages to the Age of Enlightenment, is the idea that human intelligence can solve human problems, that reason can form the basis of morality.
In politics, that led from the Christian doctrine of divine right of kings (Romans 13:1-2) to the secular doctrine that authority comes from the consent of the governed (Declaration of Independence).
It led to the notion that rights can be discerned by reason, that they precede civil society, that the government has the duty to uphold and protects people’s rights.
The Judeo-Christian concept of rape as a crime against the woman’s husband, fiancé or father changed to the rational concept of rape as a crime against the woman, a violation of an objectively discernible right that all persons have.
> Witnessing atheist mythomoralists attempt to articulate a
> reason for their nominal opposition to rape during the
> recent discussion was particularly amusing – while the more
> philosophically inclined appealed to basic utilitarianism
> or Kant’s Categorical Imperative, one frustrated fellow
> finally threw up his hands and declared:
> I swear to God, if you use the phrase “moral relativist”
> one more time, I’m gonna crush your teeth with a hammer.
Fortunately, we are not confined to Day’s memories or what he chooses to reveal about them. We have the works of Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, who was a believer in God, but declared that morality could be discerned by reason, thus making religion entirely superfluous to morality.
> And while “might makes right” is the true essence of
> atheist amorality,…
No. That’s the true essence of Christian morality that argues for the Almighty’s authority entirely from His ability to roast the disobedient in Hell.
> …it is not exactly the most convincing means of attempting
> to assert the moral evil of the rapist.
It’s understandable that Christians would not be persuaded by arguments from the universality of rights.
> As for Utilitarians in a demographically declining West,
> it is quite easy to make numerous cases for the inherent
> common good of rape on societal and social Darwinist
> grounds that are more powerful than the comparatively
> nebulous cases to the contrary.
This means that collectivism can be used to justify rape.
> There may be a genuine moral argument against rape to be
> made outside of the Judeo-Christian ethic,…
There is none to be made from inside the Judeo-Christian ethic.
> …but I have yet to hear it.
What Day chooses to hear is not controlling.
> And, more significantly, much finer minds than mine…
Not that much finer.
> …have reached similar conclusions in a broader sense,
> which nevertheless encompasses the moral question of rape
> considered here. In an article that recently appeared in
> the Telegraph, Umberto Eco quoted another lapsed Catholic,
> James Joyce, in condemning the moral and spiritual
> bankruptcy that pervades the West today:
Eco longs for the morality of the Dark Ages.
> What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an
> absurdity which is logical and coherent…
Christianity is neither.
> …and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?
Genuine liberation would come from universality of rights which is neither absurd, illogical nor incoherent.
> When each does what is right in his own eyes, all
> distinctions between right and wrong become meaningless.
However, each person making his own decision about what’s right isn’t the only alternative to having an alleged spokesman for the Almighty make such decisions for everybody. The notion that right is objectively discernible by reason has in fact led to greater civilization, benevolence, freedom and prosperity.
> Regardless of whether one believes in God or celebrates
> Christmas as the birth of one’s Risen Lord and Savior, one
> would do well to seriously consider the likely implications
> of a world that rejects both.
We already know the implications of morality that encompasses both: cruelty, savagery, barbarity. Only rejection of both provides hope for improvement.