Important clarification/FAQ
I am not calling to coddle or excuse the behavior of bigoted men in any way!
I am calling to be kind and understanding to young men (often ages 10-20) who are very manipulable and succeptible to the massive anti feminist propaganda machine. Hope this clarifies that very important distinction. :)
Very good comments that express key points:
- Detailed summary of the situation if you’re wondering what’s going on
- The rhetorical value of the bear hypothetical and what this means for you
- One example of why the long-term rhetorical value of the hypothetical is poor, in the context of intersectionality
- What does disenfranchisement mean in this context?
- The importance of not asking women to tone down their expressions of fear and frustration
- “But why can’t they just say it nicely?”
- The importance of participation in kindness toward young men, specifically outside the context of people speaking their experiences
Edit: This post has now been removed and restored twice. I want to encourage you all:
Be decent to one another
I think this post is a valuable thing given the current state of the Fediverse, please don’t fuck it up for us by being toxic in the comments.
It wouldn’t work, unless it was pretty heavily moderated a la askhistorians, or what have you. You’d probably just get like, AITA level nuance shit, where people drone on about like, things that are “common sense”, or commonly accepted talking points that have the pretense of nuance, but none of the actual weight. Maybe just like, mild centrism.
The thing about valuable, nuanced thought is that it’s mildly chafing in that it’s foreign and novel, introduces something new into the mix, but not so chafing that it’s impossible to accept from the current POV. Social media operates in contextually eliminating extremes, when you automate it all, you either get a system where people only push around stuff that’s highly agreeable, or stuff that’s extremely disagreeable. Nuance is basically anathema to automated online spaces.
probably be better than extremely partisan posting alone though.
I feel like you could totally monetize nuance, i’m just not sure how you would go about it, satire maybe?
I mean something that satire gets pretty rightfully dogged for a lot of the time, as a schtick, is a lack of nuanced understanding of an issue. Like south park’s manbearpig schtick, or maybe like, I dunno, borat. Idiocracy. Office space, maybe, dunno, haven’t seen that one, don’t know too much satire. Tropic thunder, I guess, right. None of these are really nuanced portrayals of what they’re satirizing, because to do so is kind of antithetical to the genre.
I mean something that satire gets pretty rightfully dogged for a lot of the time, as a schtick, is a lack of nuanced understanding of an issue.
that’s exactly the point, you provide a point that is so aggressively anti-nuance, that it forces people to reckon with the concept of nuance internally. Because obviously they shouldn’t be believing what you say.
Satire is hard, you have to do it correctly, and once done correctly it can be a very powerful tool. Everyone cites a modest proposal as a really good example of satire, because it is. You can’t just walk up to someone and exclaim yourself to be a nazi, walk away, and then go “no actually that was satire”