Thoughts on Citizenship

>>I posted my thoughts on the matter on my LJ, but that was mostly a 'my thoughts on assimilation' thing, not a point-by-point commentary, that would be quite too long for a comment here but if you are interested I can either post it on my LJ or write privately to you.<<

By all means, link to your post on the topic. I actually think that spinoff posts are an ideal way of carrying discussions in cyberspace. It has a lower risk of derailing the original thread, and it lets the respondent present a personal perspective in their own forum where their audience will probably appreciate it. It's not uncommon for me to post a few lines of comment on someone else's blog, then copy that into a post here and add a bunch more stuff under it.

>> On the whole it felt like 'make yourself invisible and you'll be ok' or, as msstacy13 says, the equivalent of 'if a woman wears a miniskirt she is asking to be raped'.<<

I agree with the former (which of course is not true if there are visible distinctions, as any African-American could demonstrate) but the latter is too buzzwordy for my taste.

>>I got a bit dog-piled myself when I suggested elsewhere that she had a right to express her opinion. I quickly backed off and just shaddup.<<

See now, that is exactly the problem with dogpiling. It coerces silence by punishing people for expressing their ideas. It shuts down discussion by making noise instead of real arguments. It blocks the process of problem-solving by sweeping things under the rug. People who want a real debate of the issue -- and this one happened to be an important and timely issue -- are denied a forum in which to air their ideas. That happened not just in the original space (comments on that post were shut off) but in multiple collateral places as some bloggers found themselves added to the dogpile. Not good.

>>What are we getting into when we can't allow others to have opinions with which we disagree without name-calling and vitriol?<<

False dichotomy and zealotry, most often. If you can't criticize, you can't optimize.

>> It's very sad. It makes those with liberal beliefs sound as sanctimonious and acrimonious as the conservatives we abhor. <<

I agree. I dislike foaming-at-the-mouth liberals almost as much as I dislike foaming-at-the-mouth conservatives. Sometimes it's very hard for me to find articles about an issue that are sensible and civil enough for me to link them here. If all I can find is slantwise yabbering, I tend to avoid boosting signal for that. I want people to be able to think about and talk about delicate topics without assaulting each other, so that we might *gasp* actually come up with possible solutions.

And sometimes we DO that, here. Talking about the lack of women in computing, someone else suggested pitching programming as a way to help people (which was new to me) and I chipped in my knowledge that mentoring programs work and assigned study groups could help (which might be new to someone else). Maybe someone who reads this journal is a computer teacher or Human Resources staffer and could actually implement these ideas. That discussion wouldn't have been anywhere near as useful if all the men had started screaming "You're being mean to the penis people!"

>>That said, why are you suggesting that it's ok for Elizabeth Moon to say something that many people found insulting or endangering (this wasn't just a disagreement) but it's not ok for people to dogpile her on it?<<

Because there's a difference between free expression and verbal abuse, between debate and personal attack. It's like the difference between swinging your arm through empty space vs. punching someone in the nose.

It's acceptable to express disagreement as part of a discussion, especially in pursuit of resolution. Using someone else as a verbal punching bag is not so acceptable. That distinction even appears in the law: free speech is constitutionally guaranteed, but not the freedom to cause direct harm with libel, slander, fraud, plagiarism, etc.

There is also a difference between expressing one's own opinion and going out to encourage other people to make personal attacks on someone -- that latter is "dogpiling," a cyberspace problem closely related to trolling. It's an attempt to shut people up by punishing them for saying something unpopular, possibly by overloading their service or getting them banned, or just making them too miserable to continue. The act of dogpiling is separate from the act of expressing one's own ideas. And it's distinguishable from protest methods such as boycotting or letters to the editor because it consistently takes the form of a personal attack and because it quickly loses sight of the original debate -- the summoning posts frequently summarize the "offense" very briefly and often inaccurately, and few people bother to read the original for verification. So it's very easy for a simple dispute to blow up into something huge and ugly. It tends to do much harm and little if any good. That's not something to be condoned.

>> Elizabeth Moon absolutely has the right to express her opinions. And others equally have the right to call her on it if they feel offended, endangered or disagree. <<

By that logic, I'm equally free to express my disapproval of people who consider verbal abuse and dogpiling to be appropriate actions. I support their right to express their disagreement. What I don't support is their disgraceful and destructive behavior in how they have chosen to manifest that disagreement.

I'm glad to hear that.

This is awesome. Thank you so much for sharing!

Too bad it's the kind of stuff that usually gets people kicked out of classrooms.

The problem with a melting pot is that, if you put a bunch of vegetables in some water, after a while you get fine stew ... but if you keep cooking, the structure breaks down and all the individual flavors merge to barely edible slop.

I sympathize. Some of my opinions are shared with a fair number of other folks. Some are not. A few I don't share, or don't share more than once or twice. The main glitch is that other people expect you to care about their opinions ... and some of those opinions are stupid, irrelevant, or boring beyond belief. It's usually easier to avoid a conversation than stop one.

Precisely! Civility and discussion are to be encouraged. Rudeness and personal attacks are to be discouraged. There will always be different opinions in the world, which is a feature and not a bug, so we need to be able to talk about them sanely in order to decide how we will face those challenges. Haranguing someone for their honestly expressed opinions is unlikely to convince them to come over to your side. Nobody wants to be converted by a jerk.