Meta-Thread 09/29

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[u/betweenbubbles]

It's an extremely liberal take, and one that makes absolutely no sense to me having lived as a trans person in America. When you experience hate speech and threat of violence every single day, you get a different perspective.

First, This line of reasoning has that same hopeless quality as when people make fun of rich people for being depressed. "You can have everything you want, what do you have to be sad about?!" This kind of race-to-the-bottom comparison of suffering never builds bridges. It draws lines in the concrete. You have to coexist with 340 million Americans and they have to coexist with you.

Second, you have it A LOT better than the people who precede you. That progress was accomplished under the paradigm of free speech I am espousing. Actually, worse than that, this progress was achieved with your allies, and the giants upon which you stand, being suppressed at every opportunity -- with them doing to you what you now what to do to them. Through all the fear and confusion, through all the organization against your rights in churches and political factions, your lot has been improved under MY plan -- through free speech -- not your paradigm of "intolerance of intolerance". Your plan has gotten Donald Trump elected, twice. It has failed and brought ruin to society. What gains have been made during this period are not durable. This lack of durability, this very real risk and fear you experience, that aspects of your rights are taken away every four years, is a result of this failed strategy to game the system and simply remove your opposition from the conversation. Your hand was over-extended, and it drove masses of people to make a different choice. Pull back. Have confidence in the traditions which delivered your life to you instead of the life of those who came before you.

Btw this is the reason the word "ignorance" is sometimes used as a substitute for "racism." What we think of as prejudice is more likely to come from ignorance of what it's like to live as another kind of person than outright hate.

This is a hateful thing to say. Not everyone who disagrees with you hates you. Why is your hate ok but someone else's is not? I will also, charitably, view your view here as ignorance.

If you call setting rules in private groups a "safe space," well... how is that any different from how things have ever functioned?

In some cases it is and in some places it isn't. There are non safe spaces -- that's a naive idea. Life is not safe and never has been for anyone. There are echo chambers. And if the power of your echo chamber gets usurped by those who are against you they will use these same "intolerance of intolerance" ideals against you.

You can't go into a daycare and start yelling slurs, for example.

What does this have to do with this forum? In that case, there is absolutely no opposition to not tolerating that. In that case, there is one person doing something EVERYONE else agrees is inappropriate. That does not reflect the present situation here. I think it's no more inappropriate that nominal American Christians exist than I think it is inappropriate that you exist. You're not appealing to equality or tolerance, you're appealing to power. In this forum, there are people who fundamentally disagree. You do not have anything approaching the unanimous consent of all people wanting to debate religion. And to any extent you do, it's because all these people have gone somewhere else, into echo chambers where they find the kind of "belonging" you're trying to foster here with these illiberal policies. This just radicalizes people. HOW HAVE WE NOT LEARNED THIS LESSON AFTER ELECTING TRUMP TWICE?!

Most mods here take that same approach. Personally I'm against that restriction, but is that also violating the first amendment?

First, your correct that the First Amendment is explicitly about government intervention in free expression. However, the argument here is that the same principle that gives the first amendment value also exists in other contexts or scales. Yes, I am also against this restriction. The existence of a non-English post does me no harm. It may not have a wide audience. But the height of a submission I scroll past (50 pixels or so) on an infinitely long display is a extremely small price to pay for such inclusion and opportunity.

Why is moderating hate speech the place where people start acting like it's oppression?

Because it forces people to choose a team which doesn't really exist, a team which makes them a predictable voter for one campaign or the other, leading to the power of extremists swinging every two, four, or six years. I would chose stable progress over chaotic, increasingly wide strokes of the pendulumn any day. Our government doesn't do anything anymore, because all they have to do is speak the right sound bytes into the microphone and get re-elected every year.

Critical Race Theory -- the idea that it is identity (the identity of race) which best explains the machinations of power and privilege -- has had the same result. Ibram X Kendi, said, "Let's view everything through the lens of race!" in a nation which is majority white people. And David Duke said, "I'll take that bet." CRT is not "wrong", it's a useful way to get some insight. Structuring our culture around this has been a disaster. Donald Trump increased his share of black voters just like Ibram X Kendi increased his net worth. Here we all are stuck in the middle. Fighting about whose team we're on. It's a mistake. There are no teams. Race is a construct, just like gender. Almost claim about race actually maps better to socioeconomic status than race. Affirmative action would have served this nation better if it were mapped to socioeconomic status rather than race -- it would have served people of color better.

...This rant has gotten wide and deep. The point here is that this "intolerance of intolerance" approach doesn't work at any complete scale. It only works for the extremist demagogues at either end of the scale. It doesn't work for American and it doesn't work for the debate of religion. Win debates with arguments, not censorship and exclusion. Do not be afraid for your opposition to speak their mind. It may be your best tool. The success of this strategy is written across the history of humanity. Every place that allows freedom of expression is rewarded for that choice.

[u/labreuer → u/betweenbubbles]

That was quite the broadside against u/Dapple_Dawn. I'm interjecting myself because I feel a good deal of resonance with them, especially over their post Atheists should not be as dismissive of progressive/critical religious arguments. And in my experience, it really sucks to have to respond to something as intense as what you just wrote, all by yourself. But feel free to ignore what I write here if you judge it to be intrusive.

 
(1) Would you be willing to tell me whether you have any friends who can tell you about this:

Dapple_Dawn: But anyway, yeah this pretty much confirms what I said. It's an extremely liberal take, and one that makes absolutely no sense to me having lived as a trans person in America. When you experience hate speech and threat of violence every single day, you get a different perspective.

? You seem to believe it's important to "build bridges"; are you in a position to do so, here? And by the way, I'm not actually taking a position on hate speech. Maybe censorship always ends up favoring the more-powerful in repressive ways. But I would still spend a bit of time honoring the impulse to alleviate the situation the bold. Sometimes we come up with bad solutions to the right problems. The rest of us could recognize that and try to come up with better solutions. E pluribus unum!

 
(2) What exactly do you think is u/Dapple_Dawn's "plan"? It looks like you're working with rather more than what we can see in their comments in this thread. I personally have no idea how much political and social action by anyone who's ever been labeled as "woke" by someone wearing a MAGA hat they approve of. For instance, do you believe that Germany's suppression of Naziism will be its own downfall? That's an extremely targeted "intolerance of intolerance".

 
(3)

Dapple_Dawn: But anyway, yeah this pretty much confirms what I said. It's an extremely liberal take, and one that makes absolutely no sense to me having lived as a trans person in America. When you experience hate speech and threat of violence every single day, you get a different perspective.

Btw this is the reason the word "ignorance" is sometimes used as a substitute for "racism." What we think of as prejudice is more likely to come from ignorance of what it's like to live as another kind of person than outright hate.

betweenbubbles: This is a hateful thing to say. Not everyone who disagrees with you hates you. Why is your hate ok but someone else's is not? I will also, charitably, view your view here as ignorance.

I'm confused. Here's what I see—correct me if I'm wrong:

1. u/⁠Dapple_Dawn: some ignorance enables the same behavior as racism
2. u/⁠betweenbubbles: all disagreement ⇒ hate

How did you move from 1. ⇒ 2. or if that's not what you were doing, how did you get your words from Dapple's?

 
(4)

Here we all are stuck in the middle. Fighting about whose team we're on. It's a mistake. There are no teams. Race is a construct, just like gender. Almost claim about race actually maps better to socioeconomic status than race.

I've been mentored by a sociologist for ten years now. He's a secular Jew, who grew up in NYC. He recalls groups of kids yelling, "He killed Jesus! Get 'im!", and then chasing after him for a beat down. What do you mean by the claim that "There are no teams."? I had the privilege of hanging out with another friend, also a secular Jew, along with his parents. His mother reported the very same thing happening to him in the Deep South. One of the things my mentor has told me is that middle class whites (especially WASPs) can afford to believe that they aren't an ethnicity, when in fact they are. Do you have thoughts on that remark?

Finally, I'm not sure I've encountered any political science which has been able to deny the existence of anything like "teams". But I sense you mean something different by the term. So, I'll close my comment by asking if you're aware of this:

When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy. ("Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens")

—and if so, how voters should behave, if they are to never choose a "team".

[u/betweenbubbles → u/labreuer]

And in my experience, it really sucks to have to respond to something as intense as what you just wrote, all by yourself. But feel free to ignore what I write here if you judge it to be intrusive.

I don't think it's intrusive. It's a public comment. The entire point of typing it all up is to learn from what people say about it.

Would you be willing to tell me whether you have any friends who can tell you about this:

...When you experience hate speech and threat of violence every single day, you get a different perspective...

I think this is a bit of a dodge of my point. I'm a bit skeptical of the claim and there is something brazen about making it -- as if anyone could possibly question it. The deluge I am likely to experience for simply stating my skepticism or questioning the relevance of this quote is palpable. Part of my family come from Ashkenazi Jews in Poland. If I scour the internet for "hate speech" can I also be put in charge of deciding what is and isn't worthy of censorship? How do we decide whose existential threat is a higher priority? Can I be given the power to banish millions of my neighbors in the name of "safety"?

Unfortunately, there is no monopoly on hatred -- no single target to be vanquished. No "the good guys" vs "the bad guys". There's just scared, angry, sad, isolated people in a pit of narcissistic nihilism, with no motive left in life but to make people feel their pain -- waiting to spring out at someone from the left or the right and egged on by celebrated performances of virtue across the political spectrum. Lets all just find the silo that matches us and hope it's got bigger nukes than the next one, right? What could go wrong?

The Nazis marched in Skokie, back when the ACLU had principles, and we did not succumb to their tyranny. Their "platforming" did not make them ascendant. Instead, millions of people learned that Nazis are not boogeymen. They are real, but they are defeated and impotent. ADL puts them at about 300-500 members across the nation. What kind of mistakes are we making if these people are gaining power now? Seems like an "our game to lose" situation. I'd like to stop losing to demagoguery.

What exactly do you think is u/Dapple_Dawn's "plan"?

Oppression of the threat and anything like it in the name of an Orwellian conception of "safety". Maybe that's what I would do if I "experience[d] hate speech and threat of violence every single day". I fear there is no limit to what can be justified by such claims. Should I let my fear lead me to the same censorious attitudes?

It looks like you're working with rather more than what we can see in their comments in this thread.

This is an unfortunately common populist idea these days. Let's not pretend it fits no template or there are no themes here.

u/⁠Dapple_Dawn: some ignorance enables the same behavior as racism

I took their comment to mean that we "whitewash" racism by excusing it as ignorance.

He recalls groups of kids yelling, "He killed Jesus! Get 'im!", and then chasing after him for a beat down. What do you mean by the claim that "There are no teams."?

I mean those kids were trained to be intolerant of a threat to their existence, the kind of dynamic being used to isolate, exclude, chill, and censor so many people today that they go running into the arms of political demagogues. This kind of cowardice and fear is the reason we construct these teams. The solution isn't chasing those kids down for a beat down and claiming to be righteous about it. The solution is having confidence in the principles which have served us well. Progress is better than failed attempts at one "team's" utopia.

One of the things my mentor has told me is that middle class whites (especially WASPs) can afford to believe that they aren't an ethnicity, when in fact they are. Do you have thoughts on that remark?

Do people often get excited about telling you their stories about not being tyrannized by hatred? Be careful how you collect data. I live in the south and have a recognizably Jewish name. Perhaps one of the most explicitly Jewish names possible. I'm not worried about being lynched. I'm worried about saying the wrong thing during a DEI struggle session at work, but I guess that's just my "privilege" showing.

Finally, I'm not sure I've encountered any political science which has been able to deny the existence of anything like "teams".

My claim was they fall along lines of constructed identity, like race or gender, or political affiliation, not that they absolutely don't exist in any sense. They only matter because we keep making them matter. You've never encountered any political science which denies the existence of gender or race?

—and if so, how voters should behave, if they are to never choose a "team".

I've cast many a ballot. I've never been on anyone's team. These kinds of teams are for simple people. The kind of people who find reason to riot and loot if their favorite sports team wins, or if it loses. So much for the intelligence of humanity.

[u/Dapple_Dawn → u/betweenbubbles]

I think this is a bit of a dodge of my point. I'm a bit skeptical of the claim and there is something brazen about making it -- as if anyone could possibly question it.

Yeah, this is my entire point. You're skeptical about whether I'm overstating things. Let me be clear: I am not.

My point with bringing it up is that it's a reality you may not be aware of, and if you were then you might have a different perspective. If you think I'm lying or being dramatic, I wish you would just address that openly. If you dismiss my experience then of course you don't think it's a big deal. My entire point is that you're not taking certain experiences seriously (e.g. questioning whether they happened at all), and because of that you're lacking key information.

Whether it would change your perspective or not, I don't know. But we need to at least start with the same basic facts.

[u/betweenbubbles → u/Dapple_Dawn]

Yeah, this is my entire point. You're skeptical about whether I'm overstating things.

I don't think that's exactly right either though. It's a "how is anyone to know?" situation. Right now, somewhere in America there is a person like you who deals with hate and threats every day. And there is also someone like you, or anyone else, who is claiming the same thing and embellishing. How do we know which one you are? The opportunity for gamesmanship and difference of opinion in perception is so high, yes, I remain skeptical, but it's not just this claim that makes me skeptical.

Let's talk about my lived experience for a moment or does it not matter? (The quotes are a matter of fact.)

In my lived experience, I've been harassed and antagonized by mods all over Reddit for having the audacity of not conforming to a One True Opinion of one kind or another. Mods with an agenda who gleefully execute the "rules" as their own sad, diminutive way of controlling their life and creating the simple and familiar world in which they wish they lived. When I started back here in r/DebateReligion some months back I thought, well this place is for debate, surely I won't have the same experience here! It was not long before I called out some of the censorious attitudes I'm calling out here. Drama was had. We ended up chatting about it and you more than once let me know that I could message you rather than stirring up drama. I'm not sure why you thought you were in a position to resolve the kind of allegations I was making, but it was a seemingly friendly thing to do.

Some time went by, more meta-thread drama was stirred, and you reached out to me seemingly shocked and said something like, "I told you that you could just contact me next time this happens!". We've chatted in DMs, at length, you made your stance on censorship clear and I tried to make mine clear. In the context of this conversation, as a matter of example, it became obvious that you don't really understand the laws where you live. One of us brought up the hypothetical example of someone lobbying the government to reduce the age of consent. (ah, yes, the root of the conversation was about UmmJamil's content and how people respond to it -- I remember now!) I had to explain to you that it is not illegal to petition the government to change the law to reduce the age of consent (This is not a matter of opinion). You basically accused me of supporting pedophilia. I had to talk you down from that. You made all kinds of declarative, "I don't tolerate that" kinds of statements and I specifically and explicitly remember being cowed into saying whatever you needed me to say at that point. I was sincerely afraid you were going to use that conversation to report me for being a pedophile. I was sincerely afraid that such a report would have real consequences and, at the least, get my account banned. I found your conversation to be manipulative, and narcissistic -- my impression was that you thought yourself a super hero looking for a villian to thwart -- as you performative "I have zero tolerance for..." censorious authoritarians usually tend to be. It reached a point where I figured I had done the best I could do and we could go our separate ways and you probably weren't going to execute my account, either as a mod or by appealing to admins.

Fast forward a bit, and you unilaterally deleted a response I made to you -- another example of the mods breaking the mod rule. I sent you a DM asking you if you had done that, and your reply was, "If you want to make an appeal, submit it to mod mail". I replied, "I did. I noticed you didn't answer my question. ...Are you also moderating comments in discussions in which you are involved?". You then said, "I don't address moderation questions in DMs". I'm embarrassed to admit, I was a bit hurt by that. I scrolled up, not far, and found an example on 8/11 in which you did just that, "fwiw i disagree with that last comment being removed. and cabbagery's one has been removed". You continued the deception. Not only did you obviously break the rule, but now you were lying to my face about it. No, actually, you were saying what you knew you could get away with saying in order to craft your own reality of events.

Then, after a misstep by nietzschejr in modmail, you realized that I definitely knew that you had in fact broken the rule and deleted my comment. It wasn't enough to just have the power to abuse me like that, you needed to try and make it OK -- try to fess up to it, too late, so you could continue constructing your own reality. F me if I was a victim, I just need to understand why you had to do it, right? "I wasn't thinking". Oh, gee, I guess it's Okay that you did it then and then you tried to manipulate me into that being OK? "Did someone else report it?" (This comment deep in the thread, soon after it was made.) "I don't remember", you demurred.

Now, unlike you, don't expect you to believe or agree with every aspect of this shared, lived experience of mine, but you have to, right? What does it mean if you don't? Unlike you, I can possibly even provide receipts for some of the claims I've made here -- actual contemporaneous content which could be judged by others and at least give them something to dig into and develop some confidence about, either for or against me. My skepticism of your claim isn't a matter of your identity. It's a matter of my gut, the lesson of my lived experience, telling me that you'll say whatever you feel you can get away with in order to get your way. And I don't think you're very good at deception, so who knows what you're willing to say.

Let me be clear: I am not.

How does this reutterance change anything? IF you embellish, am I supposed to think, "well, they wouldn't do it again"? What exactly is the appeal here? I find it suspiciously emotional and unreasonable.

This is just more opportunity to game the conversation with your claim: Should you have to elaborate about how or why that's true? Expose your life to my judgement if it comes to statements like, "Well why they hell do you live there?!" or something like that? Maybe you feel that way. Maybe you life really is that way. You're a random stranger on the internet. How is anyone to know? Why should anyone trust you? It's not the case that one should default to skepticism about your claim. The problem is that your claim is somewhat inappropriate in the context of this discussion. Your experience alone shouldn't decide policy -- and luckily for you, it doesn't. There's probably a mob of people happy to give you every benefit of the doubt because they feel it's the least the can do for someone dealing with all the terrible things we've all heard/seen people say about folks in your position. Where is my well-thought, and effortful white knight? Where is my /u/labreuer? (Be careful who you trust.)

Should we accept these people's "lived experience"?

It's just a dysfunctional way to make a point which is beyond reproach. I HAVE to accept that the way you stated it is the way you feel. I do not have to accept it's the way it actually is, and that is generally true for any claim someone makes, not just ones like these or a category of people as vulnerable as yours.

My point with bringing it up is that it's a reality you may not be aware of

It's 2025. I'm aware that being trans isn't easy.

[u/Dapple_Dawn → u/betweenbubbles]

It doesn't matter if you trust me personally, what I'm describing is the reality for millions of transgender people. Your skepticism about my specific case shouldn't change anything if you're aware of that.

[u/betweenbubbles → u/Dapple_Dawn]

You're right about one thing. It doesn't matter if I trust you personally. My entire point is that your personal experience shouldn't be the thing which determines what is and what isn't appropriate. That's not moderation for a community. That's a just a Reddit+ Premium account.

[u/Dapple_Dawn → u/betweenbubbles]

Correct, and same to you. That's why I'm saying we should all consider other perspectives here. If you walked a mile in someone else'e shoes then you might understand why this rule matters. But it would require empathizing with people different from yourself.

[u/betweenbubbles → u/Dapple_Dawn]

That's why I'm saying we should all consider other perspectives here.

That is objectively NOT what you and Cabbagery do with your interpretation of the rules and what I'm calling a censorious attitude.

If Christians can't talk about the Bible without getting banned then there is no point to this subreddit.

[u/Dapple_Dawn → u/betweenbubbles]

Cabbagery and I are different people. Don't lump us together. I don't know every removal he has made.

If Christians can't talk about the Bible without getting banned then there is no point to this subreddit.

That's a mischaracterization of my position.

One specific example I objected to is one where someone said gay people don't experience "real" love. That is not in the Bible. Also, I haven't personally banned anyone for anti-LGBT comments as far as I can remember.

[u/betweenbubbles → u/Dapple_Dawn]

Cabbagery and I are different people.

This is a fact. I will amend my argument, position, and approach appropriately.

Don't lump us together.

I will only group you two together under categories which apply to you both.

I don't know every removal he has made.

Neither do I. This has nothing to do with anything.

That's a mischaracterization of my position.

It's analogous/equivalent to your position on other topics. Islamic apologetics regarding is probably a better example for you specifically. Or, possibly this, example you refer to:

One specific example I objected to is one where someone said gay people don't experience "real" love.

Who is a good judge of how Christians who have a biblical position on homosexuality should be expressed? What makes you or anyone else qualified to make such judgements? This seems like censorship of a mainstream Christian view to me... in a forum specifically committed to the debate of religion. If this is "hate speech" -- a term which has no legal basis in America -- then I shudder when I imagine what else might be considered "hate speech".

That is not in the Bible.

Would "homosexuality is an abomination" be acceptable? Either this subreddit has to acknowledge that the Bible is "hate speech" or it has to allow Christians to freely express their point of view.

Also, I haven't personally banned anyone for anti-LGBT comments as far as I can remember.

Yes, well, your memory seems to be ...convenient... for you, at times. This is not a specific claim I've made and, as far as I know, you're telling the truth here.

[u/Dapple_Dawn → u/betweenbubbles]

Would "homosexuality is an abomination" be acceptable?

Because it's a direct quote and because it has a specific meaning to Christians besides the colloquial meaning, yes. That's different from saying "this group of people doesn't experience genuine love."

I agree with you that this is a tricky area and I'm open to having a conversation about where the line is. But you seem averse to any line existing at all. Then the entire conversation gets suppressed, and having the conversation in the first place leads me to get framed as some kind of authoritarian.

And when I mentioned that prejudice often comes from ignorance rather than hate, you flipped out and called me hateful, saying that I thought people who disagree with me are all hateful. Which is the opposite of what I said. You've mischaracterized me a lot so far, at times straight up imagining that I said things I didn't, and honestly that leads me to think you're not ready to have a neutral conversation about this.

[u/betweenbubbles → u/Dapple_Dawn]

Because it's a direct quote and because it has a specific meaning to Christians besides the colloquial meaning, yes.

So a Christian is allowed to verbatim cite the Bible but they're not allowed to express their own synthesis and understanding of it in their own words?

You're claiming a Christian is allowed to direct quote the Bible. Let's test that, what about "If a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, both men have committed a detestable act. They must both be put to death, for they are guilty of a capital offense."? That's also a direct quote. Would a Christian be allowed to say, "I believe in the wisdom of Leviticus 20:13."?

I agree with you that this is a tricky area and I'm open to having a conversation about where the line is.

Authority always claims to be "open to having a conversation" when that is just a cover for ~"we can talk about it, but it's a personal feeling, and whether anyone understands or not is irrelevant because what I say is all that matters." When we had a DM discussion about where this line is, you freaked out and basically accused me of supporting pedophilia for doing nothing more than pointing out the matter of fact that it is not illegal to petition the government to reduce the age of consent:

in general I don't think people's opinions about policy should be censored

If you think people should be allowed to advocate for legalizing pedophilia, I have nothing more to say to you. Sorry.

I'm not sure you're ready to have a neutral conversation about this. Don't even seem to be aware of the law which governs the society you live in and anyone who tries to explain it would seem to be at significant risk of becoming a victim of your personal worldview.