
I don’t know what to do, you guys - Balgair
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/
======
stolio
I spent about ten years being an "ally" to feminism, to the LGBT community, to
minorities, etc.

And then my views drifted ever so slightly from the tried and true party
lines. One day I said I thought it was wrong that Brandon Eich was forced out
of Mozilla, I said I thought it was wrong the way he was treated. Immediately
the decade spent arguing for gay rights and marriage equality disappeared and
I became a bigot, the enemy.

One day I said it seemed clear that there is in fact a biological aspect to
gender. The decade spent arguing for feminist politics disappeared, and I
became a sexist. Just like that.

I've lost friends, old friends over these things. My politics are still left
of center but I've learned not to open my mouth around the social justice set
because to them I'm a sexist/bigot/racist/etc. It's amazing just how small a
step out of line you have to take before the group tries to collectively shame
you into seeing the light. It's amazing that shame has become a central tool
for trying to create positive social change.

~~~
vacri
It's worth remembering that one advantage right-side politics have is that
they are passionate for the status quo. Left-side politics are passionate for
change. And it's when people are passionate that they get into disagreement;
it's much easier for lefties to disagree about what kind of change they want,
than for righties to disagree about how they want things to stay the same...

~~~
yummyfajitas
This is an odd view. Right wing politics in the US claims to lean toward
reducing/dismantling SS and the welfare state, radically changing immigration
and education policy. (In reality they are prevented from doing this, of
course.) In contrast, left wing politicians just want to throw more money at
the same things.

~~~
vacri
"radically changing immigration and education policy." => "making it so that
the current demographic makeup doesn't change that much". Right-wing reforms
of this kind aren't about the legislative change, but about keeping society
itself relatively unchanged. Rate of reform isn't calculated in number of laws
passed, but in the societal effects of those laws.

~~~
yummyfajitas
When right wing types poison-pilled Bush's amnesty bill, they didn't try to
protect the current democratic makeup. They merely tried to shift the balance
of new immigrants to be more conservative (more educated, more Eastern Europe,
less Mexico). And again, reducing dependency on the state and radically
changing the education system is hardly a matter of preserving things the way
they are.

Put it this way - given a choice, which would you prefer? Allow no new laws to
be passed for 8 years, or give Republicans an 8 year supermajority and a
mandate to make any changes they liked? If you are right that they merely want
to keep things static, you should be indifferent.

------
smacktoward
I don't think it's an accident that all three of his examples involve college
students. I saw plenty of examples of this type of aggressive ideological
policing in various political groups I was involved in when I was college. I
have seen exactly zero in nearly twenty years of being involved with and
working in left-wing politics after graduation.

(Which isn't to say it _never_ happens, I'm sure it does, just that it's not
the epidemic it would appear to be if you look solely at politics as she is
practiced on campus.)

There's an old saying to the effect that campus politics are so vicious
because the stakes are so low. When you get out in the real world and realize
politics requires more than making statements -- that it requires building
movements, and _you need lots of people_ in order to build movements that make
a difference -- you learn fast to either live with people who are mostly on
your side, even if they disagree with you here and there, or you content
yourself with writing blog manifestos.

~~~
Animats
"Academic politics is so vicious because the stakes are so low." \- Henry
Kissinger. He'd both been on the Harvard faculty and was Secretary of State,
so he knew.

The real trouble with the political correctness thing about sex is that it's a
distraction from the real political issues - money, and who gets how much.
Most of what government does and can do is about money. The US right has its
own problems with sex, but it's a distraction there, too: "God, guns, and
gays". None of which the U.S. Government can do much about.

Occupy ran into this. Occupy leaves behind one lasting achievement - the
identification of "the 1%" as a problem. They never had a coherent agenda.
Basic truth about dealing with political leaders - don't ask them to solve
your problem. The most that will get you is a study. You must have all the
homework done up to the "sign here" point. Ask any lobbyist.

Thought for today: should people be paid more than they are worth as purely
economic units? If not, should incomes go down as automation gets better?

~~~
sparkzilla
>Occupy leaves behind one lasting achievement - the identification of "the 1%"
as a problem.

As long as the 1% doesn't include Steve Jobs.

~~~
titanomachy
I don't think the message is that those 1% of people are themselves a problem,
more that it's a problem that wealth is distributed as inequitably as it is.

~~~
sparkzilla
It's still the same argument. I didn't see Steve Jobs offering to pay extra
taxes. And I don't see the Occupy crowd complaining about Jobs. Or Soros for
that matter (who financed the Occupy movement). OTOH the Koch brothers and any
republican 1%ers seem to be fair game. It seems some billionaires are more
equal than others.

------
omegaham
I think one of the biggest problems with these types is that they associate
opinions with morality. As in, if you hold uninformed / ignorant / bigoted
opinions, you are automatically an evil person and should be treated
accordingly.

Are some bigoted people evil? Sure. But I think that a lot of people hold
various opinions because they just haven't thought about it too hard. They've
just gone along with whatever they've been taught from childhood, and they're
just kind of parroting their indoctrination. That doesn't make them bad.

Unfortunately, the SJW crowd (to be distinguished from the mostly rational
leftist crowd) seems to have decided to elevate themselves based on their
enlightenment. "I've devoted the time to make myself more informed, and _that
makes me a good person_." With that black-and-white thinking comes the inverse
- you're a bad person because you _haven 't_ devoted this time to make
yourself more informed.

Such thinking immediately makes people bristle and walk off. Why would they
volunteer for abuse? I don't talk to SJWs because it's ridiculous to be
treated like subhuman filth for disagreeing with something that the other
person treats as Gospel, especially when a huge amount of this material is
hugely complicated and up for debate.

The guiding principle should be _stop being an asshole_. Instead, the SJW
crowd resorts to yelling about "tone policing" and drives away people who
would normally be allies.

Here's some food for thought. The black civil rights movement in the 60s and
the gay rights movement today have enjoyed a lot of success because they
emphasized their status as _normal people_. As soon as you get the kooks who
excoriate people for any slight deviation from the One True Faith, you end up
failing miserably.

~~~
Xcelerate
> Sure. But I think that a lot of people hold various opinions because they
> just haven't thought about it too hard. They've just gone along with
> whatever they've been taught from childhood, and they're just kind of
> parroting their indoctrination. That doesn't make them bad.

It's funny you say this because I was discussing the exact same thing with a
friend today. There's some views I have where previously I have been
incredulous that anyone could support the opposite view -- "How can anyone
possibly support something so horrible and _wrong_?" But then I think, is 50%
of the population really be _evil_? No, of course not. That's ridiculous. I
think most people have good intentions with what they believe, and if they
have the opposite viewpoint on something that is important to you, it's not
the case that they're evil people who just don't care about morality; it's far
more likely that they truly think their viewpoint is moral and just.

~~~
omegaham
I think that this is a great point. It's far too common for people to think,
"John is completely opposed to my beliefs. He's definitely not stupid, as I
know from other conversations with him that he's thoughtful and sincere. Well,
that leaves one option - he's a bad person."

Often, this results from taking the bad intentions of certain people who
believe such things and applying them to the whole.

"You're for / against X program. There are people who are for / against X
program because they have an immoral ulterior motive. Therefore, you have that
ulterior motive too!"

This naturally leads to fingerpointing and yelling.

------
beerbajay
The Vox article[1] by Amanda Taub is substantially better than either the
deBoer's or Chait's articles (an article, by the way, that deBoer seems to
entirely miss the point of) in that it correctly identifies the term
"political correctness" as _a thing people only ever complain about_; it's not
a thing that "the left" wants.

> people pushed out and marginalized in left-wing circles because

> they didn’t use the proper set of social and class signals to

> satisfy the world of intersectional politics.

This definitely happens, but not as some sort of organized strategy by "the
left". It happens because "the left" on college campuses is made up of young
people who are angry about the racist/sexist/classist/etc culture in which
they have grown up, but have not yet learned to be diplomatic with and
empathetic to people who are less informed.

The goal isn't for people to avoid certain terms, the goal is for people to
not be assholes.

[1] [http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-
correctness-d...](http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-
doesnt-exist)

~~~
mrxd
> This definitely happens, but not as some sort of organized strategy by "the
> left".

That's not true. It absolutely is an organized strategy by the left.

Anti-oppression activism is founded on social constructionist theories. These
claim that bigotry and prejudice are subtly reproduced in society through
language. So activists are scrupulous in cleansing their speech of any hint of
prejudiced beliefs, no matter how minor, because they believe that if they can
accomplish that, prejudice itself will disappear.

But people who aren't activists are also reproducing prejudice through their
speech, so the problem becomes how can you get all of them to stop doing that
too. The answer is to make it morally unacceptable. Minor phrases like "man
up" turn into huge ethical lapses that are worthy of censure and shaming.

Not using those phrases become matters of empathy and not being an asshole
towards unknown persons who are offended. But really, no one is offended, it's
just a tactic for redefining linguistic norms.

------
tomlock
I don't think queer-exclusive spaces should exist, and I'm queer, and
extremely left wing. That opinion is unpopular in queer circles.

The flak I cop for that is _nothing_ compared to the very real, quantified
consequences for women trying to enter tech, or who are already in it. I think
we should upvote more articles about that and less articles about this.

~~~
Pxtl
Well said.

I find the internet social justice movement _intensely_ annoying. They are, to
be blunt, assholes.

But unfortunately, they're also right more often than not.

And dwelling on how disgustingly annoying the online social justice movement
is instead of solving its problems is one facet of geek culture that is just
somewhat pathetic.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
You admit that the "online social justice movement" is dysfunctional, yet you
put the onus on so-called "geek culture" to fix their problems for them? Why
"geek culture" in particular, and is a notable subset of it already not
involved with the former movement?

~~~
Dylan16807
>onus on so-called "geek culture" to fix their problems for them

What? That comment doesn't say anything even resembling that.

~~~
graeme
The OP used a poor pronoun reference:

>dwelling on how disgustingly annoying the online social justice movement is
instead of solving its problems is one facet of geek culture

It's not clear whether the author means "its" to refer to SJW or geek
culture's problems. I believe the author meant geek culture should fix its own
problems, but it's a reasonable misinterpretation to have read that sentence
as referring to SJW's problems.

That's where the parent comment was coming from.

------
millstone
I think this is the referenced Chait article:
[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-
pc-t...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-
say.html)

~~~
hn_politics_thr
This is an incredible piece. Highly recommended.

------
derefr
To leftist politics, and the "social justice" movement in particular: separate
the bullies from the revolutionaries. Shun the bullies; don't let them use
your name. Then we'll stop being afraid of the name, and of the
revolutionaries.

~~~
hammerdr
This is easy to beat: just go to the source. If there's a howling white man
going on about injustice and how he's going to tell you about the struggles of
women of color, First Nations and Imperialism.. ignore that person. Go talk to
a (well.. several, actually) woman of color, member of a First Nation or a
nation ravaged by European and/or American imperialism.

"But what can I do as a white man/white women/generally privileged person?" \-
Amplify. Your voice unjustly carries more weight than that of other people. If
you can be the "Retweeters" of Social Justice, you'll be doing a lot of good.
Just be sure to retweet the people with firsthand knowledge.

~~~
jacobolus
It’s absurd to claim that white men can’t ever under any circumstances have
anything to say about the struggles of other people, but there are certainly
people who make such a claim.

As one example, my father, an anthropologist/historian in his 60s who spent
his whole career and life befriending, interviewing, translating, and writing
about indigenous rural peasants in southern Mexico, and probably knows as much
or more about their history and circumstances as anyone alive (in an
intellectual sense, if not precisely as lived personal experience, since he
was never himself a destitute peasant) was told by a 30-year-old recent Ph.D
from a well-off family (who had literally never worked a job outside academia,
and spent her entire life living in rich US suburbs) that he had no right to
comment on the circumstances of indigenous rural peasants, “the subaltern” to
use her term, because he he was a privileged member of the hegemonic class,
whereas she could, as a Latina.

~~~
hammerdr
I agree with everything you said.

I was specifically speaking about people that pontificate about things they
have no legitimate claim to have experienced. Being a Latin@ in the United
States doesn't legitimize your claim to speak about rural peasants of Mexico
(though, if your family has roots there you may have lingering first hand
accounts that can color the discussion more than those without).

In fact, historians are one of the people I would consider a source,
especially if their words are born from the interactions and studies done from
interacting with real people. They make it their life's work to understanding
the situation in which people live.

Also, everyone makes mistakes and/or embellishments. I make mistakes. People
in their own experiences get caught up in those experiences instead of the
truth. Historians get caught up in their own narrative of truthiness instead
of truth. Skepticism and an open mind are great tools toward enlightenment.

So, yeah, sometimes white men can be more legitimate than others in their
viewpoints. But far too often the voices of the privileged and uninformed
drown out the voices of experience and truth. That's the tragedy.

------
jdp23
Angus Johnson has a reply at [http://studentactivism.net/2015/01/29/stop-
whining-freddie-d...](http://studentactivism.net/2015/01/29/stop-whining-
freddie-deboer/) ... Freddie deBoer makes a brief appearance in the comments.
I gather the two of them don't care for each other.

[The URL's a good examples of "perils of permalinks": the post is now titled
"A reply to Freddie deBoer" and he mentions in an update that "The original
title of this piece was more obnoxious than was necessary. I’ve changed it"
... but not the link.]

~~~
joe_the_user
Yeah,

deBoer's post speaks to a culture of not knowing the right language, of
general intemperance and how poor and working class actually wind-up more
likely to be victims of it because they are less likely to know the game even
if the game itself is intended to protect them.

------
Xcelerate
I absolutely detest the way some people "argue" and attempt to shame their
opponent. Shaming doesn't work on me; it just pisses me off. As soon as
someone begins attacking me as a person instead of my argument, I lose all
patience with them and honestly start to view them as stupid and incapable of
rational thought. The conversation on their end normally contains an implicit
assumption that their viewpoint is automatically the correct one (no
willingness to even _hear_ other perspectives), and personal attack techniques
include phrases like, "you are trolling" (even though half the US population
shares the "troll" viewpoint), "the flaw in your argument is...", "unless you
are a [something genetically immutable], your privileged white male opinion
does not matter". Pull up the list of logical fallacies on Wikipedia and they
hit almost every single one of them.

I have had calm, rational debates with people who have viewpoints that are
completely opposite to mine. Both of us come away from the conversation
feeling enlightened, and occasionally one of us changes our mind on an issue
because of a persuasive argument. This is what a good debate should be like.
But unfortunately, people who can debate like this are few and far between.

Far more often I just end up frustrated and leave the "debate" part way
through. So many people get angry and emotional if you criticize their
viewpoint, and I don't have the time or energy to deal with it. Although
sometimes if I'm in a good mood, I will stir things up for entertainment: if I
am listening to a debate between two people I know, and one of them is using
shaming tactics and logical fallacies, I will join in on the conversation (if
permitted) and automatically take the side _against_ theirs, even if I have
the exact same viewpoint that they do. Then I will tear their argument down
the best way I know how (it's fun to argue against your own belief). And at
the end I will reveal that my viewpoint was actually the same as theirs.

------
Udo
Although a lot of people obviously disagree, I believe this should not be on
HN. Both the examples raised in the article and the subject matter itself is
bringing out the worst in the members of this community, for no good reason.

Blanket statements all around, personal attacks, strawmen galore, just-so
anecdotes as moral fables, and for what? The kind of petty political polemics
inevitably attracted by the topic do nothing to make HN a more interesting or
pleasant forum.

To quote the submission guidelines:

    
    
      Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're 
      evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
    

It's hard to argue that the article somehow qualifies as describing an
interesting or new phenomenon. It's a political opinion piece. (I'm not an
American, so I like to think this view is non-partisan.)

~~~
xtrumanx
Let's face it; the submissions guidelines are a joke due to the first line:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.

No matter the topic, anyone can bring up that line and effectively ends any
question that the topic is fit for HN by claiming that they find it
interesting.

~~~
dang
Can't agree with you there. The guidelines make it clear that "interesting"
means intellectually interesting. That excludes many other kinds of
interesting, like celebrity gossip and more-heat-than-light politics.

The criteria may not be algorithmic but they're not arbitrary either.

------
FrankBlack
I had a conversation today at work that was on an unrelated topic, yet still
dealt with the difficulty of operating in the vortex of left-leaning politics.
The main issue that drove me away from being active after many years in the
fray was the blazing passion that came from many within the group (almost
always young people) who wanted to emphasize their one-key issue over the
broader message. Meaning, issues such as, environment, LGBT, animal rights,
women, race, peace, etc. were more urgent as a particular issue than finding
consensus for a broad range of issues as a unified political group. This
splintering caused dissipation of unity, energy and resources. In the end,
this behavior caused me to lose any motivation to work for the cause in any
real "boots on the ground" way. I wasn't alone in that sentiment. This article
echoes a bit of my feelings. I am not pointing fingers and saying this one is
right and this one is wrong, I am just saddened because it seems so much
energy is being used to attack those with whom we are allied or to preach to
the converted just so we can hear our voices through a megaphone. If one was
interested in making a particular group impotent, this strategy would appear
to be quite effective.

------
vijayboyapati
This post, which definitely resonates with me and my experience in Silicon
Valley and in Seattle, surrounded by very leftist politics, reminds me a lot
of Mencius Moldbug's brilliant piece "Technology, communism and the Brown
Scare":

[http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technol...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technology-communism-and-brown-scare.html)

~~~
powera
I know I'm going to get downvoted for this comment, but: what the literal
fuck? That article seems to only be a borderline incoherent mix of various
claims of racism, anti-communism, pro-communism, and anti-semitism directed at
nobody in particular.

If anybody can make any actual sense of the point of the article, please say
so?

~~~
defen
You can't just jump into a late-stage Moldbug article like that. He's
very...talmudic, perhaps, is a good word. You have to read all his stuff from
the beginning, which is probably too much for anyone to do at this time.

------
zerocrates
The author spends a lot of time decrying Chait, his article, and his views,
but seems to end up in a pretty similar place.

Other than the fact that deBoer has scrupulously chosen to only call out white
authors, this article seems to "scold" its subjects for their tactics just the
same as Chait's did. What's the basis for the great distinction between the
two that's the basis for the first and last paragraphs? That Chait is a
"centrist Democrat" instead of " _more_ left wing"?

~~~
Lazare
I think the short of it is that deBoer believes he has a valid point, but
believes that there's is a likelihood that his intended audience will just
ignore him. He's trying to insulate himself from that outcome by several
tactics: The elaborate denunciation of Chait, the careful choosing of targets,
the stressing of his credentials and history.

If deBoer could be honest, he'd probably say "WTF is wrong with you? Chait was
correct, and excommunicating him for saying correct-but-uncomfortable things
is fundamentally unhelpful and illiberal". But he can't say that, because the
same process will excommunicate him too, so we get this instead. Not that
it'll help; for some of the more extreme types, it's probably enough that
Chait quoted deBoer approvingly in his article.

(You'll notice that while he mouths the _pro forma_ denunciations of Chait, he
never really specifies where he thinks Chait got it wrong.)

------
kevinqualters
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the
spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate"

------
GauntletWizard
Wizards of the Coast posted a story today that featured a transgender
character. I thought, and continue to think, it was a shit story. I've no
experience with WOTC's writing, and I don't know if shit is the norm for their
fluff, but nothing about the story engaged me, and the one 'interesting' piece
was heavy handed; Oh, no, a sexist orc is literally a pig to the trans
character and then put in his place! For that, it seemed like everyone I know
who plays videogames or card games had posted it to facebook.

I don't know why I'm supposed to care. A demographic with a tiny tiny minority
is getting represented? A few years back, being indistinguishable was the
highest compliment you could pay a trans person. Now, it seems anything they
do is 'brave' and you have to constantly praise how 'proud' you are of their
transition, even if they become an utterly unlikable person with it. In my
world, you try to build the best world you can by lifting everyone up, not by
stacking praise where least praise is warranted out of some form of
'equality'.

Maybe if WOTC had made us like the character first I'd care. Maybe if it had
been a bombshell, or something quietly unacknowledged, but it took two
paragraphs before it was clear where this one was going. Maybe it was just
spoilers; The subset of people who had posted it and their praise told me
exactly what the moral was. Maybe if it were treated as just another trait; a
birthmark, a minor disability, a past struggle worked through. Maybe then I'd
care.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
...Okay. Maybe you could submit that story and post a comment to it, instead
of hijacking this story's comments?

~~~
GauntletWizard
I'm sorry; was the connection not clear enough for you? Politics of the left
wing are increasingly about keeping up appearances and out-dogmaing one
another, scaring off potential allies and self-praise on spurious grounds. I
can't make saidsame rant on facebook, because the people who salivated over
the story would tear me to shreds, and I really don't want to deal with that
today, or ever.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
That's what the original post was about. _Your_ post was about you being such
a grinch that you feel the need to register your outrage at what was--at worst
--a perfectly harmless, feel-good fluff piece.

~~~
Kalium
Also, failing to understand the piece. The piece was about knowing yourself.

------
geofft
Like it does for a lot of things, I think feminism has its own lingo for this
very problem, and it's called the lack of "101 spaces" \-- as in spaces where
you're learning "Feminism 101", or "Anti-racism 101", or whatever, spaces
where the sort of basic questions that would be inappropriate in a graduate-
level class are welcome and expected.

A lot of activists are trying to effect some actual social change. That
requires not staying on the basics forever, just as if you're writing papers
on operating system design, you won't be spending much time explaining what
pointers are. Even in a classroom, a graduate-level class on operating systems
isn't a place where you'll be taken seriously if you complain that pointers
are needlessly confusing. But it would be a mistake to conclude that
coherently explaining pointers isn't _important_ , just because nobody working
on OS design seems to do it, or that the student wasn't earnest in finding
pointers needlessly confusing. In fact it is absolutely fundamental that
pointers are taught well and students be taken seriously when they express
confusion -- but it is precisely because it is fundamental that it needs to be
in a separate place.

I have seen two good forms of "101 spaces", though. One is quietly listening
in upperclassman spaces, the Internet's venerable rule to "lurk moar". You
won't understand everything at once; you certainly won't pick up the lingo,
and you probably won't understand several of the conclusions. But in an era
with internet search, you can slowly work on figuring out what people have
found out, just as it's _possible_ to catch up to the state of research by
just reading papers and trying to figure out what they mean.

The other is friends, people who have been through the 101 class but also
personally know you're acting in good faith. If you say something that's
innocently wrong to them, they'll _know_ it's innocently wrong, and not
malicious, badgering a tired point, concern trolling, etc. In turn, of course,
listen to what they have to say.

But besides those, there's certainly a lack, and for various reasons, a lot of
people may not find internet-lurking their style of learning, or may not have
sufficiently knowledgeable friends to go bother. It would be a good thing for
the world to see more. But unfortunately, the responsibility to create them
cannot be on the shoulders of the activists. If you think teaching at a
research university is ever half-hearted, imagine what it would be like if the
researchers weren't paid to teach, weren't expected to teach at all, and were,
often, trying to fit in research in their spare time after another full-time
job.

~~~
im3w1l
There is one point at which your analogy to pointers breaks down. After having
studied pointers, you will never be in a position to disagree. But you could
come away from a class on feminism 101 disagreeing with many things.

~~~
Dylan16807
I've seen plenty of people disagree on whether pointers are a good idea.

Even better, should pointers be nullable?

~~~
im3w1l
You should be able to get through OS design either way.

EDIT: addendum. I guess one could imagine a situation where you only needed to
have _knowledge_ of feminism 101, but not be required to _agree_ with the
arguments. This does not seem to be the case though.

~~~
geofft
You can get through the class either way, but if you refuse to use pointers,
say negative things about them in code reviews, etc., you're eventually going
to get everyone frustrated at you. If you can _suspend_ your beliefs enough to
use pointers, then you can absolutely get through it, and maybe once you
graduate you can figure out how to write a kernel in Python. (I'm not being
sarcastic here; there's a python.efi that one hardware vendor is using in
production.)

Maybe a better example is monolithic kernels and microkernels. You can believe
either opinion, but if you're wading into Linux kernel development now and
keep complaining about the lack of microkernel sensibilities, you're going to
neither turn Linux into a microkernel nor get people to keep listening to you.
If you really, truly believe that Linux's monolithic design is bad for the
world, start your own kernel. (Andy Tanenbaum, for instance, had this argument
right when Linus Torvalds announced Linux, and since then has been working on
MINIX, not showing up on LKML.)

------
mdpm
Moral absolutism is the killer. There is no set of 'right' that you can apply
regardless of context, actors or situation. Attempting to create such mental
shortcuts is the problem, and perpetuating any as _absolutely_ 'correct' is
toxic, and detracts from any of the real issues, actual humans, or real world
consequences of whatever is under discussion.

------
davesque
I think this kind of hysteria is pretty common in politics (actually, my
incidental use of the word "hysteria" is fitting if anyone remembers that
whole controversy). I guess the author's argument is that this phenomenon is
more pronounced on the left. Perhaps.

It reminds me of a time when a friend of mine got fired from his job at a
private school in the eastern US for simply patting a female student on the
back during class. You might wonder what the nature of this "patting" was, but
I don't. He's just not the kind of person who would have done that in a creepy
way. He was devastated, of course, having just been labeled in a somewhat
official capacity as a sexual predator. It's too bad that this kind of thing
happens.

------
asgard1024
There is nothing inherently leftist about feelings of moral superiority. It
comes with various ideologies and is poisonous all the same. I can only
recommend Altemey's excellent book on the topic. (By the way, my short
definition is that if want to reduce social injustice and inequality, then you
are a leftist.)

In fact, yesterday I just had a debate with my Czech coworkers (we work for an
American company). In Europe, the ideology of "political correctness" is not
so followed (and in fact many from minorities would find it plainly annoying),
and in Czech Republic specifically is mostly ignored. Yet in many respects
Europe could be considered more "leftist" (take employment law, for instance).

------
baisong
This article perfectly demonstrates how talking about "PC" prevents good
discussion about inclusion.

As it turns out, "PC" is a term developed to dismiss appeals to sensitivity
and inclusion. And it's quite good at doing so!

So, if you care about sensitivity and inclusion, but focus on "PC", you're
forced, like this author, to throw your hands up in defeat.

It's actually quite simple: if you realize that policing other's language is
more often itself a form of exclusion/aggression, then you can clearly
describe the scenarios the author relates as part of the problem, not as some
failure of the only proposed solution to an unfathomable problem.

~~~
Kalium
The point the author is attempting to make is that a culture has been created
where it is unacceptable to fail to be arbitrarily sensitive and inclusive.
That this is used to bully and control people and does not allow for a
diversity of opinions.

------
ageek123
The Chait article should be required reading.

------
noodly
Don't say anything - they already chose what's best for them.

They left one of the bullshits camp and hopefully they will be more careful
next time before they will try to associate with another.

People learn on mistakes.

------
mathattack
What is intersectional politics?

~~~
potatolicious
That privilege (and the lack thereof) is a highly complex system that is more
than the sum of its parts, and therefore cannot be easily separated and
evaluated in isolation.

For example, while women are disadvantaged in our society in many ways, the
ways in which this disadvantage works is remarkably different for black women
and white women - or women from higher-class backgrounds vs. lower-class
backgrounds.

Ditto, while "white men" are commonly perceived to be privileged, this
privilege works differently (and to varying degrees) depending on if you're
wealthy or poor, urban or suburban, jock or nerd, etc.

And the effect in totality is not the simple sum of all the properties of the
individual. Therefore, attempts to separate the discussion of privilege and
disadvantage into discrete "women/men" "rich/poor" "white/black"
"straight/gay" variables is doomed to failure - the way an individual is
treated in society is the complex _intersection_ of many attributes of who
they are.

A straight black woman faces different discrimination than a gay white woman,
who faces different discrimination than a straight white poor woman - and the
dynamics of the privileges they hold and lack cannot be simply isolated like
an algebra equation.

------
hagan_das
Many of the "social justice" crowd get off on the moral superiority they feel
from engaging in rabid political correctness.

Unfortunately for them, moral superiority is by definition a positional good,
a good whose value rapidly diminishes as PC concepts become increasingly
mainstream. Thus they seek increasingly extreme levels of political
correctness to signal their status as being above the common rabble.

~~~
SafariDevelop
As Kristian wrote "Political Correctness is really just a special form of
conspicuous consumption, leading to a zero-sum status race. The fact that PC
fans are still constantly outraged, despite the fact that PC has never been so
pervasive, would then just be a special form of the Easterlin Paradox"
[http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-
correc...](http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-correctness)

------
electronvolt
From my experience at one of the elite public universities:

Something I noticed as a student who spent time around activists (I wouldn't
say I am one--I fundamentally agree with many pretty far-left social and
economic ideas but I didn't participate in marches/action and was only
occasionally involved in their official groups) was that there were sometimes
people who used left wing politics and the language of intersectional feminism
as a bludgeon to silence any critics and generally prove their superiority.
Some groups were kind of dominated by this type of person, and others weren't
--it certainly wasn't universal.

The thing is, I saw similar things during my short time in a pretty right
leaning debate club, just over different issues. Instead of not speaking the
language of intersectional feminism, it was not speaking the language of right
leaning economics, but the mechanisms seemed to be the same--an in-group who
knew the language and biwords used it to enforce the group's shared values on
those outside of that in-group who were interested in joining.

The realization that I had was really that there are people at every point of
the political spectrum and in every philosophical movement who police
orthodoxy and use it as an excuse to be disrespectful. It happens in the
center as well: the people who see the far left and right as crazy demagogues
and ignore/berate anyone who uses their language, regardless of their point.

The solution (for the left and the right groups) is probably to demand a
certain basic amount of respect from and for other people in your movement.
That doesn't mean "let them trample all over you," but instead "When someone
seems genuinely interested in your movement, direct them to educational
materials." In the cases given, the appropriate thing to do would probably
have been to interrupt and explain either why something might be offensive or
'wrong', but defend the person being attacked not on the basis of what they
said but on their personhood. And, of course, to not tolerate rabid orthodoxy
at the expense of basic compassion for others.

As a side note I wouldn't conclude from this post or the occurrences that I
saw that "political correctness" (of either the left or right variety) is
totally out of hand or wrongheaded or invalid. As other commentators on the
internet have pointed out, a lot of what gets labeled as "abusive leftist
social-justice-warrior political correctness" is actually "treating people who
are different from you with respect." If someone regularly says things like
"Gays are terrible aberrations in the eyes of God" or "All Muslims aren't
civilized", then it's fair to conclude that they probably do not respect Gays
or Muslims as groups of people, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

~~~
Balgair
I'm in grad school and this is also true of the sciences. I'll make a comment
about how X is metaphor for Y, mostly as a way to solidify and arrange my
brain to learn. For example: The Circle of Willis is a arterial structure in
your brain that keeps blood moving even if there is a clot, I likened this to
a set of resistors in parallel. Oh man, the looks... I felt like I had grown
10 heads. It's natural to me to want to tie things together, but for others,
no way, you either have the language or you don't, the in words and
shibboleths or nothing at all.

------
narrator
I read "Why there is a culture war"[1] by John Fonte about 10 years back. It
made the whole political correctness thing make perfect sense.

[http://www.hoover.org/research/why-there-culture-
war](http://www.hoover.org/research/why-there-culture-war)

------
xlm1717
I take it he doesn't agree that mentally beating an ideology into
impressionable young minds is the way to turn people to the left-wing.

But it has worked so well so far!

------
cafard
Worth at least a quick browse in the bookstore: the essay "The Puritan and the
Prig" in Marilynne Robinson's _The Death of Adam_.

------
ritvars
You don't know what to do? Don't be the same as you described - and stand up
in these cases!

------
throwaway38364
I find it strange that there's a concern with political correctness on HN when
the majority of "political" stories gets flagged to death. I guess this
political story happens to fit the narrative. Talk about political
correctness.

~~~
swatow
To the person who doesn't share the progressive political viewpoint, the flood
of stories about diversity in tech, always written from a pro diversity
viewpoint, is itself a form of political activism to be resisted.

~~~
throwaway38364
The idea that your behavior is excusable because you're resisting something is
a cornerstone of populism and the problem with political correctness in the
first place.

