SubJeff on 9/7/2020 at 12:34

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As I see it, cancel culture is boycotting or otherwise openly and vociferously criticising someone or something, usually a public figure but it could be a company or government, based on a set of ideals that have been decided by an interest group.

The important issue is a. the ideals are not up for debate, ever, even in the face of facts or evidence that refute their validity, b. knee jerk reactions and strawmaning or other inferences and conclusions made from any statements that assume the worst possible interpretation of anything, and maybe most importantly c. once flagged by a member of the interest group as an X (TERF, racist, whatever) absolutely no way to reason ones way out of that.

see june gloom's first response (and continued interaction) with SD, just assuming the worst possible view and trans-phobia. This plainly isn't true.




The result is it's just stifling of discussion.

I'll give you an example. Police violence against black people in the USA is a big topic at the moment. George Floyd's criminal record was being discussed and the response has been the opinion that this is totally irrelevant to the way he was treated.

That's true, in that case.

But the bigger picture is that criminal record and behavioural history IS important to the way police restrain someone. A known violent resistor of arrest should be approached differently. But even saying that you think history is important will immediately get you pounced on as excusing the murder of George Floyd. And wow betide you if you start to discuss cases where recorded and evidenced resistance to arrests (by video) by anyone black.

It's almost like a flight of ideas really, or Knights Move thinking.

If you can't discuss things without the worse possible conclusion being assumed by the woke then you cannot ever get to the bottom of anything.

Cis women express concern about trans women encroaching on their safe spaces. That's a fact. But in trying to discuss it here instead of dealing with the issues what we have is repeated false accusations. I could quote them all but I can't be bothered.

One of them though, is that I've somehow based my opinion on who can and can't rape in law. I've never done that.

Another is I want to force trans women to use cis men's facilities. I've never done that. In fact I asked why there can't be trans facilities, more than once. Somehow that suggestion of compromise will be equated to further trans phobia. Watch. I'm saying it will happen, and the nam shub of wokeness will compel the woke to accuse me of such.

SubJeff on 9/7/2020 at 12:34

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I promise I'll get to this Thirith.

Nameless Voice on 9/7/2020 at 12:55

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You mean the Ireland where (https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/people-queued-to-shake-this-sex-attackers-hand-108061.html) people queue up to shake the hand of a convicted sex offender? Or the Ireland where a group of rugby players were acquitted of rape (even though they basically boasted about it) because they were famous? (Admittedly, that was in Northern Ireland, not the Republic.) (I can't find a good, short article that summarises it, but if you're really interested you can search for "Ireland 2018 rugby rape trial".

Not sure how I'm supposed to magically "effect change through the solid democratic process". I live in a constituency which is mostly rural. In the last election, they voted in a known racist bigot who had recently been stirring up anti-immigrant hate in the region. I can vote for people who want to reform laws all I want - it doesn't change anything if they never get elected.


The whole argument about "censorship" and "totalitarianism" doesn't make any sense. No one in this discussion is saying that people should be censored.
I was talking about people facing the consequences for their actions.
I'm not saying we should form vigilante squads and beat up or murder them (I'm not a Sinn Fein supporter), I'm saying people have the right to decide if they want to deal with a person based on the information that they have on that person.
Being able to choose what you do (within reason / the law) is one of the cornerstones of any free society. How can you equate freedom with totalitarianism?

The only argument I can see there is that you think most of the people who join in a boycott are "bandwagoning" rather than actually considering the facts themselves. Obviously, people shouldn't do that. That's why I said people should make their own decisions based on the information available to them.

The other argument seems to be that people should only act based on facts which have been proven in a court of law, but that's obviously a ludicrous notion.
Imagine someone is extremely rude to you at a party, should you have to prove in court that they were rude to you before you are allowed to decide that you don't want to invite them to your next party? No, of course you don't.

You certainly shouldn't believe every accusation that you hear from others without considering it, without considering the behaviour and trustworthiness of the parties involved to determine which side you believe is more likely to be true.

Also, in a lot of the sexual abuse cases, if you actually listen to what the accused say in and around their defence, then you can often get a good idea of their character even regardless of the actual allegation. For example with that famous Brett Kavanagh case which was the subject of a previous one of these threads, even if he wasn't guilty of the crime he was accused of, the rest of his behaviour around the case was already enough evidence to show what sort of person he was, and enough for people to legitimately decide that they didn't want to deal with him.


Anyway, basically what Jason Moyer quoted.
Trying to "cancel" (aka not deal with) people because they are morally reprehensible is a lot different than trying to "cancel" (aka oppress and murder) people because they are a threat to your power and privileged.

Are people really arguing that there's no difference between "I don't want to buy your stuff because I disagree with you" and "I want to oppress and murder you because I disagree with you"?




Are you referring to the person that I argued with so much that they rage-quit my Discord server in disgust?

Thirith on 9/7/2020 at 13:04

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Haven't got time right now to respond to the whole post, but I want to address this bit here:

In the best of all possible world, I'd be happy to consider this. In a world where criminal record is in no small way dependent on race, wealth and other factors, much less so. (A not insignificant number of poor and/or black people in the US end up with a criminal record for minor crimes or even without ever having done a thing other than being arrested and not being able to afford the legal process, and while not all countries are as bad as the US, few are untarnished by this sort of thing.) And what about the behavioral history of the guys in blue? When they can shoot fleeing people in the back, or shoot people while they're asleep at home, and nothing much happens (until after a lot of protesting, and often not even then), shouldn't this be part of the equation?

Jason Moyer on 9/7/2020 at 13:26

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The only thing relevant to cops murdering someone is whether the person being murdered is an active threat to the lives of the civilian populace or the officers. There is literally no other reason that cops should be applying or threatening to apply lethal force. There is no law that I'm aware of that says that the penalty for resisting arrest is execution by a police officer without due process. Or that murder is an acceptable part of executing a warrant.