So, over on that Pharyngula thread that has sparked a week’s worth of posts here on Pervert Justice, the main instigator of the back and forth was a commenter named kathleenzielinski who tends to pop up in threads that are not about trans people and pose a very, very serious question about “Why do we take all these trans people seriously, with their rights and stuff, when they deserve rights of course but not the almighty excessive rights that these trans people are always demanding, like the right to grow their wheatgrass for juicing right in my shower under my bathroom skylight? Why are over 90% of trans people telling me that I can’t move wheatgrass out of my own way when I take a shower in my own bathroom just because the shower is where the daylight from the skylight hits?”
And, really, I make light of the original content of the question a bit, but the point isn’t that. The original content of the question isn’t always **so** terrible as the assumption that everyone is telling kathleenzielinski that she can’t do something which few, if any, people are telling her she can’t do. Even worse, at least sometimes it is quite obvious that even if a thousand people were telling her that justice demands trans people be allowed to do something that it still wouldn’t be justice: the moral question at the heart of kathleenzielinski’s query is, like all moral questions, not something resolved by a popularity contest.
And even that wouldn’t be so bad, since some people are at an early stage of thinking explicitly about the process by which we should answer ethical questions (i.e. “metaethics”) and are thus unsure how to even go about answering their questions. Everyone has to start somewhere, and while I can now confidently assert that ethics aren’t best resolved by popularity contests there were times both when I was very young and much later at the college level when I wasn’t entirely sure that that was the case. Moral epistemology and popular convictions can conflict to lead to some thorny issues of their own.
But kathleenzielinski is frustrating not so much because one or two or even three questions raised. No, kathleenzielinski is frustrating because of the obvious plea for reasonable discussion and response, the lingering in a thread as long as things are escalating tensions, and then WHOOPSIE disappearing as soon as a serious response is offered.
Now, in that Pharyngula thread some people jumped up and down on kathleenzielinski right away. They didn’t offer serious answers to the questions posed because the questions and surrounding commentary relied on transphobic assumptions (on which people preferred to comment) or because their goodwill toward kathleenzielinski had expired many threads and weeks before. I do not here criticize them, but whatever their reasons and however worthy they may (or may not) be, it is fair to say that no one responded directly to the questions and concerns originally raised.
Now, as it happens, those questions and concerns also aren’t easy to directly answer. While anyone is free to have an opinion on any topic at all, kathleenzielinski was asking about policies, public policies, from informal policies of private clubs and small restaurant owners up to and including nondiscrimination laws passed at a much broader, possibly even national level, and how such policies (encoded in law or not) can, would, or should intersect with providing trans inclusive public accommodations in gender segregated environments. While anyone can have an opinion on such things, very few people have any actual expertise in such matters. And though depending on how specific you want to get with law and jurisdiction or with the details of a particular environment I may not have answers, I do, in fact, have expertise on these topics.
So when kathleenzielinski made a comment at #38 that even more directly implicated my area of expertise (by raising issues related to response to rape and managing post-rape/sexual assault trauma), I responded. kathleenzielinski’s comment went up at 8:55pm eastern time on 28 Oct, 2021. I didn’t notice it instantly, and it takes some time to compose a serious response to a serous question, especially one implicating delicate issues like post-rape trauma. Nonetheless my response was up less than 5 hours later, at 1:14am eastern on 29 Oct.
Now I certainly don’t expect kathleenzielinski or anyone else to wait at the keyboard for a response to a comment they made on the internet, even a very serious comment, but likewise it is entirely unreasonable to expect that people with expertise will be available 24 hours a day when you, yourself, have a serious comment or question and that they will respond, thoughtfully and fully to your serious content, within minutes. It doesn’t happen. In fact, kathleenzielinski is quite lucky in that there are very few people in the world that have my level of expertise with providing trauma-informed, trans inclusive services in gender segregated service environments.
And what happened? kathleenzielinski never responded. Not even the barest acknowledgement that something had been posted that provided direct answers to the questions and concerns raised, much less something long enough to show that those answers had been read and considered.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this behavior poisons discourse. It creates the impression that kathleenzielinski or people who behave similarly never wanted the discourse requested. Remaining so long as antagonism exists and escalation continues but disappearing when serious, thoughtful (much less expert) replies are voiced gives rise to the conclusion that people like kathleenzielinski were never here for serious, thoughtful answers or good discussion. As reasonable as they might sound in any particular comment, the totality of the behavior, and in particular raising issues of rape in a comment that announced a desire for serious response (note: I am not talking about raising issues of rape and saying that those issues preclude further discussion) creates hard work for other people in the thread. It’s not easy to arrive at good community and public policy responses to the provision of services, including public accommodations, to survivors of violence (including rape and sexual assault, but not limited to them) even before layering on a societal history of gender segregation and the messages we send interpersonally and socially that gender and/or sex, rather than behavior, is a source of danger.
While no one person owes a duty to any other single person in an internet conversation, and anyone is free to walk away from such conversations at any time, everyone should be aware that walking away from a conversation after demanding a difficult response has consequences, particularly if someone goes to serious effort to compose such a difficult-to-craft response.
This is to say, kathleenzielinski, with your behavior, you are poisoning discourse across important social lines, poisoning conversations that need to happen, and denying yourself education necessary to prevent you from showing up and asking the same type of loaded, difficult question again with zero acknowledgement that others went to great lengths to answer your last question.
I resent that behavior. I resent the poisoning of trans/cis dynamics. I resent that as a result of ghosting the conversation partners that provide what you ask, you make the work of providing education, of bridging gaps, even of centering empathy that much more difficult. I would also prefer that people didn’t swear at you, but the swearing isn’t nearly as lethal to the work that must be done to answer your concerns since it never pretends to be a part of answering your concerns.
I don’t like encountering people that say that they want to do hard work on hard questions and then fuck off, privilege intact, without so much as an oopsie to the marginalized persons who worked their asses off not knowing the privileged jerks have already decided their efforts are worthless.
There are reasons that I no longer run the nonprofit I once ran, and behavior like that of kathleenzielinski is one significant reason among them.
At this point, if I kathleenzielinski showed up on Pervert Justice, or if I ran Pharyngula, without an immediate apology after no more than one reminder of what happened in that thread, I’d swing the banhammer. And that should be heard as significant since I have never yet banned a single commenter once a first comment was let through. Literally no one who’s made a single comment here has ever been subsequently banned. But I would do it for behavior like that of kathleenzielinski.
Not sure if your title question is meant to be rhetorical, or if it is meant to be general or not, since you did answer what you specifically would do for a specific user.
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Part 1 Most people who ask complicated questions like this aren’t interested in the answer, and the complicated question is quite likely not their own question that they themselves thought of. It’s just not how most humans talk. Most humans can remember 4 to 7 things at one time and I have seen you make posts with !!!nine!!! Reading you is difficult as this is a lot of recursion. I personally think it is worth it so I go back and re-read what you wrote like what I might do for Paglia or Sonntag. Rechunking things like this can work
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Most people won’t or can’t.
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Talking like this poster does does follow the pattern of Islamic/Arabic discourse sometimes, so it’s useful to see where the insults are and who is doing them because insults do matter and are a legit part of the way that any complicated argument/question will start. So communication method matters, and someone just dropping out could be expected. The ghost-insult is intended as a drop-the-mike except it is more ancient than that, and is a power move. It is helpful to know that not everyone who is well educated and speaks English comes from our traditions or even thinks their valid.
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Part 2 The communication method here on FTB is not suited to complicated or long-term answers. I do not usually give long complicated answers here, but I think slowly compared to most people. By the time I have an answer or a reply to any post, the thread it’s “over”. Only the maker of the thread sees it.
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I personally would not blame the poster, simply because of the medium and language in which we are communicating here. But this is just me and you are absolutely entitled to banhammer this user.
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That said, I do have an answer to your title question. My approach is more direct and confrontational. It’s likely you will not like it for other reasons.
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Part 3 What I do if the question is complicated like that is to present one and only one of the concepts necessary but not sufficient to make the original question look very silly or insane. Not refute it. Not give the answer that is commonly given. Not give the answer they expect from where the ‘bait’ might be. I zero in on their pattern and I Fuck It Up. (By bait I am talking about both Marcus’ Argument Clinic bait , and transactional analysis bait).
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Then, when they are caught off guard they either start to think (maybe?) or they give a kneejerk response without thinking. I tell them that that is a lie. Flat out. I make them explain why it’s not a lie (it’s ALWAYS a lie) and follow the lies all the turtles way down. It helps considerably because I can say what I truly belive, that Thou Shalt Not Lie. This won’t work for you unless you first establish that the truth must happen before you start. I have used the “are we only talking about true things right now?” thing against atheists to good effect.
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By this time they have (if they’re not serious) forgotten what their original question is since it wasn’t their idea or their own thoughts in the first place and there isn’t necessarily someone next to them constantly parroting whatever Big Lie they originally told. If at this point they have pretended at any time that they have faith I point out that their lies go before them into the fire/lying is a sin etc. and I won’t talk to them. Again this part won’t necessarily work for you. Instead, you will need to point out that they broke their agreement with you.
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But if they start to think and really mean their curiosity, they can be induced to ask questions. This allows me to add in other points. It also allows me to deliberatly alert them that I am about to say something complicated and ask them if they will listen.
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If at this point they continue to think, I force them to consider if they respect me and my opinions. If at any point they stop thinking, and sometimes this happens on the way to turtles all the way down I once again tell them it is a lie. At any point they say that they don’t respect me or say something indicating they have reached the end of new concepts that their particular brain at this particular time will accept, I stop talking and tell them why. This could be either good or bad.
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At any point they talk about something being a little white lie, I say I am only interested in the truth and will ignore everything that they said based on it and go back to where the last true thing they said was. This last-true-thing might not be anything they said.
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Part 4 This does require a dialogue. It does require all parties to the dialogue to have thick skin. If no true answer is given by anyone else in the dialogue I find it useful to point out their lies too. It also often fails, but the way that it fails allows me at any time to point out that the person talking doesn’t believe what they themselves are saying or that they meant to be insulting and ignorant from the get go. It’s a huge time-saver!
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What this does NOT do is provide a coherent thorough answer of the type you like to make. It requires input from the person I am talking to. Chances are good they are running off of a template. Create one of your own and save it, and then PASTE that motherfucker.
The thing is that Kathleen didn’t say anything cogent, coherent or consistent enough to respond to. I have as a policy to respond to any points about policy or broader culture that is remotely coherent even if ultimately false, but there just wasn’t much to do. Even if she had later responded (and there’s all sorts of reasons a person could leave a thread in that context besides the bad faith ones, like getting busy, or burnt out, or feeling dogpiled on, or like there’s some bias against her, or maybe even feeling like she had indeed dug herself into a hole and didn’t know how to dig out without just leaving), the conversation would only have really begun *then*, not earlier. I’m an optimist and I see the best in people, and I’d love to believe that there is some misunderstanding that Kathleen had that could clear things up, or some way of opening the conversation that might cause her to reframe it in her head as less oppositional or just to get her to adopt a new perspective.
It’s hard to say what solves a problem like her because the very nature of poisoned discourse makes a veil between us and the true Kathleen. I can’t know if she’s just a person who has had a few bad experiences with some people she thought was trans and they caused her to have an understandably human but ultimately immoral and irrational reaction, or if she’s a TERF trying out points, or someone who had a bad day and needed to vent on something either related or unrelated to her issue. When someone won’t talk to you, you can’t really talk to them. Lead a horse to water and all that.
To respond to Kathleen, she would have needed to say something like “I am in favor of not allowing trans people into changing rooms that match their gender identity”, or something of that sort. Something direct enough that we could then start asking questions like, “Okay, why do you think that? Do you have any policy evidence that this is a good idea? Have you considered alternatives?
Generally, people like Kathleen are dealt with more broadly by having enough messaging circulating that helps to defang the criticisms that are at least possibly based in a good faith misunderstanding so that those who are not operating from an incredibly biased perspective such that they will just dismiss calm explanations can learn, and then drill down to the actual biases of someone like Kathleen. Because for someone like Kathleen, *what they said is never their actual concern*, whether they realize it or not. Even if Kathleen had had an excellent day where she was really cogent and able to really think through issues and explain her point, and everyone she interacted with had good resources on hand so that she could see she was being reductive or was mistaken, we all know that wouldn’t stop her from posting something else equally clueless later. Something is buggy in how she relates to this topic.
The only insight I have that gives me a little hope is that these conversations are actually fundamentally therapeutic. I had an insight some years back that the work that I do as a mental helper for friends and the work that I do in politics actually ends up having a ton of the same underlying dynamics: people have a perspective that leads them to behave in ways that aren’t good for themselves or others, and there is something that they can work on to do it, and we all need help sometimes in figuring out what that is.
And that means that an amazing post like yours can’t ever be counted as wasted, just like Bilbo’s compassion to Gollum could never be counted as wasted. Kathleen has whatever views she really has (which may or may not be markedly distinct from the views she has admitted to having in that thread – and there at least has to be some variance because she had earlier said things directly contradicting that thread) because of a broader worldview, not just having bad answers to a few questions. When we encounter a point that doesn’t fit in our worldview, we can usually accommodate it as something we can find an answer to later, or an exception to a rule, or something. Occasionally, changing a person’s mind on one charged topic might make them less charged on related topics, like the stories one hears on occasion about the racist or sexist or homohobic grandpa having to face a choice between being in his grandchild’s life or not and that rock-bottom moment making him question his commitment to the drug that is hate, so then he also becomes less aggressive on other issues. But it virtually always takes multiple encounters, multiple new perspectives, to start actually changing one’s worldview… but then it all starts to go, and sometimes very quickly.
seachange is right that most people can’t sit down and have a policy discussion: too many things to remember and track, which is hard enough to do when we are clear-headed and we are used to the ways of thinking and working through these issues and is much harder to do when we are feeling attacked or when we feel like other people are being analytical and cold about our safety. It’s possible to walk the average person through one topic, as long as the way that that’s done is to start with basics so they never have to keep track of multiple nuanced ideas at once. When one can’t do that, one can often at least drill down to one dispositive point that can be discussed on its own merits.
Your response, for example, was incredible, but it had to go into amazing detail and be very compassionate to address one of Kathleen’s concerns… but another concern she seemed to have, that she felt like there was some kind of irrational consensus among trans folks and her allies (in contrast with the obviously rational, measured activism of LGB people in the past, something you had to spend an entire post fisking and still was just scratching the surface of how wrong-headed that idea was), didn’t get addressed. And that one too can be addressed in countless ways.
I can only think for a second in those cases what brakes stop me from agreeing with someone like Kathleen. if I were in her shoes and I encountered some seemingly pernicious consensus among some community, would I act like she did? *No*. Because even if a community has some kind of belief that doesn’t make sense if you take it to a Spinal Tap 11, they may still have a valid concern when it’s taken up to a 4.
So even if I had no automatic empathy for trans folks whatsoever (as in, for whatever reason I slotted them into my mental space into the same kind of slot I had Nazis in), I could still see why a particular concern should or shouldn’t be taken seriously. To use an example from the Nazis, perhaps unwisely: Declining fertility, for example, *is* a policy concern to examine! It’s just that the answers don’t hinge on Great Replacement nonsense or an ethno-state but on much more boring and yet actually more frightening things like an economy that doesn’t make it easy for people to afford to have children. And both the much milder conservative worry (“Why are all these millennials ruining marriage and not having kids?!”) and the fascist’s (supposed) worry are actually both rooted in the same inability to respond to a complex problem with accurate information due to their preexisting beliefs, let alone to respond to a problem by considering it rationally against a reasonable hierarchy of actual concerns.
So that’s at least part of Kathleen’s problem, and it’s one that people who try to train as skeptics recognize: She’s strawmanning her opposition instead of steelmanning them. One thing we usually don’t talk about with strawmen is that they virtually always serve an emotional, well-poisoning purpose as well as a rhetorical one. It is likely that somewhere in Kathleen’s head she has eked out some exception to what she would otherwise see as decent behavior based on the idea that listening to trans people and their allies would mean giving into a cult, or giving into bullies, or whatever excuse she has.
If she didn’t have that problem, she might start doing things like asking herself “Wait a minute. Even if I am right about wheatgrass, maybe the reason why people are telling me something about how important it is to them is because it is actually that important? Have I actually informed myself? Maybe I should ask!” She would also stop pulling the classic trump card of the bigot and use the presence of a supposedly extreme, irrational request as a reason to ignore quite measured, reasonable, necessary ones.
Kathleen is Schrodinger’s TERF: We are sure something is irrational and transphobic about her ideas and behavior, but we may never actually know what, because lots of people have in their own ways and for their own reasons made it very easy for someone like her to hide beliefs. My hope is that we can get around that by continuing to encourage a society where compassionate, loving, thoughtful, honest discourse dominates and is expected, so that the disingenuous don’t have any place to hide and have to actually face what they really believe.
Correction: Most people can’t *easily* sit down and have a policy discussion, especially not on an Internet forum. I do think that in fact most people can grasp policy basics and pick up the essentials, and even end up having cogent contributions and original ideas, but it’s difficult to do in most environments, and it’s near-impossible to do in any space where an adversarial stance is possible to adopt, like an Internet comment thread. It is, as you noted, a skill, and each new policy area has complications and difficulties. To have any random person do it is going to take a little work and setting up the right space.
Which means we as people have to be better about humility, and accepting that maybe there’s something about a policy response that we find initially baffling that actually makes a lot of sense once we learn a few things.
Frederic:
Mmmhmm.
(Such coherent cogency!)
Mmmhmm.
PS
Such an exemplar of humbleness!
(Must be nice to be so righteous)
Hey, John. Notice how I said “we as people”? That includes myself, by definition. I even included the “as people” to make sure that that point was super, duper clear. But nothing is less righteous than snarking about someone else’s supposed righteousness, right?
As for whatever you’re talking about in the first post: Again, notice how I said “seemed to have?” I suspect CD and I both agree that Kathleen generally “seemed to have” lots of concerns but they were expressed so poorly and so vaguely that it wasn’t really possible to be sure what they were, with CD and I seeming to disagree only on the idea that Kathleen really had seriously floated the changing room issue. Good job with those ellipses, though: Sure is easy to make something seem less coherent when you cut out six intervening paragraphs of context!
Why do you communicate like this? Has it ever done anything valuable for you?
Frederic:
Oh, you could have hardly been more clear: you prescribe humbleness for everyone, not just for yourself. If only you walked your talk!
Me, I’m not even slightly righteous. Tolerant, sure… but not righteous.
I quoted you.
Heh. You imagine I’m somehow cherry-picking?
Apart from the pleasure of pricking pomposity?
Well, the ensuing response is quite indicative of both the acumen and attitude of the respondent. And information is valuable in itself.
(You’ve been informative)
“>>Why do you communicate like this? Has it ever done anything valuable for you?
>Apart from the pleasure..?
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43033-never-wrestle-with-pigs-you-both-get-dirty-and-the
John, you have no idea if I walk my talk. You don’t know me. You may *think* I don’t from this interaction here, but the whole
point of what I said is that it’s something to work on in general and in the right contexts. But good to know that you actually *did* know that the statement as it was said didn’t imply superiority, but you decided to say so anyways. That’s not “tolerant”, John, that’s being a dick.
You did quote me, John, and then cut out six paragraphs, and then acted as if I hadn’t said that thing. So you both quote mined and screwed up the quote mine. Good to know you learned from creationists! This *is not* discussion in good faith.
And there you go. “Pricking pomposity”. You’re the noble trickster, needling everyone you encounter. It’s not just like you do this to me, John, you interact like this to *everyone*, pompous or not. So not only does this indicate a monumental lack of self-awareness, but a spectacular self-contradiction that disguises one thing: I didn’t do *shit* to you, and you decided to be a dick.
Either I am as pompous as you think I am, in which case you know full well the pricking won’t do anything (but hypocritically stoke your self-righteousness!), or I’m not and you are actually just being an ass.
Super telling that you think that choice reflects well on you.
I have a similar problem with my parents, but the details are likely to have differences. I make serious comments or ask serious questions and get no acknowledgement of what I communicated, or a set of responses I will no longer tolerate in our relationship* if they want a relationship.
At its base it’s a resistance to and lack of motivation to answer.
This occurs with often with political issues, and religion is often connected as well as the military. The “not talking about politics” problem extending into other problems relating to criticism and sensitivity to it, bad family communication going back a long time.
I am planning on challenging their sense of courage, they raised me to defend my beliefs. Especially with religion and now that religion is being used to let them act politically and avoid criticism. They raised me to respond to their anger even if I did not agree with it, it’s their turn. The lack of reciprocity is unacceptable.
I can post more if this is useful, but the same emotional ties don’t exist with KZ.
*References to “freedom of speech” when commenting or critisizing something (dad)
*”Post more nice things” (mom)
*”You always do that” at a political criticism without saying what “that” is.
*…
*Lots of deflection and acting like the criticism is wrong.
@10: Yeah, the “emotional ties” point is a good one. It’s not that it’s impossible to have a functional conversation with a stranger, but it’s a lot more difficult, and usually ends up being about talking past them to asynchronously address silent observers. So they can use all the approaches your family can (because disingenuous replies don’t need to be sincere or sensible), but you can’t equally lean on something. The Alt-Right Playbook noted this in particular, the way rhetoric has to change when the context isn’t personal.
If someone like CD were having private messages with Kathleen, maybe that environment could bring enough humanity back to proceedings that she’d have to think through some of the hurtful implications of her ideas. But it’s just too easy to pull the ripcord in a discussion thread.
Frederic, I’m trying to respect CD’s purpose rather than to indulge my proclivity, but you are such a tempting target! So I’ve held off, but I’ll compromise, and take it easy on you.
To adumbrate the post’s thesis, the problematic nature of the sort of thread hijacking featured by example is that it insinuates stuff by JAQing whilst attempting to occupy the high moral ground, but that it persists only so long as contentiousness applies. Salient quotation: “But kathleenzielinski is frustrating not so much because one or two or even three questions raised. No, kathleenzielinski is frustrating because of the obvious plea for reasonable discussion and response, the lingering in a thread as long as things are escalating tensions, and then WHOOPSIE disappearing as soon as a serious response is offered.”
So, basically, it’s not about bashing kathleenzielinski, as you apparently believe, but about understanding the modus operandi at hand.
In your case, I can’t but help think you’re engaging in a form of cargo cult critiquing; your responses hitherto make it clear to me you really don’t get the point of my #4 and #5.
Anyway, pending input from our good host, I reiterate what I’ve (admittedly obliquely) indicated in those posts: That it is incoherent to both claim there is nothing to which to respond and also claim that a particular response was most apposite regarding a particular expressed concern, but that at least one other expressed concern remained unaddressed (a point which you clearly have yet to grasp); and the irony of you complaining about strawmanning (I say ‘straw dummying’) rather than steelmanning.
You remain oblivious.
I go by what you’ve written; that much I know. It more than suffices, O advocate for humility.
<snicker>
Are you familiar with the fallacy of the excluded middle?
#2 frederick said (start big snip)”And that means that an amazing post like yours can’t ever be counted as wasted”(end massive snip)
QFT
#brony
Yes, just as a prophet is not respected in the country of their origin, being in a family means that ‘they think they know you and all about you’ so familial conversations can start out with a lack of respect that is basic to the entire interaction.
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You are worthy of respect, Brony.
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It just so happens that my parents taught me and my sibs, and walked the walk themselves, to be always plain and direct, and to always say true things as much as possible. Much to my surprise when growing up and becoming an adult and realizing everything outside of high school is STILL one big stupid high school this lack of respect and lack of truth telling is a general issue of the society we live in.
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This is why I always use the “this is primarily about truth” and “this is secondarily about respect” in the complicated post I first responded to our Crip Dyke Servant of Death and Her Handmaiden. Not everyone is as smart as all y’all, and sometimes they’re not as smart as me. Not everyone thinks for themself, and sometimes all y’all atheists don’t do that, even here on FTB.
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People are not perfect. Crip Dyke’s compassion Matters.
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There is a limit to what folks can learn at any one time and more important to me then is to make sure that part of the delusional and harmful to the speaker narrative is broken. It is tempting to break the narrative at the exact same “logical and rational” place that seems most cogent, but do not do this.