Quote (Handcuffs @ Sep 22 2019 10:40pm)
I wanted to start a thread to explore the thoughts and opinions of PaRD members with regards to ways in which your personal beliefs differ than the general "side" you associate with. This could include disagreements on specific issues/stances, or also instances in which you agree with the stance but disagree with either the way in which your side's message is being communicated and/or the strategies used to communicate the message.
I'm curious as to whether people feel there are faults, inconsistencies, or breakdowns in logic represented in their side or if ideological purity is what people perceive to exist.
To use myself as a starting example: I feel like my socio-political beliefs are definitely far/radical left and a bulk of my prior experience/knowledge has revolved issues identified by social justice communities. This has primarily included issues related to the queer community, environmentalism, antiracism work, veganism, healthcare, education, and criminal justice reform. With that said:
My thoughts on the social justice community:
1. Cancel culture is largely toxic, mostly from the perspective of interpersonal relationships. In no other group that I can think of is group think so prominent that it results in an abundance of virtue signaling and people being afraid of holding and expressing any contrarian opinions. To do so is to be outcast from the in-group and deemed problematic.
2. The words "Fascist", "Nazi", and "Genocide" get inappropriately used and do nothing to further a conversation or facilitate change of any kind. People who vote for/support Trump aren't fascists or Nazis, and neither is Trump himself.
3. There is a sense of ideological purity in social justice spaces, and similar to point 1, but more specifically, there is a sense that even commenting on the process/way in which we communicate our messages will get you a 1-way ticket out of the group.
4. We utilize academic language too much in our conversations with people of differing perspectives, which makes our message inaccessible.
5. We don't seek to utilize sound research and evidence-based opinions as much as we ought to.
6. The use of violence has a time and place in social justice, but increasingly violence is being inappropriately used, protected, and celebrated. "For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house".
7. We embody some of the various "isms" that we seek to speak out against. A major example is how white social justice warriors talk about black people as though they're a monolith/voting block and assuming that all black people either think the same, or should think the same, and this "sameness" is in congruence with your perspective on social justice.
My thoughts on veganism:
1. The consumption of meat should never be equated to or described as "murder", and the same is true with respect to the dairy industry and "rape". These are uniquely human experiences/language and the usage of these terms to convey a vegan message ends up alienating people.
2. Any consideration of environmental and animal welfare that people make with respect to their consumer habits is inherently a good thing and should be celebrated. Recently made a change where you don't eat meat on Mondays? That's awesome! Decided to buy eggs from free-range farms instead of factory farms? That's awesome! Expecting people to be completely vegan and not accepting anything else is absurd.
3. Vegan food doesn't "taste the same". It's different and it's okay that it tastes different, but let's not pretend like vegan cheese tastes the same as dairy.
My thoughts on the queer community:
1. I think we expect people to have a far greater working knowledge of the queer community than they do, and ultimately, should be expected. There's a great deal of privilege in knowing all of these community/academic terminology that we should be giving people the space and opportunity to take a moment as being truly exposed to the idea/thought that there are more than 2 genders, or that gender and sex are different, is possibly very new to them.
2. Better than marriage equality is abolishing marriage as a governmental affair. Marriage should be a personal, religious, and/or cultural event.
3. We don't have enough patience and therefore have unrealistic expectations about the usage of pronouns. For many the intentional use of the pronoun "they" is new for them, and this is especially true for pronouns like Hir/Per/Zie, etc. People are going to mess up, and so long as they're not being an intentional dick about it, give them some leeway.
3. Focusing on sexuality/gender identity "not being a choice" has its merits in certain conversations, but in general is a poor leading message. The better question would be: Even if it were a choice, why would that be bad? Why does it matter if it is or is not a choice?
My thoughts on abortion:
1. It should be an intellectually honest position to say that you don't know when "life" begins, and that this is true for everyone. Suggesting that a fetus is not "life" and letting that be the hill to die on makes no sense and doesn't allow for furtherance of a discussion.
2. We need to have more calm, genuine conversations with people on the topic of abortion. We too often focus on the most vocal opponents and conversations devolve into shouting matches and insults. Beyond this, we should be emphasizing a key similarity between pro-choice and pro-life groups and that is that we each want to see the incidence rate of abortion go down. Therefore, we should be having more bridge-building conversations with pro-life groups about accessible comprehensive sex education when abortion conversations each an impasse.
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What are your thoughts on your positions, fellow PaRDians?
Good effort I guess however I'd be surprised if any right wingers here would admit to anything except owning the libs
Plus aside from points such as people thinking black is a monlithic voting block (good observation as I've seen this too) most of your issues imo are coming from fringe groups within those people and as we know the loudest and the most obnoxious are easy targets to use to reframe shit.
I agree on cancel culture and I think even sjws who aren't outright shills are starting to see how their strategy does nothing to promote their causes and instead just get vilified.