- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That and the fact that it's most commonly used to justify homophobia and transphobia, which makes citing it in this thread an... interesting choice, to say the least.
A Skirt's Not So Bad [Harry Potter]
- Thread starter Tekomandor
- Start date
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Golly gee, I wonder why the readership about a fic written about a trans character specifically to spite a TERF author might have strong feelings about transphobia.
clearly a mystery for the ages.
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NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
...where has anybody been defending her? I've not seen anybody say 'she was right to say this' or even 'no, she wasn't being transphobic'. Some questions/uncertainty about the root course of why she was being transphobic (from me), and some others questioning why people are reacting vehemently to her and the appropriate response to transphobes in general, but unless I've skipped a post nobody's said 'lay off G-P, she was in the right'.
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
fully just not true, lol.
bully bigots until they shut the fuck up and stop spewing bigotry into the discourse, such that they cannot spread their views
is the most effective way to stop bigotry.
- Location
- The great frozen north
I feel I should point out that the boded sentence seems to be opposite the official stance of SV's moderation (see: many cases of people getting infracted under rule 2 for statements about fictional people).
EDIT: pronouns
Anyways, jesus Grubbly-Plank is obnoxious. Does this person have any redeeming features, or is this our mini-Umbridge to deal with for now? Really, herm being transphobic is probably the more charitable interpretation. The less charitable interpretation is that she has her head up her ass and has a broad-spectrum inability to recognize when her opinions about something have been incorrect coupled with anger at anyone who challenges her. Because that STILL gives you all the problems with him being transphobic, and several others on top of it! I've got my eye on her, but I'll wait until I see him interacting with other people before I make a judgement about just how much of a mess she is.
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- Pronouns
- She/They
Deplatforming works. Look at Milo.
I don't mean to be rude, but... the reason that so many people (like myself) feel such a visceral emotional investment in this is that it is our lives being threatened. What you feel is, I am almost certain, not as intimidating as knowing that people would happily see you dead for existing as a (queer/Jewish/AFAB/delete-as-appropriate) human, just to list the categories that apply to me personally. I have had to make the calculus of whether it's worthwhile to speak up against a group who I disagree with, but that calculus is a wee bit different when actual physical violence is a possible outcome. Maybe invoking the hyperbole you did is a touch out of proportion to the actual balance of power?
I disagree, all that does is drive them from your specific group turning it into an echo chamber.
It's just the first thing that came to mind to try and get my thoughts across. Generally speaking working against grouping psycology and confirmation bias is always going to be difficult. What I mean is to comdem people for what they do sure, but it's not going to convince anyone. To do that you have to tell a story that resonates with them such that they feel your perspective too. Obviously easier said than done. Just declaring them evil isn't going to make anything better they'll just see you as evil too and not listen to anything else you have to say.
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- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No one's saying her actions were right, but there's a lot of people wringing their hands over the audience reaction to her and urging people to be more understanding of the poor bigot. Which is kinda weird, since as far as I can tell the worst thing anybody's said is that they hope she gets fired.
Like, we've had this whole big digression into how mean you're allowed to be to bigots, but so far as I can tell the comments that inspired all that were pretty mild? It's kind of weird and annoying that something as simple as "eat shit" can prompt all this moralizing and "hate the sin, not the sinner" stuff.
Most bigots won't listen regardless of what you say or how you say it if you're the thing they're bigoted against. Change doesn't come from winning them over, it comes from gaining the attention and sympathy of the previously apathetic majority. Visibility is important, not civility towards the oppressors. There's a reason the modern gay rights movement started with the Stonewall Riots.
Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
If not having to deal with Nazis and other such assholes telling me I'm subhuman for wanting to address my SRY carrier status makes a place an echo chamber, I'm taking the echo chamber. Hell, let's make society at large such an echo chamber!
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Ah, that makes more sense. I interpreted LostJen's post as saying people were defending G-P herself, rather than being about the posts questioning why people were reacting strongly.
Epsilon Rose
The King of Unrest
Banning hateful people, espesially people who hate you, isn't going to create an echo chamber on its own. However, allowing them in is likely to poison discourse, attract more hateful people, and drive off more polite community members; there is a reason SV has very strict anti-hate and anti-bigotry policies, after all.
More than that, it's not the responsibility of any marginalized group to sit their and quietly take abuse in the name of inclusivity or understanding. I mean, think about how backwards that is: The bigots must be listened to and accepted, but the abused have no recourse? They have to be polite?
As Don Alverzo already pointed out, a bigot is unlikely to listen to the target of their bigotry on an open forum. No amount of rude behavior will make them think you're evil and no amount of polite behavior will make them think you're good, because they have already decided you are the "other" and the other must be evil. Your civility does not factor into it at all.
Additionally, while understanding and discourse can be powerful tools for de-converting bigots, it isn't reasonable to expect every other person to have the wherewithal or skill to engage in it with every random bigot they come across. A public web forum also isn't really the right venue for that kind of work, as it relies heavily on interpersonal connections and humanizing the group they hate, both things public, asynchronous, text chats heavily hamper.
- Location
- Bloomington, IN
I feel like Facebook has pretty definitively proven that all letting bigots stay around does is let them broadcast and normalize their views.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
What if the goal is to run them out of polite society so that other people don't pick up cues from them.
Maybe villifying them doesn't change their individual ways, but coddling them make others think it's acceptable to copy them.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
About the only real issue with driving out bigots is that it makes it less likely they'll ever change their opinions, as it encourages them to form their own echo chambers and makes them feel like victims (despite them being anything but). Everything else about it, though? A positive, in that it protects their targets, makes it harder for them to spread their message, etc. And frankly, it's not the job of the victims of bigotry to put up with bigots or try to change them- that's a problem for society as a whole to deal with.
- Location
- Turtle Island
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Adding to this: The fight against oppression in all forms is a political struggle; it's fundamentally a question of power, and it depends on denying oppressors and bigots power over the people they want to harm. Anti-oppressive education is also important, but the priority for that should rarely be trying to convince overt bigots—they're generally the most entrenched in their views and the least open to change. It's almost always more effective to organize to push such people out of positions of power and make them face social consequences for publicly espousing bigotry.
Epsilon Rose
The King of Unrest
They already do those things though? Acting like victims is core to the conservative identity in America (and fascisms in general). Similarly, their entire media landscape is built on echo chambers. All forcing them out of common spaces does is break the pipeline between the common space and their echo chambers for new victims.
- Location
- The great frozen north
Just to keep this on topic and stop this from being a general "how to deal with bigots" discussion: Grubbly-Plank ABSOLTUTELY needs to gets a few bonkings until he squares up. By causing Holly undue stress and unfairly singling her out, he not only makes Hogwarts an unwelcoming environment but also compromises the integrity of the house points system by aggressively deducting griffindor points for the most petty reasons. Not to mention that, with his stuck-up inappropriate reaction to what really ought to be a significant discovery (that Unicorn sensitivity is not just based on the presence or absence of a penis), he is failing very badly at being a role model of a biologist.
He's not just an anonymous 4channer who liberally uses that homophobic slur as a suffix. He's committed tangible crimes that have directly harmed specific people and impaired the operation of important institutions. He's gotta be reigned it.
He's not just an anonymous 4channer who liberally uses that homophobic slur as a suffix. He's committed tangible crimes that have directly harmed specific people and impaired the operation of important institutions. He's gotta be reigned it.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Not all bigots are automatically part of that sort of echo chamber, or think of themselves as the victim prior to getting pushed out- we've had enough examples of this sort of behaviour on SV to prove that. It's common, yes, but not universal. But overall... well, yeah, there's a reason why I said that getting rid of them is a positive.
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Subrosian_Smithy
endless
- Location
- Washington
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Hers
Literally what do you think bigotry even looks like in practice? Please stop with your half-baked analysis and think about it seriously for a moment.
Bigots aren't just people seething with anger and talking about how much they want to kick innocent puppies. Bigotry is an attitude which justifies itself by promoting epistemic injustice and internalizing the idea that it's only reasonable - if not outright morally obligatory - to set double standards for minorities and treat them poorly. And that goes double for transphobia in its current form in Anglo-American culture, invested in both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as it is.
Having "mistaken assumptions" and being "stubborn about reviewing them", to the point that you as an adult teacher are glaring hatefully at a child, punishing her scholastically for contravening you, and allowing her transphobic peers to bully her directly in front of you, is exactly the same thing as being "knowingly" and "intentionally" transphobic for all intents and purposes. That is what the internal monologue of an avowed transphobe looks like.
It obviously never once Grubbly-Plank's mind that the unicorn might be wrong about Holly's gender until it's validating her.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
'compromises the integrity of the house points system'
*looks at Snape*
...yeah, that boat sailed a looooooong time ago.
Other than that, though, I agree that'd be the ideal response. The problem is that the general incompetence and complacency of magical Britain is likely to get at least partially in the way.
Spectral Waltz
Scatterbrained Writer
- Location
- Walking the Endless Corridors
I mean... It's basically that we know and agree that G-P did a transphobic thing, we're just trying to figure out whether they are 'a transphobe' or if they're just stubborn and resentful. The latter being a much less severe character flaws than the former.
I'd say "they're definitely a transphobe, but are they willing to join a hate group over it?"
Most people are bigots in one way or another. The question is what they do when confronted with that.
And Grubbly-Plank is off to a bad start.
- Pronouns
- He/They
"We must defend witches' spaces from muggle degeneracy!"
(My apologies if this is in bad taste.)
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NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Shockingly, I have thought about it seriously. A lot. I actively work to analyse my own thoughts and actions to check whether I'm being bigoted or prejudiced, because I'm aware that it's an easy mindset to slip into or get pushed into. Which is probably part of why I'm interested in the motive behind G-P's actions, come to think of it...
Anyway, as for what it looks like... it looks like a complex mess with no simple representation or universal display. On one end, you have slurs, violence, identity denial, and other blatant acts. On the other, you have double standards, passing over and ignoring people, watching for 'perverted' or 'illegal' behaviour (depend on the type of bigotry), and other 'passive' but still extremely damaging acts. It can be a mindset people embrace. It can be something people don't realise they're doing. It can be obvious. It can be subtle. And above all, it makes absolutely no fucking sense the minute you stop to think about it.
Hmm...
Wow, it's almost as though I could tell AND REPEATEDLY OUTRIGHT STATED that regardless of motive, G-P's actions were transphobic in result!
Imagine that.
The reason I brought up the motive wasn't because I thought it somehow made her actions not transphobic, or because I thought it would excuse her, or anything like that. It was because I genuinely couldn't tell from the update whether her actions were the result of conscious transphobia, or a personality and mindset that just gives the same result. And the reason that matters is because it impacts how I see the character in a noticeable way.
Also, you obviously had better teachers than I did, because I've seen that sort of behaviour from plenty of teachers in school (not the transphobic trigger, but the same general attitude). For example, I distinctly remember one occasion when I was sent out of class just for asking why something what would happen if we did something we'd been told not to; it wasn't something dangerous (we were in music class), I was curious as to why we'd been forbidden, and next moment I had a teacher red-faced and yelling at me to get out. So yeah. G-P's reaction? Perfectly in line with what I'd expect from a short-tempered and/or stubborn teacher who doesn't like being questioned.
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Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
I just read Grubby Plank as initially feeling Harry didn't count as a girl to the unicorns, so was being concerned for her safety, then when proven wrong just sulked and gave her grumpy looks. Academia and such don't like folk proving them wrong, in general.