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I think the people getting abused have a fair amount of say in what's abusive and what's not. Working conditions/scenarios from years ago might be considered un
by nstart 10y ago
I think the people getting abused have a fair amount of say in what's abusive and what's not. Working conditions/scenarios from years ago might be considered unwelcome today. That doesn't make my negative feeling towards a "work 8 hours a day for 35 years in one company and retire" scenario invalid. Your question however IS the problem. Sure there are a lot of messages that straddle a fine line between abuse, jokes, and not at all abuse. But people have quite collectively agreed that rape threats are a form of abuse. That doxxing is a form of abuse. But the attitude towards even these kinds of obvious forms of abuse has remained flippant at best because instead of catching the low hanging fruit, people counter with bike shedding style questions of "is it really abuse?". The problem here honestly is a simple case of not wanting to listen hard enough.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoI think the people getting abused have a fair amount of say in what's abusive and what's not. This is circular reasoning. If I can define X as abusive (where X is something I don't like), then I am a person getting abused. So now that allows me to define whatever I want as abusive?
- breischl 10y agoThat's a near-perfect example of what the GP was referring to with "...instead of catching the low hanging fruit, people counter with bike shedding style questions of 'is it really abuse?'" And while I get your point about circularity, it pretty much has to be that way. For example, if I threatened to stab a random person with a syringe, that would be abusive. If I threatened to stab my brother with a syringe, that's an inside joke from when we used to play "Battlefield Vietnam" together. Which is pretty much what the article was getting at when they talked about context mattering more than content.
- sievebrain 10y agoIt's not "bike shedding". Bikeshed painting is a term for discussions where the outcome doesn't matter, often started to give management a feeling that they're in control and being involved. Pointing out that "abuse is whatever an abused person defines it as" is an argument built on quicksand is very much not bikeshedding.
- nstart 10y agoWell to be fair, I didn't say that abuse is fully defined by the abuse. Just that the abused have a fair amount of say. This is very different. Couple that with the statement of things that can be easily and objectively defined as abusive and we have a group of people who can easily be put in to an objectively defined bucket of abuse. This is the group that can further share their experiences which lets anyone who's willing to listen hard enough, to qualitatively identify/define how abuse is happening. Or at least attempt to.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoThat's a near-perfect example of what the GP was referring to with "...instead of catching the low hanging fruit, people counter with bike shedding style questions of 'is it really abuse?'" Ok, in that case lets also catch the low hanging fruit of black men raping white women. And if you say "a black man asking out a girl who doesn't like him isn't rape" then you are guilty of bikeshedding. <- Spot the fallacy yet? If circularity is valid then as a victim I define names that start with "brei" to be harassment. You can tell I'm a victim because someone with a name starting with "brei" replied to me, which makes this valid. <- Spot the fallacy yet? Consider the possibility that if you can't prove your point without deliberately resorting to logical fallacies, that your point might be wrong.
- scott_s 10y agoI think you ignored breischl's point, which was about context mattering. That is, you can't treat the claim as a logical proposition alone in the universe.
- yummyfajitas 10y agoI'm not disputing that context can provide information about an action, I'm disputing the need to use circular reasoning/appeals to emotion rather than clear objective principles.
- breischl 10y agoYes, clearly one can construct ridiculous examples. On the other hand, one can also ignore clearly valid cases while trying to construct the perfect solution. Sometimes the real world involves solutions that are merely acceptable. Or even individual judgement calls - hence why we have judges and juries. But since you seem to think that there is a fully-cohesive, non-circular, objective way to judge what is harassment or abuse, please enlighten me as to what it is. If you fail to do so, then somebody will probably rape and kill your entire family. <-- Not abusive, because there isn't a peer-reviewed Theory of Abuse available. edit: Just for the hard-of-sarcasm, the last bit is to illustrate the ridiculousness of the argument, not an actual threat.