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I think that public shaming can be laid directly at the feet of Social Justice. It would be great if people who want to make things better for minorities chose

I think that public shaming can be laid directly at the feet of Social Justice. It would be great if people who want to make things better for minorities chose a different tactic - private communication rather than public ostracism.

geofft 12y ago
SJW here. Private communication works well if the problem is specific people behaving badly in private, and public ostracism is, in fact, inappropriate. But usually the goal is to establish a changed social norm, and to combat an existing one, which needs to be done in public; ostracizing an individual is not the goal (and, to be clear, isn't a good thing!). Someone brought up the example of Ben Noordhuis and node.js elsewhere in this thread. Assuming for the sake of argument that Ben's behavior was something that you didn't want in the world, it's not enough to message him in private and say "Hey, this was wrong for these reasons." That gets you change within the node community (well, provided it's Ben acting), but not anywhere else. Meanwhile, if you object in public and write a blog post about it... do you think io.js is going to risk rejecting a pull request about gendered pronouns now? Or any other equally large, somewhat-overlapping language community? I would definitely agree with the criticism that the blog post should have tried harder not to look like an attack on Ben as a person. But it reads to me like it wasn't the intention; it was an attack on anyone who acts in the same way.
- golemotron 12y ago
  Essentially, your argument is that the ends justify the means, right? Or, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? The issue is that we now know that things blow up in social media so we should adjust our behavior to be ethical. The case of dongle-gate at PyCon is a good example to talk about. We should now understand that attempting local solutions outside of social media is far preferable. Individuals (on either side of an issue) should not be cannon fodder for social causes. Inviting/creating that sort of public ostracism is extremely irresponsible. I hope that we (collectively) are learning that lesson. Maybe protecting individuals from social media attacks can be seen as a social justice cause? The most vulnerable minority is the minority of one.
  - geofft 12y ago
    No, absolutely not, and I'm sad that anyone would think I'm advocating that, because it means I wrote unclearly. My argument is that distasteful but not disallowable means should not scare us off from meaningful ends. Disallowable means are, as always, disallowable. Here's an example of a disallowable means: come up with trumped-up excuses using forged evidence to fire all the powerful white men on the grounds that once you get rid of them, the people who'll fill in will be (probably) less oppressive. You can probably even come up with data backing that. But it would be completely inappropriate. (Not to mention strategically wrong because it legitimizes a harmful strategy, but it's also inherently wrong even if it weren't strategically wrong.) My worry is that we'll look at a possible side effect of a means as a threat, as you're portraying things "blowing up", and that will be a chilling effect on change. Whatever the problems are with social media, to use that as an excuse is just that—an excuse, to prop up the current, bad systems.
    - celticninja 12y ago
      but really what we see with these crusades by SJW's is just an opportunity for bullying, usually by people who were once bullied and now want to get their own back. A lot of it is bandwagon jumping by the majority of people, who may or may not have a dog int he fight, but just want to cause a fuss. It is these people that call the employers, DDOS employers websites etc and then everyone lumps them all together as SJW's, giving everyone a bad rep. Doing things quietly would bring about better change, not chnage through fear (as it is now) but change through education. Explain to eople why they are wrong, get them to conciously change their behaviour as opposed to reactively change it to protect themselves and not because of an understanding of where they went wrong. Reasd the article and everyone involved still thinks that what they said was a joke and was blown out of all proportion. No minds were changed here, people just batten down the hatches to protect themselves and their families.
      - geofft 12y ago
        That would be extremely nice, if it worked. Then the entire question about distasteful means wouldn't come up, which would be better for everyone, because distasteful means are still distasteful. Unfortunately, that's not how changing minds works, in practice. http://www.contralbum.com/blog/2015/2/5/political-correctness-is-more-reasonable-than-jonathan-chait http://www.contralbum.com/blog/2015/2/5/political-correctnes... See the section starting "The second great flaw...." (And yes, I get the irony of trying to convince you of this by cordially linking you to some random blog post that lists research.)
- Kalium 12y ago
  Now we have created a culture within which ostracism, shaming, and zero tolerance for difference or error is the norm. Then you add in making examples of people to frighten others into compliance. Perhaps the possibility that the means of choice are toxic should be considered.
mercurial 12y ago
> I think that public shaming can be laid directly at the feet of Social Justice. I'm not entirely sure of what "Social Justice" means in the US, or how can such a thing be negative, but it seems to me that it's about enforcing social norms. If the social clock was set back a few decades earlier, you would get the same pitchfork mob if you tweeted something in favour of homosexuality. Just look at what happened to Adria Richards. My personal theory is that people like to see blood flowing. We don't get our bread and circus any more, pogroms and lynchings have gone out of fashion, but we still have the Internet to get our kicks.
- rkuykendall-com 12y ago
  > I'm not entirely sure of what "Social Justice" means in the US, or how can such a thing be negative The phrase "social justice" in this context usually refers to things like this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=social+justice http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=social+justic... http://www.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction/top/?sort=top&t=all http://www.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction/top/?sort=top&t=all

geofft 12y ago

SJW here. Private communication works well if the problem is specific people behaving badly in private, and public ostracism is, in fact, inappropriate. But usually the goal is to establish a changed social norm, and to combat an existing one, which needs to be done in public; ostracizing an individual is not the goal (and, to be clear, isn't a good thing!). Someone brought up the example of Ben Noordhuis and node.js elsewhere in this thread. Assuming for the sake of argument that Ben's behavior was something that you didn't want in the world, it's not enough to message him in private and say "Hey, this was wrong for these reasons." That gets you change within the node community (well, provided it's Ben acting), but not anywhere else. Meanwhile, if you object in public and write a blog post about it... do you think io.js is going to risk rejecting a pull request about gendered pronouns now? Or any other equally large, somewhat-overlapping language community? I would definitely agree with the criticism that the blog post should have tried harder not to look like an attack on Ben as a person. But it reads to me like it wasn't the intention; it was an attack on anyone who acts in the same way.

golemotron 12y ago
Essentially, your argument is that the ends justify the means, right? Or, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? The issue is that we now know that things blow up in social media so we should adjust our behavior to be ethical. The case of dongle-gate at PyCon is a good example to talk about. We should now understand that attempting local solutions outside of social media is far preferable. Individuals (on either side of an issue) should not be cannon fodder for social causes. Inviting/creating that sort of public ostracism is extremely irresponsible. I hope that we (collectively) are learning that lesson. Maybe protecting individuals from social media attacks can be seen as a social justice cause? The most vulnerable minority is the minority of one.
- geofft 12y ago
  No, absolutely not, and I'm sad that anyone would think I'm advocating that, because it means I wrote unclearly. My argument is that distasteful but not disallowable means should not scare us off from meaningful ends. Disallowable means are, as always, disallowable. Here's an example of a disallowable means: come up with trumped-up excuses using forged evidence to fire all the powerful white men on the grounds that once you get rid of them, the people who'll fill in will be (probably) less oppressive. You can probably even come up with data backing that. But it would be completely inappropriate. (Not to mention strategically wrong because it legitimizes a harmful strategy, but it's also inherently wrong even if it weren't strategically wrong.) My worry is that we'll look at a possible side effect of a means as a threat, as you're portraying things "blowing up", and that will be a chilling effect on change. Whatever the problems are with social media, to use that as an excuse is just that—an excuse, to prop up the current, bad systems.
  - celticninja 12y ago
    but really what we see with these crusades by SJW's is just an opportunity for bullying, usually by people who were once bullied and now want to get their own back. A lot of it is bandwagon jumping by the majority of people, who may or may not have a dog int he fight, but just want to cause a fuss. It is these people that call the employers, DDOS employers websites etc and then everyone lumps them all together as SJW's, giving everyone a bad rep. Doing things quietly would bring about better change, not chnage through fear (as it is now) but change through education. Explain to eople why they are wrong, get them to conciously change their behaviour as opposed to reactively change it to protect themselves and not because of an understanding of where they went wrong. Reasd the article and everyone involved still thinks that what they said was a joke and was blown out of all proportion. No minds were changed here, people just batten down the hatches to protect themselves and their families.
    - geofft 12y ago
      That would be extremely nice, if it worked. Then the entire question about distasteful means wouldn't come up, which would be better for everyone, because distasteful means are still distasteful. Unfortunately, that's not how changing minds works, in practice. http://www.contralbum.com/blog/2015/2/5/political-correctness-is-more-reasonable-than-jonathan-chait http://www.contralbum.com/blog/2015/2/5/political-correctnes... See the section starting "The second great flaw...." (And yes, I get the irony of trying to convince you of this by cordially linking you to some random blog post that lists research.)
Kalium 12y ago
Now we have created a culture within which ostracism, shaming, and zero tolerance for difference or error is the norm. Then you add in making examples of people to frighten others into compliance. Perhaps the possibility that the means of choice are toxic should be considered.

mercurial 12y ago

> I think that public shaming can be laid directly at the feet of Social Justice. I'm not entirely sure of what "Social Justice" means in the US, or how can such a thing be negative, but it seems to me that it's about enforcing social norms. If the social clock was set back a few decades earlier, you would get the same pitchfork mob if you tweeted something in favour of homosexuality. Just look at what happened to Adria Richards. My personal theory is that people like to see blood flowing. We don't get our bread and circus any more, pogroms and lynchings have gone out of fashion, but we still have the Internet to get our kicks.

rkuykendall-com 12y ago
> I'm not entirely sure of what "Social Justice" means in the US, or how can such a thing be negative The phrase "social justice" in this context usually refers to things like this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=social+justice http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=social+justic... http://www.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction/top/?sort=top&t=all http://www.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction/top/?sort=top&t=all