Poll: Victims and Victimhood - a prediction from the past

[Fallow]

Basically society doomsday predictions based around bitching about the younger generation. Welcome to the same thing that happens in every generation ever.

Sometimes, true. But the current SJW threat is causing some seriously unwanted effects here and there. People have been attacked, persecuted, arrested and had their lives destroyed because they offended professional victims.

Like that Canadian who lost his freedom, his job and his life savings because a Twitter comment of his offended a feminist and professional victim. It's been three years and he's still fighting this blatant persecution.

I'm all for laughing about people who complain about the youth of today, but it's not funny anymore when it becomes a real threat.

No, safe places as in the sort of place where it's a social faux pas to call (for example) a homosexual a "******." The fact that people who are intolerant or outright hostile to a certain group might not be welcome is apparently quite devastating for some reason.

Huh? We're talking about SJW-induced safe spaces right? The kind you find on American universities. Areas where normal people are not welcome because of their race or gender, to keep hyper-sensitive privileged people from being butthurt by someone's mere presence.

Kinda like some stores used to have signs that said 'no niggers allowed' in order for those poor white supremacists not to be offended.

Gregory Allen Elliot. It involves this campaign [http://www.freedomoftweets.ca/].

I still except it's feminist opression though. Have you ever seen a harassment case take over 3 years and cost in excess of a ton? Those tend to be settled in a few weeks. Also never seen bail conditions that draconian before. I simply can't explain the proceedings as they happened without it involving persecution.

Yeah thought it was him.

A quick Google check reveals he met a woman, Stephanie Guthrie, in April 2012 [http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/01/08/first_of_three_toronto_women_testifies_in_twitter_harassment_trial.html] for a professional meeting to design a poster and a logo. The meeting went fine but she found someone else to design it and informed Elliot. Then just over a month later she had a disagreement on Twitter with a different guy who had created a game where you beat up Sarkeesian, and then Elliot stepped in and got involved in the argument against Guthrie.

Sometime also in Spring or Summer he got involved with arguing with another woman, Heather Reilly, but she blocked him. After being blocked he then spent the next few months [http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/07/24/twitter_harassment_trial_second_complainant_says_accused_wouldnt_leave_her_alone.html] monitoring and replying to her tweets by finding hashtags she'd have tweeted to so he could get around the block.

It was descrived that [http://www.metronews.ca/news/canada/2015/07/21/women-had-a-right-to-fight-back-crown-argues-in-toronto-twitter-harassment-trial.html]: "Mr. Elliot sent copious amounts of obsessive, harassing tweets where he tweeted 'at' the complainants, mentioned their handles, mentioned the hashtags created by Ms. Guthrie, sent subtweets at the complainants, monitored their feeds, etc. He did this knowing that they blocked him and that they did not want contact with him". He was apparently even monitoring where they were going in real life, as he tweeted in September [http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/07/24/twitter_harassment_trial_second_complainant_says_accused_wouldnt_leave_her_alone.html]: "A whole lot of ugly at the Cadillac Lounge tonight," on the same night Reilly went to meet with friends there, causing her to fear he was there and search the bar to make sure he wasn't.

Finally in November 2012, after months of him doing this, Guthrie went to the police and he was charged with criminal harrassment. Reilly and another woman, Paisley Rae, came forward after learning Guthrie went to the police and he was charged with two more counts of criminal harrassment in January 2013.

So yeah, there's "a Twitter comment of his offended a feminist", and then there's "harrassing people for months until they go to the police".

If you take into consideration that the Canadian justice system is functional though far from perfect, it seems highly unlikely that either of these scenarios would result in a three year legal battle, as they are both pretty black and white in nature. It is more likely that both parties are trying to paint themselves as "victims" in the media here, and that anything described is either grossly misrepresented or outright fabricated.

 

[Lightknight]

The appropriation of victimhood to enforce personal beliefs and values on others is a problem. It's nefarious in that it not only trivializes real victims (if every small thing warrants huge out lash, it diminishes the value of anger at major things) but also carries the weight of real victims of actual atrocities with it when trying to impose alternate social norms (which means taking implied authority despite having none).

An alternate risk here is when we handwave a group as just being part of victimhood mentality when they actually have legitimate complaints. So we do have to be cautious of how we progress with responses once we accept the perils of internet abuse of victimhood.

In general, we as a society need better ways to cope with internet mob justice. We are currently doing the equivalent of just listening to the mob and lynching the person they're after albeit career or personal life-wise rather than literally taking their life. We are allowing the destruction of meaningful free speech and dissent when individuals merely expressing commonly held beliefs can suddenly find themselves without work or blacklisted in their career because the other side mobbed up. It's pretty damn dangerous in this new frontier that is the wild west web.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

People are welcome to whine about petty bullshit, as long as everybody else is free to ignore them to death. And it doesn't cost people who've done nothing wrong their jobs... oh...

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Has anybody actually read the article about conservatives being persecuted in academia? The author actually seems to be making the point that ideological diversity is beneficial and people tend to get lazy, make mistakes and fall victim to unconscious bias when they all think the same way.

Ideological diversity is a noble goal. Unfortunately a great many of the people calling for it don't want ideological diversity so much as they want more of their preferred ideology on display. And with AEI's record on this sort of shit they don't exactly merit the benefit of the doubt.

Still, a fine point to raise.

 

[Hagi]

Has anybody actually read the article about conservatives being persecuted in academia? The author actually seems to be making the point that ideological diversity is beneficial and people tend to get lazy, make mistakes and fall victim to unconscious bias when they all think the same way.

Ideological diversity is a noble goal. Unfortunately a great many of the people calling for it don't want ideological diversity so much as they want more of their preferred ideology on display. And with AEI's record on this sort of shit they don't exactly merit the benefit of the doubt.

Still, a fine point to raise.

I don't even think you should see it as a goal. Rather a symptom of a healthy system.

Ideological diversity should never be an argument for including an ideology. Your ideology should stand on it's own merits. And if the case happens to be that a diverse number of ideologies are present and recognized yet yours is rejected then you should probably take a very, very good look at your beliefs.

 

[Something Amyss]

Huh, I hadn't really heard of it until like 2015. Seemed new to me, and when people glommed on to it, seemed like a trendy new thing.

There's a pehnomennon called something like "the illusion of recency," and it happens to the best of us.

I think my first encounter with a safe space in anything other than theory was back in like 1997 or so. There was a pizza joint near here that caught a bunch of shit for being an LGBT safe space, and people were convinced that the owner was...I don't know, recruiting or something stupid like that. I live in a really weird community that seems to be like half gay and half homophobe.

I certainly can't argue with what you said. The people that feel they're higher in society want to impose their will on everyone they deem inferior, and get insulted when they can't.
They also get insulted when those they deem inferior try to do anything to change the perspective of those who see themselves as superior, seemingly no matter what. They want the world they see as theirs, and don't want anyone else even attempting to get any sort of foothold that might elevate them to anything.

It really is a shame that asking people to even consider something different is akin to persecution. but that's really what it is treated as, sadly.

...fuck, I'm depressing myself. I need to go not be on The Escapist for a while or something.

 

[blackrave]

Whenever there is real issue that can be exploited in some shape or form there will be mimicric parasites that will move in along actual people involved for genuine reasons
People who will pretend to be something else in order to gain some sort of benefit (financial, political, social, psychological, whatever)
These "fakes" usually misunderstand issue, severity and opposition.
This is where "overkill" reactions come from.
In most severe cases organisations that originally started with legit issues and with intent of following practical solutions end up overrun with these people that are worried only with stroking their egos and perpetuating problem (to legitimize their existence).

In short- it isn't limited to victimhood only. Any area can have influx of parasites.

 

[DoPo]

Still the central question remains: Was Elliot argueing with their feminist bullshit, as is everyone's right, or was it actual harassment that they couldn't escape and didn't involve political discussion? A discussion is not harassment by definition.

Well, from the description, it didn't really sound like a "discussion" but more along the lines of

Spoiler: this

 

[Lightknight]

Huh, I hadn't really heard of it until like 2015. Seemed new to me, and when people glommed on to it, seemed like a trendy new thing.

There's a pehnomennon called something like "the illusion of recency," and it happens to the best of us.

I think my first encounter with a safe space in anything other than theory was back in like 1997 or so. There was a pizza joint near here that caught a bunch of shit for being an LGBT safe space, and people were convinced that the owner was...I don't know, recruiting or something stupid like that. I live in a really weird community that seems to be like half gay and half homophobe.

I think the introduction of the internet is what has exacerbated the effect of the illusion of recency. Remember, we're basically a decade into what could really be seen as the modern internet where knowledge is presented in a user friendly form and communication with people in other nations has never been easier (I'd currently consider the decades before that being the infancy of internet). The age of the smart phone has really sped that up too with knowledge and communication on the go.

I certainly can't argue with what you said. The people that feel they're higher in society want to impose their will on everyone they deem inferior, and get insulted when they can't.
They also get insulted when those they deem inferior try to do anything to change the perspective of those who see themselves as superior, seemingly no matter what. They want the world they see as theirs, and don't want anyone else even attempting to get any sort of foothold that might elevate them to anything.

It really is a shame that asking people to even consider something different is akin to persecution. but that's really what it is treated as, sadly.

It's really not being seen as asking people to consider something different. A lot of times it comes across as militantly mobbing someone who disagrees or does not already express the "something different". I mean, it is textbook bigotry when that happens. You also mention safe spaces and you know that while they are good for some things they are also appropriated by groups who don't need a safe space as a means to protest groups who are also just asking people to consider something different.

It's kind of a balance people like you have to walk. Where the extremes espouse bigotry in the name of acceptance and if you come down too hard on them you risk out lash against your position and not coming down hard on them makes their tactics seem mainstream. So acknowledging that special interest groups are improperly using "safe spaces" as a means of protest rather than as a means of safety then makes actual safe spaces look more suspicious or unnecessary even though they aren't the same thing whereas not acknowledging the misuse of the term "safe space" for political means makes onlookers think all safe spaces are like that and you people don't care.

Rock and a hard place, yo. I don't think it's either side that is more guilty than the other of this. I think these things are common within humanity. We trend towards tribalism and drawing lines which has an inevitable effect of bigotry and exclusion. The internet is slowly making us into more of a global tribe. That's pretty cool and should start to mitigate exclusion naturally over time. I think our children are pretty well set up for that just like we were raised in integrated schools which made us see people as people regardless of race.

...fuck, I'm depressing myself. I need to go not be on The Escapist for a while or something.

I got you:
http://img.brothersoft.com/screenshots/softimage/c/cheerful_dogs_screensaver-48180-3.jpeg

 

[1981]

To be "victimized," you merely have to be wronged in some way or, if you're in a particularly frisky mood, feel that you've been wronged in some way. Nobody's arguing or diminishing the plight of victims of crimes, actual oppression, or something equally terrible.

The author of the article did just that. He doesn't know what made the participants in the first experiment feel wronged. As far as the third experiment goes, losing in a video game because of a glitch isn't the same thing as being discriminated against. The author also doesn't seem to realize that if someone acts a certain way when they lose in a video game, it only proves that they act a certain way when they lose in a video game. People really should stop making those embarrassingly unscientific extrapolations.