firefinga

Well-known member
Mr. Tea is posting dissenting opinions and he is giving argumentative support to those. He's making this site more enjoyable for old reactionaries like me.
 

droid

Well-known member
Tea's rhetorical style here has been well documented for nearly a decade. Its not the opinions per se, but the manner in which he debates.
 

comelately

Wild Horses
Good god, man. Talk about a stuck record. I'm an 'Islamophobe' now as well? Lol, if you insist.

I see you wrote a thousand-word thinkpiece in response to one of my posts a page or two back. I'm afraid it was a wasted effort as I'm not going to read it, because I know it'll begin, continue and end with a studied mischaracterization of my position.

328 words. Talking. About a stuck record.
 
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luka

Well-known member
Arguing with tea is like entering a strange mysterious territory known only as The Zone. Nothing is as it seems. The terrain shifts. Roads which appeared straight curve back on themselves depositing you right back where you started. Parrots morph into Puffs of smoke. The object on the horizon gets further away the more steps you take towards it.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
The problem arises when a dishonest definition of 'hate speech' is used in such a way as to define it as 'anything I disagree with'.

Mr Tea, this is probably what you should have stated clearly from the start and the discussion could have gone from there. I think a discussion about what constitutes 'hate speech' is probably worth having (that, plus firefinga's point about 'borrowed importance' is a good one).

Unfortunately after 7 or 8 pages I doubt anyone can be arsed by now.
 

comelately

Wild Horses
How often does this (the dishonest, presumably implicit, definition of 'hate speech', or something similar) actually happen? In what contexts does it happen? How do you know when this has happened? Is it actually significant?

Or to put in another, perhaps simpler, way - when do I get to tell a 'race realist' to piss off?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Conspiracy theory: 'safe spaces' were invented by right-wing agents in order to turn the left against each other.
 

comelately

Wild Horses
I think there's a possible argument to be had around whether, for example, Germaine Greer is guilty of 'hate speech' against trans people - but even if you think it isn't, that doesn't mean you necessarily get to legitimately accuse those who think it is as defining 'hate crime' as 'whatever they disagree with'.

A lot of this is going to come down to 'burden of proof', on both sides.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Conspiracy theory: 'safe spaces' were invented by right-wing agents in order to turn the left against each other.

I was going to say this earlier, too, before it all kicked off - a consequence has been to encourage infighting among progressives over sometimes relatively minor doctrinaire points, when they actually agree on 95% of issues, rather than fighting their real ideological opponents.
 

comelately

Wild Horses
Well......

Melhuish suggests that this belief "contribute to the high levels of stigma, hatred and violence towards trans people", but doesn't explain how exactly this is supposed to work......In her article, Quinn makes some oblique references to hate speech – speech which incites violence, hatred or discrimination – but stops short of actually accusing Greer of hate speech against transgender people. She also alludes to violence and harassment experienced by trans people, implying – but again refraining from explicitly stating – that by holding the beliefs she does, Greer is in some way responsible for this violence.


So without going on a full-analysis thousand word think-piece.....Melhuish is not defining hate-speech, implicitly or explicitly, as an opinion she disagrees with.
I think the article goes wrong here (weasel word bolded by me):

That is, the objection is that she believes things that her opponents believe to be false, and that these beliefs are, for reasons that are never properly articulated, "dangerous". So what Greer stands accused of is, essentially, thoughtcrime.

When you see the word 'essentially', then like 'implicitly' you know there's been a logical jump. I don't think it helps really, especially when argumentation jumps are explictly what you're chiding the other for. You're actually completely validating their approach by doing so.
 
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Benny Bunter

Well-known member
My my you are a pernickety chap arent you? I posted that article to roughly illustrate my general feelings about gender identity politics, nothing more really, sorry.

Anyway like i said, im not about to get into all this again, so ill leave it there iydm
 

comelately

Wild Horses
Yeah I understood you were not going to engage over a prolonged period, but I thought the article was a good example of someone doing pretty much exactly what they think they're attacking.

And no, I don't think the charge of being pernickety has any substance whatsoever.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
Conspiracy theory: 'safe spaces' were invented by right-wing agents in order to turn the left against each other.

Would be time and energy wasted by the right wingers. Lefties have a tremendous history of dividing and marginalising themselves.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
So The Sun doesn't have op-ed pieces by feminists and LGBT activists and anti-racism campaigners? That constitutes 'no-platforming' - a notably right-wing paper mysteriously not publishing material by left-wing writers? Fucking hell. :rolleyes:

You're taking the point too literally - I'm saying that getting worked up about 'no-platforming' in particular is a bit absurd, given that the same stifling of people's views occurs every day in countless other contexts.
 
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