The Internet's 'Misogyny Problem' - real or imagined?

[Traitorfish]

Yea, but in that we are generally interested in him during this century for his quest to end slavery rather than his quest to preserve the federal government, it's easy to gloss over exactly how hard he tried to first prevent the creation of the Confederacy and 2nd, how much he was willing to bend on the slavery issue when it kept popular support in the north. He was not a dream for his contemporary abolitionists. Frederick Douglass wound up trying to mend that rift years after his death, and did a pretty good job of it.

Granted, but at no point was Lincoln interested in hearing the slavers' side of the story. He knew what it was: he wanted them to stay in the Union because he believed, as the slavers themselves believed, that the closing of the West to slavery would confirm the whithering and death of the institution. He wasn't a radical, but he wasn't a bridge-builder.

 

[Flying Pig]

I think where he gets that reputation is his policy after the war, in contrast to the Grants and Shermans of the time - although he didn't get long to see the culmination of it.

 

[luiz]

Sorry, but "negotiation and moderation" are not words that would naturally come to mind when reading many of your posts. Case in point:

Where's the opposition to negotiation and moderation there? Am I saying Marxists ought to be sent to labor camps?
No, I think they are a silly cult, who in the past was actually powerful and violent and caused an immense amount of death and suffering.
I tolerate their views. I don't like them or respect them.

Does this pass the test of a "reasonable and non-oppositional" approach that is being advocated here?

Sure does.

Nobody on this forum is capable of actual physical violence towards each other. And yet there is disagreement about various people's approaches. This should tell you that physical violence is not all that is being debated here.

But physical violence is one of the key disagreements. When someone endorses Marcuse, one is endorsing the suppression of opposing viewpoints, even if one is obviously not capable of suppressing anything. When someone praises the North Korean government, one is praising a violent and repressive regime.

Radicals love to spill blood, and usually their own blood ends up being spilled at some point.

Confrontation and opposition run the gamut of practices, from the physical violence of battle to peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience. What most of them are not are polite and non-oppositional. And they are used even by some of the most celebrated advocates of peace.

I'm not opposed to intellectual confrontation and opposition at all. I'm opposed to physical violence, which you are endorsing. So we are indeed debating physical violence.

So would I be correct to call the DPRK a self-described democratic government?

Yep, they sure are. All communist governments were self-described as democratic. What they did not claim to be is liberal democratic.

 

[Borachio]

Slavery didn't end anywhere without violence. It may have been the routine, institutionalised violence of the British imperial government saying "right, enough of this", but that still represents violence. Nowhere on the globe has chattel slavery ever been abolished voluntarily.

Hmm. You're kind of using a wide definition of violence, here. Sure, you can do that by all means.

But in the sense that slavery wasn't ended by the violent overthrow of society in "most places", I'd say the everyday sense is more fitting. (After all, it isn't violence that keeps me from robbing my newsagent, is it? Although I suppose you might claim it is.)

In this particular case, I believe, the "some places" referred to the Southern States of America. And the Civil War culminated in the end of slavery there.

My point, using a less ubiquitous definition of violence, is that it's not immediately obvious to me that non-violent means of ending slavery in the South could not have been successful. (Ignoring for the moment that the Civil War was more, or at least as much, about hegemony than slavery.)

Still, never mind. It's a minor point. Carry on.

 

[Flying Pig]

But in the sense that slavery wasn't ended by the violent overthrow of society in "most places", I'd say the everyday sense is more fitting. (After all, it isn't violence that keeps me from robbing my newsagent, is it? Although I suppose you might claim it is.)

TF is a Marxist, so he'd tell you you're stopped from robbing your newsagent by the threat of being (violently) arrested, which is disguised by your moral opinion that private property should be respected, which is itself what the people doing the (violent) arresting want you to think so that their (violent) control is less obvious and more secure.

 

[aelf]

Sure does.

I'll just let people like Winston Hughes defend your tone and approach. Let's see if they'll "offer their chin to the other guy's elbow".

 

[Farm Boy]

Granted, but at no point was Lincoln interested in hearing the slavers' side of the story. He knew what it was: he wanted them to stay in the Union because he believed, as the slavers themselves believed, that the closing of the West to slavery would confirm the whithering and death of the institution. He wasn't a radical, but he wasn't a bridge-builder.

It is somewhat interesting to speculate much compromise would have been happened had the southern states decided to try to manage the issue of the territories with senators instead of generals. Maybe they were correct and it would have been none. Maybe they were correct in their assessment of Lincoln's belief in the efficacy of closing the western frontier to slavery. But we don't really know very well. Lincoln rolled into office, the states turned to succession, and Lincoln turned to war.

 

[luiz]

I'll just let people like Winston Hughes defend your tone and approach. Let's see if they'll "offer their chin to the other guy's elbow".

Surely you can appreciate the difference between disliking and a mocking a position and advocating that the people who hold that position be killed, beaten, silenced, arrested, disenfranchised and etc?

Because it is a pretty big distinction. Failing to acknowledge is just an attempt to obfuscate the debate.

To be clear: my problem with you and others like you is not that you're rude or anything like that. It's that you advocate violence, censorship and hold other abominable positions.

 

[Borachio]

TF is a Marxist, so he'd tell you you're stopped from robbing your newsagent by the threat of being (violently) arrested, which is disguised by your moral opinion that private property should be respected, which is itself what the people doing the (violent) arresting want you to think so that their (violent) control is less obvious and more secure.

Yes! I think you're right. But I thought Mr Fish was an anarchist. Still, maybe that includes Marxism, and the ubiquity of violence, in some form or other.

In fact, I'm stopped from robbing my newsagent by the consideration that 1) I couldn't be bothered 2) I'd muck it up if I tried (and people would probably laugh at me) and 3) I never go in newsagents (not having any use for newspapers beyond the compost bin).

 

[aelf]

To be clear: my problem with you and others like you is not that you're rude or anything like that. It's that you advocate violence, censorship and hold other abominable positions.

That is a false characterisation that is either dishonest or highly presumptuous.

And, also, to be clear: Your posts are at best tangential to the debate here. I'm not currently looking to get into a debate with an overwrought third party over his perennial ideological pet peeve.

 

[luiz]

That is a false characterisation that is either dishonest or highly presumptuous.

And, also, to be clear: Your posts are at best tangential to the debate here. I'm not currently looking to get into a debate with an overwrought third party over his perennial ideological pet peeve.

But you do endorse violence as a means of promoting social change, you did so in this very thread!

And the posts are only tangential to the mysogeny debate, but mysogeny doesn't seem to be the most debated topic in this thread anymore.

 

[Evie]

Hmm. You're kind of using a wide definition of violence, here. Sure, you can do that by all means.

But in the sense that slavery wasn't ended by the violent overthrow of society in "most places", I'd say the everyday sense is more fitting. (After all, it isn't violence that keeps me from robbing my newsagent, is it? Although I suppose you might claim it is.)

Even without taking a narrow definition, an enforced blockade (with ships being boarded and seized) would almost certainly have to involve a degree of violence. Sure, it doesn't involve out and out war, but not all violence is war.

IMO, it's like what Teddy Roosevelt said. Speak softly and carry a big stick. People do prefer diplomatic language, and you'll need it to change their mind, but if you don't have ways of asserting yourself (or if you have such ways but never do it, and let them believe the assertion talk is just a load of hot air), they won't listen to your polite talk because it doesn't seem worth their time and attention.

You need ways to grab that attention and hold it, to make them understand that this is a serious situation worth listening to, before polite talking can really get anywhere. Without it, most people are just going to meet polite talking with polite indifference.

(On the flip side, a big stick alone won't do it either. Even if you grab people's attention, if you grab it by attacking and then keep attacking, they're just going to defend themselves)

 

[aelf]

But you do endorse violence as a means of promoting social change, you did so in this very thread!

There's a distinction, which no doubt you are unable to appreciate in your inability to grasp nuance, between endorsing violence as a go-to solution and accepting that violence does sometimes solve certain problems.

 

[luiz]

There's a distinction, which no doubt you are unable to appreciate in your inability to grasp nuance, between endorsing violence as a go-to solution and accepting that violence does sometimes solve certain problems.

That's not a great distinction at all. Even the most hardcore proponents of political violence have always preferred to get what they want without actually having to resort to violence. So what? I didn't say you're a rabid dog, I said you endorse political violence as a legitimate means to get things done your way.

 

[aelf]

Not quite. I wouldn't advocate the violent (and extra-legal) takeover of a state, for example. I'm generally fine with violence in self-defense, which may also apply in cases of attempted wrongful arrest. I don't imagine you have a problem with self-defense. Legal violence is another matter altogether, which I'm sure you endorse.

Outside of the normal conduct of affairs in the context of today's nation-states, though, things get murkier. Wars could be fought with somewhat noble aims, for example. Is that less effective? I couldn't say, and neither could you. Even one of the greatest modern liberal thinkers, John Rawls, a huge proponent of reasoned debate, suggested in Political Liberalism that there are groups of people that may not be amenable to reason at all and may thus have to be fought in order to obtain a moral outcome in cases of gross violations of rights.

 

[Traitorfish]

It is somewhat interesting to speculate much compromise would have been happened had the southern states decided to try to manage the issue of the territories with senators instead of generals. Maybe they were correct and it would have been none. Maybe they were correct in their assessment of Lincoln's belief in the efficacy of closing the western frontier to slavery. But we don't really know very well. Lincoln rolled into office, the states turned to succession, and Lincoln turned to war.

Lincoln was elected on an explicit platform of closing the West to slavery. That's what the Republican Party was all about: affirming the cause of Free Soil and challenging "Slave Power" in Washington. The guy wasn't elected to understand the slavers' point of view, to hold them by their hands and walk them gently into the nineteenth century, he was elected to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and the free states were all out of bubblegum.

TF is a Marxist, so he'd tell you you're stopped from robbing your newsagent by the threat of being (violently) arrested, which is disguised by your moral opinion that private property should be respected, which is itself what the people doing the (violent) arresting want you to think so that their (violent) control is less obvious and more secure.

Bingo. If violence refers only to acts of physical harm, then I could rob you at gunpoint and we would be obliged to declare it a "non-violent" action. The threat of violence is itself a form of violence, whether personal or institutional.

 

[Hygro]

Bingo. If violence refers only to acts of physical harm, then I could rob you at gunpoint and we would be obliged to declare it a "non-violent" action. The threat of violence is itself a form of violence, whether personal or institutional.

Wait no timeout. If you throw a gun in my face, I'm going to have a serious adverse physical reaction.

 

[Traitorfish]

Wait no timeout. If you throw a gun in my face, I'm going to have a serious adverse physical reaction.

Direct physical harm, I should have said, which is the distinction being proposed here. There's really no such thing as non-violent state policy in regards to slavery, is the point, only policies which entail a greater or lesser degree of bloodshed.

 

[Evie]

Well, I suppose technically the state could just go and keep offering everyone more and more money for their slaves until the people accepted, then declaring all those people free. that would be a non-violent policy*. I can't imagine too many people being THAT attached to their slave to refuse several times market value.

*Until the inflation caused by printing that much money would have caused an extremely violent revolution.

 

[Winston Hughes]

Might it be that racism has actually increased since then? If you take the whole world into account, that may well be the case.

I don't see any body of evidence to support that conclusion. Inter-communal problems certainly persist around the world, but division by 'race' is by no means a key issue in most of them. Indeed, in many places it's completely absent.

So you deny that it took violence to end slavery in some places?

Absolutely not. In some cases it is the only option. But I will always resist the defence of violence as a principled stance - down that road lies terror. It should never be treated as something more righteous than a pragmatic measure born of necessity: something we turn to only with reluctance and regret.

My essential point here is that we should be very wary indeed of jumping into more aggressive postures by default, and especially when doing so serves the aims of our opponents more than our own.

Nobody said that controversy ought to be courted for its own sake. However, polite intellectual debate is overrated as an agent of change in the real world. Gandhi, MLK and Mandela certainly did not restrict themselves to polite debate. They were very disruptive towards the oppressors - practically rude, even.

But, and here's the crux of the matter, they were always striving to be - and thus to appear - fundamentally reasonable. It's well-established in social psychology that the most effective way to change people's minds is to appear more reasonable and coherent than those who seek to resist that change.

What Gandhi in particular argued was that violence can only impose changes that must then be sustained by continued violence. Whilst I don't think he was quite right there - in fact, my suspicion is that he held to that line because the more nuanced one is less powerful rhetorically - the essential point holds that only by changing people's minds can you achieve ends that do not require continued violence and repression to sustain them. That is to say, even if violence is unavoidable in a given moment, it is only by sticking to the reasonable approach whenever possible that we can create the conditions in which our aims can be sustained peacefully in the long run.

Liberalism has achieved much. But it has not brought about nearly everything that it set out to achieve. Institutional racism remains and is implicitly supported by liberal elements. Inequality and oppression remain perennial issues and there is no end in sight to the domination of society by moneyed interests, who have effectively side-stepped or even controlled debate. It seems clear that the liberal ideal of the public sphere is as mythical as any of the most plausible utopias you can imagine.

I agree with you entirely here, except with regards to the last sentence. The liberal idea of the public sphere is mythical only where its present conception is held up as the last word in social and political evolution. Where it's treated as a set of tools, which can be augmented or replaced as new options become available, I believe that, for the time being at least, it still has much to offer.

The mistaken assumption I face repeatedly when arguing with opponents of liberalism is that I'm committed to it as an ideology. As I try to make clear every time it's brought up, this is far from what I actually believe. To the extent that I am committed to it at all, it is only in-as-much as I see the alternatives suggested so far as offering no adequate replacement for those aspects of liberalism which promote diversity of opinion, and, thus, allow the continued generation of alternative approaches to the various issues faced by our species.

As per my comments earlier in the thread, what I regard as the most dangerous of all developments is the narrowing of our collective view to any internally-coherent ideology. Faced by a reality too complex to be appreciated from a particular perspective, I believe it's essential that we keep looking at it from many different angles, using many different lenses, and then chewing over the results of what we find in an ongoing process of reasoned debate and discussion. Until I see viable alternatives to those aspects of liberalism which preserve a space, however imperfect, for that to happen, my support for them will continue.

Edit: Just to be absolutely clear, the need to sustain diversity of opinion does not mean that all opinions should be treated as equally valid. That view would be even more foolish than holding that one opinion is uniquely valid.