Say The Magic Words

It seems as though people have been lamenting the decline of civil discourse for fifteen years or more. It's been easy to recognize as it has happened. Still, occasionally we encounter situations that remind us just how far out of whack things have gone. 

A couple of different conversations did this for me recently. I won't bother with the particulars of these conversations here; doing so would risk relitigating the whole discussion, and I don't want to do that. Instead, I'd like to focus on the overall discursive climate in today's world.

When controversy arises, there is often One Right And Important Viewpoint You Are Supposed To Declare In Full-Throated Support Of A Slighted Person. If someone says something sexist, you're supposed to loudly decry sexism. If someone says something racist, you're supposed to loudly decry racism. And so on. Still, in many controversies there may be other matters worth discussing.

To name a few easily-recognized examples:

• Donald Trump may be a big jerk, but it might be worth noting that his Administration marks the first time in decades that the US government has not entered a new armed conflict abroad.
• Same-sex marriage might be a significant step toward equality under the law, but it could be worth discussing whether the government should play any role at all in marriage licensing.
• Although there have been many high-profile examples of racist police violence in America, a significant contributor to police violence is police militarization, not merely police racism.

More examples could be provided, but I list these only for illustrative purposes, so I'll keep it short. 

Suppose one wants to talk, not about bigotry, but about one of these other important issues that are not identity issues per se, such as international peace, restrictions on government licensing, or decreasing the level of police militarization. In that case, one need not first recite a set of magic words about opposing bigotry. Especially where space and time are at a premium, it's best to get right to it. 

I've noticed, though, that if one leaves off the magic words about opposing bigotry, the main pushback one receives is that one hasn't said the magic words! If I leave off the magic words, someone invariably chimes in to scold me and argue with me, to attempt to shame me, to call me names, to call me a horrible person, all because I haven't said the magic words, and even though the magic words have nothing to do with my point.

I am accustomed to this sort of behavior from internet keyboard warriors who might cross my path on Twitter, or in a blog's comments section, or the like. What surprises me is that recently, people who have known me for years on wonderful terms - good friends and family members, people who certainly know my true character - will pursue this line of argumentation with me. Not only will they pursue it, but they'll take it all the way to the brink, ready to end a good relationship over my failure to have recited the magic words. 

It is as though the magic words take precedence over years of friendship. Perhaps for some, they do. But not for me. I'm not prepared to end good friendships over a hysterical need to recite magic words of anti-bigotry. If I know someone isn't really a bigot, I won't tap my foot, waiting for them to loudly proclaim their non-bigotry, and potentially end my friendship with them if they don't.

But some of my friends and family members are so inclined. They will (and have) called me racist, sexist, and so on despite decades of personal experience to the contrary. 

How will I respond to their readiness to cut ties? 

The truth is, I see a lot of this magic words stuff as a temporary mass delusion. This will pass, eventually, although I don't know how long it will take before it does. I see people growing increasingly neurotic as they take shelter from the pandemic in their homes, exposed only to a steady diet of internet, social media, Netflix, and high-calorie/low-nutrient delivery food. In short, I think people are going a little crazy. 

I'm willing to forgive some temporary craziness under the present circumstances. If people want to hang their age-old friendships on a few magic words, I think that's a serious mistake, but it's one their entitled to make. However, I'm not going to make that mistake. If any of these people would like to patch things up once times get a little less crazy, I'm going to be there for them. 

I'm willing to forgive them their craziness, in the hope that, one day, they'll forget what was so important about the magic words.

Some Links

I have to chuckle at this David Henderson proof of objective truth, contra Scott Sumner and Rorty. The commentators (and Sumner) keep missing Henderson's point: You can't assert that objective truth doesn't exist without demonstrating that you do not, in fact, hold that belief. (Or, in other words, you cannot possess knowledge that you disbelieve.)

It's interesting to see everyone's reaction to the whole Cheryl Tiegs / Ashley Graham row. Women who once lambasted Sports Illustrated for the "exploitation" of its swimsuit issue are now applauding the magazine for putting a plus-sized model on the cover. So sexual exploitation is okay, so long as it's plus-sized women we're exploiting? Or, it doesn't count as exploitation if it's a fat woman in a swimsuit - only skinny women can be sexually exploited? And note that all Tiegs is saying is that being plus-sized is unhealthy; and it is.

Here's a Huffington Post article about replacing the Best Actor and Best Actress categories with a single, gender-neutral category. Once again, what's interesting here is not the position the author takes, but the inherent contradiction: On the one hand, gender identity is vitally important to all people; on the other hand, we should eliminate all traces of gender from public discourse.

Scientists claim that hominids' teeth shrank due to increased use of tools and the cooking of food. But how would any of this lead to the natural selection of smaller teeth? I really dislike just-so evolutionary stories.

By now you must have heard about the Atlas robots. Does anyone out there really think it's a good idea to make artificial intelligence that is impervious to human attacks?

Maybe I'm not understanding Scott Sumner's argument here, but it sounds like he has completely undermined the case for monetary policy (which wasn't his intention). My comment explains.

Not Sexy At All Is The New Sexy

Sexual objectification is a spectrum, not a binary. Everyone, everywhere, at some point wants to be sexually objectified.

That might be an inflammatory way to put it, but I'm trying to make a point. Obviously, no one in their right mind wants to be thought of as "good for absolutely nothing, except sex," and that is the typical connotation attached to the phrase "sexual objectification." A great many attractive people - most of them women - struggle to be taken seriously on every other level due to the pervasive sexual objectification they are forced to endure. Clearly, and unequivocally, this is a bad thing.

But sex is a beautiful, normal, natural, positive part of the human experience. If you're anything like most of us mammals, you will at some point want to be viewed sexually by someone.

Like I said, it's not a binary thing. As with any other part of your identity - who you are, at your very core - you cannot simply stop being that person just because you're at work, or whatever. That doesn't mean everyone should interpret your business memos "sexually" (whatever that means), but it does mean that if you have any sexuality at all in your personality, it will sometimes make itself known to other people, whether that's what you intended, or not.

Furthermore, as adults, most of us choose to intend it now and again. This gives us some control over how we interact with the rest of the mammals out there. We don't always make sex a part of what we're doing, of course, but we do so on occasion.

This is all very obvious and uninteresting, but it's important that I start off today's post with that explication.

The Offense

ABC News reports that an Alabama Sorority's recruitment video - posted to YouTube, but evidently since removed (but re-uploaded here) - came under fire for being "unempowering." Actually, it's worse than that. The University of Alabama itself gave a stern criticism of the video, according to ABC:

In a statement, the University of Alabama said the video “is not reflective of UA's expectations for student organizations to be responsible digital citizens.”

Welcome to the new normal, in which a sorority's every action must reflect the university's "expectations" "to be responsible digital citizens." Personally, I struggle to understand what exactly comprises "being a responsible digital citizen."

Some things seem obvious, such as not "cyber-bullying" anyone, not hacking, protecting the sensitive or potentially sensitive personal information of others, protecting minors and sensitive people from potentially objectionable material (don't goatse me, bro), and perhaps even practicing "netiquette."

The sorority, however, appears not to have violated any of those expectations. Instead, they put together a recruitment video in which the members of their sorority were made to look as physically appealing as possible. There was no nudity in the video. Based on the clips in the ABC News video, they don't seem to have violated the university's dress code while on university property. No overtly sexual acts are depicted in the video. They simply dressed up in flirty outfits and frolicked around a bit, in order to portray the image that (1) sorority members are pretty, and (2) sorority members have a lot of fun.

Why else would a young woman want to join a sorority?

In this case, the offense appears to be the mere suggestion of elite sexuality, no different than anything you'd see on daytime TV. "We're pretty, and we have a lot of fun," they seem to say. "Come join us."

That's cause for uproar?

The Unempowered

One "A.L. Bailey, a writer, magazine copy editor, and online editor who lives in Hoover," had this to say about the video:

No, it's not a slick Playboy Playmate or Girls Gone Wild video. It's a sorority recruiting tool gaining on 500,000 views in its first week on YouTube. It's a parade of white girls and blonde hair dye, coordinated clothing, bikinis and daisy dukes, glitter and kisses, bouncing bodies, euphoric hand-holding and hugging, gratuitous booty shots, and matching aviator sunglasses. It's all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition. It's all so ... unempowering.

Unempowering is an interesting word choice here. If one wanted to make the argument that such a video takes power away from women, one would use the word disempowering. But saying that the video is disempowering is a strong claim against a video made independently by women, intended to appeal to women, and posted on a forum that requires women to voluntarily seek it out in order to watch it. One might say, "That message was meant for me, but failed to resonate," but one probably couldn't argue that "The video took away my power as an individual."

Instead, Bailey says the video is unempowering. I had never heard that word, so I looked it up, and what it means is (and I quote) "Not empowering."

I agree - the video is not empowering. Should it be? Bailey - by virtue of the fact that he or she chose to criticize the video for being "not empowering" - seems to think so. But why?

"Yes, sororities are known for being pretty and flirty;" she writes, "they aren't bastions of feminist ideologies. But perhaps they shouldn't completely sabotage them either."

Again, this is a fascinating word choice. To sabotage anyone - feminist or otherwise - would be unambiguously disempowering. But Bailey doesn't accuse the sorority of sabotaging any person, but rather sabotaging an ideology. 

And how does this sabotage occur? By portraying the actual members of an actual sorority as being every bit as sexy, flirty, and fun as they actually are. 

Bailey Opens The Kimono

It seems so strange to me. Why would anyone think the sort of thoughts contained in A.L. Bailey's article? 

Bailey tries to relate the video to current popular examples of misogyny:

Just last week during the GOP debate, Megyn Kelly of Fox News called out Donald Trump for dismissing women with misogynous insults. Mere hours later, he proved her point by taking to Twitter to call her a "bimbo." He also proved the point that women, in 2015, must still work diligently to be taken seriously. The continued fight for equal pay, the prevalence of women not being in charge of their own healthcare issues, and the ever-increasing number of women who are still coming out against Bill Cosby after decades of fearful silence show that we are not yet taken seriously.

None of this has anything to do with the video. But Bailey continues:

Meanwhile, these young women, with all their flouncing and hair-flipping, are making it so terribly difficult for anyone to take them seriously, now or in the future. The video lacks any mention of core ideals or service and philanthropy efforts. It lacks substance but boasts bodies. It's the kind of thing that subconsciously educates young men on how to perceive, and subsequently treat, women in their lives. It's the kind of thing I never want my young daughters to see or emulate.

These two paragraphs appear back-to-back in the article. The implication is that sex-positive videos of women "subconsciously educate" man viewers to insult female journalists or become (alleged) serial rapists.

Think about it: Bailey argues that videos such as these - featuring no nudity or sexual activity whatsoever, in which the most salacious thing that appears to occur is that a young woman blows a handful of glitter into the air - result in young men becoming rapists.

No, really, think about it. That's Bailey's argument. I haven't mischaracterized it.

In what I imagine was intended to be Bailey's emotional climax, he or she presents a series of characterizations of her own about the 72 young sorority members in the video. "That's 72 women," he or she writes, "who surely must be worth more than their appearances," "...who will potentially launch careers..." "...who could be a united front for empowerment..."

"And that's 72 women who will want to be taken seriously rather than be called bimbos--"

Oh. Now I get it.

Sex As Emotional Maturity

Here's an excerpt from a recent interview of Camille Paglia published at Salon.com:

When I burst on the scene in the early 1990s, one of the things that made me notorious was my attack on the date-rape rhetoric of the time.... [M]y statements on the topic, such as my 1991 op-ed in New York Newsday, caused a firestorm. I wasn’t automatically kowtowing to the standard rhetoric that men are at fault for everything and women are utterly blameless. I said that my 1960s generation of women had won the right to sexual freedom–but with rights came personal responsibility. People went crazy! There was this absurd polarization where men were portrayed as demons and women as frail, innocent virgins. It was so Victorian! And there was also a big fight about pornography, which I strongly supported. In the 1990s, pro-sex feminism finally arose and took power. It was an entire wing of feminism that had been suppressed by the Gloria Steinem power structure–by Ms. Magazine and NOW– since the 1970s. It had been forced underground, but it started to emerge in San Francisco with the pro-sex and lipstick lesbians in the mid to late 1980s, but it got no national attention. Then all of a sudden, there was this big wave in the early 1990s. I became one of the outspoken figures of it after “Sexual Personae” was published in 1990. My views had always been suppressed, and I had had a lot of difficulty getting published–“Sexual Personae” had been rejected by seven publishers and five agents. So we fought those fights, but by the late 1990s, the controversies subsided, because my wing of pro-sex feminism had won!

What I remember about the 1990s is less about the state of the feminist power structure, and more about the kind of entertainment that was out there. Madonna and Prince - with their extremely sexy imagery - were hitting their peak popularity. At the movie theaters, so-called "erotic thrillers" were huge hits. (Think about movies such as Basic Instinct, Wild Orchid, Angel Heart, and so on.) Even on the small screen, the early 90s saw the birth of series like Red Shoe Diaries. Dr. Ruth became a household name. Late that decade, MTV's "Love Line" would do it all over again with Dr. Drew.

To put it simply, there was a lot of sex going on in popular culture. Generation X had come of age and by all appearances wasn't a particularly squeamish generation when it came to erotica. No one was scandalized, marginalized, "unempowered," or "triggered" by any of this. Or at least, to a much lesser degree than in previous generations. It was a cultural phenomenon. Society had evolved into something more "pro-sex," as Paglia might put it.

Meanwhile, I was living out my life in the extremely conservative local culture of suburban Utah, where sex seemed particularly verboten. Anything that hinted at a person's sexuality - from shorts deemed "too short," to strapless blouses, to locker room comments - was quickly maligned. The impact of this was that young women did their hair and makeup like old ladies, and young men tried to act as somberly and wholesomely as possible. They'd go on "dates," but without any sort of mere conversational outlet for any aspect of their sexual identity, they would be forced into a bizarrely saccharine cutesiness. For example, laser tag was a common dating activity. Unchaperoned dancing? Not so much.

Perhaps it was coming of age at a time and place where I gained exposure to both a minor sexual revolution and severe emotional sexual repression gave me some added insight into this, or perhaps I'm just making too much of it. In any case, what I concluded from my experience is that sex isn't just a part of a person's identity, it's a vitally important way through which we interact with the world.

You can't just sweep it under the rug. You can't just demand that young women strike it from the repertoire of their self-expression in an endless social crusade to gain "a united front for empowerment." You have to embrace what is a vital part of the human experience.

And if you don't? Well, here's what Camille Paglia thinks:

[INTERVIEWER]: I wanted to ask you about that. If Emma Sulkowicz were a student of yours, in an art class you were teaching, how would you grade her work? 

[PAGLIA]: [laughs] I’d give her a D! I call it “mattress feminism.” Perpetually lugging around your bad memories–never evolving or moving on! It’s like a parody of the worst aspects of that kind of grievance-oriented feminism. I called my feminism “Amazon feminism” or “street-smart feminism,” where you remain vigilant, learn how to defend yourself, and take responsibility for the choices you make. If something bad happens, you learn from it. You become stronger and move on. But hauling a mattress around on campus? Columbia, one of the great Ivy League schools with a tremendous history of scholarship, utterly disgraced itself in how it handled that case. It enabled this protracted masochistic exercise where a young woman trapped herself in her own bad memories and publicly labeled herself as a victim, which will now be her identity forever. This isn’t feminism–which should empower women, not cripple them. 

...To go around exhibiting and foregrounding your wounds is a classic neurotic symptom. But people are so lacking now in basic Freudian consciousness–because Freud got thrown out of mainstream feminism by Kate Millett and Gloria Steinem and company. So no one sees the pathology in all this.... I prophesied this in a piece I wrote... called “The Nursery-School Campus”. ...I was arguing that the obsessive focus by American academe with students’ emotional well-being was not what European universities have ever been concerned with. European universities don’t have this consumer-oriented view that they have to make their students enjoy themselves and feel good about themselves, with everything driven by self-esteem. Now we have people emerging with Ivy League degrees who have no idea how little they know about history or literature. Their minds are shockingly untrained. They’ve been treated as fragile emotional beings throughout their schooling. The situation is worsening year by year, as teachers have to watch what they say and give trigger warnings, because God forbid that American students should have to confront the brutal realities of human life. 

Meanwhile, while all of this nursery-school enabling is going on, we have the entire world veering towards ISIS–with barbaric decapitations and gay guys being thrown off roofs and stoned to death. All the harsh realities of human history are erupting, and this young generation is going to be utterly unprepared to deal with it. The nation is eventually going to be endangered by the inability of several generations of young people to make political decisions about a real world that they do not understand. The primitive realities of human life are exploding out there!

Coda

I spent some time trying to Google "A.L. Bailey" in hopes of finding out more about his or her perspective, and to learn more about what he or she had written. I couldn't find any other article penned by an A.L. Bailey. I couldn't find a public profile or LinkedIn page. In fact, I couldn't find anyone named A. Bailey listed in the city of Hoover, Alabama, where his or her op-ed's byline indicates he or she lives.

I don't fault someone for using a professional pseudonym, but when someone makes such strong claims, I expect more than a single, anonymous article launched against a few dozen college girls whose only crime was to embrace a natural, normal part of who they are. 

Someone is repressing young women, and it's not who Bailey thinks it is.

Identity Politics

• "Identifying as a woman" is sufficient to make a biological male female.
• "Identifying as black" is sufficient to make a white woman African-American.

These are two propositions of contemporary American culture, not of Mr. Stationary Waves. To those propositions, I will add Merriam-Webster's definition of "identity," as follows:

who someone is : the name of a person
the qualities, beliefs, etc., that make a particular person or group different from others

Here is a thorough philosophical treatment of identity via Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

The Rachel Dolezal case must surely have been a practical joke played against the media by a Mad Philosopher. Identity is a problem that challenges even the brightest of philosophers. Or rather, what challenges philosophers is the task of setting out a non-circular definition of identity. If, for example, the identity of Rachel Dolezal consists of all the things that make her something other than everything else in the universe, then we have defined Rachel Dolezal's identity, but only in reference to itself. It's like saying, "A = not not-A." It's true, but unhelpful.

And since this limitation is inherent to abstract reasoning (because it all hinges on the concept that some things are not some other things), then Rachel Dolezal must surely have been sent here to test our tolerance for abstract concepts that challenge the patently obvious.

What I mean is this: You definitely know that you are you. But what if I told you that I am actually you? Of course you would object, and of course you would be right, but on what grounds? If you can't define identity, and I make the politically correct claim that "I identify as you," then you have no defense left. You are forced to accept that I am you, because I identify as you. And who are you to tell me what I identify as? Shame on you.

Rachel Dolezal is not black. Caitlyn Jenner is not a woman. We know this. There is no question about these things. They are facts. If I told you that both of these people are playing make-believe, I would be right, even if that "triggers" you.

That doesn't mean these people don't deserve to be treated fairly - and possibly compassionately, especially if Dolezal is found to be ill - but it does mean that facts are not "identity-dependent." Your internal sense of self does not get to magically erase everyone else's physical reality.

And you can't disagree with me, because I identify as you, and in my capacity of being you, I have already voiced my agreement. Disagreeing with yourself will only make you look stupid.

How To Stoke The Flames

Two op-eds popped up on my Facebook feed this morning. Both could widely be viewed as "good articles," and yet underneath the sheen, both are utter garbage. By "garbage," I mean to say that both articles use weak rhetoric to evoke passion in those readers who already agree with the author. It's a form of "preaching to the choir," but it's a particularly smug one because it includes a thin veneer of intellectual credibility, which beguiles its more worthless true nature.

Am I being unfair? Maybe. You can find these articles here and here. Read them for yourself, then come back to this blog post, read below, and tell me whether or not you agree that these pieces fit the general form I am about to describe.

Okay, friends, here's how you write an effective op-ed piece!

1. Step One: Identify a serious issue that cannot easily be solved.
2. Step Two: Identify a trivial issue with high signalling value; the more it appeals to readers' vanity, the better.
3. Step Three: Draw a parallel between the two issues.
4. Step Four: Use the simple, ego-padding solution to the trivial problem as a means to imply that the serious, difficult problem could just as easily be solved, if people were simply more like the right-thinking readers of the op-ed (and its author, of course).
5. Step Five: Op-ed goes viral.

In the first article I linked to, the rather serious and difficult problem of Bangladeshi corruption is compared to the dog-whistle issue of Charlie Hebdo. Oh, of course! All we need is more respect and decency, then we can overcome deeply entrenched government corruption! It's so obvious!

In the second article, libertarianism's troubling history of bigotry is compared to... wait for it... GamerGate! See how easy it is to "fix" libertarianism? All we have to do is expunge the nerds! Once again, nerds provide an easy and effective whipping-boy (oops - microaggression! I mean "whipping-person") for the "right-thinkers."

The sad thing here is that I actually agree with both articles. But because the rhetoric in each is so cheap, I'm left wondering if I agree because the points made are good ones, or merely because it's difficult even for critical-thinkers to rise above the tide of mood affiliation.

Who Is "We?"

Part One:
A few days ago, I alluded to a forthcoming post on use of the word "we." It's time to deliver the goods, but before I do, let's quickly recap what said about "we" in that post:

[A]ttaching negative consequences to unacceptable childhood behavior is called discipline. It is concrete, specific, and enforceable. But simply declaring something to be "not okay" and frowning furtively at a child (or an adult, please note) is synonymous with the act of declaring an action to be socially frowned-upon. The point is that those children (or adults) who engage in that behavior should be ashamed of themselves. It's shamey. But there isn't any specificreason why people who say "not okay" are saying what they're saying. The best you'll ever get from them is "we don't do that." It's an act of shaming someone by attaching social unanimity to whatever the speaker has deemed to be "not okay."

Part Two:
A friend of mine once invited several friends on vacation, myself being one of them. I knew many, but not everyone, who went. Among the attendees was a sizable group of young people, an insular group of friends who spent a lot of time together. We all got a good deal on accommodations as a result of a group rate, which was the logic in my friend's inviting so many people. Best of all, no one was "on the hook" to spend a lot of time together, so there were many small off-shoot groups that hung out as desired.

One morning, many of us met in the hotel lobby to discuss plans for the rest of the day. As I was waiting for the member of my own off-shoot group to arrive, I watched the people in the insular group discuss their plans. One young woman, Renee (all names changed to protect the innocent), had a strong desire to do something specific. I don't remember what it was exactly, but let's say it was hiking.

She made her first attempt at suggesting the hike by saying to Steve and Michelle, "I think we should go hiking!" Her friends seemed unsure. They answered, "Well... let's wait for Jane to get here before we decide."

When Jane arrived, Renee made her second attempt. She walked up to Jane and said, "We're going to go hiking. Do you want to come with us?"

Jane wasn't sure, either. She replied, "Hmm... Well, who is 'we'?"

To this, Renee responded, "Steve, Michelle, and I."

Still, Jane wasn't convinced. She said, "I'll go if Ursula is going."

So, Renee waited for Ursula to arrive, then walked up to her and made her third attempt at suggesting the hike: "We're all going hiking. Do you want to come hiking with us?"

Ursula was surprised. "We are? Is that what Jane said?" Renee confirmed, so Ursula said, uneasily, "Well, okay... if everyone else is going hiking, I'll go hiking, too."

Part Three:
Notice how self-aware Renee was as she deceived the others. She didn't begin by saying that she wanted to hiking, she began by suggesting that they should all go hiking. When she was unable to convince the others, rather than comply with their wishes that they all discuss it as a group, Renee waited for the next group member to arrive and then announced that she and the others were definitely going hiking, and did Jane want to come, too? Jane only wanted to go if Ursula also wanted to go, but Renee told Ursula that Jane had already confirmed. Thus, as far as Ursula knew, everyone had already decided to go hiking.

The group went hiking, despite the fact that Renee hadn't managed to convince anyone to go hiking. Only Renee wanted to hike. But she deceived the others into thinking that a group decision had been reached, and thus manipulated a rather large group of friends into doing what really only Renee wanted to do.

Interesting, right?

Part Four:
It happened again, not to long ago. This time, I was the purported victim; but of course these sorts of strategies have no effect on strong individualists like myself.

I found myself among a small group of friends, on our way to have some fun. As we walked, one of us decided that he would rather do X than our intended Y. After fruitlessly suggesting to the group that we all do Y instead of X, he tried a different approach. He approached me and said, "We're going to do X."

I said, "We are? Who is 'we'?"

He didn't reply, he just smiled. Another member of the group confirmed that "we" was really "he," so I made a point of acknowledging that fact: "Oh, you would rather do X than Y. Okay, that's fine with me. We don't have to do Y, if you don't want to."

This caused a mini-group melt-down because the matter had been re-framed as a group discussion rather than a group conclusion. We spent the next ten minutes discussing what to do next. In the end, we decided to do neither X nor Y, but rather Z, and everyone seemed satisfied with that decision.

Part Five:
Absent the word "we," the English language would have severe limitations. But in the wrong hands, "we" can be highly manipulative. It's okay to act on behalf of a group, if you so choose. It's okay to want to make a group of friends happy. But it's important to keep in mind that many of the people who inform you as to what "we" want to do are really just talking about their own personal desires.

Watch closely, and you will soon see that many people have a knack for using the language of collectivism to bend individuals to their own ambitions. When people talk about the horrors of collectivism, this is what they're really talking about. It's not as if Ayn Rand truly believed that it was always evil whenever human beings acted collectively. Rather, Rand recognized the important insight that much of what people talk about when they say "we" is really nothing more than using the word "we" deceptively, in order to shame people into submission or appeal to their sense of altruism to extract benefits that would not be worth doling out if the truth were otherwise known.

It's not that collectivism is bad, it's that deception is bad, and particularly pernicious when some of us choose to abuse the word "we."

Shamey

I think I have found a new hobby horse in complaining about the juvenile, shrill, passive-aggressive, mildly effeminate language deployed by modern "progressives" against their opponents.

The kind of language to which I refer is typically spoken as though it were a bored response to a tired trope, but it always belies a level of irritation that goes far beyond what the literal translation of it would have you believe. That is, the speaker wants to sound unfazed, bored, condescending, almost sleepy, but instead ends up sounding extremely vexed. Before I venture any further here, I should provide some examples.

Examples
In a recent comment on Stephen Williamson's blog, Noah Smith writes:

In any case, we should not be dismissive of what Prescott is saying. [Ed: Smith is quoting Williamson here.] 

I think, actually, we kind of should.

"Actually, we kind of should." This is a perfect illustration of what I'm talking about (and Williamson offers the perfect response), but I'm not content to leave it at that. Let's take a look at additional examples.

Writing in response to a passage in this book (I am not endorsing the book, please note), an email correspondent of mine says:

I don't agree with any of this and find that it somewhat feels like it's justifying behavior that is violent, mean, and rapey.

Here the offending word is "rapey." There is absolutely nothing cute about rape, but adding "eee" to the end of it makes the description vaguely insulting and highly childlike. Like "meanie."

A similar phrase - one that you'll often read on Slate or Jezebel is "That is not okay." And typically the last two words are emphasized: "...not...o-KAY!" It's the kind of thing you'd expect a mother to say to a toddler. "We do not hit people. That is not... o-KAY!" Compare this to a far more disciplinary phrase like, "If you continue to hit your playmates, I will take away your toys and make you sit in the corner."

Saying that something is "not okay" is a far more effeminate, passive-aggressive way of disciplining a child. It assumes the role of a parent is to instruct a child as to what is "okay" and what is "not okay." It's Orwellian; we can draw close parallels to "good" and "un-good." As if a child's life is governed by what is understood to be "okay!" Children respond to incentives and consequences - just like the rest of us - not social conformism. But I digress.

Anyway, speaking of Slate, Amanda Marcotte writes, "All jokes aside, Hannity's boo-boo here was the result of a larger lie..." Boo-boo; infantile language; we can contrast it to the words gaffe or mistake. Understand, there is a reason Marcotte says that Sean Hannity made a "boo-boo," and the reason is to infantilize him and dismiss his position. But if what Hannity says is erroneous to the point of being childish (and believe me, I have no reason to believe that Sean Hannity has ever said anything worth defending at Stationary Waves), why would Marcotte write in the same article that "Sean Hannity found himself getting aggressive with a woman who called into his show"? Women accuse men of being aggressive toward women when they want to shame the men in question. And, however much Hannity may deserve to be shamed for the things he says - and whatever it is you may personally believe about any related issue - shaming is not an activity reserved for people about whom we feel blase.

...unless, of course, our passive-aggressive attitude and language belies a heightened level of shrill indignation.

The Point
Through it all, it is important to keep one thing in mind at all times: Those who rely on this kind of "shamey" language (get it? I'm doing it to them now...) are not actually responding with sound arguments. Consider each of the examples above.

First, Noah Smith argues that "we kind of should" dismiss a claim by Ed Prescott, but offers no substance with his comment. Williamson rightly calls this kind of comment "blather" and advises Smith to write about what he knows. Without argumentative substance, it's all just kind of "shamey," isn't it?

Second, my email correspondent could not credibly accuse the author of a 19th century book on gender relations of the crime of rape, so instead the correspondent simply accused him of being "rapey," i.e. offering an argument that resembles rape in some unspecified way. Rape is, of course, a terrible and inexcusable crime of hatred. What is "rapey?" It is something that the correspondent wishes to attach a similar level of shame, but without any sort of fact or reasoning to merit the claim. "Rapey" is "shamey."

Third, as discussed above, attaching negative consequences to unacceptable childhood behavior is called discipline. It is concrete, specific, and enforceable. But simply declaring something to be "not okay" and frowning furtively at a child (or an adult, please note) is synonymous with the act of declaring an action to be socially frowned-upon. The point is that those children (or adults) who engage in that behavior should be ashamed of themselves. It's shamey. But there isn't any specific reason why people who say "not okay" are saying what they're saying. The best you'll ever get from them is "we don't do that." It's an act of shaming someone by attaching social unanimity to whatever the speaker has deemed to be "not okay."

(More on this in a forthcoming post about use of the word "we," by the way.)

Finally, Marcotte's shaming of Sean Hannity for being "aggressive" (toward "women") and making a "boo-boo" is one last example of an argument made without facts. We are simply told to accept that Hannity is aggressive; we are simply told that his mistake is a juvenile one (because it is a "boo-boo," not an error).

And what was Hannity's error? It was the suggestion that women who care passionately about access to birth control ought to form a private charity to supply it for the less fortunate, rather than demand a government mandate and pass the cost around to every American taxpayer, regardless of whether he or she philosophically agrees with the mandate. That's not an error, it's an opinion.

Marcotte, by the way, goes on to say that such a private charity is exactly the same thing as both health insurance and ObamaCare, a claim I have endeavored to shame a bit myself (see "Error #8 in this response to David Simon's having said something similar).

Conclusion
Being "shamey" is not the same thing as being correct; but above all, being "shamey" is actually the exact opposite of having the better argument. Each and every case of a person's being "shamey" is an example of their having no concrete defense for his or her position. Of course, not being able to offer a good argument doesn't mean that one is wrong, it just means that one cannot legitimately claim to be more right than those who one is shaming. "Shameyness" is not merely a bad way to respond to an argument, it is not a rhetorical response at all. It is nothing more than immature, effeminate passive-aggression bereft of facts or reasoning.

So, rather than attempting to shame those who disagree with you, why not respond with facts and reasoning? You'll end up looking a lot less ridiculous.

I plan on following up on this issue when I notice particularly egregious examples. Thus, I've created a new label, "Shamey," by which to track the matter on Stationary Waves. For now, I wanted to introduce the issue, especially since it provides a good set of background information for a forthcoming post about use of the word "we."