- Robot Hugs – Technigal This autobio political cartoon, co-created by a trans woman, is about how her expertise as a videographer was treated before and after she began publicly presenting as a woman. And see also Veronica and a couple of other folks talking about similar experiences they or their spouse have had.
- Microaggression, macro harm – LA Times “The new culture of victimhood is not new, and it is not about victimhood. It is a culture of solidarity, and it has always been with us, an underground moral culture of the disempowered.”
- The brutal Spring Valley High School video shows what happens when you put cops in schools – Vox
- Guatemala just elected a comedian with zero political experience to be president – Vox
- Remembering the African-American Suffragists Who Fought a Dual Oppression – Vogue
- Minor League Baseball Team Spokane Indians Change Jerseys to Salish Language – ICTMN.com Very neat! Thanks for the link, Ben.
- No Trenchcoat for the Giant Squid « The Hooded Utilitarian How in the end, Watchmen undermines “realistic” grim crime drama with superhero silliness.
- The philosophical problem of killing baby Hitler, explained – Vox
- Why there’s no point telling me to lose weight | The BMJ
- Let’s Talk About Intentional Weight Loss and Evidence-Based Medicine | Worse for the Fishes
- Why “gender gap” analysis of American politics is mostly wrong
- The Rise and Fall of the First Galactic Empire | Ordinary Times
- Prison vs. Harvard in an Unlikely Debate – WSJ A debate team from an in-prison college program beats a debate team from Harvard. There’s a followup story here.
- Study: Men Get Bigger Start-Up Packages | The Scientist Magazine Er, pun not intended.
- Why Snoopy Is Such a Controversial Figure to ‘Peanuts’ Fans – The Atlantic
- The US Economy Has Definitely Done Better When A Democrat Is President. But why? And can Democrats reasonably take credit? Well, maybe kind of sort of mumble. Turns out that not needlessly getting into Gulf wars is good for the economy, and some unidentified policy differences may encourage greater productivity.
- The House science committee is worse than the Benghazi committee – Vox
- I want to live in a baugruppe | Grist
- How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult – Vox
- And a counterpoint: Stop Blaming Suburbia for Killing Off Friendships
- Reasons I Would Make An Excellent Housekeeper In A Forbidding Eighteenth-Century Estate And You Should Consider Me For The Position – The Toast
- Benghazi Timeline. Specifically, a timeline focused on when Clinton and other members of the Obama administration said that the attacks were or weren’t preplanned, were or weren’t “acts of terror” or “terrorist attacks,” and were or weren’t motivated by a Youtube video. Useful if you’re trying to follow (or double-check) what folks attacking Clinton over Benghazi are saying.
- Ben Carson Assures Conservatives That His Campus Speech Monitoring Would Only Target Liberals | Right Wing Watch Right Wing Watch’s title is an exaggeration – Carson only implied that, but didn’t explicitly state it. Nonetheless, Carson’s position is anti-free-speech.
- Religious Right Activists Argue For Recriminalization Of Birth Control In ‘The Birth Control Movie’ | Right Wing Watch
- A chess-set you wear in a ring / Boing Boing “Near impossible to set up.” Heh.
- THE LION KING Australia: Cast Sings Circle of Life on Flight Home from Brisbane – YouTube
- A woman as president? The gender-neutral Constitution. – Volokh Conspiracy Interesting! Despite the use of “he” as a generic pronoun, the US Constitution was for the most part intentionally written using gender-neutral language.
My understanding of the Spring Valley incident is that the student used her phone during class and refused to put it away when requested by the teacher. Then she refused to leave the class. Then she refused to comply when an administrator asked her to do those things, and then she refused to comply when the officer asked her to come with him.
Frankly, if all that’s true, I have no problem with the way the ensuing action was conducted. If my own kid acted like that I’d have no problem. When you are in school and are disrupting class and refuse to comply when given directives by a teacher, an administrator and a cop, then bad things are going to happen to you. Maybe that will encourage more self-discipline on the part of the rest of the students.
Why was the cop there in the first place? She was breaking a school rule, not committing a crime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbebjUYItKw
There’s no credible claim that she began the violence. Escalation to violence should be the last possible resort, and they weren’t even remotely there yet.
I think calling the officer in was a terrible mistake in the first place. But whether or not the officer is called in, the mission should be to de-escalate, not to get violent.
Yes, because violent, over-the-top, arbitrary punishment has such a great track record. That’s why repressive governments never, ever have to use violence to suppress their citizens, after the first example has been made. Right?
I find it amazing that you get all panicked about freedom being in danger because people asked a college to change its choice of speaker, but don’t see any problem at all in needless police violence against a nonviolent civilian.
Finally, thanks (sincerely) for saying “if all that’s true.” Although one or two students who were in the room have spoken out, most of the narrative so far has come from the police and the school, both of which are highly motivated to tell stories that make the student look as bad as possible. I’d bet any money that if there weren’t videos of the incident, the story would be that she attacked the officer first.
It didn’t look like arbitrary punishment to me. It looked like peaceful means were used repeatedly to get her to do what she was supposed to do, and that physical means were resorted to only after those failed.
Children in elementary and high school are supposed to respect and obey the teachers and administration. Instead what we have here is someone who, upon being told to put their phone away – which they should not have had out in the first place – refuses to comply and instead argues with the teacher. Apparently thinking that she’s a special case and doesn’t have to do what the teacher – and the administrator, and the cop – tells her to do, that she has privileges that are superior to everyone else’s.
It wasn’t needless. It’s very important to maintain discipline in a school if you intend to get any actual instruction done. If a student can defy that many authorities with little consequence it damages the entire school. The kids need to see that such defiance has immediate consequences and that you WILL comply when asked to stop disrupting class.
Yep. It shows that there’s a crying need for discipline in that school and that putting cops in there improved it.
Just heard on TV that the deputy sheriff was fired, as he should have been. Unless that student had a history of violence, such that it was wise for the teacher to call the officer to be there just in case, there was no reason for the officer even to be there, much less escalate the situation the way he did. Nothing in the video suggested the student was a danger to anyone, and as someone who regularly sits in those kinds of chairs, I can attest to just how hard it would have been for that student to pose a danger–unless perhaps she had a weapon we don’t know about yet–from that position.
Equally to the point, a teacher who cannot deal on her or his own with a stubborn, sullen, resistant, recalcitrant student who is not posing a physical danger to anyone without turning it into the kind of power struggle we see in that video probably doesn’t belong in a classroom teaching high schoolers.
RonF, I can’t tell if you’re trolling.
The best way to get students to engage with their education is to throw them around a lot.
Do you genuinely not remember being a teenager? Respect and fear are two different things. “If you use a cell phone in class I’ll have a burly man beat the shit out of you” is not a message that encourages respect, nor does it encourage children to participate in their own education. It’s a message that encourages resentment; people in a school environment like that will just intensify their efforts to disrupt the school in ways that won’t get them caught.
Also, if the school officials can’t even have a conversation about cell phones that doesn’t descend into violence, why would students have any faith that officials can comprehend, handle, or teach more complicated things?
Ron, as a scout leader, you’ve worked with teens.
Have you never, in all your years, had a teen you’re working with flatly refuse to do something? Because I saw that as a camp counselor, and I was only doing that two summers.
And secondly, if it has ever happened to you that a teen refused to obey (but wasn’t being violent), did you then flip the teen heels-over-head, followed by throwing the teen across the room? I’m assuming not. Would you consider that to be an appropriate way for a boy scout leader to behave, if a scout wasn’t obeying?
Report: Bernie Sanders wants the feds to stop classifying marijuana as a dangerous drug
So, on a different note, I feel like the term “microaggression” is starting to suffer the same fate as “trolling,” slowly devolving into a vague definitional mush.
“Trolling” used to mean “Saying deliberately provocative things not because you believe them, but because it will get a rise out of people,” but as it’s been used more and more it’s boiled down to “Saying provocative things”.
Does “microaggression” just mean “small aggression”? I had thought there was a connotation, or even a requirement, that microaggressions were examples of unconscious, non-deliberate bias, but one of the examples the article leads with is “shopkeepers acting suspicious toward people of color” which struck me as a conscious, and not particularly “micro” act of racial bias.
I suppose such bias could be unconscious, but looking at the Oberlin blog, I see, for example, the letters KKK scrawled into a bench, or a story about two students shoving a woman aside so they could take naked pictures of her sleeping friend without permission.
These are overt, fully conscious acts of cruelty; what makes them “microaggressions” rather than “aggressions”?
Christopher, I agree with you completely, especially about the original denotation of “microaggression” and the way it has been inflated. This fits with the way other terms of art have changed their meanings, and I’m not sure that anything can be done about it. Linguistic drift of this kind is totally normal, part of normal language use, and it’s probably impossible to stop.
Just after I first encountered the concept a few years ago while speaking to a diversity class for teachers-to-be, I was discussing it with a friend who’s a member of the School of Education faculty, who told me something very valuable: “Microagression” is not a term you’re supposed to throw at other people, it’s supposed to be one you use on yourself, to see what you are doing, especially if you’re in a position of authority over others. This doesn’t mean that you can’t notice or point it out in others, but it’s a beam you have to take out of your own eye first.
I noticed when I looked at a microaggression-themed tumblr that many examples of supposed “microaggressions” people cited were in fact microaggressions, like being called “nigger” or “chink” or “faggot” or even being shoved and otherwise assaulted. (An American writer who lives in a poor Central American country, commenting on a thread about microaggressions on Facebook said that “The other thing is getting asked how much things I have cost (including my dog and her cocker clip when she’s been recently groomed) — and either I answer or I ‘forget.’ This somewhat bothers me, but it’s not the micro-aggression that spitting near my feet is (one guy appears to really have it in for Gringos).” Again, this is not microaggression but aggression, full stop. She refused to recognize that, for reasons I’m still trying to figure out.)
I also noticed that many microaggressions come from within a person’s group. Terms like “banana” and “oreo” for example, though maybe those are macro; but joking that someone doesn’t fit his or her ingroup’s self-stereotypes (You don’t like Lady Gaga? Honey, are you sure you’re really gay?) surely counts. Also, microaggressions are also used within groups as cover for positive emotion. If you’ve seen The Martian, the scene where Martinez “explains” that Watney was left behind because “we don’t like you” and besides, the spacecraft was roomier for the rest of them, is replete with microaggressions, used because they’d probably all burst out sobbing if they directly expressed their shame and guilt and grief for having left him (accidentally) alive on Mars alone. And of course, Boy Culture frowns on overt expressions of love from one male to another. Microaggressions are one of the ways of getting around that.
Microaggressions are also used when a new member is being added to an established group and community. It’s not quite hazing, though it can turn into hazing if the newbie can’t respond properly to the microaggression. One reason I think it’s difficult to prep kids to deal with microaggressions outside the home is that families themselves use microaggressions to socialize children. And so on. There are always problems when technical terms start to leak into the nonacademic world, but I’m constantly baffled by how they lose their meaning within academia itself.
Duncan
I really like your blog, and it’s informed my thinking in a lot of ways, so it’s not surprising we agree.
I should say that other than the vague definition of “microaggression” I thought Rini’s article was good.
I’ve been reading a lot of articles about microaggressions and I really feel like the term is used nowadays to lump together things which aren’t necessarily that similar.
Like I said, when I hear the example of a shopkeeper watching black shoppers more closely, what first comes to my mind is that it’s an example of conscious racial animus; that the shopkeeper does that because he consciously believes that black people are more likely to shoplift.*
The other example Rini uses, “someone saying to a Jewish student, ‘Since Hitler is dead, you don’t have to worry about being killed by him anymore.'” sounds like a joke that is meant to consciously, but benignly play up the differences between the Jewish student and the speaker. It’s not meant to be hurtful*, but it is consciously meant to point up, and thereby solidify, the differences between Jews and Not Jews.
*I assume. Rini gives no context for these remarks. It’s quite possible that the Jewish remarks could be meant as hostile racism or that the shopkeeper might imagine he watches everybody equally closely regardless of race; But these are the impressions I have in the absence of context.
And then there’s an example that some UCLA training materials used as a microaggression, “asking a foreign-looking student ‘where are you from?'” which is something which might unintentionally play up differences even though the speaker wasn’t trying to. I tend to ask people where they’re from, or “Have you lived in (Whatever city) your whole life, or…?” just as an ice-breaker; it’s not something I say because somebody looks foreign. But it’s easy to see how some people might feel like that’s the latest in a long line of people questioning whether they belong.
Those same materials also mention “Statements which assert that race or gender does not play a role in life successes, for example in issues like faculty demographics.” giving as an example the statement ““Men and women have equal opportunities for achievement.” which is vague but is on some level an attempt to state facts as that person understands them.
I feel like it’s not a great idea to lump these ideas together. Racist graffiti needs to be addressed in a different way then an incorrect idea about whether or not an organization has a glass ceiling; “There is persistent gender bias in hiring at such and such a place” is something you can demonstrate with a factual argument, while “Don’t paint swastikas in the student lounge” is a moral argument, and “please try to be more aware of how people might take your words, because you don’t want to accidentally offend them” is also a moral argument, but quite a different one.
It seems like the term “microaggression” was invented as part of a way to create a sort of taxonomy of different kinds of biases, but it seems to be slipping into just a synonym for bias in general.
My take on the Spring Valley incident is that given that the student was disrupting the class and had steadfastly refused to leave, that it is acceptable for reasonable force to be used to remove them. I’m not sure it’s of issue whether the force comes from a teacher or a police officer, and I certainly understand why a teacher might feel that using force against a student isn’t in their job description. However, from what I saw in the video I think both the method and the amount of force the police officer used remove the student were clearly not reasonable. I think a better approach would be for another person/officer to assist and simply lift and calmly carry the student out of the classroom. If another person wasn’t available then some low level of pain compliance would have been much more preferable to violently throwing the students around.
Given that the act of throwing the student to the ground is, in fact, escalating the “disruption,” how do people who support the deputy’s behavior feel about the other student being arrested for filming the incident and commenting on it as it happened?
Eta: that student, Niya Kenny, describes her behavior as screaming, praying, and crying, and explains what led up to her arrest:
She was charged with the same crime, classroom disruption, and the police report notes that the charge stemmed from yelling and cursing at the officer.
Also, the county sheriff’s on record as saying that police officers should not be requested to handle or address such a “disruption,” and disagrees with the law that mandates it, in part because it generalizes too broadly what might constitute “disruptive” behavior. He feels that:
I think it is more productive to understand microaggressions from the perspective of the person being aggressed against than from the perspective of the aggressor.
If someone spits at my feet, maybe they are just really hostile to everyone, maybe they were just lost in thought and needed to spit, maybe they are just looking for a fight, or maybe they specifically hate people of my race/ethnicity/gender/religion/etc. If that is the only act of random hostility I face that week, then I just shrug it off and think, “That was weird!”
On the other hand, if someone shouted something unintelligible from a car thirty minutes earlier, and shop clerk eyed me suspiciously when I bought milk, and when I was on the way to the store I noticed that someone had scratched ‘KKK’ on bus bench, and someone in class earlier today asked me where I was from (even if they didn’t follow that up with “No, where are you really from”), then when my evening class teacher insists that “We all have an equal chance of making it in the world if were willing to try,” then that becomes just one more little slap in the face instead of just being a kind of polly-anna-ish sentiment.
Any one of those things in a month, I could shrug off, but the cavalcade of microaggressions, each of which may or may not be intended as an attack, all add together into a significant blow.
According to Wikipedia, Sue et al (2007) lists three types of microaggression:
So things like spitting at your feet or watching you suspiciously have been categorized as microaggressions in the literature for at least nearly a decade.
The violence in that Spring Valley video is way over the top. Obviously, police officers should not be used for this sort of thing. That girl sort of hit the officer or smacked him away, and he responded exactly like an officer would who is arresting a threatening criminal, rather than a teenager girl who was talking on a phone during class.
My high school hired an ex-special forces dean. He was confident and intimidating, and mostly got his way with misbehaving teens without laying a finger on anybody. On a two occasions, I did see him have to restrain and remove a student from class, but he was able to do it much more professionally than the officer in the video. I think a third party enforcer, like the dean at my school, is a good idea as long as this person isn’t a cop. I think this because:
1) Teachers shouldn’t have to be qualified to physically restrain or remove students. It simply isn’t fair to ask a 140 lbs teacher to deal with a seriously misbehaving 215 lbs defensive linemen on the high school football team.
2) Teachers are likely to be angered before having to physically confront students. Both teachers and students are more liable to do stupid things when they are angry A student who shoves a teacher may or may not get expelled, a teacher who is caught on a cell phone video like the one on Vox will be fired.
3) A third party enforcer is likely to carry more authority with the students. It won’t work every time, but it worked in my school. Sometimes it really is necessary to physically remove a student.
Not every school is big enough to justify hiring a dean, and not every school will be able to find a qualified ex-navy-seal to do the job, but at the right price, there are enough qualified people to take on this responsibility.
I wonder how people who believe that men should entrust feminism to advance men’s issues feels about the fact that a female, left leaning British MP has laughed at the idea of discussing men’s issue in the British parliament, and point blank argued that time shouldn’t be allocated to discuss men’s issues until there is gender parity in the parliament, which she seemingly gleefully noted “will take an awfully long time”.
The truth of it is that in 22 years as a Scouter and God knows how many Troop meetings and campouts (and 22 weeks of summer camp as an adult alone) I’ve never had a kid flat out refuse to do something beyond my persuasion. But then, at 6′ 2″ and 275+ pounds I’m a bit intimidating to an 11- and 12-year old. By the time they’re older than that they’ve either gotten with the program or left on their own.
It absolutely would not be appropriate for me to do that. For one thing, as part of Youth Protection I promised not to. I’d get my ass tossed out of Scouting. For another thing, when you have kids carrying around knives and axes and are teaching them how to use firearms the issue of discipline and obedience (Scout Law point 7, “A Scout is Obedient”) is a bit more explicit and we drill our expectations in to them and their parents. I would physically restrain someone if the misuse of a knife, ax, fire or firearm was involved. Finally, I can just send a kid home and tell him to never come back, with no appeal from the parents to any higher authority if we choose to make it permanent.
So this is interesting. The EEOC has intervened on behalf of a couple of Muslim truck drivers who had been fired by a trucking company for refusing to transport beer. They won $240,000. Now, how does this reconcile with a bakery being forced to provide a wedding cake for a gay wedding or a pizzeria being condemned for refusing to cater one, both on religious grounds? Why would a Federal agency intervene on behalf of the truckers but another one prosecute the bakery?
RonF –
Because legally, the position of an employer —> employee is not the same as the position of a company —–> customer. Different laws apply. For one thing, the EEOC is a federal agency, but the bakeries that have run into trouble, were all in trouble with state law, not Federal law. (As I understand it.)
From the EEOC’s press release:
It sounds to me that if a trucking firm that specialized in trafficking beer had been in this situation, they could have fired the guys and not gotten into any trouble. But if there are plenty of non-beer shipments that the guys could have been assigned again, then the employers could get in trouble. Sort of like a grocery store firing an Orthodox Jewish cashier because they wouldn’t work a Saturday shift, rather than just assigning them some other shift.
BTW, it looks like Star Transport admitted liability without a trial; the trial was just to determine the amount of damages to be awarded. I’m not a lawyer, but that suggests to me that Star Transport’s lawyers told them that they were clearly in violation of the law; if they had any chance of winning at trial, it seems unlikely that a corporation like that would have admitted liability.
What federal agency prosecuted the bakery?
—Myca
Ampersand:
So if a Christian employee of a cake shop refused to provide a wedding cake for a gay couple when there were other employees who could do so, you would support protecting that employee against being fired by their employer?
It seems unlikely that would be a realistic scenario. As I understand it, a successful truck driving firm will have a couple of dozen (or more) drivers working for it, making switching drivers in and out of particular jobs relatively easy. I think it’s unlikely that a cake shop will have enough employees to make that workable.
That said, even if the example were realistic, I don’t think the situations are actually parallel. Because the truckers are not discriminating against a class of people by choosing not to transport beer. The Christian in your example is. That creates a legal conflict between non-discrimination laws and EEOC reasonable accommodation rules that doesn’t exist in the case of the truckers. It’s well beyond my abilities to even guess where the law would fall in that case.
Law aside, I worry about where “people have a right to be accommodated by their employers in their desire to discriminate against gays” leads. Does that mean that in a town dominated by Christians, every single business can be dominated by employees who will refuse to help gays (or trans people, or Jews, or Blacks, or whomever)?
There’s a basic moral difference between “my religion requires me to not transport beer” or “my religion requires me to not work on Saturdays” versus “my religion requires me to discriminate against gays/Jews/Blacks/etc.” I don’t know what the law says, but personally I think it’s defensible to accommodate the former but not the latter.
Cops would have executed him in America.
The linked video shows how British police restrain a dangerous, mentally ill man with minimal violence. We do have options. Americans choose violence. It is wrong. It should change.
I agree. I would also say, that it would not be o.k. if the truck driver was only refusing to transport alcohol to other Muslims, because that would be a case of discrimination.
Since justice varies from culture to culture, I disagree with this premise. Since justice varies from person to person within a culture, I disagree with this premise. Since justice within a culture changes over time, I disagree with this premise.
Justice is a term that describes an ideal. But that ideal is different for every person and every culture. Justice is real in the same way that beauty is real. It’s a concept and concepts are real. They’re not necessarily constant or objective, though.
While I think I understand your position, my experience and knowledge base cause me to disagree with it. Therefore I’ll disagree with conclusions you derive from your starting point. This is a fundamental disagreement in all it’s glory that we have between us.
As such…
…
Nope. No. Not so. There are ways of logically deriving justice/right & wrong within social constructionism. For example, “Cause no harm to others,” can be a social construction that I attempt to live by. Under that construction I can be fully and logically against non-consensual sadism while being entirely in favor of allowing people to transition from one socially constructed gender to another.
What does ‘against’ mean in that formulation? What does ‘in favor’ of mean in that formulation? It sounds like you just don’t want call your moral judgments anything in particular but you still want to have the force behind them of getting to coerce wrong people to stop what they are doing and have society help right people do what they are doing but you don’t want to call it ‘wrong’ and ‘right’. You’re just removing the label from analysis while continuing to act as if it has force.
What “I attempt to live by” doesn’t help you either. How do you justify attempting to stop other people who live under other social constructions (like being a KKK member and threatening and killing people is a good way to maintain the purity of the races) from doing what they want to? If “cause no harm to others” and “gay people should be attacked and killed” are both social constructions, how do we choose between them since both precepts can’t coexist easily?
Back to the issue at hand, trans people tell us that they experience being the gender they weren’t born into. I suspect they do, and not in a hallucinatory way that we should try to work around.
Social constructionism does not necessitate cultural relativism. Is does not equal ought.
Mandolin, that is too simplistic.
You can believe that some things are socially constructed without necessitating cultural relativism. What whatever you believe is socially constructed can only be judged either against something not completely socially constructed (perhaps a mixed thing like justice) or you have undercut your ability to decide between different social constructions. Those are the options.
If you believe ALL social/interactive concepts are socially constructed, you have cultural relativism because you have no basis to weigh any one social construction against another. You have to introduce an outside weighing variable in order to do that, and it can’t be wholly culturally constructed.
Lots of people try to use evolutionary fitness for that purpose, but it doesn’t work well for gay people very often.
If you disagree, can you explain how you weigh “don’t hurt others” against “the KKK is a good weigh to maintain the purity of races”?
Like every other moral and ethical choice we make? That’s my guess. So, the same way we decided that murder is a thing that we, as a culture, are against is the same way we choose between the two constructions you’re asking about.
I feel like I won’t be able to continue this conversation with you since we’re coming from such disparate fundamental beliefs. Your questions to me make me think about the argument about who it is who is at the precise center of an infinite universe and I was done with those arguments 30 years ago.
I saw your comment and was inspired to point out how vehemently and fundamentally I disagree with your premise and why. Beyond that, I really don’t see a constructive dialog between us as a thing that can happen, so I’ll bow out here saying that we just disagree on such a fundamental level that there’s no basis for a civil or productive discussion.
Just because we’ve had this discussion here before, and this piece, “What’s a Professor Do?” does one of the best jobs I’ve seen if laying it out: http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-collins-heres-how-professors-spend-their-time-1101-20151030-story.html
Charles S
I understand the idea that, when you constantly encounter small reminders of your outsider status, it’s hard to laugh them off, and you become less inclined to say, “maybe I only imagined that shopkeeper was watching me more closely than anybody else in the store.”
My question is, is “micro aggression” just a fancy academic word for bias?
Because to me, I don’t think it’s quite right to say that racist grafitti is something that could be shrugged off if it’s not part of a larger problem.
And from a different angle, I feel the same way about expressions about whether hiring practices at your place of work are equitable.
Because there’s not the same potential double meaning with either of these that there is with somebody spitting at your feet. Maybe the guy spitting at your feet didn’t see you coming; but the person carving graffiti is inarguably trying to make people feel upset, whether or not they’re part of a broader pattern, and a person making am argument about hiring practices is making a factual argument which deserves to be addressed thoughtfully and factually*, whether or not it’s part of a larger pattern.
I’m biased against jargon. I think fancy words like “micro aggression” need to justify themselves by helping us to talk about things that otherwise don’t have good language. If the definition is fuzzy or if this is just a fancier, smarter sounding word for “any expression of bias” I’m not sure it’s a helpful term.
*Assuming the conversation isn’t a distraction from some other issue.
Grace, I want to be clear that I am not one of the people who thinks that evolution=gay people bad, or that trans people should be talked out of being trans.
Jake you write: “Like every other moral and ethical choice we make? That’s my guess. So, the same way we decided that murder is a thing that we, as a culture, are against is the same way we choose between the two constructions you’re asking about.”
The way our culture does it is we describe things that are morally wrong on a fundamental level and we outlaw the worst of them. Or we try to describe ‘best of evils’ where we kick back the judgment one level but still have an ultimate moral aim in view. Or we describe things that are morally good and try to maximize them. What you’re describing definitely isn’t that. You seem to want to say that you want to maximize things (but don’t call them good) and minimize things (but don’t call them bad) for reasons that you don’t want to articulate. (Community Harmony? Bodily Autonomy?) It looks like whatever you want to maximize or minimize is the same thing as ‘moral’ or ‘right/wrong’ and I’m not sure what you gain analytically by dropping such terms.
(Please note I’m not calling you immoral or amoral. I’ve read much of what you’ve written and you seem very much morally grounded.)
Mandolin, yes, why?
Bringing it back to trans issues. One strong moral principle is “bodily autonomy”. Letting trans people express themselves the way they need to is a good thing to do because bodily autonomy is very important and because they will be happier if we do so, and because it doesn’t hurt anyone else in any important way to do so.
That kind of description is an appeal beyond social constructions. At least if you want to try to argue against societies that don’t accept trans people (which is another social construction). What kind of argument do you make without a moral appeal? If making people happier without hurting anyone else isn’t a virtue, how does the argument look without invoking some other principle? If your only argument is “I would prefer we accept trans people” what do you do with the majority who says “I would prefer we not accept trans people”? You can’t say “but it hurts them” without appealing to the idea that “hurting them is bad”.
Which is fine.
Hurting them IS bad. But you’re saying that “hurting them is bad” is just a social construction. “Hurting people is fun” isn’t even a social construction. Lots of people experientialy feel that way. What do you say to them? “Your social construction allowing you to hurt people is …… [can’t use the word wrong]?”
Mandolin it isn’t clear to me what you mean by “the body of academic work”. Do you mean anthropological non-judgementalism? That is a methodological process of describing things accurately and trying to minimize the lens of pre-judging what you describe.
Do you have some particular work in mind?
It seems to me that for the most part hard social constructionism isn’t rigorous about relativism. I have occasionally seen concerns about how to reconcile a stance against female circumcision with anti-colonial concerns but they just kick the can to bodily autonomy which doesn’t solve the issue at all (because respect or lack of respect for bodily autonomy is just a social construction to a hard social contructionist). Or the other tact is to take a hard libertarian bent, but again that doesn’t help (because respect or lack of respect for people to do what they want to do is just a social construction to a hard social constructionist).
Again, I’m not saying that you can’t decide to be trans friendly. You should. This all came up because it was suggested that there was something inherently unfriendly to trans people from an essentialist feminist position (say Greer) while it seems to me that unless the essential part is a working vagina (which isn’t what most essentialist feminists seem to say) it isn’t obvious at all that they need to be transphobic. (Or even that most of them are). Similarly, it isn’t obvious at all that hard constructionist theory fits well with trans experience. Trans people tend to say things like “I was born a man but in the wrong body”. You can force that to fit into a constructionist view [e.g. they REALLY mean that they grew up with an affinity to the socially constructed view of men (gender) despite having genitalia normally associated with female (sex)] but it isn’t at all obvious that is closer to their experience than an essentialist who says that they feel like they have much more in common with the essential character of men (gender) despite manifesting female genital organs (sex). My experience tends to be that in personal relations, acceptance or non-acceptance is independent (there are nasty constructionists and nice essentialists and vis versa).
Do you have a clear case in mind where a strict social constructionist [on all social relations] explains how they avoid moral relativism? The problem of condemning the KKK who are obviously just acting on their own social constructions? Again, I have no problem with a partial social constructionist. But Amp and Jake, and maybe you are saying something much further than that.
If I see some graffiti that says “Kill white people” or “FUCK WASPS” tomorrow, I’m going to shrug them off (I’m 7/8s wasp). I mean, I’m not that likely to see either of those things, because they aren’t part of a larger problem of socially normalized racial animus against white people, but if I do see that graffiti, a shrug will be my response.
No, micro aggression is the “fancy academic” word for the way that lots of little reminders of your outsider status are hard to shrug off. Not all of those little reminders are expressions of bias (even if some of them are), and not all acts of bias are micro aggressions. For example, if a group of bank executives sit down and decide to red line a majority black neighborhood, or launch an advertising campaign for exploding ARM home loans targeted at minority home-buyers, neither of those is a micro aggression, but they are the result of bias. ‘Bias’ is actually the fancy academic word for bias.
Speaking of bank executives and redlining, did you all see the Hudson Bank settlement, for a bank in the NY/NJ/CT area that granted just 1.3% of its mortgages to black customers in 2014?
The problem of condemning the KKK who are obviously just acting on their own social constructions?
This is really easy.
I condemn the KKK.
Give me a harder one.
yrs–
–Ben
Sebastian H:
You seem to misunderstand what’s meant by social construction.
Let’s consider an analogy. You evidently understand how to read and write English. I think it’s would be uncontroversial to state that English language is by-and-large a social construct. That is to say there’s nothing biological that drives humans towards connecting say, the symbols “R” “E” and “D” or the pronunciation of the word “red” to our visual perception of the colour. This can be evidenced by looking at the large variety of ways the visual perception of the colour red is expressed in different languages. Therefore, the only reason we, as English speakers associate the symbols and sounds with the visual perception is that we have been socially conditioned to do so. Yet, if someone were construct a “better” language, such as Esperanto and propose we all stop using English and start using Esperanto, the effort for individuals to change would be immense, assuming they could even manage to stop themslves speaking and thinking instinctively in English. The fact that it language is something that is socially constructed doesn’t mean it’s not something that becomes an inseparable a part of who someone is.
Gender presents a slightly different problem as we don’t have two languages in society that we socially restrict to different groups. However, by the time it’s possible to identify that someone has developed a gender identity that is different from their biological sex, their socially constructed gender identity is going to have become an inseparable part of who they are as a person. It’s not something that can simply be reprogrammed.
Just because an element of someone’s mental state is theorised to be constructed through social means rather than being driven by biology, doesn’t imply it’s theorised to be infinitely malleable. However, the theory does raise questions over how we organise society, manage the constructive nature of socialisation, and the merits of social regulation of behaviour (whether that’s language use or gender expression).
That said, I don’t agree with the stronger theories of social construction.
I’ve done quite a bit of reading now, and in the discussion I wonder if there isn’t some confusion between what I would call methodological personal construction (a study into the process by which people “construct” their knowledge about things and themselves) and societal construction (various hypotheses of various strengths regarding how societies shape personal and group views). I found scores of people who positioned themselves as non-constructionists or very limited constructionists who critique constructionism as being culturally relativist. I didn’t really find those very helpful because they already held my position. I was looking for someone who described herself as a social constructionist in a strong sense who explained how it wasn’t relativist. The closest I came was this article. But it seems to reject the strong constructivism of Amp and Jake for a methodological version. It concludes that it is all a big misunderstanding, because constructivism is just epistemological (referring to what I call methodological constructivism) not ontological. If so, it appears to be a common misunderstanding at least on this thread.
I’m not clear if Mandolin is talking just about methodological constructivism. I would tend to think not, but it isn’t as clear as with Amp or Jake.
[On reading the journal articles it feels like some looseness in language made things worse in this discussion. There is a trivial level of constructivism which would make statements like “All knowledge is constructed” meaning “All human knowledge goes through a study-able process by which it gets transmitted via experience, books, and other learning methods and integrated into an individual’s brain/mind/persona”. This is pure, individual level, methodological construction. I’m pretty sure almost everyone believes it.
Social construction can mean a similar thing for groups and cultures. But it also can mean something like “All knowledge on abstract things is just a creation of the culture and THEREFORE not corresponding to any reality beyond the culture.” My argument against the latter with Jake/Amp (which is by definition cultural relativism) seems to be what triggered Mandolin’s response about cultural relativism. Mandolin is right so long as we are talking about methodological construction but wrong if we are talking about more than that. The thing I am trying to tease out with the KKK thing is how you get away from moral relativism if you believe that “justice” is constructed *in the doesn’t correspond to anything real* sense. All the responses thusfar have just reinforced my point that the responders aren’t treating construction in the Amp/Jake sense]
I’m terrible at philosophy and not well-read on this particular social science aspect, so this may not be coherent, but:
For me, this seems like a strange question. “If there’s no objective definition of justice/morality, how can you have a preference?” But we have preferences about all sorts of subjective things.
I can say, “I think it’s better when we make as many people’s lives as happy and satisfying as possible.” I know that “happiness” and “satisfaction” are arbitrary (and ill-defined) and there’s no objective reason to prefer them, but I still think it’s a good idea based on my subjective experience. So I can still judge moral systems against those criteria, as well as my ideas of fairness, justice, etc, while acknowledging that my criteria are in some sense arbitrary; they don’t have to be objective for me to believe they’re correct. I can acknowledge that other people might come to other conclusions while still thinking they’re wrong.
Sebastian H:
You would appeal to some form of socially constructed common ground. If there is no underlying common ground then you’re beyond the point where making arguments can be productive. You’re at the point where it’s the equivalent of trying to have a discussion with someone who is completely delusional. If there’s no common ground with that person about the current state of the world around them, no sensible discussion can ensue. If there’s no common ground with regards to morality then there’s no meaningful way to make an argument to persuade such a person.
At that point if, according to your own socially constructed morality, you consider someone else’s opinion is wrong then you stop making arguments and start using whatever force your socially constructed morality permits you to use. Which is why I suspect there appears to be a link between those attracted to the belief that morality is socially constructed and those attracted to authoritarianism.
Of course you can have a preference even in a total moral relativist world, but that ends up being a lot less convincing when you have to make laws to stop other people from engaging in their preferences. You feel that gay people should have rights? Lots of people feel otherwise. Lets have a majority vote! What could go wrong?
But when you start talking about human rights for example, it is difficult to understand what you are talking about if they aren’t meant to allude to something universalist. And the weird part is that lots of people who are saying they are hard constructionists seem to talk about rights a lot.
If the conversation boils down to:
A) stop oppressing gays;
B) Why?
C) because I personally feel that gays shouldn’t be oppressed
D) Gays are wrong and deserve to be oppressed, they are lucky we tolerate them at all
Usually this is where you want to talk about human dignity, human rights, or bodily autonomy, but none of those are any better than “gays are wrong” under your argument.
I don’t see anyone making the argument that morality is entirely socially constructed and making the argument that one socially constructed morality is objectively better than another.
Sebastian, I guess I would ask: How is the situation “I think most moral concepts are socially constructed, and you think your moral concepts are universal” different from “I think most moral concepts are universal and well-described by my religion, and you think most moral concepts are universal and well-described by your totally different religion”?
It’s not that I think your hypothetical situations aren’t difficult ones to come to an agreement in, I just don’t see how they’re a particular problem of what you were calling strong social constructionism, as opposed to a general problem of people with two different moral systems trying to come to agreement.
Sebastian,
There is nothing particularly incoherent about believing that rights are socially constructed and believing that they exist (socially constructed things exist! They aren’t fake or not-real or imaginary) and that they should be extended in ways that benefit people. A right to privacy is something that many people believe in and that many people desire. Functionally, it doesn’t matter whether that belief and that desire are socially constructed or given by God, or developed through natural selection, or are a pale reflection of the true form of the right to privacy that exists only in the world of Platonic Ideals. People are often happier when that right is acknowledged and supported, and less happy when it is not, so protecting and extending that right is a good thing within the socially constructed morality that we all probably share. If any of us are hard-core Calvinists, then people being happier would not be a shared moral good, and as desipis describes, we’d be in a much more complicated terrain of moral discussion.
If we’re arguing with Calvinists, it doesn’t matter whether people being happier is a socially constructed good or a god-given good or a devil-inspired lie, it is not a common ground that we can work from so, as desipis says, we have to decide whether we have any other common values to work from or whether our disagreements require (or allow) the use of force under our moral and social systems.
Maybe believing everything is socially constructed makes it easier to be a moral relativist, but it doesn’t require it. We are all bound up in our own moral and cultural systems- understanding that doesn’t mean that we stand outside of them, forced to judge moral systems based on some non-existent objective moral principles. We still judge our moral and cultural systems from the vantage point of being bound up in our moral and cultural systems.
Likewise, on the gender side, believing that gender is wholly socially constructed does not mean that I am able to stop being a mostly cis, mostly man, anymore than believing that language is socially constructed means that I can stop having English be my native language.
Personally, I am, at this point, a moderately weak social constructionist. I don’t believe that Justice is a thing that exists outside of human beliefs, but I do think that fairness is a concept that arises routinely in human society and that shows up in children at a very young age, so it ends up being important in socially constructed moral systems very often, as does subservience to hierarchy, etc. But I’ve been a strong social constructionist on both morality and gender in the past, and it didn’t make me a strong moral relativist or anti-trans.
Harlequin, The problem is that you’re arguing with different things in those cases. In the two different religion cases you agree that there is a universally applicable morality, you differ on the details of what describes it. Your scope of disagreement is in the details.
In the hard constructivist cases you deny the existence of a universally applicable morality. If here is no universally applicable morality there is literally no point in arguing about it. You have yours because of how you were socialized. I have mine because of how I was socialized. There is no progress to be made because you just have a different one because of different socialization. There is no way to distinguish the content. There is a reason for people who believe in universally applicable rights to try to come to agreement–they believe in universally applicable rights. It isn’t clear why a hard constructionist should care about gay people being thrown off buildings in the Middle East. That’s just their cultural construction of how to treat gays. Denying that there are universally applicable rights AND trying to apply your personally constructed preferences on rights universally is unjustifiable. Why not just leave them to their own understanding?
Charles, you seem to be arguing for methodological constructivism, a position which so far as I can tell no one disagrees with. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say about Calvinists. They believe in hardline predestination so as far as they are concerned you can’t believe other than what you were destined to believe. Or are you saying that is like hard constructivism under God? I think I’m not getting it.
Well, this is actually how we’ve established in this country that gay people have rights. First we had a massive popular movement to convince people that gay people should have rights, and then we elected people who (a) passed laws decriminalizing homosexuality (b) passed laws explicitly protecting the rights of gay people (c) appointed judges who came to believe that gay people should have rights (d) created executive orders protecting the rights of gay people.
We’re primarily a representative democracy, so we mostly haven’t done it by direct popular vote.
Logical arguments from first principles did not actually play a very large role in establishing gay rights in the US.
And I’m not really sure what part moral relativism is suppose to have played in preventing all that from happening…
Maybe there are some enlightened despotisms or monarchies where the right thinking people have simply imposed gay rights on the ignorant populace, but I’m not actually familiar with any. Women didn’t have a right to vote until governments granted them those rights. Gay people didn’t have a right to public accommodations until we passed laws recognizing those rights (and they still don’t have those rights in lots of places in the US and won’t until we pass more laws granting those rights). Etc.
Now, you can say that gay people have always had a right to public accommodations but that those rights were not recognized for a long time in most places, but a right you can’t exercise and that no one else recognizes is not worth much of anything as a right.
Sebastian,
My point about Calvinists is that they don’t believe that human happiness in the mortal realm is a general good, so we can’t rely on that shared value in trying to convince Calvinists. Not an important point and clearly not a clear example, so lets drop it.
Back to the main argument:
Your argument that “It isn’t clear why a hard constructionist should care about gay people being thrown off buildings in the Middle East. That’s just their cultural construction of how to treat gays,” feels similar to the common Christian question of ‘without a belief in Heaven and Hell, why would anyone be a good person?’ You are assuming that something that you believe in that produces a particular effect is the thing that is required for producing that particular effect, rather than it just being the thing that produces that particular effect in your case.
If my socially constructed moral system tells me to try to prevent the Saudi government from killing gay people, why would my belief that there is no universally applicable morality prevent me from following my moral system? You seem to be assuming that non-intervention to impose my moral system (by force or moral persuasion or bribery) must be a moral good in the moral system of hardline social constructionists, and I don’t see any reason why that would be the case. I can believe that the moral system of the Saudi royals is a human moral system just like my own and still prefer that their moral system or their legal practice be changed to fit with mine. If my moral system says that it is a bad thing for gay people to be being murdered anywhere in the world (and it does), then I am simply adhering to my moral system if I try to interfere in Saudi politics. Since all moral systems are just human created moral systems, there is no reason for me to not prefer mine over other people’s. Admittedly (speaking as a hard-line constructivist for the moment), the only reason I prefer my morals over other people’s morals is that they are mine (and so I experience them as being right and natural), but that seems like enough of a reason. That’s the reason I follow my moral system at all, isn’t it?
Sebastian,
“existence of a universally applicable morality”
It may be that I simply don’t understand what you mean by this term. Perhaps there are no true Hardline Constructivists in your sense this discussion. Could you break this term out further?
But everyone prefers their own moral system. And you haven’t provided any reason why anyone should change it. That just turns into a strict might makes right situation. Which I’m pretty sure no one here agrees with.
No. I’m assuming that when you say you have come to the reasoned conclusion that your reasoned conclusions by definition can’t be better than anyone else’s, you won’t then act as if yours are better than everyone else’s. I guess the flip side is this: if we are going to act as if our own socially constructed values are better than everyone else’s and if we are going to be ok with forcing our own socially constructed values on other people who disagree with us, what do you think the value of insisting that they are socially constructed IS? Operationally you are acting as if you believe that your values are universal values. You are treating their values as if they are inferior values. You appear to be getting away from cultural relativism only by robbing the social construction insight of any meaning.
For me the useful part of the methodological social construction insight is that your society can influence you to such a degree as to make you have wrong beliefs. That is easier to see in other cultures, but should warn us that we may very well have wrong beliefs and cause us to be modest about forcing our beliefs on other people and cause us to examine our own beliefs carefully.
But if you deny the existence of ‘wrong belief’ at least insofar as social phenomenon, you don’t have that insight. So what use is social construction theory if you are going to treat your beliefs just like a universalist?
Sebastian H:
People seek to change other peoples moral systems because their own moral systems tell them to.
Observing that one’s moral system is entirely socially constructed does not automatically imply it is immoral to force it onto others. Most moral systems permit or encourage the use of force in certain situations. There is nothing that necessitates all moral systems include the belief that forcing your subjects views onto others is immoral (whether or not they are socially constructed systems).
Making the observation that moral systems live and die on the basis of ‘might’ doesn’t require that one agree that this is a morally desirable process. It is just a simple observation on the way things work.
There is the subjective opinion that the values are subjectively inferior, but also the subject opinion that the first subjective opinion is sufficient to justify action. If you’re taking a strong constructionist approach to morality, then objective superiority or objective justification are meaningless concepts, and hence a lack of them does not preclude taking action.
The reason why someone should change their beliefs is a totally different issue from the question of whether I should try to change their beliefs, and depends on who you are arguing with about what, and yes, when we reach an impasse on convincing people of the prefer-ability of our moral concepts over their moral concepts, and it matters enough to us and is morally and socially appropriate in our situation, then we generally resort to force (some of us may be strict pacifist, in which case it is never morally appropriate to resort to force, but most of us probably are not). Demonstrably, most people’s beliefs are changeable by experience or persuasion. That is an observable phenomenon and doesn’t have anything to do with whether one set of beliefs is more right than another. People’s beliefs get changed from beliefs we both agree are good to beliefs we both agree are bad all the time (as well as moving in the preferred direction), so the potential for change in beliefs is obviously not connected to there being a scale in which some beliefs are more right than others.
That assumption seems like a classic rationalist mistake to make. From my vantage point, my moral conclusions are better than other people’s, all other things being equal, because they are mine. Also, I’m not particularly convinced that my beliefs about social construction are reasoned conclusions, and even less convinced that my moral beliefs are reasoned conclusions. I’ll act as though my moral beliefs are better even though there are an unlimited number of vantage points from which they aren’t because I’m not operating from any of those vantage points. If someone can shift my vantage point to one of those vantage points (where my beliefs are equal or worse) then I won’t act on my beliefs as though they were better, and if someone can shift my vantage point far enough, those will stop being my beliefs. For the moment, my beliefs are my beliefs and my vantage point is one in which my beliefs are better (anyway, for some subset of my beliefs that includes “don’t kill people for being gay”; I have plenty of beliefs that I already don’t believe are the best belief).
Well, in this context I’m mostly only doing it to explain why I don’t beleive that strict social constructivism inherently leads to moral relativism. In most contexts, I don’t find it particularly important to insist on social constructivism. In terms of what use I get out of believing in social constructivism:
(a) it seems true to me, and believing that moral statements have objective truth value doesn’t really match my experience of the world, and my belief system values some degree of coherence and not believing things that I think aren’t true (funny story, this isn’t one of my beliefs that I think is a best belief, I think that plenty of people benefit from believing things that aren’t true, I just don’t know how to be comfortable doing that);
(b) it serves something like the same purpose it does for you, it reminds me that my beliefs are just my beliefs and that they may not be the best beliefs (even for me);
(c) it reminds me that most people are not evil within their own moral system;
(d) it reminds me that if I want to change other people’s minds I have to find common ground with them (or work from non-rational angles- which is what usually actually works best), I can’t rely on the fact that my morality is closer to the objectively correct morality;
(e) it reminds me that if I want to understand why someone believes something, I need to understand how it fits into their belief system and their social system.
(f) it permits working to change the morality of my own or others’ cultures, because I don’t have to worry about a meta-level concern with whether the change I’m pushing for is congruent with the unknowable objective right morality (or violates God’s Law, or whatever), I just need to worry about whether it hurts people or does other things that are bad within my own moral system.
Largely though, I don’t think the question of strong vs. weak social constructivism substantially matters in how people act or how they think, except at the very edges. Mostly, people (me included) just don’t think or act on bases like that [see previously when I argued that my moral beliefs are not particularly reasoned].
Sebastian,
Minor question, related to my previous question about “universally applicable morality”: google turns up no hits for “methodological constructivism”, can you point me to what you are referring to?
“Minor question, related to my previous question about “universally applicable morality”: google turns up no hits for “methodological constructivism”, can you point me to what you are referring to?”
It is what I call non-relativist constructivism. I was asked to research the literature, and everything I found that was willing to tackle the subject at all suggested that if constructivism wasn’t relativist, it was because it was merely describing the method of learning and mediating knowledge with nothing on the truth value of the knowledge. (For example it could explain how people ended up with false knowledge). I call that methodological constructivism because it deals with the methods not the values (it is also largely focused on individuals). But that was mostly by critics of constructivism, and most of the other critcs of constructivism straight out say it is a tool of justifying relativism. I would rather have read something by someone who is a hard constructivist but also who explains how they justify forcibly changing someone else. I would love if someone would refer me to something like that.
“Demonstrably, most people’s beliefs are changeable by experience or persuasion.”
Quite, but you are undercutting the very most powerful and common tools for talking about morality. By relegating them to pure preference you remove the ability to say things like “It would be better if…” or “It would be more just if…”.
I guess I’d be better off with an example. How would you go about arguing that it would be better for me to prefer blue over red without ever referring to a universal?
Not really. “It would be better if..” is shorthand for, “I think it would be better if…” And, “It would be more just if…” is shorthand for, “I think it would be more just if…”
When I hear you, relying on natural law or god’s word or whatever objective morality it is you believe in, say, “It would be more just if…” what I hear you saying is, “I believe it would be more just if…”
I fully acknowledge that it removes the ability for you to say those things if you become a social constructionist. But it does not remove the ability to say such things for the vast majority of us as evidenced by the fact that we all say those things and many of us are social constructionists.
“But it does not remove the ability to say such things for the vast majority of us as evidenced by the fact that we all say those things and many of us are social constructionists.”
Why isn’t that evidence that you are nearly as much social constructionist as you think?
It doesn’t really explain why you want to convince me that blue is better than red. It seems like you aren’t really taking the idea of preference to heart.
Just noting this started as a conversation about social construction of *gender.* There’s decent evidence as far as I know for there being a few innate groundings of behavior that humans find moral*, based on studies that show the same behaviors in other primate groupings, and some other stuff. They’re not absolute morals — to an atheist, what would that even mean? — but they seem to be embedded human ones. They aren’t that elaborate, though, which is what you’d expect from basic brain structures, and they’re subject to some really stupid fallacies of the “you are not so smart” variety (http://youarenotsosmart.com/). Other stuff gets added on via social construction which is good.
TL;DR I am basically of the belief that while there is no such thing as an abstract absolute morality, there are things that can be said to be moral in regard to humans as a class based on innate factors. (But there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t covered and humans are subject to a lot of predictable and documentable mental errors.)
*We have words for when the brain structures that give rise to these morals are missing or malfunctioning.
Also, a lot of the vestigial popular ideas about cultural relativism come from the Margaret Mead “I would not interfere by helping with a snake bite” era, and the theory has moved on from there within the anthropological field.
(I’m going to assume that you meant “aren’t” instead of “are”. Is that correct? If not, ignore the remainder of this comment.)
1) I have no idea if I’m a social constructionist or not. You stated earlier that I am, so I’m going with it.
2) This is what I mean by we have no common ground for discussion because we’re each coming at this from such vastly different fundamentals.
3) I am more firmly convinced that we’re having a, “No, no, no, I’m the one at the exact center of the Universe,” conversation. I feel like you’re trying to engage me in a debate about unanswerable questions.
Yes it should have been aren’t.
I’m not sure how “different fundamentals” should be understood by a constructionist. Fundamentals are precisely what aren’t supposed to exist, only social constructions.
I suspect I’m seriously misunderstanding what noticing that a belief is “socially constructed” brings to the table. If it doesn’t alter your idea about the ultimate validity of beliefs, why bother to call it a socially constructed belief? Why not just call it a belief or an understanding or thought? What is adding “socially constructed” to the label supposed to do to change the underlying label or our understanding about it?
[Unless you are talking pure methodology]
Social construction in terms of gender provides an explanation for the wildly different gender roles we see in various cultures (most of the exceptions seem to be about reproductive stuff) and creates a starting point for understanding gender as a theory. In terms of practicality, it has some implications for how to move forward with an understanding of gender — but imo, it can only possibly be useful as long as it acknowledges realities of lived gender experiences in the contemporary world, and right now that can be dodgy, especially in regard to TERFs. Though there are trans folks who are social constructionists on gender.
I have no idea. What I’ve been trying to do is point out where your theories or assertions are incorrect. Thus my comment at 56.
From what I understand, you believe that there is an objective set of correct beliefs/morals/ethics. I don’t. So fundamentally different starting point. When you start telling me where my beliefs must logically lead, I tell you when that’s not true.
Whatever labels you put on it, believing that all morals are human creations and can therefore vary from culture to culture or person to person does not preclude me from fighting for the preeminence of my beliefs/values/morals/ethics in whatever way fits my beliefs/values/morals/ethics. Charles gave a really good and really detailed answer on why this is so.
This is a great example of why I think we can’t possibly have a productive discussion. Your image of a constructionist and how they must think is so radically different than mine that, even if we agree that “different fundamentals” = “different first principles”, we aren’t talking about the same thing. First we would have to come to an agreement that your image of a constructionist is wrong in some critical ways and correct your definition. And I don’t see that as a possibility. I certainly don’t have the skills necessary to get us there.
You’re going to have to take my word for it (and Charles S.’s much clearer words) that the people you call constructionists think very differently than you think they do.
So, I’m not a rationalist. I think trying to determine truth by reasoning from first principles is a misguided waste of energy.
Empirically, gender (to bring it back to that) seems very much to be something that is constructed, on a culture-by-culture and society-by-society basis, around the facts and conditions of, human reproduction, sexual attraction, labor conditions, sexual dimorphism, etc.
There are, empirically, a wide variety of gender systems, and they are, again empirically, mutable over time and place.
I do not like the current gender system of my society, and would like for it to change. Two of the many things I don’t like about it include: The two major gender roles, which I consider both socially and personally devastating, and the treatment of trans people (in the broad, Bornsteinian “gender outlaws” sense). I would like the gender system of my society to be different, in these and other respects.
I am going to try to change these by a number of means including exposure, suasion, social pressure, political pressure, and argument, roughly in that order. I would hope that, in the rare circumstances that it would be called for (interrupting a bashing, say), I would be willing to use physical force, but I don’t know until I’m in the situation.
So: I accept that there is wide variance in gender construction over culture, society, and time, because this is empirically true. I would like to change the current gender system of our society, because I consider the current gender system of our society to be a monstrous evil, responsible for untold suffering and personal harm to me, my family, my friends, and my community. The strategies I undertake to do that are based on observations and studies about what makes people change their mind, such as they are (the state of the field is truly wretched right now), filtered of course through personal experience, bias, and capability.
It is of no particular concern to me if you, or anyone else, considers this set of beliefs irrational or logically inconsistent, because I reject logical argument as a form of truth evaluation which trumps empirical study and direct observation of nature. This rejection is on empirical grounds: logical argument is demonstrably terrible at determining truth value.
Is that clear?
yrs–
–Ben
All of this reminds me of nothing quite as much as the certainty with which some religious types will argue that it’s impossible for atheists to have morality, because all morality flows from God, so without God how can you etc., etc.
And yet atheists who posses morality continue to exist nonetheless, possibly just to piss off these people.
This is, as Ben points out, the chief problem with relying on reason to the exclusion of empiricism, is that it leads to obviously false answers.
Upthread, Desipis posted:
This … seems clearly untrue?
Francoist Spain was officially Catholic. Fascist Italy was overwhelmingly Catholic. Nazi Germany was 94% Christian. Catholicism and all mainstream Christian sects believe in objective morality.
Sure, the USSR was atheist, but their morality was hardly subjective either, since they had the Moral Code of the Builder.
Soo … the great authoritarian movements of the 20th century both seem linked specifically to objective morality, which make sense. It’s hard to punish people for wrongthink if you don’t establish what rightthink is, and that there’s a higher authority empowered to define it.
—Myca
There’s also the Taliban and Islamic State, not exactly noted for their endorsement of socially constructed morality…
Myca, “All of this reminds me of nothing quite as much as the certainty with which some religious types will argue that it’s impossible for atheists to have morality, because all morality flows from God, so without God how can you etc., etc.
And yet atheists who posses morality continue to exist nonetheless, possibly just to piss off these people.”
I don’t believe I’ve said anything remotely like that. In fact I don’t believe I’ve suggested that anybody here doesn’t possess morality. In fact having read here for years, I’m very convinced that you all possess a strong sense of morality. That is why it is somewhat surprising that you don’t think there is anything objective to it.
Ben. ” because I reject logical argument as a form of truth evaluation which trumps empirical study and direct observation of nature. This rejection is on empirical grounds: logical argument is demonstrably terrible at determining truth value.”
These kinds of things lead me to believe that you aren’t a constructivist in any sense of the word that has been used on this thread. When discussing moral issues “truth evaluation”, “empirical study” and “truth value” literally don’t make sense the way you are using them if you were a constructivist.
Myca,
I think I disagree with your claim that the USSR didn’t favor social constructivism (that is the reason for the preference for Lysenko-ism, isn’t it?), and definitely disagree with your evidence for that claim. Having a set of codified moral laws is something social constructivists are perfectly capable of. To argue otherwise is to commit the same mistake that you point out that Sebastian is making.
Likewise, “It’s hard to punish people for wrongthink if you don’t establish what rightthink is, and that there’s a higher authority empowered to define it.” is wrong (or rather, irrelevant) for the same reason (and shows you don’t spend much time on Tumblr!). Hardline social constructivists can establish what is rightthink, and can recognize a socially constructed higher authority (either God, the Central Committee, or some established body of text) that defines it.
[edited to add] I mean, desipis’s throw-away line you were trolled by was baseless and unsubstantiated, but that doesn’t justify a shoddy counter argument.
Sebastian: This conversation began with you proposing that mainstream feminists, because they believe that gender is socially constructed, cannot possibly really support or believe trans people.
The dominant strand of modern feminism believes that most/all of the differences between men and women are social constructs, which leaves trans people in an odd place of insisting upon differences which feminists classify as not really being real.
What I just stated is, as far as I can tell, an extremely mainstream feminist view of gender and how it works. It’s absolutely in line with Laurie Penny’s statement, which you categorically rejected as logically capable of including trans people.
Empirically, it is capable of including trans people, because it does.
Laurie Penny:
So here it is. I consider “woman” to be a made-up category, an intangible, constantly changing idea with as many different definitions as there are cultures on Earth. You could say the same thing about “justice” or “money” or “democracy” — these are made-up ideas, stories we tell ourselves about the shape of our lives, and yet they are ideas with enormous real-world consequences. Saying that gender is fluid doesn’t mean that we have to ignore sexism. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Me:
Empirically, gender (to bring it back to that) seems very much to be something that is constructed, on a culture-by-culture and society-by-society basis, around the facts and conditions of, human reproduction, sexual attraction, labor conditions, sexual dimorphism, etc.
There are, empirically, a wide variety of gender systems, and they are, again empirically, mutable over time and place.
I do not like the current gender system of my society, and would like for it to change. Two of the many things I don’t like about it include: The two major gender roles, which I consider both socially and personally devastating, and the treatment of trans people (in the broad, Bornsteinian “gender outlaws” sense). I would like the gender system of my society to be different, in these and other respects.
These are not incompatible statements. They are highly overlapping and roughly equivalent.
yrs–
–Ben
Emphatic agreement with Ben, especially his first post. Really nicely stated, Ben, thanks.
You are hyperbolically overreading me, which is odd since you literally quote me right afterward. Nowhere did I say “cannot possibly really support or believe trans people.” Everywhere I have said “possibly exposes some problems with the theory”. It is the theory that has problems, not trans people. And not even mainstream feminists. I didn’t say that THEY don’t support trans people. I said that some of the theories they claim to believe don’t easily fit with the empirical reality of trans people.
You are pretty clearly not a hard constructionist like Amp or Jake, as you repeatedly assert the importance of universals and empirical knowledge about moral topics. Which is great.
I don’t disagree with methodological constructionism AT ALL.
I’m not arguing that NOTHING is constructed. I’m merely arguing whether or not they are constructed has nothing to do with the truth value of the statements. The way you are using things like “empirically” relating to morality is incompatible with hard constructionism. A hard constructionist doesn’t believe that those things are empirical. So great, you aren’t a hard constructionist.
Which was my suggestion all along–that maybe hard constructionism doesn’t fit the facts very well and maybe we have to be clearer about that.
I can’t speak for the Squid, but Amp (who is at our house right now) agreed with me that Ben’s post nailed it. So, I don’t think you really understand our positions.
In that case you have mislabeled me. And I agree with Mandolin & Amp about how on the mark Ben’s comments are.
Sebastian H:
You have misunderstood my analogy.
Charles:
In the first part, my impression was that Soviet Communism viewed its morality and conclusions as objectively true rather than socially constructed, but I may certainly be wrong. I’d actually think of Lysenkoism as evidence for, rather than against this … would you mind running through your thought process on this?
In the second part, you’re absolutely right, that was a bad example.
—Myca
In the first part, my impression was that Soviet Communism viewed its morality and conclusions as objectively true rather than socially constructed, but I may certainly be wrong
You are not just wrong, you are dead wrong. A big deal was made about how morality is derived from what is good for society, not in a general, objectively true sense, but the good for society at the stage it currently is. It was well understood that as we neared the elusive communism, and left behind the transitional socialism, morality would change to reflect the more advanced society.
Of course, there were axioms, such as that societies, over time, always move towards a more advanced … Hmm… not only do I lack the English vocabulary, I cannot even recall the Bulgarian/Russian nomenclature. ‘Общественно-экономическая формация’ seems to translate into ‘social order’.
Collective navel-gazing and pontificating would lead to amazing conclusions like “Wars of aggression are morally justified, nayh, morally imperative if they will lead to advancement of social order”, which was not so different from “Kill the infidel!” I was taught that in high school and college, in the late 70s and early 80s, both as a high school student and as an agent provocateur tasked to discredit dissident professors.
My first step to the road of joining law enforcement was writing an essay comparing what we were taught in “Moral and rule of law’ to Catholic religion, and making the case that just as the latter was the opium of the masses, so did the former help ease the hardships of the road to the bright future. I did not realize until much later how important that those few pages were to how my life went until I found them as the first attachment to my file, after the system fell. It could have gone much worse for me…
Ah, well, I will 100% take the word of an eyewitness! I’ll rescind my earlier, stronger claim, and retreat to a simple “whether you think morality is objective or socially constructed seems to have nothing at all to do with whether you also favor authoritarianism.”
—Myca
Halloween is over, which means it’s once again time for the War on Christmas. Opening shots: the Starbucks cups are just plain red, rather than red with pictures of snowflakes and ice skaters like they were last year, and this lack of snow pictures is clearly an insult to Christians. Or something.
BARRY’S BRAIN: That article was good! Let’s read the comments.
BARRY: Good idea, Brain! (reads) AAAARGH! NOOOO!
BRAIN: Bwa-ha-ha! You FOOL!
(In response to the comments here.)
Have changing gender roles made it more likely that a policeman or mailman police will marry a box turtle? Perhaps so, in the Busy, Busy World of Richard Scarry, where box turtles of any gender might become a policeman or mailman — er, police officer or letter carrier.
Oh, spare us your pointless bickering about mindless symbolism; you’re missing the point!
In the past: snowflakes. Now: no snowflakes. Can you say global climate change? (…Duh…!)
Myanmar (aka Burma) just had an election.
The NDP (anti-military dictatorship party) won in a landslide. Which isn’t surprising, but it wasn’t open-and-shut. The USDP (military dictatorship party) has actually conceded the election which is a huge deal, because last time there was an election (in 1991) they just nullified the result.
This is a pretty big deal. I mean, there’s a lot of problems. For instance: the current constitution allows the military to take over the government again in an emergency. For another instance: during the campaign, the NDP started race-baiting the country’s Muslim minority. But it’s a huge start towards a functional, democratic state in what has been one of the most moribund, brutally totalitarian countries in Southeast Asia.
Also of note, to geo-political watchers: Myanmar is the easiest* overland route between China and India. If it does stabilize, it could well become the most important trade route in the world.
* Not easy. Notoriously difficult terrain, remote, etc. But easier than crossing the Himalaya.
Dan Waddell and Paula Higgins have done some additional investigation into Tim Hunt’s remarks (as well as analyzing the aftermath of those remarks and testing the veracity of the spin that followed), last discussed here (I believe) in July: Saving Tim Hunt.
Thanks for the link, Mookie; that article is excellent, and has a bunch of information that I hadn’t known before.
That’s some impressive equivocation about the fact that there’s an audio recording of people laughing at Tim Hunt’s clearly self deprecating joke.
I look forward to seeing similar skills in action to defend the way Melissa Click incited violence against student journalist.
Reproducibility Crisis: The Plot Thickens
There is some really important work going on in psychology right now about the systematic dismantling of decades of fraudulent results. This study is particularly damning.
The epidemic of fraudulent science isn’t limited to psychology — it is nigh-certainly present in every science — but it is where the debunking work is being done right now. This doesn’t represent a problem with psychology, but a problem with the process of academic science entirely.
Wow, that funnel plot is gorgeous. …I mean, also terrifying, but a beautiful illustration of the problem. Thanks for the link.
Christmas is a big deal to me. No, not the presents part. That’s a big hassle. It’s the spiritual aspect. I struggle with that, but manage to preserve it by singing. The group I sing with, the Chicago Master Singers (that I just joined this year) will have two concerts the 2nd weekend of December, which also means that I’ve got a rehearsal every week with them until then. My wife and I will be going to the Do-It-Yourself Messiah downtown, my church choir will do a ton of singing and some friends of mine and I that I used to sing with are going to get together to do a concert at a local Catholic church. It’ll all mostly be sacred music, not “holiday” or “winter” music, and I find that actually thinking about what I”m singing helps a lot.
All of which is a roundabout way to explain what Christmas means to me. What Christmas does NOT means to me is seeing Starbucks put something on their coffee cups. I don’t care if they put “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” or “Go Fuck Yourself” on their cups. I view it as a victory against the over-commercialization of Christmas, myself.
Since trigger warnings on college campuses are a recurring topic here, some people here might be interested in seeing this article and hearing some of the thoughts people had about it on a FaceBook discussion I was part of:
My trigger warning disaster
-I almost didn’t read this article because it had the word “coddled” in the title, even though I know that the author didn’t choose the title. I really don’t think that “coddled” is what’s going on with the students in question; I think people are using it as a snarl word so they can be dismissive of them, and if an article takes that approach it won’t have much worthwhile to say. While I often don’t agree with what they’re trying to do, I actually admire the courage that it takes to stand up to authority figures like a lot of student activists are doing.
-Setting boundaries with students is an important part of being a professor, and that is not new–you can’t just give in every time a student wants an extension on their paper, for example. They may be becoming a bit less meek and more pushy–I’m not convinced, but maybe–but it’s a difference of degree. One thing that could help professors in setting boundaries and denying requests/demands for change in the way a class is taught is if the university makes clear ahead of time the types of situations where it will have the professor’s back, so that professors are not left unsure if the university will back them up when they set boundaries.
-An example of a perfectly reasonable boundary to set: “We will see more positive representations of black men later in the course, but we are going chronologically and we’re going to stick to that order. Meanwhile, here’s the historical context of this film, why it was considered a positive representation at the time, and why it is culturally important.” A lot of the stuff students were asking for was, IMO, unreasonable.
-The author doesn’t go into this, really, but I wouldn’t read too much into the girl running from the room crying. It could be that there was other stuff going on that meant she was just barely holding it together and that little bit of extra stress pushed her over the edge into crying; it could be that she just cries easily. Anecdotally, I’ve heard women say that when they get angry or frustrated they cry, and that does happen to me; I like to try and explain, if I end up crying in public, that I look more upset than I am, but when I was younger I was less conscious of how my crying made other people feel and more conscious of my profound embarrassment, so getting out of the room ASAP doesn’t seem like a surprising reaction from a college student.
-The bit at the end where she talks about the other things that are more important seems like a false dichotomy of the ‘Dear Muslimah’ variety… but paying attention to trivial things really can suck your attention away from more important things… but students should be paying attention to their classes anyway (jeez, do your reading, students in this article!), and how close to and well-informed you are about an issue, and how much power you have to change things should affect it… but the white woman who was a black studies minor may have overestimated how well-informed she was.
-I think maybe the big takeaway from this article is that professors are human beings too, with all the vulnerability that goes with it, and may be dealing with their own oppression and histories of trauma. Sometimes people make the point that anti-PC people can just as easily be accused of hypersensitivity as PC people, but looked at from a different angle, students should think about everyone’s feelings, not just other students’ feelings.
-That said, while I think it’s OK that the author was mad that some students thought people in abusive relationships couldn’t consent to sex, it certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of opinion that’s beyond the pale, or that she should consider it an injustice that she had to hear people express it in class.
Closet puritan: Thanks for that link. This quote in particular resonated with me:
These seem to me important questions to ask.
I also think the “old white dude” colleague that she spoke to was onto something when he said that students might not be deferring to her in the way they do to him. I have been aware for a long time that I rarely face the kinds of issues in my classes that my women colleagues do. How gender dynamics play out in a classroom, especially one where class discussion and direct student-professor engagement are central, is a complex issue. But I know that because I am six feet tall, male, old enough to be most of my students’ father, and white that I get a certain level of respect and deference from them that many of my colleagues do not.
Interestingly, I have never had to deal with the question of trigger warnings, despite the fact that I deal with a lot of material in my classes that you might think would merit one. I provide an awful lot of context so that students are rarely surprised by the material, though they may not know the specifics of what it contains, but I’ve never had an experience like the ones the writer of this article describes. I have begun to wonder how much that has to do with the fact that I teach at a community college and the socioeconomic, educational-background, political, and other differences between the students in my classes the ones at many of the four-year institutions I’ve read about where trigger warnings have been an issue.
Absolutely. I’m female, 4’11”, and just turned 35 but still regularly get carded for alcohol. One issue that I’ve seen talked about a lot is how students address their professors. I introduce myself as Dr. LastName, and sign all emails as Dr. LastName. I also tell my students that, since LastName is difficult for some people to pronounce, Dr L. is fine. I still get tons of students addressing me as Miss LastName, Mrs. LastName, and FirstName. Meanwhile, some male grad students who teach classes, who tell their students to call them by their first names, still get addressed as Professor. I’ve also had students try to physically intimidate me into giving them higher grades in ways that almost none of my male colleagues have ever had to deal with.