I’d like to comment on this recent cartoon from the webcomic xkcd.
This cartoon was brought up on a message board that I read and participate in, at the end of a long conversation about politics (although the point of the message board is non-political, the board does deal with politics sometimes). The conversation was about “tolerance,” and I voiced my opinion that I’m very suspicious when people bring up the topic of “tolerance” as an abstract, because in my experience, people who are talking about tolerance in that context often want to coopt the language of civil rights in order to draw false equivalence between non-equivalent statements. “I support rights for gay people” and “gay people are immoral” are not equivalent statements.
While I like and respect the two people who posted this cartoon, the effect* of introducing the cartoon into the conversation is to minimize anyone who is passionate about politics by saying that their opinions are based not on clear thinking, or passion, or reaction to oppression, but on “rationalization.”
There is a legitimate point being made in this cartoon, as any teacher well knows. Teaching in front of a classroom is a tricky business. It’s difficult to be endowed with so much trust, and I appreciate that people struggle with that.
Outside of math, there are rarely objective and concrete facts that can be pointed to with absolute certainty, by anyone, from any place. 2 + 2 = 4 is not, or at least should not be, a controversial statement.
But the simple fact that someone can argue with me when I say “I support gay rights” is not an indication that I am simply “rationalizing” my position. To suggest it is so is to dismiss the concerns and oppression of gay people.
To say that caring about and debating politics is all about “smart people rationalizing” is the epitome of a priveleged statement. People who are fighting for their rights and survival do not have the privelege to say “oh, well, it all doesn’t really matter” or “I guess this is just a difference of opinion.”
In this country, black women have been sterilized for the color of their skin. I strongly doubt that my interlocutors in that discussion would have agreed that it was acceptable behavior. For me to argue against it — for black women to argue against it — would they call this an exercise in rationalization? I certainly hope not.
People suffer. Queer people suffer. Women suffer. Poor people suffer. People of color suffer. Our suffering is not a cheap political point, to be argued away by saying that our justifiable anger is merely an example of “smart people rationalizing.”
But I don’t really want to pick on the people who posted this cartoon. They’re nice; they’re smart; and I don’t think either one of them intended to offend me. On a personal level, I’m not upset with them. But politically, I want to address the message behind that maneuver, and behind this cartoon, because it’s larger than a single exchange in a debate.
Americans have a tendency to slump toward the middle. This tendency was described by Durkheim when he was talking about Democratic societies; it is the ultimate effect of democratic thinking. If the majority opinion is deemed ‘right’ by a political system, then it’s not shocking that many people rush to agree with it, because they want to be right. I believe Durkheim described this phenomenon as the “tyrrany of the majority.”
One effect of this is to create the Overton window, the window of acceptably moderate discourse. As I understand the theory, it works something like this:
Because people are not very good at being amateur pollsters, the Overton window isn’t based on demographics (25% of people are more conservative, 25% are more liberal, so I’ll position myself in between). Instead, it functions on concepts (25% of ideas are more conservative, 25% are more liberal, so I’ll position myself in between). So when conservatives rattle around saying things like “ABORTION IS MURDER” they pull the Overton window to the right. When liberals insist on being “reasonable” in an attempt to “sway the middle” and they stick to a wishy-washy position like “of course abortion is bad, but…,” then they allow the conservatives to continue shifting the window rightward, because the spectrum is between a radically conservative idea and a moderately liberal one. People say “well, I don’t want to be as conservative as the radicals (“ABORTION IS MURDER”) or as liberal as what I perceive as the liberals (“of course abortion is bad, but…”), so I’ll go for a middle position (say: abortion should be legal in cases of rape and incest, but not for “frivolous reasons” [read: reasons I disagree with]).
If we buy into the theory, then if we wanted to actually pull people further in our direction, more liberals would say “abortion on demand, without apology,” or more extreme positions — which is why when Amanda of Pandagon wrote a post claiming that “abortion is a moral good,” she titled it Time to Open up the Overton Window Some More. Ideally, if the spectrum of ideas that were constantly brought to the public consciousness was between “ABORTION IS MURDER” on the right, and “Abortion is a moral good” on the left, then the people who value moderation would end up at a middle position that looks more like what is currently leftist — say, “Safe, legal, and rare.”** Conservatives have been much more vocally radical in the Ameican public square than liberals, and this affects the way that Americans conceive politics (which we can see from the fact that American politics are radically conservative compared to the politics of other countries in the global north).
In American society, a moderate position implies rationality. It implies that the person who is taking the moderate position has heard both sides and is able to balance them. It implies balance, a lack of excess or extremity: this person is neither too much of one thing, nor the other.
Because the “tyrrany of the majority” is an embedded cultural assumption in America, all of us end up looking at the extremes of any argument not just for their actual substance as statements, but also as markers of the extreme ends of a continuum. They are the definition of extremity and excess; a position in the middle is the definition of moderation and reason. And it is from this perspective that people draw the false equivalency between extreme positions.
“Discrimination against gay people should not be illegal” and “gay rights are an incontrovertible part of human rights” are not equivalent statements if we look at the actual substance of them. One is inherently oppressive. The other is part of the fight against oppression. It seems ridiculous to look at active oppression, and the protest of oppression, as equivalent positions from this perspective.
They are only equivalent if we don’t look at the substance of the positions themselves, but instead view them as the end points on the continuum of acceptable discourse. From this perspective, it’s easy to draw equivalencies between oppression and protest. As end points, rather than arguments, both arguments are equidistant from the middle. If we’re thinking about them this way, then we can go on to say things like: “both parties are being equally infractious” “both parties are equally extreme” “both parties are equally irrational.”
Both parties are just “smart people rationalizing.”
In order to see things this way, you have to stop looking at the substance of the arguments. You have to ignore what the arguments are actually saying, in order to look at them from the perspective of being points on an abstracted spectrum.
It’s harder to employ this reasoning if you are actually being oppressed. It’s hard to be denied marriage, or to be given unequal pay, to have people think you are stupid and dirty because of the color of your skin, to be less likely to be hired because you carry more excess food under your skin, to be likely to be sexually assaulted or murdered if someone notices that your genitals aren’t what they expect — it’s hard to experience these things, and hear people make statements in support of oppression, and believe that the two statements are equal.
To my knowledge, the people who posted the cartoon support gay rights, feminism, and anti-racism. They seem to position themselves as liberal. But the message I get from the cartoon is that they are still willing to abstract the political debate away from what it actually signifies into some kind of game where the two opposed parties are just rationalizing from opposite sides of the spectrum — as if the political ideas that one side is expressing don’t have the ability to actually hurt real people. Debate is not just a ping pong match of rationalization from two sides that are academically opposed. There are lives at stake.
Now, the debate in question only glancingly dealt with actual issues of oppression — although it did deal with those issues. But the insidiousness of the idea that political debate is just sophisticated rationalization rather than an act of passion, reason, and activism stems from the same power dynamics that are at play when oppression is on the table.
The concept implies that to voice any strong political feeling is incivil and distasteful. It is, after all, extreme rather than moderate. To debate politically is to refuse to be part of the moderate middle.
I like these people, but it may be harder to debate with them again. Based on the cartoon, I’m afraid that when I speak to them, what they’re hearing is “blah, blah, blah, rationalization,” and not, “Do not oppress my sisters and brothers. Do not oppress me. Do not commandeer my body to your purposes. Do not make laws to regulate my life based on religious assumptions that I do not share. Pay me equally. Treat me equally. Respect me equally. Acknowledge me as human.”***
I understand that the people who posted the cartoon are my political allies, and that they support my rights and other people’s rights. But the message I get from their cartoon — whether it was the message they intended to send or not — is that they are willing to reduce my striving to rationalization.
—
*Please note that I am discussing effect and not intent. I don’t know what the intent of the people who posted the cartoon was. However, since it does contain the insinuation that political debates are just the rationalization of smart people, I think it is perfectly within stride for me (and any other passionate poster who was on the thread) to interpret the posting of the cartoon in the way that I have.
**It’s not necessary to be cynical about doing this. Plenty of people do believe radical leftist positions. I support Amanda’s idea that “abortion is a moral good.” The point is to stop censoring ourselves in an attempt to win over the mushy middle, because we end up shooting ourselves in the foot. (Feel free to talk about this in this thread, but if it has to do with rape definitions, take the posts over to that thread, because I don’t want a derail.)
***I don’t mean to imply that the people I’m actually speaking with don’t acknowledge me as human, or support various rights for various groups. Those are comments that I address toward the American public in general.
Final note, to the people who posted the cartoon: I know you’re going to read this, and I want to publicly repeat that I like you and that I don’t mean this as an attack. I am not posting this because I hate you, or am angry with you, or want to erase your opinions. I am posting this because I want to express my reactions not only to what you said, but to something that happens in American political discourse in general. I hope that you will try to hear what I am saying, and I hope that you will both bear in mind that I do respect you very much.
I think very few things are absolutely right. most of my opinions are 60/40. I believe I’m right but can see the other side of the argument. the further you get from abstractions and the closer you get to policy the more true I find this to be.
2 + 2 = 4 is not, or at least should not be, a controversial statement.
Well, if you’re talking about vectors, you could have 2 units in direction A and 2 units in direction B such that 2+2 could be any number between 0 (A=-B) and 4 (A=B).
“I think very few things are absolutely right. most of my opinions are 60/40. I believe I’m right but can see the other side of the argument. the further you get from abstractions and the closer you get to policy the more true I find this to be.”
There aren’t only two positions in any given debate. Political positions are not binary. Are you saying that you position yourself 60% of the way toward the liberal end on the acceptable spectrum? The actual possibilities of discourse are much larger.
No. What i meant was that most of my positions are only mostly correct (imo). There’s usually a compelling case to be made the other way. The other way has merit but I’ve decided that my way is slightly more correct. I don’t have a perfect answer; least bad is usually the best that I can get.
I know that there’s usually many possible positions. I was simplifying for brevity.
The overton window stuff seems a lot more relevant to advocacy and partisan issues than it does to a general discussion. It’s like negotiation. I want x so I’ll ask for 4x and let you bargain me down.
“Discrimination against gay people should not be illegal” and “gay rights are an incontrovertible part of human rights” are not equivalent statements if we look at the actual substance of them. One is inherently oppressive.
They’re both oppressive. One oppresses people on the basis of their sexuality. Another oppresses people on the basis of their religious belief. It’s certainly reasonable to decide that one of these oppressions (or the other) is so much more important than the other that, too bad, the other side has to go pound sand.
But there are actual harms being weighed. It isn’t one side being oppressed and the other side playing word games.
“Another oppresses people on the basis of their religious belief.”
Nope. Your right to swing your fist ends at my face. You are perfectly welcome to hold whatever religious belief you want; you stop being able to enact it when my face (or job, or marriage) is involved.
I’m not taking away anything from you by saying that you can’t punch me. You want oppression against people on the basis of religious belief, then we need to start denying housing to Episcopalians. Don’t compare apples and slabs of concrete.
“There’s usually a compelling case to be made the other way.”
I guess I was trying to argue that there isn’t always a single “other way.”
Would you apply this theory to discussions like “is it okay to sterilize black women with illegally obtained consent?”
I’m sorry if I’m not understanding you, btw.
Nope. Your right to swing your fist ends at my face. You are perfectly welcome to hold whatever religious belief you want; you stop being able to enact it when my face (or job, or marriage) is involved.
I agree when it comes to your face. I disagree, when it comes to your job. Marriage is a bit more complicated; let’s set that one aside for the moment, if we can.
The government should not be able to discriminate against you in its hiring decisions; the government is not allowed to have a private moral code, or to base its rules on particular religious traditions. But individuals are allowed to have such a code, and for many Americans, homosexual behavior is a moral wrong, on religious grounds.
Requiring those individuals to disregard their deeply-held religious values in the conduct of their own lives is oppressive. It may be justified oppression – it is entirely legitimate for the political system to decide, for example, that a religious belief that women who have sex before marriage should be burned alive, is not going to be allowed to be honored. The system balances the oppressions (a woman’s right not to be burned alive, a person’s right to live out their religion) and decides that one is more important than the other.
But it was a weighing process, not a process of ignoring one side’s interests and values because they’re nonexistent.
I’m not taking away anything from you by saying that you can’t punch me.
Sure you are. It’s just that it’s reasonable to take it away.
You want oppression against people on the basis of religious belief, then we need to start denying housing to Episcopalians.
“We”?
If you have an objection to renting your house out to Episcopalians, it is fine with me. There are lots of other houses. It’s not OK with the government; through the political process, that’s gotten added to the protected categories.
But again, there was a weighing process where the relative rights involved were balanced and considered.
I know this is somewhat tangential, but: GARGH!
Math is the study of logically connected patterns. It is not the study of objective truths. Sometimes the patterns are clearly related to the real world. However, most of the time the patterns exist only within arbitrary systems professors developed to get tenure.
It’s why we’re just as unemployable as our cousins in the Philosophy department — and why so many of us head to law school.
“is it okay to sterilize black women with illegally obtained consent?”
That’s a pretty easy one. No it’s not okay. I have a hard time thinking up a hypothetical justification for it.
My point is that once you get further away from abstract cases there are more and more defensible alternatives.
It’s not a universal truth that there is never a correct answer. (imo)
considering that some white guys in england about 150 years ago basically came up with the entire concept of a specific sexual identity revolving around being homosexual, it is often surprising to see people behaving as though it has always been normal to identify oneself by one’s sexual practices firstly and everything else nextly.
there are still plenty of cultures where whom you prefer to have sex with is not an indicator in any way of your identity as such. and in fact, i suspect rejecting a pseudonorm introduced by, gasp! privileged upper class white men might actually be a vast improvement in just about every respect.
What, no Godel jokes yet?
The Overton stuff is an interesting theory; I have read a fair bit on it though not recently.
I am curious though as to whether I am reading your meaning right.
Take gay rights and abortion rights, for example: they seem pretty obvious to ME, and I don’t much give a shit granting them pisses the hell out of some people.
I don’t doubt, though, there are people whose lives have been personally worsened by the granting of abortion rights or gay rights. I just don’t care about them.
So, should I concede they have a burden, and argue that it’s a REASONABLE one? Or should I allege they have no burden in hopes of moving the Overton window?
Overton obviously says to take the extreme position, because by alleging “no burden” is borne by your opponents you place the moderate view closer to your target goal.
But though it’s the correct move under Overton analysis, is it true? Not from my perspective, it’s not. So if you want to support Overton gaming, you often have to accept the fact that your position will be at odds with what you believe to be true.
And THEN what?
Some people are of the “better to win no matter what the costs; we can fix things once we’ve won” camp.
Some people are of the “better to know we fought fairly, outcome be damned” camp.
You seem to be attacking the second camp, alleging that “they are willing to reduce [your] striving to rationalization”
But we (global ‘we’ for a moment) are supposed to be the “good guys.” Don’t you think there’s some cost to this? Don’t you think that focusing solely on the Overton window (which essentially suggest taking the most extreme position possible) is inherently conflicted with the belief that extremism in politics is a problem? because I sure as hell think that WE are doing a lot of (justified) complaining about extremism on THEIR side.
It’s like a confused pacifist: Is this a preemptive war, an aggressive war, or self-defense?
There are those of us, like me, who feel that extremism is a problem in and of itself. We’re not “apolitical.” We just have (rationalization again) different motivations.
**I use “burden” instead of “oppress” deliberately, to avoid the issues with defining “oppression”
And THEN what?
Then you’ve become a lying hack, and people of intellectual integrity can start ignoring you. ;)
(Not you personally. You appear to be one of the angels.)
Now, now, Robert, he may have honestly misunderstood what the Overton Window means. :)
Sailorman, “extremism” is most certainly not a problem in itself unless you can explain what you mean by the word. (Generally when we accuse conservatives of extremism we mean to say that most of America disagrees with them, not because this makes them wrong but because it’s true and pointing it out advances our goals.)
Similarly, you give no clear reason for calling one of your hypothetical claims more “extreme”. The Overton Window normally refers to policy positions, and places them on a perceived political spectrum (generally “left” and “right”). In your hypothetical situation you seem to invent a new spectrum that has nothing to do with policies. Instead your new spectrum involves claims of fact. If you mean to say that you oppose lying, I assume most of us would agree with you. This has no necessary connection to the Overton Window. It also has no link with common political usage; telling the truth to children, for example, seems like a radical extremist view in America today.
Great. Who are they? What worsened for them? Was what worsened an actual worsening, or just a mitigation of expected privelege?
I refuse to interact in argument with a fuzzy and non-specific invocation of people who I suspect are mythical.
I said nothing about gaming. I said for people to say what they believe WITHOUT gaming. See the foornotes.
Not true. I said: “It’s not necessary to be cynical about doing this. Plenty of people do believe radical leftist positions. I support Amanda’s idea that “abortion is a moral good.” The point is to stop censoring ourselves in an attempt to win over the mushy middle, because we end up shooting ourselves in the foot.”
It would be political gaming for me to refuse to acknowledge my actual position because of an attempt to persuade someone else by pretending to hold a less extreme position than I actually do.
No, I’m attacking people who say that all political debate is useless rationalization. They have nothing to do with either camp you described.
You’re doing exactly what I describe in the post. Y0u’re creating a false equivalance between my “extremist” position and the “extremist” position on their side.
I don’t hate their positions because they’re extremist. I hate them because they’re dangerous and wrong.
It’s only when you stop looking at the substance of my argument or their argument, and reduce both of them to points on a spectrum, that you’re able to give them a label that describes both of them: extremist. This label has nothing to do with rightness or wrongness.
But extremism is relative. That’s the whole point. A position is not extreme in and of itself; it’s only constructed as extreme within a particular setting.
Giving women the vote used to be an extreme position. Now taking it away would be an extreme position.
It’s impossible for “extremism” to be the problem. You may mean something else. Dogmatism, perhaps? But that’s unrelated to the conversation above.
“Then you’ve become a lying hack, and people of intellectual integrity can start ignoring you. ;)
(Not you personally. You appear to be one of the angels.)”
I have honestly no idea whether to read this as a harmless joke — in which case, LOL — or a potshot at the people on the thread who don’t agree with Sailorman. :-P
“i suspect rejecting a pseudonorm introduced by, gasp! privileged upper class white men might actually be a vast improvement in just about every respect.”
I agree that it’s important and useful to remember the relatively ahistorical roots of the category homosexuality.
I don’t know who this is in reaction to, but your speciifc suggestion strikes me as being about as feasible as the insinuations that black people should “just ignore being called n*ggers, it’s not like he punched you in the mouth.” A rather brilliant description of white privelege I read recently described the ways in which people who have privelege don’t need to worry about the opinions of other people in the same way as people who lack privelege, because the latter group has real fear of discrimination and exclusion.
I don’t know whether or not it’s a useful goal for homosexuals to work toward the dissolution of homosexuality as a construction for understanding sex, but I am certain that simply refusing to interact with the identity of homosexuality will not in itself mean that people who are homosexual will not be discriminated against or targetted for assault.
I am not really sure in what context you were making your comment, so I apologize if I’m misreading your intent, and thus replying to something you weren’t really arguing at all.
Roberts point on gay rights is a good example of what I meant. I think gays have the same rights as everyone else and that the state should recognize this. (We’re born with rights imo.)
I think it’s morally wrong not to rent property to a person because they’re gay.
But I also think that people should be able to rent to whomever they like, or not. (for instance I don’t think anyone should have to rent space for a porno store if they have moral objections to porn.)
So there’s a conflict.
I think passing laws making it a crime to refuse to rent on the basis of race are a great thing despite the infringements on the rights of racists. It’s no where near a close call to me.
I don’t feel the same conviction about renting or employing based on sexual orientation. Many private businesses are actually ahead of state on recognizing benefits for same sex couples. It looks like the market and social pressure are achieving the right answer without any need to laws. (right = I agree)
In short, it’s complicated. There are compelling arguments either way.
Sorry if this is a confusing explanation. I’m still trying to come up with a clear and conscise explanation of what I’m trying to say.
I’m not familiar with the overton window. How is it different from game theory?
I have honestly no idea whether to read this as a harmless joke — in which case, LOL — or a potshot at the people on the thread who don’t agree with Sailorman. :-P
Well, it’s a potshot against the (hypothetical) behavior he described. I haven’t seen anyone here lie about their beliefs in order to shift the Window, and wasn’t attempting to insinuate that anyone was.
Great. Who are they? What worsened for them?
Well, vis a vis discrimination laws:
Their identity: People who own rental property in a number of cities (Berkeley and San Francisco among them) which have passed ordinances adding sexual orientation to the list of banned categories of discrimination in housing.
The harm done: Their ability to dispose of their property as they wished – specifically, to have a degree of control over the people living in their house – was constrained. In addition, their ability to behave in non-discriminatory but carefree ways is impinged. Instead of not caring at all about the sexual orientation of an applicant, a landlord now has to care about it even if he or she has no intention or desire to discriminate.
Some of those people, a lot of them even, didn’t want to discriminate in that fashion anyway; others (usually for religious reasons, though not always) did. Even the former group is negatively impacted by the law – the creation of a category of discrimination opens them to false claims (whether malicious or simple misunderstandings) of such discrimination even when they did not intend to discriminate.
Pre-ordinance, Landlord X might reject Tenant Y for some bona fide reason, or if he just didn’t like the cut of her jib. Post-ordinance, if X rejects Y and Y happens to be gay, Y can make a claim (however implausible) that X discriminated on the basis of orientation. X must now take exceptional care in rejecting gay applicants for bona fide reasons – particularly if through happenstance X ends up renting to a straight tenant instead.
Joe –
Here’s a good article about the Overton Window, written by people at the think tank where it originated.
Game theory is a general approach to minimizing the harm and/or maximizing the gain in a particular scenario. The Overton Window is a specific concept about what policies are politically feasible, and how to effectively make a particular infeasible policy more feasible.
uh, mandolin, considering that who you have sex with as a primary arbiter of identity was again invented by a buncha privileged white guys, i’m having a pretty hard time with the idea that it should be retained at all. it is a modern artifact that needs desperately to be jettisoned.
i mean, again, there are plenty of current cultures in which one’s choice to have sex with guys or girls or both or neither is just that– one’s sexual preferences. those preferences are not broken out and made out to be determiners of personality and personal identity.
200 years ago, the idea that if you slept with guys sometimes and girls other times you HAD to attach your identity to sex-based markers labelled ‘bisexual’ or ‘homosexual’ or ‘heterosexual’ would have been ludicrous.
fundamentally, the very idea that who you have sex with is relevant at all to such an extreme degree is directly derived from the white privilege of some rich guys who felt like the rest of the world just had to accept that their personal sexual peccadilloes had deeper meaning than they’d ever had before in society. it was an extraordinarily self-centred worldview and that it has trickled down to anyone else really is quite puzzling.
and as for privilege-calling, it looked suspiciously like you were invoking black suffering to bolster an argument that gay identity is essential rather than artificial. which is of course damnably privileged in itself of you to imply or suggest, if you were.
I didn’t say that gay identity was essential. I intended to say that asking people not to identify homosexuality as a socially real category in the United States in 2007 is not feasible, and if you’re calling for gay people to do it specifically, then it places a great onus on homosexuals to ignore something which, while culturally constructed, is a social reality in this time and place. Again, I wasn’t sure what your initial argument was, so I attempted to acknowledge that you may not have been calling for gay people to stop talking about themselves as gay at all; that was just what I got from your comment.
However, as this line of conversation has little to do with the initial post, I’m going to ask you to leave it here for now, simply because it’s not the conversation I’d intended for this space.
Well, I’m in the “it’s all rationalization” camp–sort of.
Which way you state the question makes a big difference.
In most accounts of rights, self-ownership and freedom of association are both critical human rights. So, how do you pose the question? Is it, “homosexuals have the same rights as everyone else, so why is it OK to discriminate against them,” or “Don’t people have a right to associate with, and to avoid, others based on any criteria they please”?
Stentor at Debatage has posted a reply to this post (in which he mistakes Mandolin for Maia, alas). Here’s a quote:
You can read his entire post here.
Regarding Stentor, I don’t know that I buy that A) the intransigence of beliefs is an indication of rationalization, or B) that beliefs are indeed intransigent. Speaking personally, I’ve learned a whole hell of a lot about, for instance, anti-racism and transpolitics, which has led me to change my stance on a number of issues. I don’t agree with — say — Robert, no. But again, one can only assume that “changing one’s mind” = “moving to the other side” if one is looking at politics through the broken binary metaphorical lens.
It interests me that this post has drawn attention from the people who have chosen to respond, including Stentor and SamChevre — and to a lesser extent, Robert (since he hangs out here more than S&SC, his participation doesn’t surprise me as much). I appreciate that it’s gotten y’all thinking, and provided an opportunity for Joe and Sailorman to express their defenses of a moderate position. That can only be to the good, and as a writer, I appreciate you all taking the time to read and respond.
Still, in my particular place as an activist, I am particularly interested in the reactions of people who are more likely to identify as left-wing or radical, and so if there’s anyone who is interested in participating in the discussion — but who, for instance, really doesn’t want to interact with the thread of the conversation that’s about proving gay rights don’t hurt people — I do hope you’ll join the conversation.
As regards the thread about gay rights, I realize that I set up certain political notions in the post, and so reacting to them is not exactly off topic. I used a specific example; you’re reacting to the specific example. But I’d rather talk about the forest than the bark on the tree, if at all possible.
“It interests me that this post has drawn attention from the people who have chosen to respond, including Stentor and SamChevre — and to a lesser extent, Robert (since he hangs out here more than S&SC, his participation doesn’t surprise me as much). ”
I withdraw this.
For some reason I had the impression that Stentor and SamChevre were self-identified Men’s Rights Activists. I don’t know why I had this impression, and I apologize for not checking it out before speaking on it.
Mandolin – the reason I found it hard to respond was because to me it was unclear what the cartoon meant by ‘political’. Often what people mean by that is the game of politics – Democrats vs. Republicans (or here Labour vs. National) and the fight for formal political power. I think that often is about smart people rationalising.
If you leave out any mention of party political stuff I agree with you, mostly. I think we should go out there ‘abortion on demand without apology’. Not because that’ll mean that ‘Safe, Legal and Rare’ will become the middle position, but to win ‘abortion on demand without apoology.’
While the overton window and the tyranny of the majority are sometimes true, they’re not always true. People can and have been convinced of radical ideas (think of juries who didn’t convict activists on all sorts of charges in the late 1960s and 1970s, sometimes knowing full well that the person had done what htey were accused of).
Those are very good points, Maia. Thank you.
Reason, commitment, debate and the Overton Window.
Reason: For purposes of my discussions on this web site, I have no goals besides my own edification. I strive to minimize the number of conclusions I hold, and the strength with which I hold them, in order to remain open to new ideas and analyses.
Commitment: In contrast, I understand Amp to embrace and proselytize for feminism. As I understand it, he will not permit any amount of information or analysis to cause him to accept views he would regard to be anti-feminist.
In short, I strive to embrace reason even at the expense of commitment; I understand Amp to embrace commitment even at the expense of reason. Happily, the facts and analyses with which I am acquainted have left Amp and me with many areas of agreement.
Debate: To me, debate is a ritualized contest of persuasion. In the US and elsewhere, high schools and colleges have turned it into a sporting event, with rules and tournaments and champions. It is no less ritualized in US political campaigns.
Mandolin objects to the suggestion that political debates reflect “rationalizations” – that is, arguments that promote a speaker’s conclusions but not a speaker’s motivations. But much like any other contest, people have learned strategies for winning. The person who feels the most passionately about a subject may very well NOT be the person who can best promote the subject in a debate. (Recall the adage, “The man with himself for a lawyer has a fool for a client.”)
I believe Amp is passionately committed to the cause of feminism. As a consequence, I cannot trust that he would candidly concede if he found evidence or analysis that would cause him to doubt the cause of feminism. To put it another way, I must suspect that any argument he offers merely reflects a smart person rationalizing.
This doesn’t offend me. I’m just not that interested in Amp’s endorsements, no matter how sincere. I’m more interested in learning about his data and analysis. And Amp has demonstrated reasonable felicity with arguments grounded in classical economics, libertarian thought and Christian scripture. I don’t concluded that Amp necessarily embraces all these world views; he merely offers them for the benefit of those who do. Some may regard these arguments as disingenuous rationalizations; I regard them as demonstrating regard for a diverse readership.
The Overton Window: I understand that people with philosophical commitments will seek to move the Overton Window of Respectable Discourse one way or the other. Lacking such philosophical commitments here, I don’t have an ambition to move the goalposts left or right. But I do want to move them.
See, I cannot profess to be immune to the effects of the Overton Window. (Jonathan Chait notes how the strategy of “triangulation” involves Democrats running against their own party, constantly yielding ground, and how progressive bloggers have been pushing back.) Presumably this Window impinges on the range of ideas that I’m willing to consider – that is, it impinges on my own capacity for reason. So I do have a dog in this fight.
Consequently you’ll often find me taking a contrarian or apologist position in arguments. I’m not pushing the posts left or right; I’m pushing them apart. This pisses some people off, I know. Still, I hope you can look on this practice as my little effort to expand the range of options that people are willing to consider.
“The person who feels the most passionately about a subject may very well NOT be the person who can best promote the subject in a debate. ”
This is an interesting argument, and certainly plays into the American concept of objectivity.
However, why is it any more dubious for:
a woman, who has experience of sexual abuse, to describe what she feels should be done about it
than for
a man, who has experience of law, to describe the law
As someone pointed out in a thread on Feministe, if you support that people who are personally involved are the wrong people to be making decisions about what affects them (and I realize you used the word “may”), then would you concede that the best people to make decisions about American politics are non-Americans?
Someone on that same thread observed that this rule seems only to be applied when it means that straight white cissexual, etc. men get to be the experts, and the voices of those who are defined as “other” can be silenced or ignored.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/05/19/why-im-here-probably/
“The person who feels the most passionately about a subject may very well NOT be the person who can best promote the subject in a debate. ”
This is an interesting argument, and certainly plays into the American concept of objectivity.
However, why is it any more dubious for:
a woman, who has experience of sexual abuse, to describe what she feels should be done about it
than for
a man, who has experience of law, to describe the law
I don’t mean to say that the person who feels most passionately about a subject is NEVER the person who can best promote the subject in debate. I just mean that passion is not a guarantee of persuasiveness, and that persuasiveness is not a guarantee of passion – or even sincerity.
That said, you raise a tough point about “objectivity.” In any rape trial, a defendant will ask to have any victims of sexual assault dismissed from the jury; a certain number of jurors will have filed police reports about sexual assaults, and will therefore feel compelled to identify themselves for dismissal. The prosecutor will also ask anyone who has committed a sexual assault to be dismissed, but only jurors who had actually been convicted would ever volunteer this information about themselves. Because the number of complaints will always exceed the number of convictions, the effort to create an impartial jury may actually skew the jury.
[I]f you support that people who are personally involved are the wrong people to be making decisions about what affects them (and I realize you used the word “may”), then would you concede that the best people to make decisions about American politics are non-Americans?
I’ve often thought that if the US is going to act as the policeman of the world, then everyone in the world should get a vote. US citizens too, of course.
Mandolin, I think the point is that an advocate who is deeply emotionally invested in a issue can come across as a fanatic. People who are undecided often assume that fanatics aren’t capable of being objective. Either because they have an axe to grind or because the issue is so important to them personally that they aren’t able to acknowledge any trade offs.
Extreme nationalists are a good example of this. While I believe it’s true that the US as a good system I can see the flaws and need for improvement. Someone who isn’t willing to admit any flaws in the United States, or how dismisses them automatically isn’t (to me) as persuasive as someone who argues that while those flaws exist on balance the US system has more good than bad.
The same can be said for most any position.
Note: This is just an example. I’m not trying to start a discussion is if the US is good or bad.
Robert, thanks for the link. It’s a good starting point on the Overton Window. It still looks like a strategy to me. I want 6+ you want 4 and most people think 5 is close to good. So I’ll argue for 9 and maybe get 7.
As a model to describe how thing happen it’s fine. But I do think that arguing for a position you don’t really want in hopes of getting a good compromise is deceptive. In other words if you argue that “Abortion is a moral good” when you really want “safe legal and rare” you’re being dishonest.
Still new to the Overton window so I let me know if I’m getting it wrong.
In response to Mandolin and nobody.really:
I think an analogy is useful here. Imagine an expensive car on one side of a football field. On the other side is a group of people. Whoever gets to the car first will win the car, and gets to drive off with it.
Will it be the best driver of the group that gets the car? No. The one who gets the car will be the best runner.
In a debate setting, and this applies in the case of setting public policy as well, no other qualities matter in order to determine who wins except for which side is best at debating. This has nothing to do with personal experience of the issue being debated or decided upon, and everything on playing the field and winning over the audience by whatever means are deemed acceptable.
The question then becomes: Who sets the rules of the debating game? Who decides that the person that runs the fastest gets the car? If it is the case that the game is biased towards some participants, what should the others do? I think this is partly what the XKCD comic is getting at; the teacher feels that her honestly held convictions are being played with, so she begins to ask herself “how do I win the debate game?” and “how exactly is it played?”.
There are several strategies that can be used to affect the rules of a game that is biased against oneself and one’s group. One is to reject outright any participation in such a game, thus keeping oneself “morally pure” and above reproach. However, in the eyes of those still playing this is equivalent to conceding defeat. Whether or not one cares about this depends largely on the stakes of the game.
Another tactic is to attempt to introduce new rules in order to rectify the bias. The problem in this is that the new rules may not become universally accepted, thus fracturing the game into a number of smaller, local games, each with its own set of rules. As long as these separate games don’t come into contact with each other, this is fine, but if they do intersect, confusion and frustration is frequently the result. Online debate is but one example of this.
A third option is to engage in the game by the rules set by the opposition and use their tactics to win. This is a strategy that can bring quick results, but is liable to backfire since it makes the player vulnerable to accusations of being a sellout or having surrendered to the opponents.
There are instances where these strategies work, and other instances when they don’t. But the main point I’d like to get across is that experience, and passion, does not automatically win an argument or decide policy. Rationalizaton does have a place in debate as well, and even if it is a tactic one may personally reject, remains a tactic widely used, so ones position in a debate benefits from understanding it.
I don’t mean to say that the person who feels most passionately about a subject is NEVER the person who can best promote the subject in debate. I just mean that passion is not a guarantee of persuasiveness, and that persuasiveness is not a guarantee of passion – or even sincerity.
However, let me acknowledge a counter-example: the Great American Think-Off. While styled as a competition of thinking, the application form specifically asks people to speak from personal experience and observation, and finalists generally (always?) articulate a personal connection to the issue being debated. Why?
Maybe the people who make the debate rules believe that only people with personal experience can speak knowledgeably, articulately and logically. Or maybe the rules reflect the idea that debate is a form of theater, and judges are less interested in which person is learned, articulate and logical than in which person can provide the greatest drama. Dunno for sure, but I have my suspicions.
I’m assuming you meant to make that second sentence equivalent (since you’re comparing), iow “a man, who has experience of law, to describe [what he feels should be done about it]”
With the rewrite, there’s little difference.
But that doesn’t explain anything about subjectivity. I haven’t seen anyone question that people can have opinions on things. The issue is whether someone who is extremely subjectively affected can have an opinion that adequately takes into consideratio the experiences of others who are unlike them. That’s what the subjective/objective complaints are about.
This isn’t usually how it’s presented. More commonly, the phrase is that only people who are personally involved should be entitled to make decisions about what affects them. See, e.g., the reasonably common statements which boil down to “only women can really define rape;” “only POC can really define racism” “only women can really define sexism,” etc.
People who (like me) disagree with those assessments note that subjective experience is neither a guarantee for or against accuracy. It can either tend to make you less accurate (fox-guarding-the-henhouse bias) or more accurate (by intimate knowledge of the subject at hand.) But it’s not an obvious “gimme” for either side; both extremes are wrong.
Sort of, though that statement is a bit vague. Certainly, non-Americas are likely to do a better (non-self-interested) job of assessing certain policies. Though of course they have their own interests to deal with.
It’s pretty undisputed, for example, that we’re shredding the earth’s fisheries. And it’s also pretty undisputed that the countries whose economies or national predilections are vastly in favor of fishing, are atrociously self-interested and are botching the “management” of it all.
Selective perception, I think. Probably because most of what gets to be discussed on blogs of this type are things that are subjectively important to those often classified as “others.”
“Selective perception, I think.”
And the vastly different treatment between women who discuss their own abortions, and men who discuss their wives’ abortions stems from…?
It’s not that being personally involved biases your perception; it’s that only experiencing the costs or only experiencing the benefits of a particular trade-off biases your perception.
Mandolin, maybe we’re inadvertently talking past each other. That last sentence you appear to be responding to is related to this quote:
this rule seems only to be applied when it means that straight white cissexual, etc. men get to be the experts, and the voices of those who are defined as “other” can be silenced or ignored. (bolding added by me)
I never intended to allege that there was never bad treatment for anyone. I’m discussing the “only” part.
Anyway, I think that the different treatment can still be described generally. Those who are directly affected by something tend to vote for “subjective = good.” As an example, women tend to believe that being female should give them superior control of the abortion debate.
Those who are not directly affected tend to think that subjectivity is either bad (which makes no sense to me at all) or, more commonly, not dispositive either way (my view.) This is based on the belief that there IS some “objective truth” or “objectively ideal situation” and that finding such is beneficial.
As for selective perception, I think a lot of people misread the statement “subjectivity is irrelevant” to be “subjectivity is bad.”
Also, I did a bad job explaining another factor. There are occasions where multiple group characteristics overlap, and there’s a tendency for us to misconstrue decisions based on Set A as actually being based on Set B.
So it’s possible, say, to believe that people with Ph.Ds in economics are the ones best able to make decisions regarding welfare laws. Although I suspect white males are overrepresented in that category, this hypothetical belief doesn’t stem from their privilege, but their training. However, other people may selectively perceive that this belief is “anti-Other” instead of “pro-training.”
Okay, I’ll swing with “only” as being problematic in my statement. Seems to be dominantly applied.
Hmm. I don’t dispute that it gets used a lot as a tool of argument. And because the dominant folks are generally the majority (or the majority of speakers) they probably use it more often in a quantitative sense. If white males write more published articles, then most of those published statements are going to be made by white males.
But I think (a guess) you also mean that dominant folks use it with proportionately more frequency. I don’t know if I agree with that, though I don’t have enough evidence to really mount a disagreement.
However, what “universe” are you discussing? In the blogosphere, my own experience suggests that pretty much everyone uses that tactic to disagree with everyone else. I’ve seen MRAs use it against feminists and vice versa.
Because obviously, there are situations in which subjectivity is 100% important. If I’m trying to institute a policy to “make kids happier” then only their experience is relevant; it doesn’t matter worth a hoot what I want, or what would make me happy. Those things are pretty rare, though, in policy discussions.
I think it’s a lot harder to write from the data. Take a look at the discussion about rights and food. Amp’s the only one to bother using facts to discuss the issue.
Also, it’s tough to remain dispassionate when you’re pissed because it affects you personally. I don’t think it wrong to be passionate. I just don’t find it personally persuasive.