Up Front: Are We There Yet?
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That's why I really don't care that Tess has been nice and polite. Give me Craig's vitriol any day. At least it's honest.
Which is more or less what Craig and I said back on page 1. I've had the experience of discovering that an acquaintance was using me in a 'some of my best friends are' defence. Utterly polite, and to me, utterly repulsive. It's not the words that offend me, but the underlying sentiment.
one of the great indignities of our time is that we are forcing gays to make the case of why they deserve equal rights.
Can I just get that printed on some kind of sign and stick it up by my monitor to remind myself of my, y'know, original point?
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'Some of my best friends are Emma Hart.'
Yeah, it could work.
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'Some of my best friends are Emma Hart.'
Yeah, it could work.
Oddly, this morning has included the discovery that there are two of me. That explains a LOT.
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It's not the words that offend me, but the underlying sentiment.
Certainly a useful rhetorical step along the road to enlightenment for many people, albeit not a good place to stop and down tools?
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Certainly a useful rhetorical step along the road to enlightenment for many people, albeit not a good place to stop and down tools?
In some cases, yes. Sometimes - and I in no way want to imply that it's the case here - politeness itself becomes a weapon, when you're dealing with issues that are emotional. So you stay polite and ignore the fact that there might be an emotional impact in passing judgement on people's most intimate decisions, or fitness as parents, or right to equality, and then get all 'surprised and hurt' when people get angry. Derailing for Dummies covers this in a few different sections:
Don’t worry about silly things like their feelings - c’mon, they’re grownups, aren’t they! The only thing that matters is defending your discrimination as completely fair and to avoid examining your prejudiced arguments in ways that may challenge them. You could even drop this little bomb: "You are damaging your cause by being angry, real understanding can only happen if all sides are respectful and patient".
Not only do you come across as a smug, self-righteous asshat (though you may prefer the term “bigger person”) you can also manage to subtly make them feel guilty about their anger, as though it’s undeserved! Everybody wins! Well, except them of course.
In emotional matters like gay rights or child abuse, people tend to be carrying the scars from the last battle. So even if the current person is being perfectly polite and considerate, there's an underlying anger because you're having to defend this, yet again. Happens on both sides, of course, but an issue like gay marriage is obviously more personal for one side than the other.
That doesn't mean abandoning intellectual discussion to emotive wrangling. But I've said here before, if you're talking about something like rape or child abuse, speak as you would if you were speaking to a victim - because this is the internet, and you probably are. Yes, that means politeness, but it also means gentleness and empathy - something which I thought was completely missing from Tess's response to Giovanni.
I touched on it too when I talked about moderation, that pretty much the hardest thing to deal with is someone who doesn't swear and isn't abusive, but is still upsetting a chunk of your community.
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there are two of me
Just imagine the shit she gets. :)
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And I wrote that before I read your post about being respectful. Doh.
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Excellent illumination of a very important point, Emma, thank you (and Deborah, for spelling it out upthread). Subtle button-pushing, willed or ignorant, often comes wrapped inside the politest of enquiries. Which can leave one with only a handful of options for response: rage or Vulcan dissociation, or some uncomfortable combination of both.
And yes, there is often an invisible bargepole in the middle of that phrase "Some of my best friends are..." While for others, it functions as a tentative rhetorical linking of hands, until they figure out its dodgy logic and move on to "How do you know I'm not" or "Speak for yourself, sunshine" and other useful rhetorical devices.
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Jon Stewart is on the button with the underlying message about who gets to justify who they are, over and over again.
For me, there are parallels with how challenging disabling stereotypes falls largely on the shoulders of those who are least resourceful and connected. I'd rather see that load shared by all the people who can actually change things, including journalists and policymakers.
It's hardly a novel complaint, but ignorance of power is inexcusable and respect is action not just polite words.
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I've just read through all 34 pages of this thread over the past two days, and I've found it both exhausting and one of the most enthralling threads on PAS ever.
If anything Tess, as polite as she may be, has underlined my distaste for the Catholic Church. The calm, often well argued face remains a front for what I regard as one of mankind's greater evils. The crimes of the recent years follow in a direct line from hundreds of years of years of pain, misery and the use of the church to control, often with violence a potentially unstable mass.
With the latter in mind I read a story on another forum recently (which I think was lifted from somewhere else):
A traveller arrived in a particluarly wretched Peruvian village and asked his guide where everyone was.
It's Sunday and they are in Church he said.
The traveller looked around and said 'But clearly the Church doesn't work'
But, said the guide 'They need to believe that someday it might'
Which had some relevance to me, in a very religious nation struck down by massive poverty in which the imams, many of whom are stupid old men, grossly out of touch (their national organisation tried to ban cellphone conversation between sexes this week after they issued a edict against Facebook last week) have a huge, often quite negative, voice.
But mostly I was just pissed off that someone, no matter how calm the voice, could tell me that my marriage was wrong, and, more, that the very right of others to do as I've done should be abolished by the state and marriage should only exist in her minority sect (a sect which has been a minority in the nation we derive our laws and common law from since 1540....the catholic view of how things should be has not held sway since then, far from the recent history she repeatedly claims, the Maori practice of marriage also being rather different to any Christian church).
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the imams, many of whom are stupid old men, grossly out of touch...
Seriously be happy when that lot die off, too.
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f you're talking about something like rape or child abuse, speak as you would if you were speaking to a victim - because this is the internet, and you probably are. Yes, that means politeness, but it also means gentleness and empathy
Well said.
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Gah - have to run back to uni & then a meeting... Everybody stay right there & don't post too much!
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Gah - have to run back to uni & then a meeting... Everybody stay right there & don't post too much!
Tui billboard.
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The crimes of the recent years follow in a direct line from hundreds of years of years of pain, misery and the use of the church to control, often with violence a potentially unstable mass.
do be a good fellow and point me to at least some of your historical sources here? And what do you think might have happened if ye olde 'potentially unstable mass'(sic) had gotten ITS way?
truculently
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Everybody stay right there & don't post too much!
Heh, I have some gay porn I need to knock out this afternoon anyway.
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What a fascinating discussion. I've swayed back and forth on this rollicking ride through the Catholic Church, gay marriage, sex abuse etc.
I fear however we've left behind 'the gays' and their need to be treated like the rest of us and either have marriage, or have it done away with as a civil institution.
This feels like a forum topic which should push people somewhere. Is there a place that we can sign up for this important change? A meaningless email petition that we can forward to all our friends? Something slightly more substantial?
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I fear however we've left behind 'the gays' and their need to be treated like the rest of us and either have marriage, or have it done away with as a civil institution.
I think that's because for most of us, it's a no-brainer. The only issue is how to achieve it i.e. either gay New Zealanders having exactly the same access to state-administered marriage as all other New Zealanders, or no state-administered marriage at all.
I'm all in favour of anyone who wants to get married being required to have some form of civil ceremony, and then anyone who wants to go off and have their own private ceremony in some other institution is perfectly welcome to do so. But that private ceremony should not convey any civil standing; it's the civil ceremony that does that. Clergy who perform wedding ceremonies within their churches would no longer be regarded as providing the civil ceremony as well.
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I really disagree Deborah - for me it's about opening up the institution of marriage to everyone in whatever way they see fit. So long as you sign the official bit of paper somewhere, it shouldn't matter if that's in a church, a backyard or a gang headquarters.
Let's not take this so far as to deny people religious choice - just deny them the ability to enforce that choice on anyone and everyone -
Okay, well how are people feeling about I/S's plan to amend the Marriage Act? It seems like a fairly simple step to marriage equality: can we get some kind of consensus around it?
And Kyle, I know how you feel. My initial purpose in writing this column was to just shove the issue forward so it didn't disappear off the radar completely. But now I do feel this slight disappointment that I can't push people towards something constructive (besides Russell's advertisements for diversity, which I have been pushing people to).
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do be a good fellow and point me to at least some of your historical sources
Since the last time you wandered around this point it was flicked away with little effort by several people, be a good boy and do your own reading.
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Seriously be happy when that lot die off, too.
There are more than enough replacements from the successive generations to keep the traditions of ignorance, suppression and intolerance that this lot call their wisdoms and teachings alive
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@ Gareth
for me it's about opening up the institution of marriage to everyone in whatever way they see fit. So long as you sign the official bit of paper somewhere, it shouldn't matter if that's in a church, a backyard or a gang headquarters.
Nah... I see that as religions co-opting the power of the state in order to reinforce their own standing. It's not just having the ceremony in a church - it's getting the celebrant (priest, vicar, witch, whoever) to do the official work of the state as well i.e. we invest the person with that particular state power. That gives that person a particular standing within the state. That is, it gives religion a particular standing within the state. I'm agin that.
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well how are people feeling about I/S's plan to amend the Marriage Act?
Sounds good to me. 'Though very roughly I think that the state ought to get out of the marriage business altogether, and only maintain a register of people who have formed households, or something like that, for the purpose of adjudicating any disputes, and delivering the standard benefits we deliver to households. But until then, amending the Marriage Act would be the way to go. You would think one of those libertarian MPs would be happy to pick it up.
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since the last time i wandered around WHAT point?
the point that the 'education' of so many new zealanders i meet seems to me to have proceeded from, or at least been eclipsed by, so much fall-out from the the tongue of Eric Idle or someone?
and is this flicking to take place upon my ear, or what?
again, i perceive that the unexamined langauge of 'power' is all over this commentariat, no conception or appreciation whatsoever is evident here of just how we really came by those enlightened moral sources whence cometh our rhetoric of such smug & snug denunication..
QUOTE: "There are more than enough replacements from the successive generations to keep the traditions of ignorance, suppression and intolerance that this lot call their wisdoms and teachings alive"
if that is not evidence of the most lazy, bilious & dire exercise of a purely resentful imagination vastly divorced from all fact, fable, legend and tradition generating Culture then hey. see you in hell with Monty Python's Flying Circus, aye!
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