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Saturday, October 22, 2022
Phobic
In a minor news story in Germany, a journalist was upset with the city government of the city he lived in, because when he was pushing his baby stroller over a public place, the cobblestones rocked the baby and made it cry. Being a journalist, and of a generation likely to do so, he went on social media and called the city government "children-phobic"; and of course everybody who disagreed with him on social media was "children-phobic" too. In reality the probability of the city government being children-phobic is slim to none, it is more likely that many of the people employed there have children too. The person who decided to put cobblestones on that public place probably simply didn't think of baby strollers at all, and made his decision based on other values and considerations, for example historical ones.
Legal theory pretty much everywhere knows the concept of "balance of interests" or "weighing of values" or similar terms. The idea is that we, as a society, hold more than a single value or interest. And that it happens frequently enough that the values we hold, applied to one particular situation, are contradictory. A typical example would be the conflict between gender equality and religious freedom when considering religions in which genders are not considered to be equal. As a result, somebody who is against women wearing burkas isn't automatically "muslim-phobic". Somebody who is upset about the way the state of Israel is treating Palestinians in the West Bank isn't automatically "anti-Semite" (especially not because technically Palestinians are Semite too). And if the IOC sets up rules under which a transgender athlete can or cannot compete in the Olympic Games, they aren't automatically "trans-phobic".
Calling somebody "something-phobic" or "something-ist" more often than not is just a cheap rhetoric maneuver. If you don't agree with me, you are obviously a Tobold-phobic, and those are the worst kind of people, going after a minority of one. :) The tendency of calling somebody you disagree with such names is just indicative of society's inability to actually discuss things and come to a compromise; like for example putting bigger wheels and a better suspension on your baby stroller.
- posted by Tobold @ 11:29 AM Permanent Link
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Not sure how to phrase this nicely, but you really don't want to use that "(especially not because technically Palestinians are Semite too)" line if you don't hate Jews. "Anti-Semite" has always and everywhere simply meant Jew hater but is result of a euphemistic effort to sound more learned. It has nothing to do "Semitic peoples" as a anthropological matter. Lots of Jew haters happen to be Semitic peoples and lots of Jew haters are not Semitic peoples but that's irrelevant to what anti-Semite actually means as used.
@Polynices: Etymology is a science. It has meaning, even if the general use of a word is basically mis-using it.
But the problem here is the confusion between "Jew hater" and "State of Israel critic". The State of Israel does some things which are simply not very nice to other groups of people; in some cases in self-defense, but in other cases they are clearly breaking international law. The use of the word Anti-Semite on critics of the State of Israel isn't justified. It is as if I called somebody racist because he criticized Nigeria for oil spills, or called him Muslim-phobic because he criticized Iran for delivering missiles to Russia.
You can easily see the pattern: Somebody criticizes something very specific, and is then accused of hating a much larger group of people, in order to make his specific criticism sound invalid. But this vision of the world in which most people's action are driven by hate to some other community is not only pretty depressive, it is also pretty wrong. Conflict between people is much more often personal, and highly specific. One guy is angry about his neighbor because of some conflict over dustbins or the hedge between their houses; the religion, origin, or sexuality of that other guy is pretty irrelevant, but these days it will be used as a sort of defense.
But the problem here is the confusion between "Jew hater" and "State of Israel critic". The State of Israel does some things which are simply not very nice to other groups of people; in some cases in self-defense, but in other cases they are clearly breaking international law. The use of the word Anti-Semite on critics of the State of Israel isn't justified. It is as if I called somebody racist because he criticized Nigeria for oil spills, or called him Muslim-phobic because he criticized Iran for delivering missiles to Russia.
You can easily see the pattern: Somebody criticizes something very specific, and is then accused of hating a much larger group of people, in order to make his specific criticism sound invalid. But this vision of the world in which most people's action are driven by hate to some other community is not only pretty depressive, it is also pretty wrong. Conflict between people is much more often personal, and highly specific. One guy is angry about his neighbor because of some conflict over dustbins or the hedge between their houses; the religion, origin, or sexuality of that other guy is pretty irrelevant, but these days it will be used as a sort of defense.
Giving easy/free voice to everyone leads to these things, sadly. Did you read about the public outcry about the "lack of black rapresentation" in the latest The Sims video announcement? It's hilarious, but they had to apologize.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ea-promise-to-do-better-after-their-first-sims-summit-did-not-fairly-represent-players
If you have the guts to watch the video... Well, you'll laugh your ass off.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ea-promise-to-do-better-after-their-first-sims-summit-did-not-fairly-represent-players
If you have the guts to watch the video... Well, you'll laugh your ass off.
I have actually no idea how many black people play The Sims, and how many it would take on a panel to achieve "fair representation".
The issue of representation gets mathematically complicated when you look at much smaller minorities. If you put 1 person of any minority on a 5-people panel, that is 20% representation, and some minorities simply don't make up for 20% of the overall population or user base of any specific product. And if you have more minorities clamoring for representation than you have spots on the panel, things get really complicated, and companies desperately are scrambling for a black lesbian in a wheelchair.
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The issue of representation gets mathematically complicated when you look at much smaller minorities. If you put 1 person of any minority on a 5-people panel, that is 20% representation, and some minorities simply don't make up for 20% of the overall population or user base of any specific product. And if you have more minorities clamoring for representation than you have spots on the panel, things get really complicated, and companies desperately are scrambling for a black lesbian in a wheelchair.
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