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Thursday, June 22, 2023
Nerd rights!
In a discussion on this blog and elsewhere the question came up how we could have ended up in a situation where activists purportedly fighting for more tolerance ended up harassing other people. Or activists fighting for actions that improve social justice for one minority group, while clearly hurting a different minority group. The answer recently came to me when I stumbled upon some advertisement trailer for this summer's "raunchy comedy" movie No Hard Feelings. It is the story of a nerdy 19-year old boy, whose parents hire a sex worker to "make him a man" before he leaves for college.
How is it, that in 2023 we are still making million-dollar movies in which the audience is invited to laugh about the social and sexual behavior of a recognizable class of people, just because it is different from what we consider "normal"? Imagine for a second that the 19-year old boy in this movie was gay or trans, with the plot of the rest of the movie being the same, his parents hiring a woman to "fix" his sexuality. There would be an outrage, picket lines in front of theaters, and Twitter would explode with calls for a boycott.
The answer is obviously that No Hard Feelings is possible, because there are no Nerd Rights Activists. Identity politics often use values like tolerance or social justice as a justification, but if you scratch the surface it turns out that they are only for tolerance and social justice towards one very specific identity group. Thus we end up with so many actions and proposals that are in fact very much intolerant and socially unjust to other identity groups. And we end up with enforced "tolerance" towards some very specific identity groups, but behavior that would be inadmissible if applied to those specific identity groups then is considered fine if applied to other identity groups with less political representation. Maybe at some point in the future nerds will be recognized as "neurodivergent" / "on the spectrum", and people will retroactively cancel decades worth of comedies that make fun of nerds. But until then, they are fair game for ridicule, because we don't generalize the values that we claim to fight for.
We, as a society, would be a lot better off if we ignored the focus on certain identities, and instead adopted just the values that the activists claim to be in favor of. We should strive for a maximum in tolerance and social justice for everybody. The goal would be to reach what an economist would call a "Pareto optimal" situation, a compromise between the different group that is so balanced, that nobody's situation could be improved without doing more harm to somebody else.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:02 AM Permanent Link
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I mostly agree with you, and think that mocking Nerd is stupid and not very funny.
But I disagree on the equivalency between all minorities group : some are objectively more discriminated than others. A very similar situation is random people mocking powerful model, VS powerful people mocking random people. One is considered totally acceptable ( even healthy for democracry) while the other is considered outraging by most people.
It is also a question of ressource repartition : if I have 100€/10h/1 tweet to use to fight for equality, it makes sense to first focus on people who suffered most from inequality.
And finally, it is far more difficult to leverage energies for large abstract concept than for actual people and situation.
Conclusion: the 'more equality' argument is often used (not always) to disarm fight against inequality for minority. I think we should be vigilant against abuse in the name of minority right, but not preemptively use this arguement when there is no issue. At least in my country (France) it is very rare that one minority rights are used to decrease another minority rights.
But I disagree on the equivalency between all minorities group : some are objectively more discriminated than others. A very similar situation is random people mocking powerful model, VS powerful people mocking random people. One is considered totally acceptable ( even healthy for democracry) while the other is considered outraging by most people.
It is also a question of ressource repartition : if I have 100€/10h/1 tweet to use to fight for equality, it makes sense to first focus on people who suffered most from inequality.
And finally, it is far more difficult to leverage energies for large abstract concept than for actual people and situation.
Conclusion: the 'more equality' argument is often used (not always) to disarm fight against inequality for minority. I think we should be vigilant against abuse in the name of minority right, but not preemptively use this arguement when there is no issue. At least in my country (France) it is very rare that one minority rights are used to decrease another minority rights.
I'll start by saying I agree with your overall point but of course I have to nitpick because that's my nature.
"We should strive for a maximum in tolerance and social justice for everybody."
Not everything should be tolerated. Most of all not intolerance. To quote Karl Popper -
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance," Popper wrote. "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
It's well known that hate groups use the fact moderates are tolerant of just about everyone to entrench themselves in society and poison it. It's literally a strategy Nazi groups in the US and other countries use to infiltrate more moderate leaning conservative spaces to begin dog whistling and recruiting from.
"We should strive for a maximum in tolerance and social justice for everybody."
Not everything should be tolerated. Most of all not intolerance. To quote Karl Popper -
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance," Popper wrote. "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
It's well known that hate groups use the fact moderates are tolerant of just about everyone to entrench themselves in society and poison it. It's literally a strategy Nazi groups in the US and other countries use to infiltrate more moderate leaning conservative spaces to begin dog whistling and recruiting from.
"We, as a society, would be a lot better off if we ignored the focus on certain identities, and instead adopted just the values that the activists claim to be in favor of. We should strive for a maximum in tolerance and social justice for everybody."
Are we though? Imagine for a moment you played 20 rounds of monopoly with your friends. In these 20 rounds every time you passed go you collected $1000 and your friends only collected $10. Would your friends feel like they have a fair chance of winning the game, or even just having fun, if on turn 21 you said "Hey guys from now all we are all going to play by the same rules".
Wouldn't they be more likely to continue playing despite the unfair start if you instead took that wealth you accumulated and dispersed it evenly amongst yourselves AND THEN started playing by the same rules?
Ignoring disparity in the name of equality does not lead to equity. Equality cannot be blind to the inequities society has established through decades of oppression and intolerance.
Are we though? Imagine for a moment you played 20 rounds of monopoly with your friends. In these 20 rounds every time you passed go you collected $1000 and your friends only collected $10. Would your friends feel like they have a fair chance of winning the game, or even just having fun, if on turn 21 you said "Hey guys from now all we are all going to play by the same rules".
Wouldn't they be more likely to continue playing despite the unfair start if you instead took that wealth you accumulated and dispersed it evenly amongst yourselves AND THEN started playing by the same rules?
Ignoring disparity in the name of equality does not lead to equity. Equality cannot be blind to the inequities society has established through decades of oppression and intolerance.
Feminism is fighting for equality for everyone. That includes the right for different types of men living without the burden of stereotypes.
Meanwhile if you look up this film, you find that the vocal minority is complaining about its problematic nature for a number of reasons, including the one you highlighted.
Meanwhile if you look up this film, you find that the vocal minority is complaining about its problematic nature for a number of reasons, including the one you highlighted.
Wouldn't they be more likely to continue playing despite the unfair start if you instead took that wealth you accumulated and dispersed it evenly amongst yourselves AND THEN started playing by the same rules?
But the beauty of striving for a Pareto optimal solution is that it would look *only* at the wealth and then try to disperse it more evenly.
If some people of identity group A treated some people of identity group B unfairly several generations ago, you can't possibly fix that by now making a new rule which passes wealth from identity group A to identity group B now. There is no such thing as collective and inherited guilt. It is obvious that even when the unfairness occurred, not everybody in identity group A was equally guilty, and not everybody in identity group B suffered equally. And today's identity groups aren't solely composed of direct descendants from the people who inflicted and suffered those injustices.
If we instead concentrate on solutions that aren't based on identity groups, but rather on things like universal basic income, which have the potential to eliminate poverty altogether, we would end up in a world where the largest possible number of people is better off. Progressive taxes, and higher taxation of passive income than labor income, over time will disperse wealth more evenly. Any solution based on identity groups will only increase the conflict between identity groups, and potentially lead to even more injustice and suffering.
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But the beauty of striving for a Pareto optimal solution is that it would look *only* at the wealth and then try to disperse it more evenly.
If some people of identity group A treated some people of identity group B unfairly several generations ago, you can't possibly fix that by now making a new rule which passes wealth from identity group A to identity group B now. There is no such thing as collective and inherited guilt. It is obvious that even when the unfairness occurred, not everybody in identity group A was equally guilty, and not everybody in identity group B suffered equally. And today's identity groups aren't solely composed of direct descendants from the people who inflicted and suffered those injustices.
If we instead concentrate on solutions that aren't based on identity groups, but rather on things like universal basic income, which have the potential to eliminate poverty altogether, we would end up in a world where the largest possible number of people is better off. Progressive taxes, and higher taxation of passive income than labor income, over time will disperse wealth more evenly. Any solution based on identity groups will only increase the conflict between identity groups, and potentially lead to even more injustice and suffering.
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