Her complaint is rather that the brutal depictions of violence against woman in video games always seem to have clear sexual subcontext, while violence against men does not.
That's how she always shows it in her videos. Cherry picking isn't valid criticism.
Evidence to the contrary? There are probably hundreds of thousands of people talking about why she's wrong. The fact that you only hear about "threats" and insults is because those are the only people she and her supporters will respond to. If the majority of those people were doing nothing but insulting her it would be pretty visible and she wouldn't have to play up painfully obvious trolls.
I'd be very interested in seeing a thread consisting of mostly intelligent comments
I have serious doubts that you would behave any different from her. Any detraction is obviously not intelligent. Which is why so many people just insult her. Why bother giving a thoughtful response when you'll just get labelled a misogynist or ignorant and subsequently ignored.
First, that when men die in these games, they're generally an antagonist or actor that actually has a measure of agency. They're killed because they were involved in a conflict that revolved around more than just their gender or their victimhood.
Completely false. Men die for every reason in video games. The fact that they are considered the main cannon fodder and leave every other type of deaths as a rounding error doesn't mean they don't die other ways as well. And you better believe that them being the targets is because of their gender. Could you just imagine how Anita would react to a game where you just gunned down women the whole time? Oh the misogyny!
Women in video games do not die in "sexualized" ways any more so than in other media. Plenty of movies feature strip clubs. Strip clubs are a real thing and, yes, they are sexualized. Are they for some reason off limits to a video game? Care to explain that?
She's right that sexual and sexualised violence is used as a lazy shortcut to show how bad a person is. You can instantly justify murdering someone brutally (to bring it back to your complaint) if we've just shown them as hitting a woman or raping them. It's not the nicest cycle.
So you are disagreeing with her and saying it is not done out of a hatred of women? And is there some reason why this "cliche" as you put it is off limits? You say it's lazy- who cares? It's not like every video game uses such a plot point. And I'd love to have it explained why games aren't allowed to use the classic heroic epic that has literally been used in every form of story telling since before the dawn of civilization?
I don't think people have to stop doing anything. But I think they DO need to think about what they're doing, understand whether it's appropriate narratively, and make those decisions with open eyes. Speaking personally, for the first ten years of my career, I definitely didn't think about this stuff as much. Maybe I would've spoken up more about certain things if I had.
You don't want people to stop.. You just demand they think your way and decide they shouldn't do it.. And stop. Passive aggressive much?
This is really just an appeal to tradition, and as such, it really doesn't carry much weight.
Not an appeal to tradition at all. You said things have to change; clearly they do not.
It's not a joke to be laughed off, this thing where a man is threatening to hit his wife so hard he sends her to the moon. I'm not sure why we think it's okay to glorify violence against women in video games.
Not a joke! Oh the misogyny! I'm sure you have no problem with similar "threats" of violence against a man.
I think that playwriting HAS responded to the changing times. I think that if we saw a play with the same sort of violence that's in games we'd be horrified. And I think that we can look back at stuff done in the past and see that things WERE misogynist and the product of their time.
You keep trying to police people by asserting your morals. I'm sure it will turn out great. Maybe you can get people to consider the violence in chess next.
And, as she's repeated so often, just because you're critical of something doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. Nothing is perfect. I'm just happy she's making these videos so I can recognise the bad stuff and think about it more.
Just because I'm critical of her and her shallow critiques doesn't mean I'm a troll.
I also think that philosophically, her ideas have merit.
They do not; they are sophistry.
She's making videos and putting her opinion out there, and it's up to us to watch the videos and make sense of her position, whether we agree or disagree.
Her opinion is not sacrosanct. I am perfectly free to call it as st
It's more like twelve thousand intelligent comments for every "threat". But keep waving your hands and ignoring criticism. I never said ignore threats; just don't pretend that the only criticism you've received are threats from "males defending their male privilege".
She hasn't debunked anything. Her videos are appallingly biased and the lack of objectivity in them makes them totally useless. The problem with her kind of "analysis" is that it can be used to legitimize any bias you could possibly dream of. I would love to hear how she debunks the fact that a million male characters die for every female character pretty much proves that deaths in videogames are not designed to "punish women's sexuality".
He got more vitriol form this "community" than Sarkeesian could ever hope for for saying basically the exact same things. That was probably due to ageism, right?
Well she does release video content. Sometimes the easiest way to respond to video is with video. As far as I know her videos are hosted and distributed primarily on Youtube which is why there is a lot of discussion about them within the Youtube community.
Well I guess we know why she got a lot of data on people being horrible, then:)
Agreed, and pretty much what everybody else has been saying too. Unfortunately they're being labelled as victim-blamers or trolls themselves.
If "willingly blinding myself" to YouTube is wrong, I don't want to be right. I don't need to read 13-year-olds endlessly parroting lines from the video, calling each other homos, and getting in pissing matches to enrich my life.
Sounds a lot like Slashdot sometimes. To be honest there is some (emphasis on some) legitimate discussion within the Youtube community. It depends on your ability to tune out the noise I suppose.
But when women die in games, they die as props or as a kind of sick joke (and it's usually a really unintentional joke, honestly). It's more a reflection of our attitudes at large about what a woman is worth than something solely limited to games per se, but that doesn't make it okay to have it in games.
Men die in the same way! And in much more gruesome and jovial manners. I think when this occasionally happens to women and it's considered more important is more of a reflection of our attitudes of men's lives being less important than women's than any negative view there is of women. You can't honestly believe that male video game characters do not die in heinous ways more than female characters. You don't think it's interesting that you find that totally normal for men and something that needs to be stopped for women? Women cannot be the same part of a narrative as a men unless they can actually be put in the same part. Which according to Sarkeesian and yourself they cannot be because *reasons*.
I'd like to stop using women as props in our games. I'd like to see more women as protagonists or just interesting characters in general. If there's a good reason to show a woman or a man dead in the game, that will still be okay. But when it happens, I'm going to be running through a little checklist in my head from now on. Was it necessary? Does it advance the game? Is it really a crucial bit of atmosphere, or could we do without it? Would it just be a good idea to hold off on showing this bit of violence given what we know about rape statistics and the deaths of sex workers?
Given that we know men are far more likely to be murdered or die in war would it not be a good idea to hold off on this bit of violence? You can do what you want in your games. But when you're trying to tell other people they're being bad or "insensitive" based on the games they create or like to play you actually are trying to make them feel bad so that they stop.
The worst part about her criticisms is that she actually doesn't understand the tropes she's talking about. Or she just makes up new tropes. Tropes are pretty much a necessary part of storytelling. That's why we call them tropes. They've been around since the advent of storytelling. All stories are just rehashes and variations of old ones.
This is criticism that the industry needs, and needs to respond to if it wants to be credible in the world.
I really can't agree with that. Using her same irrational argument style you could paint that same problems onto any media. You think playwriting needs to respond to this criticism if it wants to be credible in the world? Shakespeare the misogynist! The gaming community tried to respond with the appropriate "you're going to have to do better" and explained why to her. She chose instead to focus on people making fun of her for saying stupid things. Everybody with civil disagreements went on and did their own things because she chose to ignore them and make a spectacle out of crazies instead.
This is criticism that the industry needs, and needs to respond to if it wants to be credible in the world.
Every AAA title made in the past 20 years disagrees with your assertion. Every AAA movies as well. Every AAA book. Unfortunately mass appeal appears to correlate extremely strongly with mass stupid.
Some people really aren't playing games for the story telling. Some people are. Games should not be limited to targeting only one of those groups.
You talk about trolls again like there has not been plenty attempts to discuss this in a civil manner. The reason Anita focuses on trolls is precisely so she can ignore actual criticism. She has literally ignored it all while waving her hands and screaming "look at all the hate! This is proof I'm right". A lot of us have seen this behaviour before and know that it has zero credibility.
Side-stepped your argument about stabbing yourself in the eye? I was assuming it was hyperbole. Please don't stab yourself in the eye.
I wasn't actually addressing your original post- merely your "side-stepping" of another poster's. The fact that it is in character for her and her ilk to behave in such a manner. Normal skeptical people would want a little more evidence before jumping to any conclusions. These are pretty serious allegations that warrant a little more than "it totally happened and as proof look at all the anonymous cowards not believing it" as evidence.
As an addendum Ms. Anita's "research" is nothing more than youtube commentary so why do you give her more respect than other youtubers?
You're right- that is a pretty good metaphor for willful blindness. Don't like Youtube? Plenty of blogs discussing it too. Don't like that? Then why the hell do you care what Anita has to say? Those are her mediums. I know she doesn't discuss any of her valid criticisms but that doesn't mean they don't exist. That is one of the criticisms, in fact.
I think the issue most people have with her "work" is that for every "[hooker] being abused or murdered" there are orders of magnitude more men being abused and murdered. When Jack Thompson brought up all the killing in video games and said they were bad he was run out of town. Slashdot and the whole of the gaming community rejoiced. But now that the focus is on women it is all of a sudden something worth considering.
Also the fact that she deliberately does these things that are possible in a game but not encouraged or central in any way and paints them as centre-points to the narrative.
But to give you more of a response than you deserve: people self-diagnose based on faulty reasoning all the time. We've all had nights out drinking where we wake up confused about how we were hit that hard. Spiked drinks are incredibly rare. Without some kind of qualitative evidence beyond "trust me I'm practically a doctor" I'm going to have to assume most of these anecdotal stories are people self-diagnosing incorrectly. This is what actual data on the subject indicates.
Personally I'm in favour of anything that brings more data. I just highly doubt it will be as high as people like you think it will. I also don't think this will be used. Ever.
There's a huge difference between being slipped a mickey and being extremely intoxicated.
Which is why people are not allowing you to conflate the two. Some times alcohol hits you harder than you expect. A lot of women think this means they were roofied (because people like you tell them there's roofies around every corner).
Haha, the old "you're just a troll so I don't have to defend my flawed position" card.
When you stop beating your wife, I'll let you know the answer to that one;-)
I don't have a wife. Will you answer my very simple question now? It is not a rhetorical trick to ask you to clarify your point if that is what you were implying. You wrote a thousand god damn words to beat around the bush so you could avoid making a concrete statement. You did that so you could continually hand wave and say people miss your point when they disagree with you. When they demonstrate they do understand your point you say they are arguing in "bad faith".
That nonsense doesn't work on me. So I will ask a simple question again
So how, exactly, are you not simply opposed to his politics when you say his only recourse was to change his politics?
You have stated that he handled the issue badly because he did not admit that he was wrong. Your issue was not with his handling of the situation- it was his politics. He had no obligation to defend his personal politics to you in the first place.
I'd like to point out that just because people say you don't have moral authority doesn't automatically make it true.
An absolute moral authority does not exist. It is not me saying someone isn't a moral authority that makes it true; the lack of its existence makes it true.
You argue to be so open minded and capable of seeing things from another's perspective, but I bet you never entertained the notion that perhaps your morality is indeed inferior, for good and demonstrable reasons.
Demonstrate one. First you will have to define my "morality". The only way you will ever change somebody's mind about something is to actually see things from their perspective. Basing your arguments on another's moral inferiority precludes your ability to see things from their perspective.
but you are arguing from the gut.
Please explain how advocating the avoidance of using emotional arguments is arguing from the gut.
Fair enough but that comment was talking about people of the "someone must stop you" variety. And that someone saying that others are "free to hate" is somehow anti-gay and pro-homophobia. Of which there are quite a few. AmiMojo's strawman there is pretty good evidence that they are one of those people.
My issue is that kind of sentiment only makes problems worse. If both sides are just screaming that the other is harming society how can we make it anywhere? They are both deaf of anything but emotional arguments which they fully belief are already on their own side.
There was nothing wrong with saying Eich was wrong, explaining why he was wrong or even mocking him (I did all those things). But attacking him personally for his political opinion crosses a line. And no matter how wrong you think his opinion is it is in fact shared by a lot of people. If the tide ever turns back in their favour do you really want to leave them with the power to destroy political opponents on that level?
I'm not making a slippery slope argument. I'm not saying one will lead to the other. I am saying people's moral objections to both are usually fairly similar. All I am advocating is for people to avoid making emotional and moral arguments. They just don't help. For instance: the main reason that the anti gay marriage folks are losing the battle (slowly but surely) is because all they have is emotional and moral arguments. Using the same method to combat them only gives their methods more power.
ONE OF THEM INVOLVES MINORS WHO ARE UNABLE TO LEGALLY CONSENT.
And gays aren't legally allowed to marry. Case closed? You cannot use "one is illegal" as justification of difference when you are arguing why something should be legal for the other. It just doesn't make sense.
Well we were talking about Eich's political beliefs and how people caused him to lose his job because of them in this thread. You seemed to be defending those people. Or at least trying to deflect criticism away from them.
No one has even made the claim that homosexuality is wrong. Only that some believe that and that they should be free to have such a belief.
The only person that wants beliefs to be unchallengeable here is you. The rest of us are happy to have actual discussions about it. You want to punish and silence people you claim cause harm. I say you both cause harm.
The very fact that you think you have the moral authority to say people should be fired for their political beliefs is what I'm contending. You say that because you think it causes harm that it's totally fine to infringe on political freedom. If Eich had have started firing people for supporting pro gay marriage groups I'd have the same problem with that (plus other problems since I'm pro gay marriage).
There are a whole lot of people that think that homosexuality is harmful. They are wrong. You are never going to change their minds by telling them "no u". Emotional arguments cannot defeat emotional arguments. They only inflame people.
I am perfectly capable of defending someone's political freedom without having to agree with their politics. If I wasn't then I wouldn't be capable of defending anyone's political freedom.
The reason you feel you are arguing over and over again is because you keep insisting you have some kind of moral authority and ignoring the fact that people are telling you that you do not. You give absolutes that don't apply to yourself as soon as you feel they don't.
If you can't provide meaningful evidence other than "if you can't see it you are blind" then you are either wrong or not the person to be advocating. I have skimmed, read and participated in many such discussions. When asked for evidence it is the same two responses: You are blind and part of the problem. And anecdotal, completely unverifiable stories from people with more bias than an Apple Store employee.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends who you ask. In this case it's "anyone that disagrees with anything a feminist says".
Her complaint is rather that the brutal depictions of violence against woman in video games always seem to have clear sexual subcontext, while violence against men does not.
That's how she always shows it in her videos. Cherry picking isn't valid criticism.
Nobody does! The point is these things are a part of story telling. Don't like it? There's nothing wrong with not playing it.
Evidence?
Evidence to the contrary? There are probably hundreds of thousands of people talking about why she's wrong. The fact that you only hear about "threats" and insults is because those are the only people she and her supporters will respond to. If the majority of those people were doing nothing but insulting her it would be pretty visible and she wouldn't have to play up painfully obvious trolls.
I'd be very interested in seeing a thread consisting of mostly intelligent comments
I have serious doubts that you would behave any different from her. Any detraction is obviously not intelligent. Which is why so many people just insult her. Why bother giving a thoughtful response when you'll just get labelled a misogynist or ignorant and subsequently ignored.
First, that when men die in these games, they're generally an antagonist or actor that actually has a measure of agency. They're killed because they were involved in a conflict that revolved around more than just their gender or their victimhood.
Completely false. Men die for every reason in video games. The fact that they are considered the main cannon fodder and leave every other type of deaths as a rounding error doesn't mean they don't die other ways as well. And you better believe that them being the targets is because of their gender. Could you just imagine how Anita would react to a game where you just gunned down women the whole time? Oh the misogyny!
Women in video games do not die in "sexualized" ways any more so than in other media. Plenty of movies feature strip clubs. Strip clubs are a real thing and, yes, they are sexualized. Are they for some reason off limits to a video game? Care to explain that?
She's right that sexual and sexualised violence is used as a lazy shortcut to show how bad a person is. You can instantly justify murdering someone brutally (to bring it back to your complaint) if we've just shown them as hitting a woman or raping them. It's not the nicest cycle.
So you are disagreeing with her and saying it is not done out of a hatred of women? And is there some reason why this "cliche" as you put it is off limits? You say it's lazy- who cares? It's not like every video game uses such a plot point. And I'd love to have it explained why games aren't allowed to use the classic heroic epic that has literally been used in every form of story telling since before the dawn of civilization?
I don't think people have to stop doing anything. But I think they DO need to think about what they're doing, understand whether it's appropriate narratively, and make those decisions with open eyes. Speaking personally, for the first ten years of my career, I definitely didn't think about this stuff as much. Maybe I would've spoken up more about certain things if I had.
You don't want people to stop.. You just demand they think your way and decide they shouldn't do it.. And stop. Passive aggressive much?
This is really just an appeal to tradition, and as such, it really doesn't carry much weight.
Not an appeal to tradition at all. You said things have to change; clearly they do not.
It's not a joke to be laughed off, this thing where a man is threatening to hit his wife so hard he sends her to the moon. I'm not sure why we think it's okay to glorify violence against women in video games.
Not a joke! Oh the misogyny! I'm sure you have no problem with similar "threats" of violence against a man.
I think that playwriting HAS responded to the changing times. I think that if we saw a play with the same sort of violence that's in games we'd be horrified. And I think that we can look back at stuff done in the past and see that things WERE misogynist and the product of their time.
You keep trying to police people by asserting your morals. I'm sure it will turn out great. Maybe you can get people to consider the violence in chess next.
And, as she's repeated so often, just because you're critical of something doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. Nothing is perfect. I'm just happy she's making these videos so I can recognise the bad stuff and think about it more.
Just because I'm critical of her and her shallow critiques doesn't mean I'm a troll.
I also think that philosophically, her ideas have merit.
They do not; they are sophistry.
She's making videos and putting her opinion out there, and it's up to us to watch the videos and make sense of her position, whether we agree or disagree.
Her opinion is not sacrosanct. I am perfectly free to call it as st
It's more like twelve thousand intelligent comments for every "threat". But keep waving your hands and ignoring criticism. I never said ignore threats; just don't pretend that the only criticism you've received are threats from "males defending their male privilege".
She hasn't debunked anything. Her videos are appallingly biased and the lack of objectivity in them makes them totally useless. The problem with her kind of "analysis" is that it can be used to legitimize any bias you could possibly dream of. I would love to hear how she debunks the fact that a million male characters die for every female character pretty much proves that deaths in videogames are not designed to "punish women's sexuality".
That all has nothing to do with his arguments against video games nor the abuse he got because of those arguments.
He got more vitriol form this "community" than Sarkeesian could ever hope for for saying basically the exact same things. That was probably due to ageism, right?
Well she does release video content. Sometimes the easiest way to respond to video is with video. As far as I know her videos are hosted and distributed primarily on Youtube which is why there is a lot of discussion about them within the Youtube community.
Well I guess we know why she got a lot of data on people being horrible, then :)
Agreed, and pretty much what everybody else has been saying too. Unfortunately they're being labelled as victim-blamers or trolls themselves.
If "willingly blinding myself" to YouTube is wrong, I don't want to be right. I don't need to read 13-year-olds endlessly parroting lines from the video, calling each other homos, and getting in pissing matches to enrich my life.
Sounds a lot like Slashdot sometimes. To be honest there is some (emphasis on some) legitimate discussion within the Youtube community. It depends on your ability to tune out the noise I suppose.
But when women die in games, they die as props or as a kind of sick joke (and it's usually a really unintentional joke, honestly). It's more a reflection of our attitudes at large about what a woman is worth than something solely limited to games per se, but that doesn't make it okay to have it in games.
Men die in the same way! And in much more gruesome and jovial manners. I think when this occasionally happens to women and it's considered more important is more of a reflection of our attitudes of men's lives being less important than women's than any negative view there is of women. You can't honestly believe that male video game characters do not die in heinous ways more than female characters. You don't think it's interesting that you find that totally normal for men and something that needs to be stopped for women? Women cannot be the same part of a narrative as a men unless they can actually be put in the same part. Which according to Sarkeesian and yourself they cannot be because *reasons*.
I'd like to stop using women as props in our games. I'd like to see more women as protagonists or just interesting characters in general. If there's a good reason to show a woman or a man dead in the game, that will still be okay. But when it happens, I'm going to be running through a little checklist in my head from now on. Was it necessary? Does it advance the game? Is it really a crucial bit of atmosphere, or could we do without it? Would it just be a good idea to hold off on showing this bit of violence given what we know about rape statistics and the deaths of sex workers?
Given that we know men are far more likely to be murdered or die in war would it not be a good idea to hold off on this bit of violence? You can do what you want in your games. But when you're trying to tell other people they're being bad or "insensitive" based on the games they create or like to play you actually are trying to make them feel bad so that they stop.
The worst part about her criticisms is that she actually doesn't understand the tropes she's talking about. Or she just makes up new tropes. Tropes are pretty much a necessary part of storytelling. That's why we call them tropes. They've been around since the advent of storytelling. All stories are just rehashes and variations of old ones.
This is criticism that the industry needs, and needs to respond to if it wants to be credible in the world.
I really can't agree with that. Using her same irrational argument style you could paint that same problems onto any media. You think playwriting needs to respond to this criticism if it wants to be credible in the world? Shakespeare the misogynist! The gaming community tried to respond with the appropriate "you're going to have to do better" and explained why to her. She chose instead to focus on people making fun of her for saying stupid things. Everybody with civil disagreements went on and did their own things because she chose to ignore them and make a spectacle out of crazies instead.
This is criticism that the industry needs, and needs to respond to if it wants to be credible in the world.
Every AAA title made in the past 20 years disagrees with your assertion. Every AAA movies as well. Every AAA book. Unfortunately mass appeal appears to correlate extremely strongly with mass stupid.
Some people really aren't playing games for the story telling. Some people are. Games should not be limited to targeting only one of those groups.
You talk about trolls again like there has not been plenty attempts to discuss this in a civil manner. The reason Anita focuses on trolls is precisely so she can ignore actual criticism. She has literally ignored it all while waving her hands and screaming "look at all the hate! This is proof I'm right". A lot of us have seen this behaviour before and know that it has zero credibility.
Side-stepped your argument about stabbing yourself in the eye? I was assuming it was hyperbole. Please don't stab yourself in the eye.
I wasn't actually addressing your original post- merely your "side-stepping" of another poster's. The fact that it is in character for her and her ilk to behave in such a manner. Normal skeptical people would want a little more evidence before jumping to any conclusions. These are pretty serious allegations that warrant a little more than "it totally happened and as proof look at all the anonymous cowards not believing it" as evidence.
As an addendum Ms. Anita's "research" is nothing more than youtube commentary so why do you give her more respect than other youtubers?
I also think anonymity is great until people are saying what I don't like.
Jack Thompson is on Slashdot?
You're right- that is a pretty good metaphor for willful blindness. Don't like Youtube? Plenty of blogs discussing it too. Don't like that? Then why the hell do you care what Anita has to say? Those are her mediums. I know she doesn't discuss any of her valid criticisms but that doesn't mean they don't exist. That is one of the criticisms, in fact.
I think the issue most people have with her "work" is that for every "[hooker] being abused or murdered" there are orders of magnitude more men being abused and murdered. When Jack Thompson brought up all the killing in video games and said they were bad he was run out of town. Slashdot and the whole of the gaming community rejoiced. But now that the focus is on women it is all of a sudden something worth considering.
Also the fact that she deliberately does these things that are possible in a game but not encouraged or central in any way and paints them as centre-points to the narrative.
stop fucking raping people and covering up rape.
Nice straw man.
But to give you more of a response than you deserve: people self-diagnose based on faulty reasoning all the time. We've all had nights out drinking where we wake up confused about how we were hit that hard. Spiked drinks are incredibly rare. Without some kind of qualitative evidence beyond "trust me I'm practically a doctor" I'm going to have to assume most of these anecdotal stories are people self-diagnosing incorrectly. This is what actual data on the subject indicates.
Personally I'm in favour of anything that brings more data. I just highly doubt it will be as high as people like you think it will. I also don't think this will be used. Ever.
Rape apologia on a tech site!? GASP
There was no rape apology there.
There's a huge difference between being slipped a mickey and being extremely intoxicated.
Which is why people are not allowing you to conflate the two. Some times alcohol hits you harder than you expect. A lot of women think this means they were roofied (because people like you tell them there's roofies around every corner).
Haha, the old "you're just a troll so I don't have to defend my flawed position" card.
When you stop beating your wife, I'll let you know the answer to that one ;-)
I don't have a wife. Will you answer my very simple question now? It is not a rhetorical trick to ask you to clarify your point if that is what you were implying. You wrote a thousand god damn words to beat around the bush so you could avoid making a concrete statement. You did that so you could continually hand wave and say people miss your point when they disagree with you. When they demonstrate they do understand your point you say they are arguing in "bad faith".
That nonsense doesn't work on me. So I will ask a simple question again
So how, exactly, are you not simply opposed to his politics when you say his only recourse was to change his politics?
You have stated that he handled the issue badly because he did not admit that he was wrong. Your issue was not with his handling of the situation- it was his politics. He had no obligation to defend his personal politics to you in the first place.
I'd like to point out that just because people say you don't have moral authority doesn't automatically make it true.
An absolute moral authority does not exist. It is not me saying someone isn't a moral authority that makes it true; the lack of its existence makes it true.
You argue to be so open minded and capable of seeing things from another's perspective, but I bet you never entertained the notion that perhaps your morality is indeed inferior, for good and demonstrable reasons.
Demonstrate one. First you will have to define my "morality". The only way you will ever change somebody's mind about something is to actually see things from their perspective. Basing your arguments on another's moral inferiority precludes your ability to see things from their perspective.
but you are arguing from the gut.
Please explain how advocating the avoidance of using emotional arguments is arguing from the gut.
Fair enough but that comment was talking about people of the "someone must stop you" variety. And that someone saying that others are "free to hate" is somehow anti-gay and pro-homophobia. Of which there are quite a few. AmiMojo's strawman there is pretty good evidence that they are one of those people.
My issue is that kind of sentiment only makes problems worse. If both sides are just screaming that the other is harming society how can we make it anywhere? They are both deaf of anything but emotional arguments which they fully belief are already on their own side.
There was nothing wrong with saying Eich was wrong, explaining why he was wrong or even mocking him (I did all those things). But attacking him personally for his political opinion crosses a line. And no matter how wrong you think his opinion is it is in fact shared by a lot of people. If the tide ever turns back in their favour do you really want to leave them with the power to destroy political opponents on that level?
I'm not making a slippery slope argument. I'm not saying one will lead to the other. I am saying people's moral objections to both are usually fairly similar. All I am advocating is for people to avoid making emotional and moral arguments. They just don't help. For instance: the main reason that the anti gay marriage folks are losing the battle (slowly but surely) is because all they have is emotional and moral arguments. Using the same method to combat them only gives their methods more power.
ONE OF THEM INVOLVES MINORS WHO ARE UNABLE TO LEGALLY CONSENT.
And gays aren't legally allowed to marry. Case closed? You cannot use "one is illegal" as justification of difference when you are arguing why something should be legal for the other. It just doesn't make sense.
Well we were talking about Eich's political beliefs and how people caused him to lose his job because of them in this thread. You seemed to be defending those people. Or at least trying to deflect criticism away from them.
No one has even made the claim that homosexuality is wrong. Only that some believe that and that they should be free to have such a belief.
The only person that wants beliefs to be unchallengeable here is you. The rest of us are happy to have actual discussions about it. You want to punish and silence people you claim cause harm. I say you both cause harm.
The very fact that you think you have the moral authority to say people should be fired for their political beliefs is what I'm contending. You say that because you think it causes harm that it's totally fine to infringe on political freedom. If Eich had have started firing people for supporting pro gay marriage groups I'd have the same problem with that (plus other problems since I'm pro gay marriage).
There are a whole lot of people that think that homosexuality is harmful. They are wrong. You are never going to change their minds by telling them "no u". Emotional arguments cannot defeat emotional arguments. They only inflame people.
I am perfectly capable of defending someone's political freedom without having to agree with their politics. If I wasn't then I wouldn't be capable of defending anyone's political freedom.
The reason you feel you are arguing over and over again is because you keep insisting you have some kind of moral authority and ignoring the fact that people are telling you that you do not. You give absolutes that don't apply to yourself as soon as you feel they don't.
If you can't provide meaningful evidence other than "if you can't see it you are blind" then you are either wrong or not the person to be advocating. I have skimmed, read and participated in many such discussions. When asked for evidence it is the same two responses: You are blind and part of the problem. And anecdotal, completely unverifiable stories from people with more bias than an Apple Store employee.