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A red "Keep Calm" poster with the caption KEEP CALM AND STAY ON TOPIC

Spillover #25

Moderator Team

A red "Keep Calm" poster with the caption KEEP CALM AND STAY ON TOPICThe 24th #spillover thread’s commenting period has expired, so it’s time for a new one. Some reminders:

  1. #spillover is part of our comment moderation system for keeping other threads on-topic. It is intended as a constructive space for tangential discussions which are veering off-topic on other threads. This is part of our blog netiquette, which has the general goal of making it as simple as possible for commentors to find discussions focussed on topics of particular interest without entirely stifling worthwhile tangents of sorta-related or general interest. #spillover is also a space for those ongoing/endless disagreements and 101 issues that just keep on popping up.
  2. Commentors are encouraged to respect the topic of each post and be proactive regarding inevitable thread-drift in long threads: we hope that commentors will cheerfully volunteer to take off-topic responses into #spillover so that each post’s discussion gets room to breathe and tangents can be indulged in a room of their own.

More detailed outline/guidelines were laid out on Spillover #1.
The Moderator Team will enforce topicality where necessary, and off-topic commentors who ignore invitations from others to take their tangents to #spillover are one of the reasons commentors might consider sending the moderators a giraffe alert.

9 thoughts on Spillover #25

  1. I’m replying to you here, Broseidon.

    1) You don’t get to unilaterally decide that because you don’t like the larger context of a discussion, that context is irrelevant. The very clear context of the discussion of utilitarianism was liberalism. That was the context of my comment vis-à-vis white-majority societies. You may not like that. You may not find it interesting. But that doesn’t mean you get to claim my comment meant something else entirely. You may not be interested in liberalism; I’m not interested in utilitarian philosophy in a global context. Too bad.

    2) You are moving goalposts vis-à-vis anti-Semitism. My point was that you certainly could make a utilitarian argument in favor of abrogating a minority groups’ rights. You are now claiming something about the how societies are constituted. Not only do I think you’re incorrect–as Donna points out, Jews as the Other have been essential to Christianity’s construction of itself–but that was not the point under discussion.

    Reply here or don’t, but I’m not taking your posts out of moderation in the other thread now that tigtog has made her position clear.

    1. Reply here or don’t, but I’m not taking your posts out of moderation in the other thread now that tigtog has made her position clear.

      That’s fine. I can understand my comment being a derail, and that makes sense because I tend to go off on my own tangents, but I was perplexed by how I was dominating anything. I didn’t understand why the reply was posted to a snarky comment I made in support of you expressing your opinion here however you see fit. I posted an additional reply to that thread before I scrolled down to see the Mod’s reply to my off-hand comment. Regardless, clarification happened and the world keeps turning. This isn’t my website anyway, so that my words are posted at all is a privilege not a right.

      You may not like that. You may not find it interesting. But that doesn’t mean you get to claim my comment meant something else entirely. You may not be interested in liberalism; I’m not interested in utilitarian philosophy in a global context. Too bad.

      For me this is not too bad. Differences of interest are to be expected. I’ll be more careful in the future about the context of the discussion when I comment. I’ll probably just err on the side of posting to spillover. That seems like the best option.

      You are moving goalposts vis-à-vis anti-Semitism. My point was that you certainly could make a utilitarian argument in favor of abrogating a minority groups’ rights. You are now claiming something about the how societies are constituted. Not only do I think you’re incorrect–as Donna points out, Jews as the Other have been essential to Christianity’s construction of itself–but that was not the point under discussion.

      Alright. I’ll concede your and Donna’s understanding because your knowledge on the subject obviously outstrips my own. You are right.

      Caveat: I don’t trust people’s ex post facto self-reported interpretations of motivations for actions for which they have been censured, because it seems guaranteed to be a self-serving exercise.

      That said, at least part of my motivation was that I think of myself as a materialist, and I like utilitarianism. I value the discourses of social justice that we engage with here not only because oppression is unjust but also because it is inefficient! I believe the power of the human to produce value for herself and the people around her varies widely on how she engages with society. I don’t think there’s any validity to a utilitarian argument for class based oppression, because I think exploitation and dehumanization are not just horrifying, but wasteful of the power of human intellect and social collaboration. Dehumanized workflows that control every variable and preclude personal interpretation are great for computers. Humans are so much better than that because we each have the same amazing potential for making smart decisions with limited information. When we waste that potential we lose utility.

      1. Broseidon, FYI:

        I didn’t understand why the reply was posted to a snarky comment I made in support of you expressing your opinion here however you see fit.

        If that is how you intended that comment, then it’s the exact opposite of how I understood it. It seemed to me like you were defending Max G, not supporting EG.

        1. That’s a pretty bizarre reading, since the comment quotes EG saying she asked you to put him in permamod, and then begins with “Thank you”.

          Then I said “You shouldn’t express your opinions” is a stupid argument, because that’s an argument Max G made:

          BTW, there was a time that I had toddlers, and didn’t get to the movies, either. And you know what? For those years, I didn’t lecture people about the movies!

          EG didn’t say anything at all like that.

          So I can’t see any reason at all for you to read my comment as defending Max G.

          1. Until a little over a month ago you’d made only 2 comments on Feministe using your current email addy. Since then you’ve racked up 48 comments here. You might consider that quite a few, but it’s still over a very short period of time. I don’t *know* your style yet, and that particular comment read as grandiosely sarcastic Freeze Peach rhetoric that was meant to mock our moderation practises. I may be oversensitised to such mockery because I see it so much elsewhere, and frankly your handle doesn’t help with respect to extending you the benefit of the doubt about the use of sarcasm, so if I misread you then I regret the error. Just remember in future than I can’t read your mind, I only have pattern recognition to go on.

        2. I agree with the comment about your user name being confusing: one would think that anyone adopting that name would be some kind of MRA/frat boy/douchebro type, and it isn’t necessarily immediately evident to someone who doesn’t know you that you mean the user name facetiously.

        3. The username is pretty accurate.
          I’m White. I’m a cis man. I live in a house with 5 other guys. I work out 2-3 hours a day. I smoke weed. Drink beer. Have a white collar job.

          This handle is nothing like any handle that MRA types use when commenting on Feministe. It’s way too fey.

          Onward and upward!

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