Dealing with isms

Posted by Teeny 1 Jul 2010 at 21:31

From here it looks as if many of the isms are not so much prejudice or intolerance of others' prejudices as getting obsessed with knocking spots off each other, appearing superior, and winning the argument.

Posted by kailex 1 Jul 2010 at 21:36

Teeny ,I am not quite sure how would they differ - do you mean a prejudice is acceptable but using an "ism" to win an arguement isn't?

Posted by Teeny 1 Jul 2010 at 22:20

No, I'm saying the constant bickering is more irritating than the supposed "isms"

Posted by kailex 1 Jul 2010 at 22:30

ah - OK :-)

That makes sense - thanks.

Posted by Sharona 1 Jul 2010 at 22:31

Here's my question. What makes a statement sexist? Is it because one person said it was sexist? Do you need a preponderance of the evidence? What if two people think it is, and 15 think it isn't?

We all draw the line in the sand in a different place. I have no problem with calling a woman friend here a "chick" but that's offensive to some. Then if I call a group of women "ladies", that's offensive to others.

I'm completely at a loss sometimes when I hear people screaming offense at a word or statement, and I literally have no clue what is bothering them.

To me, respect goes both ways. It isn't just about me watching every single word I say in case one word might offend someone who lives on the other side of the world from me and may not ever have heard the colloquialism I am using. To me, respect means accepting each other as we are and learning from each other.

If it's not possible to do that without the ism police, I suspect throwing out that aspect of the CV might be the way to go.

Posted by Cat 1 Jul 2010 at 22:45

I think an "ism" is anything which puts someone down on the basis of something that is part of them which they did not choose, and cannot change.

So, while there are degrees of misunderstanding and cultural differences in language, I do think it the cv should remain.

Posted by kailex 1 Jul 2010 at 22:51

I think there will always be a middle ground where we all differ - but an extreme at which we all agree, and that extreme could be covered by other CV's such as respect etc.

So - I don't really think we need the non-racist, sexist, ...ist clause specificallly, if it's so bad it's illegal - it goes.
If its at the extreme end of offensive, but legal, we could host-post on respect etc.?

If it's in the middle ground - hopefully the members would post wisely - well - we can hope :-)

Posted by justme 1 Jul 2010 at 23:12

Agree with all the above people, and cats definition seems spot on.
middle of the road common sense and common decency seems better way forward than a thou shalt not ..but we are not quite sure what the what is .. :)

Having made my redcurrant jelly at silly o'clock am now going to bed ..night night all xx

Posted by Safrances 2 Jul 2010 at 01:10

What a can of worms. I don't think there is any reason to remove this statement in the Core Values. If you do, you just give people leeway to say things in order to be controversial. There should be ZERO tolerance for Racist, sexist and whatever behavior. When you treat people as less than equal, you are guilty of being a bigot. Obviously this is MY opinion, but I consider it basic common sense.

Posted by Sharona 2 Jul 2010 at 04:14

But what you see as sexist, someone else may not. Who gets to set the definition?

Posted by mark 2 Jul 2010 at 07:50

Safrance: "There should be ZERO tolerance for Racist, sexist and whatever behavior. When you treat people as less than equal, you are guilty of being a bigot. Obviously this is MY opinion, but I consider it basic common sense."

So from now on we host post every woman who writes "men cannot multitask"? It's a statement about all men, it puts men down (and, as I've argued more than once, it's also patent nonsense). So it is clearly sexist and should absolutely not be tolerated, and anyone who smiles when they read it is a bigot, right?

How about if someone uses the word "chairman". Is that sexist because it excludes women, or is suggesting that it's sexist in itself sexist because this suggests that women are overly sensitive about words? I've heard women on this site express both view points. How about "manhole cover"? Should we start at "Aardvark" in the dictionary and vote on the status of a few hundred words a week until we get to "Z"?

Does zero tolerance still look like basic common sense to everyone?

And things get much more complex when you start talking about racist remarks. How about the word "black"? There are entire books written by people of every conceivable skin tone discussing the appropriateness of that one word.

Posted by kailex 2 Jul 2010 at 09:08

I don't think zero tolerance can ever work - as Sharona says -who decides whether something is anything-ist?

If we, instead of protesting on a thread, simply did not respond to anything we considered sexist.racist etc - than if a majority were offended a thread would just die anyway with a lack of comments.

If people felt it was too bad to ignore, then contact the hosts of that thread who would discuss it and if necessary refer it to the CLT, but again, don't post on the forum/blog or whatever.
If the author said it to be controversial, they would have failed.
If it happened to be a genuine belief - they may realise far sooner that way than being host-posted, that what they said was deemed unacceptable.

Posted by TubalCain 2 Jul 2010 at 09:20

When I was a student the Students' Union objected to the word "chairman" on the grounds that it was sexist, and it was changed to "chairperson". Then someone said that "chairperson" was speciesist and it changed to "chairbeing", but that was changed again to "chairentity" when someone else commented that "chairbeing" discriminated against non-lifeforms...

Almost as barmy, when I was doing my PGCE we were told that a phrase such as "black coffee" was forbidden because it was racist. This made one of the black members of my tutor group very angry because he felt that whoever had made such a ruling didn't think that he had the intelligence to distinguish between a simple use of the adjective "black" and a racist remark.

But what about when we're quoting the Bible and the verse in question appears to be "sexist", such as when Paul is addressing the believers in whichever church it is and says, "Brothers!" At one church I used to go to, people would often add, "And sisters!" when reading verses like that out loud. Common sense should prevail, but would a specific ruling on being sexist (for instance) mean that we should modify our quotes from the Bible, or only use certain translations?

Posted by mark 2 Jul 2010 at 09:32

I think matters concerning the Bible are the thorniest problem here. Adding "and sisters" is very nice, but in some cases it isn't what the original text implies. It is often said here that Paul is sexist. So does that mean that quoting the allegedly sexist passages written by Paul is against the Core Values? The simple fact is that the traditional stance of the church is sexist by secular criteria. But if we outlaw the expression of that position, we no longer have a site where people from all Christian traditions can dialogue.

And then where do we go next? "All Cretans are gluttons" is racist, but it's another quote from Paul. Calling non-Jews "dogs" is racist, but this time it's a quote from Jesus. The whole argument through the New Testament about the unique place of the Jews in human history is racist, isn't it?

I don't think that banning isms does anything to promote genuine dialogue. People need to be able to express their honestly-held views. That doesn't mean they get to launch personal attacks or to be offensive for the sake of it. But other provisions in the Core Values deal with such cases. If someone makes a sexist remark in a personal attack, I think we should host it because it's a personal attack, not because it conforms to some definition of sexist.

Posted by kailex 2 Jul 2010 at 09:57

Hosting is always going to be an art not a precise science.

Mark says, " People need to be able to express their honestly-held views.", but how do we decide if a view is genuinely held or just posted to provoke a response?

But I think the same question is raised about all views - not just the obvious sexist/racist/ageist etc. For example, someone may have very strongly held views about liberals not being saved, or about fundamental Christians making God too small, so their posts will reflect this and could offend people in other camps.
But stopping that stops all dialogue.
We can usually agree when someone is simply stating their view, however offensive we may find it, and actually being rude/offensive to other denominations etc.

So it's all down to respecting the person even if not agreeing with their views - which the CV's already cover adequately.

Posted by acorn 2 Jul 2010 at 17:28

I think what having the "isms" in the CVs does at present is to help ensure that attacks can't be made against groups of people. Having looked at the way the CVs read, it seems to me that the words "personal attack" mostly seem to imply attacks made against another individual.

Cat said: "I think an "ism" is anything which puts someone down on the basis of something that is part of them which they did not choose, and cannot change."

But I would want to make it clear that putting *any* group down - in the sense of off-hand diminishing remarks - was contrary to the CVs. It doesn't just apply to race, sex, disability etc. It applies to faith as well.

Posted by mark 2 Jul 2010 at 17:43

But what does "putting down" another faith group mean in practice?

For example, "Only Christians go to heaven" is putting everyone else about as far down as it is possible to go, but it's hardly an uncommon view among Christians. For that matter "Islam is superior to Christianity" is the standard position of moslems. The very existence of protestants is a criticism of the history of Roman Catholics, even before anyone starts describing the distinctives that exist today.

Someone saying that women should not teach because they are too easily deceived would, I guess, be a candidate for host posting. But that's exactly what Paul says! Are we going to host post people for taking Paul literally?

Any group? How about "Terrorists are dangerous"? "I wouldn't trust any paedophile with my children"?

Posted by Safrances 2 Jul 2010 at 19:20

There is no way that everyone is going to agree on this subject. Good luck figuring it out, but I really hope you don't change that part of the Core Values.

Posted by Cat 2 Jul 2010 at 19:21

I would say that putting a faith group down , providing you are giving thought out reasons , is perfectly acceptable and perhaps even necessary in a debate. After all, you can choose whether you believe something or not. And . if something is really true it will stand up to being "put down" anyway.

Who wouldn't want to "put down" a group who believed god wanted them to be pedeophiles, for example?

People can choose to join a faith group, so expecting to have their opinions challenged is fair enough imnho. People do not choose their colour,sex, sexual orientation, size, or where they are born.

Posted by acorn 2 Jul 2010 at 21:52

Mark asked: "But what does "putting down" another faith group mean in practice?"

Firstly, I think context is important. There is a difference between giving well thought out reasons why you believe something in a debate and dropping into a conversation about something completely different to say, "Well the posts on this thread just show how easily deceived women are..."

Secondly, I think there is a difference between disagreeing with a particular position and doing people down. For example, I don't agree with the fundamentalist Christian view of creation. But that doesn't give me an excuse to say, "There is no point in discussing anything with a fundamentalist. They have no brains!"

Posted by mark 2 Jul 2010 at 22:06

Ok. So do we need the ism clause in the Core Values to prevent that kind of down-doing?

Posted by Teeny 2 Jul 2010 at 22:13

Mark wrote: Someone saying that women should not teach because they are too easily deceived would, I guess, be a candidate for host posting. But that's exactly what Paul says! Are we going to host post people for taking Paul literally?

No........ I would just host post Paul (with my tongue half way into my cheek)

Posted by acorn 2 Jul 2010 at 22:26

Mark said: "Ok. So do we need the ism clause in the Core Values to prevent that kind of down-doing?"

I think we need something. At the moment, I don't see anything else in the Core Values that specifically addresses down-doing people from particular groups as opposed to down-doing individuals.

Posted by Jools 2 Jul 2010 at 22:44

Why do we have core values?

Every one of them is open to interpretation, and hosting will always be an inexact science. If we are going to try and tie down every detail we'd just as well give up because as soon as we try to define a core value precisely we will encounter problems such as those that have been listed on this thread.

But we do need to have a set of principles within which we run this site. A line has to be drawn somewhere every time a controversial issue is raised, and that will involve a bit of common sense (this is where we then start debating what common sense is..... ) I don't see that dealing with "isms" is much different from deciding what is/isn't a personal attack, or what constitutes "aggressive language" or "gratuitous swearing" , or when a discussion becomes a "personal argument" etc. There will always be a point where a judgement call has to be made, either by a hosting team or by an individual host.

So I'm not sure why we are we putting "isms' in particular under the magnifying glass. If we do that then why not the whole core values? It is in there to illustrate a general principle - that we should avoid singling out personal or group characteristics and attacking them in some way. It could be left out as being included in the principles surrounding personal attack - but then I would argue that about 90% of core values could be left out on the basis of them simply enlarging on a few loose principles. We couild define precisely what "ism" remarks are unacceptable - but similarly I could then argue we need to define in more detail every part of our core values and they would end up so lengthy than no-one would ever read them.

I think we should try to avoid being "sexist, racist or whateverist" as it says in core values. We will never agree on the fine detail - but then we wouldn't on any of our core values. Each situation will demand the application of a modicum of intelligence and sensitivity.

Personally I'd leave it in core values on the basis that it describes a guiding principle for behaviour towards each other and our respective cultures, views and sensitivities.

If we care one iota about other people we should be trying not to make sweeping and/or intolerant statements about any group of people. But as Sharona has hinted above, "taking offence" is often just another form of passive aggression. Some people seem to make a career of being offended , and IMO it feels like a worse attack than the original (possibly careless or unintentional) remark that they took offence with!

Posted by pearla 2 Jul 2010 at 22:56

I must say that I'm glad I lived before political correctness when people didn't take offence so easily! The British used to have a great sense of humour and were good at laughing and themselves and others, generally in good lighthearted fun. Inuendo's aplenty but none of the foul mouthed, rude and way over the top of some so called 'humour' which has been around since.
Ah me.....Jesus was ridiculed, mocked, laughed at, teased and much worse and he didn't take offence but left it for the Judge of all righteousness to deal with.