Any Gaming sites that aren’t all so left wing? Rowling & Other Catastrophes

[theclockworkrat]

rational

“Rational”

What bull.

You seriously linked to PragerU?

[LexW]

Maybe so, but I have also noticed that the more people get criticized, the more they seem to double down on their initial comment and start to feel defensive and persecuted.

I don’t think this is a universal or really even “normal” human trait. Even in kids, only some kids behave that way, and they tend to grow out of it, especially by late teens or early 20s (partly because people that age are exploring how ideas work to some extent). Rowling is 54. Further, the more intellectually curious you are, the less likely you seem to be to do this. Whereas the more you value your own pride, your own sense of superiority, and the less empathy you have, the less intellectual curiosity, the more likely you are to do this. It also tends to be a personality trait, and has little relationship to how much you are criticised. If you act like this, even mild criticism will make you defensive and abusive.

Sadly, Rowling has always had this personality trait. You can see it from the early days of Harry Potter, where whenever someone called Harry Potter a fantasy novel, she got angry and said it wasn’t, whilst making wild, sweeping and inaccurate assertions about the fantasy genre (primarily that it was just adventure novels for 13-year-old boys). Likewise when people point out there were similar books before (after Rowling had herself declared that she invented a genre), she was extremely angry and defensive, dismissing other authors and so on. She’s never been intellectually curious either, as you can see from her reading habits (or lack thereof) and general lack of interest in exploring ideas.

Like saying this is wrong… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChVtq7NCO1M

Tixy, PragerU is a far-right/ultra-conservative outlet who have no relationship to the facts. Claiming to be rational whilst having to resort to posting their material means it’s not society which has changed, it’s you who have.

They deny that racism, homophobia, hatred of Islam, misogyny and so on are even things. They consistently deny climate change. They frequently use outright white supremacist arguments and logic. They’re directly funded by far-right donors and their content reflects the agendas and interests of those people, and is often presented by pseudo-academics.

Using their material is not compatible with being “rational”. It’s compatible with being on the far-right, and white supremacism and so on.

Also, if you’re hard-against trans rights and perhaps against BLM and so on (as PragerU are), I don’t think you’re likely to find any gaming-related sites at all outside of the fringe-right (parts of 4Chan). Even the most generally right-wing and dismissive mainstream sites (like parts of reddit and RPG Codex) tend to be far to the left of PragerU.

[Sarfrin]

unless you want to ignore biological fact that 99.99999 percent of people are born as Male and Female.

You ignored the biological facts I linked to specifically for you, so I guess you’re just a bigot on a trolling spree at this point.

[crystal_gaiden]

Seems kind of bigoted to be honest - I feel less and less like defending her every day.

The ‘infiltrate women’s spaces’ thing, I genuinely thought that was more of an issue than it really is, but I had my mind changed. Seems a lot like JK isn’t really up for that.

I believe I initially wanted to side with her for 2 reasons - firstly because I like to think the best of people, and so I need pretty conclusive evidence that someone is ‘hateful’ or whatever to go along with it. I still think misguided is a much better description than transphobe, I don’t believe she hates trans people. She just seems unwilling to listen to reason.

Secondly, the comics are very good, they are funny, but - that outrage culture is also very real, and I thought JK had fallen victim to it. Well, she has - it’s just that it’s, let’s say, a lot more justified than I initially thought.

[BillButNotBen]

I believe I initially wanted to side with her for 2 reasons - firstly because I like to think the best of people, and so I need pretty conclusive evidence that someone is ‘hateful’ or whatever to go along with it

Yeah, I do this too. To a fault.
I did ones of those Meyers Briggs personality tests a few years back, just out of interest, and I can’t remember the exact name of my result, but it was something like “diplomat” or “peacekeeper” or “mediator”.
It gets me in trouble sometimes. (Usually with LexW )

[crystal_gaiden]

It’s not it is all fact and I thought we could all agree on it… if not then I dunno what I can say to a crazy person?

I somewhat sympathise with your position - I understand the feeling of being ‘forced’ to go along with the majority viewpoint. What you have to remember though is that people do it from a place of concern - you might not agree with what they say but they’re saying it out of concern for those affected, not to try and oppress you. Unfortunately in the modern world that does occasionally result in people being silenced, but again, I don’t think it’s malicious - it’s people trying to protect other people.

That being said, in this case it’s not really a ‘fact’. Yes it’s a fact that a large number of people are born unambiguously male or female, but whether you can change sex is very much an ideology thing. Clearly you can change sex, people do all the time, but whether it is a ‘real’ change or not… Well it’s very hard to define. For some it’s hard to say what thier ‘real’ sex was in the first place. It’s semantics, but very highly charged, important semantics.

I’m not even sure of the answer myself - but what I am sure of is that I’ll treat people how I’d want to be treated, and that means referring to people as they’d like to be referred to.

[Vheissu]

An easy way to disabuse oneself of the notion that gender is fixed is take an anthropology course and discover just how many cultures have/had third genders, non-genders, intersex and so on. Humans really do run the gamut.

[Grizzly]

Or just, well, educate yourself about intersex people.

[Grizzly]

Like saying this is wrong… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChVtq7NCO1M

Without going too far down the Jordan Peterson rabbit hole, nobody considers “white priviledge” to be a crime. It’s just putting a name to a phenonomon, that people who aren’t on the receiving end of racism are often unaware about how racism affects people who are not them and how they benefit from not being in the sightlines. Do you know how many people I’ve heard argue that there was no racism in the US in the 90s?

Good ol’ JP here is conjuring a strawman.

And err

If you like rational discourse…

I didn’t want this to turn into a Trans thing, I just used it as an example and hoped people would agree with rational thought… but I guess not. I don’t see anything JK said to be offensive in any way, unless you want to ignore biological fact that 99.99999 percent of people are born as Male and Female.

Human Rights Watch states that 1.7 percent of babies are different from what is typically called a boy or a girl. Surgeries on intersex children happen often to obscure this fact: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/25/us-harmful-surgery-intersex-children

Branding an entire branch of the LGBT as sexual predators trying to infiltrate women’s spaces is not rational, it’s prejudice. Nobody is denying the reality of biological sex, although JK Rowling likes to claim that people are. People who are transgender would like their gender different from the biological sex they were assigned at birth, and…

tbh I’m not entirely sure why I continue arguing this. Just read some of the links I posted in response to crystal_gaiden! There’s plenty of information out there if you want to know more, you can just try to read the posts that were already posted here, which were partly posted here for your sake. You might as well read them.

I believe I initially wanted to side with her for 2 reasons - firstly because I like to think the best of people, and so I need pretty conclusive evidence that someone is ‘hateful’ or whatever to go along with it. I still think misguided is a much better description than transphobe, I don’t believe she hates trans people. She just seems unwilling to listen to reason.

Being a transphobe (or any phobe) doesn’t neccisarely have to be born from hate, it’s just a statement that, much like any phobia, the person who is holding those views is being entirely irrational. It’s just a bit harsher for humans to be treated in the same way as some of my family members treat spiders.
And in some way, it doesn’t really matter what JK Rowlings intentions are: She is using her considerable platform (ironically built by providing the very escapism that many LGBT people needed) to spread misinformation. This is harmful. I don’t intend to hurt other people but I still do it sometimes, often due to ignorance or sheer clumsyness, and it’s up to me to owe up to that and try to repair the damage. What seperates me from JK Rowling is that I try to do just that, whilst she is doubling down.

[crystal_gaiden]

Branding an entire branch of the LGBT as sexual predators trying to infiltrate women’s spaces is not rational, it’s prejudice.

Yes - but she didn’t do that as far as I can see. I can’t find the quote but she said something like ‘if this (law change) happens then any and all people can go inside women’s spaces’. I think she’s actually wrong regardless, but - what she said isn’t calling all trans people rapists. I’m not especially on her side anymore but we have to stick to what she actually said.

Without going too far down the Jordan Peterson rabbit hole, nobody considers “white priviledge” to be a crime. It’s just putting a name to a phenonomon, that people who aren’t on the receiving end of racism are often unaware about how racism affects people who are not them and how they benefit from not being in the sightlines. Do you know how many people I’ve heard argue that there was no racism in the US in the 90s?

There’s some weird shit in that video (What makes white people feel good makes black people feel bad? What?), but there’s some sense as well.

The thing about white privilege is - there’s very little utility in talking about it. Yes being white is undoubtedly the safest bet, but how ahead or behind you are is so vastly different for each individual that I can’t see any use for it. And a lot of what people attribute to white privilege is really ‘middle class privilege’ or ‘financially comfortable’ privilege. Yes obviously there’s a link to race there but it’s not always the same thing. In the 90s it was probably more worth talking about, but today there’s barely a white person left on the planet who doesn’t understand white privilege, you can’t move for being told about it.

Being a transphobe (or any phobe) doesn’t neccisarely have to be born from hate, it’s just a statement that, much like any phobia, the person who is holding those views is being entirely irrational.

Yeah I guess that’s a good way to put it, fair enough.

[Sarfrin]

she said something like ‘if this (law change) happens then any and all people can go inside women’s spaces

But that simply isn’t true. The change means that trans women can go into women’s spaces. Her argument against this is that men will pretend to be trans women so they can get into women’s spaces and…attack them or spy on them, I guess? Thing is, there have been very few, if any cases of that happening. The sorry reality is that men who want to spy on or attack women are already doing it without the need to pretend to be trans women.

And incidentally, if you institute a policy of barring trans women from women’s spaces the only way you can judge that is by how people look.* The people who suffer most from that are cis women who don’t look stereotypically feminine.

*I mean, you could instutute a genital pat down at the door of every women’s space, but who the hell is going to be on board for that?

[crystal_gaiden]

But that simply isn’t true. The change means that trans women can go into women’s spaces. Her argument against this is that men will pretend to be trans women so they can get into women’s spaces and…attack them or spy on them, I guess? Thing is, there have been very few, if any cases of that happening. The sorry reality is that men who want to spy on or attack women are already doing it without the need to pretend to be trans women.

Yes, I wasn’t advocating her view. I literally said in the same post ‘I think she’s actually wrong regardless’.

[Vheissu]

Oh yeah for sure. Really I’m responding to the idea that non-binary genders are a new development and thus a part of some recent leftist movement. They’ve been around for a long, long time in different forms.

[Grizzly]

“Haven’t you heard? Constant leftism is a sign of superiour intelligence and vast otherworldliness”

[alms]

A few take-aways:

1. No insults, please.
2. If you intend to participate directly and discuss a topic, it’s your duty to make sure you have at least a basic grasp of what’s being discussed. It’s OK to ask clarifications, questions, help, but …keep reading.
3. I suspect people in charge of RPS are NOT happy seeing PragerU videos posted on their platform.

Concerning point two, it’s fine to ask for pointers if you don’t, but then again it’s only fair to wait before expressing an opinion on the matter, which would be uninformed.

What’s not great:

1. Discussions potentially going in circles because every chapter is liable to be re-opened over and over.
2. People ‘missing’ large, crucial facts or notions because it benefits their arguments.
3. General sea-lioning.

If you feel like discussing something concerning this post or moderation, feel free to send a PM.

Discussion is of course welcome and encouraged, do carry on!

[TheDreamlord]

What is an “uninformed opinion”?

[Sarfrin]

What is an “uninformed opinion”?

One that’s based on little or no knowledge of the subject at hand.

[Vheissu]

More importantly, how does the noble sea lion figure into all this?

(seriously, what is sea lioning)

[Grizzly]

Geuss what, it’s another Wondermark comic!

#1062; The Terrible Sea Lion

[alms]

What is an “uninformed opinion”?

Tovarish! Any and every opinion that hasn’t been previously Approve-stamped by the Politburo is thoughtcrime …da?

Seriously for the unsuspecting readers: “I haven’t got the first clue in the world about the very facts that are being discussed, such as what was said by who, to whom, and how, but/so I’m going to argue whatever pleases me anyway.”