Oh no, it's totes disrespectful. But again, Christian beliefs are oppressive and hurtful, so I feel no obligation to play nice back.
And if debate isn't oppression, what's wrong with calling people out, and continuing to call people out, for their mistakes? Where's the harm?
No harm. I'm enjoying the conversation. Where's the harm in rebutting?
The harm comes when your rebuttal is in the form of "Not enough people agree with you to make your feelings valid for discussion." If you can't see how that's harmful, well, I simply don't know what to say.
You might have a point if we don't restrict an argument to speech that is harmful. I believe I did an adequate job explaining why racist jokes and other forms of othering speech can be harmful, not just speech.
And I should remind you that your right to free speech ends the moment you harm someone.
That's right, that's science. When 97% of an audience understands why a joke is not offensive, they're not burdened with a moral obligation to kow-tow to the remaining 3% that is getting their dicks bent.
This is why [...] free speech still exists.
Precisely the opposite: free speech exists so that 3% who are "getting their dicks bent" can't be dismissed, silenced, or beaten when they stand up to the majority and say "hey you guys are being racist," and can have some chance at getting a decent argument of whether or not some speech is harmful.
Intent does not matter. Just because you punched somebody or ran into their car or broke their window by accident does not absolve you of responsibility, and speech is the same way. Once you've said something harmful, you can't take it back, and you can't just say "No, that didn't actually hurt you, look at these 97 people who weren't hurt so obviously you're fine." You've hurt someone, and you have the obligation to apologize and to do your goddamn due diligence in the future so you don't harm them again.
And I think you're still missing the point - there are times when Futurama makes sexist jokes and they aren't being ironic. They're trying to be funny and accidentally are sexist. Good behavior in other episodes doesn't absolve them of that kind of slip.
Also, if 3% of people were getting their dicks bent on a regular basis, I would say that there exists a pretty big moral obligation to help those people. That doesn't sound pleasant at all! Won't somebody think of the dicks?
Please give examples of when and where Futurama has made unironic sexist jokes.
And I don't know where you reside, but in the US, "harm" is not defined the way that you define it. You can't libel someone, or slander someone, or incite violence, but you can certainly say that you don't like black people. The KKK does it all the time and nary a one gets arrested for it. You may disagree with that. Heck, I probably disagree with that, but it does demonstrate that free speech and "harm" as it pertains to speech are not defined, officially, in the way that you are defining them.
I fully agree that if the same 3% is being harped on repeatedly with stereotypes, jokes in bad taste, and things of that ilk, that's wrong, but that's a hypothetical entirely unrelated to the conversation/argument/internet fist fight we were having. It's pretty much a non-sequitur.
You have to realize how few people it takes to make up 3% of a group, though. More than 3% of the global population is mentally ill. Should we worry overly much about what, in prime time television, those people find offensive? I guess it depends on their specific illness, eh?
What about people whose job it is to be offended, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Are they progressives or professional shit-stirrers? Is it moral to make a living on incitement and subsequent profiting from racial tensions? Does it serve the cause? Does it progress society? Should we worry about them?
What about people who are offended about birth control being taught in high schools? Evolution? What about people who are offended by women attending school?
Who is the arbiter of which minority opinions/feelings/beliefs are important and worthy of recognition? It sounds like it's you two.
You're right, I'm using a stricter definition of harm than the US. By my definition, saying "I don't like black people" is not harmful. You're stating an opinion (and that you're a racist), but it's not harmful unless you are trying to convince other people of stereotypes based on race: Saying "I don't like black people and you shouldn't like black people" is harmful, and making a joke about, say, going into the inner city and having black kids (or really just any poor kids) steal your car tires is also harmful. It might not be obvious, but it's reinforcing the opinion of the audience that people who live in the inner city are dangerous thieves.
"I don't like black people" reinforces the idea that it's OK to dislike someone based on superficial traits. That's not harmful?
This is what's irking me about your argument. You are speaking as if you have an objective metric to apply to offense and minority rights, but you don't. Your views are entirely arbitrary, while you rail against me for the same.
Oh no, it's totes disrespectful. But again, Christian beliefs are oppressive and hurtful, so I feel no obligation to play nice back.
Fuck you. Jesus spoke with the prostitutes and cast the money lenders out from the temple. Jesus healed the leppers and washed the proletariat's feet. Christian beliefs aren't the reason Chrisitians are assholes, it's humanity's tendancy to pervert everything they touch. It's people confusing "Thou shalt have no God before me" with "Thou and everyone else shalt have no God before me." It's the same reason Muslims ignore Mohammad's rules of war. It's the same reason that if you look hard enough you can find dogmatic buddhists (believe me, I have). And before you start praising atheism as the one secular safe and not racist religion, I'd like you to remember three things: 1) In an atheist world, most european records pre-fall of Rome would've been lost 2) Google Social Darwinism 3) Google Go God Go XII. Watch that. Yeah.
You have to realize how few people it takes to make up 3% of a group, though. More than 3% of the global population is mentally ill. Should we worry overly much about what, in prime time television, those people find offensive? I guess it depends on their specific illness, eh?
Oh hell yes we should. Because the problem isn't that we're having disabled people look at people making fun of them, the problem is that we stereotype and "other" the disabled (and analogous underprivileged groups) in our depictions of them, and it makes it so that we don't find it surprising or reprehensible when somebody acts like all black people are thieves or that mistreating the disabled is okay. Stereotyping on its own won't turn somebody into a racist, but if you already are a racist it reinforces your racism and also reduces the likelihood of others punishing you for being racist.
Oh no, it's totes disrespectful. But again, Christian beliefs are oppressive and hurtful, so I feel no obligation to play nice back.
Fuck you. Jesus spoke with the prostitutes and cast the money lenders out from the temple. Jesus healed the leppers and washed the proletariat's feet. Christian beliefs aren't the reason Chrisitians are assholes, it's humanity's tendancy to pervert everything they touch. It's people confusing "Thou shalt have no God before me" with "Thou and everyone else shalt have no God before me." It's the same reason Muslims ignore Mohammad's rules of war. It's the same reason that if you look hard enough you can find dogmatic buddhists (believe me, I have). And before you start praising atheism as the one secular safe and not racist religion, I'd like you to remember three things: 1) In an atheist world, most european records pre-fall of Rome would've been lost 2) Google Social Darwinism 3) Google Go God Go XII. Watch that. Yeah.
Atheists can be total dicks too. Check out /r/atheism sometime, they're total shitcocks all around. However, atheists don't have a big book of beliefs that tell them that gay people are evil and women need to be oppressed for their own good. There are plenty of atheists who believe those things, but it's not a tenant of their atheism.
Also, Jesus don't real. He was probably made up to unite the followers of various local religions and cults, and while the guy described in those books is pretty cool, it's a pretty small part of a book pretty jam-packed with incredibly awful shit.
As for the records, doing a good thing does not make bad things go away. Sure, we'd have lost some Roman records... and we'd have kept alive all the victims of inquisitions, witch burnings, the crusades...
And, uh, social darwinism has nothing to do with anything here.
You have to realize how few people it takes to make up 3% of a group, though. More than 3% of the global population is mentally ill. Should we worry overly much about what, in prime time television, those people find offensive? I guess it depends on their specific illness, eh?
Oh hell yes we should. Because the problem isn't that we're having disabled people look at people making fun of them, the problem is that we stereotype and "other" the disabled (and analogous underprivileged groups) in our depictions of them, and it makes it so that we don't find it surprising or reprehensible when somebody acts like all black people are thieves or that mistreating the disabled is okay. Stereotyping on its own won't turn somebody into a racist, but if you already are a racist it reinforces your racism and also reduces the likelihood of others punishing you for being racist.
I think you're missing my meaning here. Let me spell it out. My wife is a psych nurse. Among her past patients are a man who believes he is a cyborg, and a man who believes that he visited the great pyramids of Egypt with Jesus Christ, while riding on a giant pink bunny. One is offended by soap commercials, the other, used cars.
Should we pull all soap commercials and car dealership commercials from the air for their sake? Why or why not? If we should not, how may members should a minority have before we have to worry about it? Why that number?
You have to realize how few people it takes to make up 3% of a group, though. More than 3% of the global population is mentally ill. Should we worry overly much about what, in prime time television, those people find offensive? I guess it depends on their specific illness, eh?
As someone with a mental illness and one who knows a lot of mentally ill people, I'm going to have to say "No shit, Sherlock." There are some cases where we shouldn't so much (egomaniacs and paranoids might be unrighteously offended due to their illnesses) but the very nature of you asking the question shows a level of douchebaggery that has just skyrocketed you from "guy with bad taste in TV shows" to "biggoted son of a bitch."
What about people who are offended about birth control being taught in high schools? Evolution? What about people who are offended by women attending school?
Teaching about birth control and evolution isn't harmful. The presentation of facts is not harmful unless it's packaged with an incitement to harmful behavior, and birth control in particular tends to be helpful.
Oh no, it's totes disrespectful. But again, Christian beliefs are oppressive and hurtful, so I feel no obligation to play nice back.
Fuck you. Jesus spoke with the prostitutes and cast the money lenders out from the temple. Jesus healed the leppers and washed the proletariat's feet. Christian beliefs aren't the reason Chrisitians are assholes, it's humanity's tendancy to pervert everything they touch. It's people confusing "Thou shalt have no God before me" with "Thou and everyone else shalt have no God before me." It's the same reason Muslims ignore Mohammad's rules of war. It's the same reason that if you look hard enough you can find dogmatic buddhists (believe me, I have). And before you start praising atheism as the one secular safe and not racist religion, I'd like you to remember three things: 1) In an atheist world, most european records pre-fall of Rome would've been lost 2) Google Social Darwinism 3) Google Go God Go XII. Watch that. Yeah.
Atheists can be total dicks too. Check out /r/atheism sometime, they're total shitcocks all around. However, atheists don't have a big book of beliefs that tell them that gay people are evil and women need to be oppressed for their own good. There are plenty of atheists who believe those things, but it's not a tenant of their atheism.
Also, Jesus don't real. He was probably made up to unite the followers of various local religions and cults, and while the guy described in those books is pretty cool, it's a pretty small part of a book pretty jam-packed with incredibly awful shit.
And, uh, social darwinism has nothing to do with anything here.
Jesus being real or fictional has no bearing on Christian beliefs being oppressive and hurtful or not. Greg is arguing that Jesus Christ, fictional, real, or half-and-half, is the Gold Standard for Christianity, and Christianity, in its pure form, is neither oppressive nor hurtful.
I'm not saying I agree fully with this statement, but it's got merit as an argument. Dismissing it as "Jesus is made up and you're childish for referring to him as an example" is pretty dismissive and offensive, wouldn't you say? Condescending. Rude. Hurtful. Doesn't progress the discussion in any way. You didn't rebut him, you just belittled him.
So why, again, are you the arbiter of reasonable moral offense?
What about people who are offended about birth control being taught in high schools? Evolution? What about people who are offended by women attending school?
Teaching about birth control and evolution isn't harmful. The presentation of facts is not harmful unless it's packaged with an incitement to harmful behavior, and birth control in particular tends to be helpful.
The offended parties would disagree with you. They believe that teaching birth control promotes promiscuity and contributes to the moral decline and decadence of society. Why are you able to dismiss their offense?
I think you're missing my meaning here. Let me spell it out. My wife is a psych nurse. Among her past patients are a man who believes he is a cyborg, and a man who believes that he visited the great pyramids of Egypt with Jesus Christ, while riding on a giant pink bunny. One is offended by soap commercials, the other, used cars.
Should we pull all soap commercials and car dealership commercials from the air for their sake? Why or why not? If we should not, how may members should a minority have before we have to worry about it? Why that number?
You're misunderstanding my definition of harm. Harmful speech occurs with libel, with slander, with incitement to harm. The thing is, I'm considering speech that reinforces prejudices to be harmful, because it contributes to people committing harmful actions, intentionally or no.
I've been using offensive speech kinda interchangeably with harmful speech, which is really my fault. Being offended by something does not immediately make the speech itself offensive/harmful. You have to be able to show how said speech reinforces prejudices, particularly against underprivileged groups. Soap commercials and used cars don't do that.
You have to realize how few people it takes to make up 3% of a group, though. More than 3% of the global population is mentally ill. Should we worry overly much about what, in prime time television, those people find offensive? I guess it depends on their specific illness, eh?
As someone with a mental illness and one who knows a lot of mentally ill people, I'm going to have to say "No shit, Sherlock." There are some cases where we shouldn't so much (egomaniacs and paranoids might be unrighteously offended due to their illnesses) but the very nature of you asking the question shows a level of douchebaggery that has just skyrocketed you from "guy with bad taste in TV shows" to "biggoted son of a bitch."
Greg, are you terminally angry or what? I have OCD. My daughter is clinically depressed. Am I in the club now? Can I comment now?
What I'm getting at is that there are minorities whose opinions are routinely considered safely ignored. The purpose isn't to belittle the mentally ill or any other minority, but to incite a discussion of where the line is and what makes a minority opinion valid or invalid (or dismissible or not dismissible.)
I think it's an important aspect of the conversation being had in this thread. It's fundamental to the argument.
I think you're missing my meaning here. Let me spell it out. My wife is a psych nurse. Among her past patients are a man who believes he is a cyborg, and a man who believes that he visited the great pyramids of Egypt with Jesus Christ, while riding on a giant pink bunny. One is offended by soap commercials, the other, used cars.
Should we pull all soap commercials and car dealership commercials from the air for their sake? Why or why not? If we should not, how may members should a minority have before we have to worry about it? Why that number?
You're misunderstanding my definition of harm. Harmful speech occurs with libel, with slander, with incitement to harm. The thing is, I'm considering speech that reinforces prejudices to be harmful, because it contributes to people committing harmful actions, intentionally or no.
I've been using offensive speech kinda interchangeably with harmful speech, which is really my fault. Being offended by something does not immediately make the speech itself offensive/harmful. You have to be able to show how said speech reinforces prejudices, particularly against underprivileged groups. Soap commercials and used cars don't do that.
Ok but you said "I don't like black people" isn't a harmful statement. Doesn't it reinforce the concept that judging a person's worth or character or affability based upon superficial properties is acceptable? It's social proof, isn't it?
What about people who are offended about birth control being taught in high schools? Evolution? What about people who are offended by women attending school?
Teaching about birth control and evolution isn't harmful. The presentation of facts is not harmful unless it's packaged with an incitement to harmful behavior, and birth control in particular tends to be helpful.
The offended parties would disagree with you. They believe that teaching birth control promotes promiscuity and contributes to the moral decline and decadence of society. Why are you able to dismiss their offense?
Because teaching about birth control is the dissemination of true information in order to inform an audience, not to encourage promiscuity.
And even if it does encourage promiscuity, promiscuity itself isn't harmful.
What about people who are offended about birth control being taught in high schools? Evolution? What about people who are offended by women attending school?
Teaching about birth control and evolution isn't harmful. The presentation of facts is not harmful unless it's packaged with an incitement to harmful behavior, and birth control in particular tends to be helpful.
The offended parties would disagree with you. They believe that teaching birth control promotes promiscuity and contributes to the moral decline and decadence of society. Why are you able to dismiss their offense?
Because teaching about birth control is the dissemination of true information in order to inform an audience, not to encourage promiscuity.
And even if it does encourage promiscuity, promiscuity itself isn't harmful.
According to you. Again, you are setting yourself up as the sole arbiter of what reasonable moral offense is. Do you really not understand what I'm driving at here?
Ok but you said "I don't like black people" isn't a harmful statement. Doesn't it reinforce the concept that judging a person's worth or character or affability based upon superficial properties is acceptable? It's social proof, isn't it?
It reinforces that the person making the statement believes judging someone based on superficial properties is acceptable. On an individual basis, I wouldn't call that actually harmful, because it is only one person. Now, inciting a group of people to get together and say "I don't like black people" can be harmful due to causing peer pressure to a community - if everybody else is judging, it's okay for you to do too.
Those are some serious semantic backflips you're doing in order to avoid admitting that your argument is not consistent. :-)
Making a joke that women like to shop is harmful because it reinforces stereotypes, but stating flat out that judgement of a person's worth based on race is acceptable is somehow different?
According to you. Again, you are setting yourself up as the sole arbiter of what reasonable moral offense is. Do you really not understand what I'm driving at here?
Calling the offense I'm talking about "moral offense" is a misnomer. The only moral statement I've (intentionally) made in this argument was when I said you have a moral obligation to apologize to someone when you've made offense.
I'm not trying to make a moral argument here. In fact, morals can go fuck themselves, because those are subjective.
What I'm talking about here is raising concerns and making complaints about harmful speech. Speech that causes or reinforces behaviors that cause real harm to real people. And speech that reinforces prejudices, particularly prejudices regarding underprivileged groups, can lead to economic and physical harm to those minorities. There is no outrage about moral violations here. It's all outrage about fucking hurting people.
Atheists can be total dicks too. Check out /r/atheism sometime, they're total shitcocks all around. However, atheists don't have a big book of beliefs that tell them that gay people are evil and women need to be oppressed for their own good. There are plenty of atheists who believe those things, but it's not a tenant of their atheism.
Also, Jesus don't real. He was probably made up to unite the followers of various local religions and cults, and while the guy described in those books is pretty cool, it's a pretty small part of a book pretty jam-packed with incredibly awful shit.
And, uh, social darwinism has nothing to do with anything here.
I've had a few too many people tell me that atheists can't be racist to not bring up social darwinism. It was a little pre-emptive, but I had to bring it up.
Anyway, it is more than likely that Jesus existed given the political climate of Judea and Roman occupation thereof. We have documentation of several people crucified at that time who could have been Jesus, and I suspect that Jesus wasn't the one who united the cults, but rather his deciples and other minor characters like that were retro-actively added to the story to unite those judean cults.
Furthermore, hate isn't one of the basic tenants of Christianity. Imperialist use of religion does not stem from the text itself, but rather from a millenium of oppressoin of individualized beliefs by the Catholic church. I'd go on to talk about how indifference is the key to Christianity and assholeism not mixing and how empathy is ultimately the downfall of human society, but I think I just had a profound realization about something almost completely unrelated (religious beliefs, but not mine or yours or anything connected to either of them) and now I'm having difficulty focusing on this.
Making a joke that women like to shop is harmful because it reinforces stereotypes, but stating flat out that judgement of a person's worth based on race is acceptable is somehow different?
"I don't like black people" is stating that you think judging someone based on race is acceptable. Sure, that makes you a terrible person, but it's not harmful until your speech encourages other people to also judge based on race. "I don't like black people," as a statement of an individual's opinion, does not demonstrably do that.
There are no semantic backflips, merely semantic clarifications.
According to you. Again, you are setting yourself up as the sole arbiter of what reasonable moral offense is. Do you really not understand what I'm driving at here?
Calling the offense I'm talking about "moral offense" is a misnomer. The only moral statement I've (intentionally) made in this argument was when I said you have a moral obligation to apologize to someone when you've made offense.
I'm not trying to make a moral argument here. In fact, morals can go fuck themselves, because those are subjective.
What I'm talking about here is raising concerns and making complaints about harmful speech. Speech that causes or reinforces behaviors that cause real harm to real people. And speech that reinforces prejudices, particularly prejudices regarding underprivileged groups, can lead to economic and physical harm to those minorities. There is no outrage about moral violations here. It's all outrage about fucking hurting people.
People offended by the instruction in birth control of thirteen and fourteen year olds believe that it will normalize risky behavior for them. They think that adults presenting sexual topics in a how-to context (such as explaining how to apply a condom or a diaphragm) is in and of itself explicit consent for those young teens to engage in sexual intercourse. Now, you might argue that puberty is a natural signal that an individual is ready for sex, but you can't argue that sex is not inherently risky, especially for inexperienced or immature participants. There argument is more objective than you're giving it credit for, but you comfortably dismiss it while promoting your own viewpoints.
How do you justify that? You don't seem to justify it at all. Instead, you go on 4 paragraph handwaving sprees. ;-)
Making a joke that women like to shop is harmful because it reinforces stereotypes, but stating flat out that judgement of a person's worth based on race is acceptable is somehow different?
"I don't like black people" is stating that you think judging someone based on race is acceptable. Sure, that makes you a terrible person, but it's not harmful until your speech encourages other people to also judge based on race. "I don't like black people," as a statement of an individual's opinion, does not demonstrably do that.
There are no semantic backflips, merely semantic clarifications.
Your last sentence is itself just arguing semantics. Are you being deliberately ironic?
Saying that you've judged someone based on race constitutes social proof. It is implicitly condoning and supporting, even encouraging racism. Are you familiar with the concept of social proof? It's a first year Sociology chapter.
Please explain the difference semantically, morally, or in terms of social harm between the statements "I don't like black people" and "women like to shop". You took offense to the latter but not the former. Why?
Where's those examples of unironic sexism in Futurama? Just curious how that's going. :-)
The offended parties would disagree with you. They believe that teaching birth control promotes promiscuity and contributes to the moral decline and decadence of society. Why are you able to dismiss their offense?
"Moral decline" ought to be a logical fallacy. All information should always be available to everyone (admittedly, NSFL things shouldn't be forced upon people; I haven't read about Mengele for a reason) but what they do with it is ultimately their own decision. Is pre-marital sex a sin? Yes. Is it a sign of moral decline? Debatable. Would I do it anyway if I could? Hell yeah.
Greg, are you terminally angry or what? I have OCD. My daughter is clinically depressed. Am I in the club now? Can I comment now?
Depression in teenagers often manifests in anger, so sort of. For more information, see the who are you thread.
Comments
And I should remind you that your right to free speech ends the moment you harm someone. Precisely the opposite: free speech exists so that 3% who are "getting their dicks bent" can't be dismissed, silenced, or beaten when they stand up to the majority and say "hey you guys are being racist," and can have some chance at getting a decent argument of whether or not some speech is harmful.
Intent does not matter. Just because you punched somebody or ran into their car or broke their window by accident does not absolve you of responsibility, and speech is the same way. Once you've said something harmful, you can't take it back, and you can't just say "No, that didn't actually hurt you, look at these 97 people who weren't hurt so obviously you're fine." You've hurt someone, and you have the obligation to apologize and to do your goddamn due diligence in the future so you don't harm them again.
And I think you're still missing the point - there are times when Futurama makes sexist jokes and they aren't being ironic. They're trying to be funny and accidentally are sexist. Good behavior in other episodes doesn't absolve them of that kind of slip.
And I don't know where you reside, but in the US, "harm" is not defined the way that you define it. You can't libel someone, or slander someone, or incite violence, but you can certainly say that you don't like black people. The KKK does it all the time and nary a one gets arrested for it. You may disagree with that. Heck, I probably disagree with that, but it does demonstrate that free speech and "harm" as it pertains to speech are not defined, officially, in the way that you are defining them.
You have to realize how few people it takes to make up 3% of a group, though. More than 3% of the global population is mentally ill. Should we worry overly much about what, in prime time television, those people find offensive? I guess it depends on their specific illness, eh?
What about people whose job it is to be offended, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Are they progressives or professional shit-stirrers? Is it moral to make a living on incitement and subsequent profiting from racial tensions? Does it serve the cause? Does it progress society? Should we worry about them?
What about people who are offended about birth control being taught in high schools? Evolution? What about people who are offended by women attending school?
Who is the arbiter of which minority opinions/feelings/beliefs are important and worthy of recognition? It sounds like it's you two.
By my definition, saying "I don't like black people" is not harmful. You're stating an opinion (and that you're a racist), but it's not harmful unless you are trying to convince other people of stereotypes based on race: Saying "I don't like black people and you shouldn't like black people" is harmful, and making a joke about, say, going into the inner city and having black kids (or really just any poor kids) steal your car tires is also harmful. It might not be obvious, but it's reinforcing the opinion of the audience that people who live in the inner city are dangerous thieves.
This is what's irking me about your argument. You are speaking as if you have an objective metric to apply to offense and minority rights, but you don't. Your views are entirely arbitrary, while you rail against me for the same.
1) In an atheist world, most european records pre-fall of Rome would've been lost
2) Google Social Darwinism
3) Google Go God Go XII. Watch that. Yeah.
Also, Jesus don't real. He was probably made up to unite the followers of various local religions and cults, and while the guy described in those books is pretty cool, it's a pretty small part of a book pretty jam-packed with incredibly awful shit.
As for the records, doing a good thing does not make bad things go away. Sure, we'd have lost some Roman records... and we'd have kept alive all the victims of inquisitions, witch burnings, the crusades...
And, uh, social darwinism has nothing to do with anything here.
Should we pull all soap commercials and car dealership commercials from the air for their sake? Why or why not? If we should not, how may members should a minority have before we have to worry about it? Why that number?
I'm not saying I agree fully with this statement, but it's got merit as an argument. Dismissing it as "Jesus is made up and you're childish for referring to him as an example" is pretty dismissive and offensive, wouldn't you say? Condescending. Rude. Hurtful. Doesn't progress the discussion in any way. You didn't rebut him, you just belittled him.
So why, again, are you the arbiter of reasonable moral offense?
I've been using offensive speech kinda interchangeably with harmful speech, which is really my fault. Being offended by something does not immediately make the speech itself offensive/harmful. You have to be able to show how said speech reinforces prejudices, particularly against underprivileged groups. Soap commercials and used cars don't do that.
What I'm getting at is that there are minorities whose opinions are routinely considered safely ignored. The purpose isn't to belittle the mentally ill or any other minority, but to incite a discussion of where the line is and what makes a minority opinion valid or invalid (or dismissible or not dismissible.)
I think it's an important aspect of the conversation being had in this thread. It's fundamental to the argument.
And even if it does encourage promiscuity, promiscuity itself isn't harmful.
Making a joke that women like to shop is harmful because it reinforces stereotypes, but stating flat out that judgement of a person's worth based on race is acceptable is somehow different?
Come on. You're losing credibility.
I'm not trying to make a moral argument here. In fact, morals can go fuck themselves, because those are subjective.
What I'm talking about here is raising concerns and making complaints about harmful speech. Speech that causes or reinforces behaviors that cause real harm to real people. And speech that reinforces prejudices, particularly prejudices regarding underprivileged groups, can lead to economic and physical harm to those minorities. There is no outrage about moral violations here. It's all outrage about fucking hurting people.
Anyway, it is more than likely that Jesus existed given the political climate of Judea and Roman occupation thereof. We have documentation of several people crucified at that time who could have been Jesus, and I suspect that Jesus wasn't the one who united the cults, but rather his deciples and other minor characters like that were retro-actively added to the story to unite those judean cults.
Furthermore, hate isn't one of the basic tenants of Christianity. Imperialist use of religion does not stem from the text itself, but rather from a millenium of oppressoin of individualized beliefs by the Catholic church. I'd go on to talk about how indifference is the key to Christianity and assholeism not mixing and how empathy is ultimately the downfall of human society, but I think I just had a profound realization about something almost completely unrelated (religious beliefs, but not mine or yours or anything connected to either of them) and now I'm having difficulty focusing on this.
There are no semantic backflips, merely semantic clarifications.
How do you justify that? You don't seem to justify it at all. Instead, you go on 4 paragraph handwaving sprees. ;-)
Saying that you've judged someone based on race constitutes social proof. It is implicitly condoning and supporting, even encouraging racism. Are you familiar with the concept of social proof? It's a first year Sociology chapter.
Please explain the difference semantically, morally, or in terms of social harm between the statements "I don't like black people" and "women like to shop". You took offense to the latter but not the former. Why?
Where's those examples of unironic sexism in Futurama? Just curious how that's going. :-)