Up and down
For
some reason, it is perfectly acceptable to mock other people for their
low standing in some important social hierarchies, but it is very bad
to mock them for their low standing in some other important social
hierarchies. Even more mysteriously, it is perfectly acceptable to mock
some group of people for their low standing in a social hierarchy, but
it is very bad to mock some other group of people for their low
standing in that very same social hierarchy.
The acceptability of mocking low-status people seems to be fluid and depend mostly on the rhetorical needs of the moment. If there are some rules that determine when such mockery is acceptable and when it is not, I would be happy if somebody guided me to right direction to find them out. For example, am I a bad person if I say that I found the post "Monday Afternoon at the Welfare Office" hilarious and it made me laugh? Jebus, what a bunch of losers!
The post "Humorless Feminism" of Ann Bartow of Sivacracy nicely illustrates this general principle by complaining about the fact that the well-known leftist blogger Tbogg mocks conservative women for being ugly and unattractive and thus sexually undesirable. However, she doesn't seem to have a problem about the exact same mockery directed towards men. Judging from the long list of example posts that she has dug up for being somehow sexist against women, she can't possibly be ignorant about this tendency of Tbogg and the leftist blogosphere in general. (Two simple words should be more than sufficient as proof: "Virgin Ben". A while back, I also made a curious observation about how very differently the progressives tend to view a woman who chooses to forgo the opposite sex and prefer sex toys, and a man who does the same. Nothing that wouldn't follow from Sociobiology 101, of course, but it's still revealing.)
The "TBogg's law" quoted in the same post, "Some people choose abstinence. Others have it chosen for them", is undeniable and apt, since the sexual marketplace can be very discriminating, cold and cruel towards the unattractive, especially men. But I still have to wonder what would happen if conservatives started to use an analogous law "Some people become poor due to just being unlucky. Others choose it with their own actions and character" to mock leftists whenever they complain that they and their groups are unfairly discriminated against and thus suffer because of their poverty.
Perhaps I am being a bit pompous, but maybe the latter law could from now on be called "Ilkka's law". After all, as you can see in many leftist blogs, the phrase "I am sorry... the position has already been filled" said in an awkward or a dismissive tone is not entirely unfamiliar to them. Obviously, you would expect that those who other people demonstrate to be worth the least with their individual actions and choices in the free market would also burn with the fiercest hatred towards the free market and individual choices. Surely a lot would be explained by this hypothesis.
It is also interesting that the bitterness, anger and desire for revenge in somebody who has been relegated to the bottom rungs of some important social hierarchy can be considered evidence of either good or bad character and thus worth either sympathy or mockery, solely depending on the rhetorical needs of the moment. For an excellent illustration of this principle, see the post "Is your kid a whiny, insecure tattletale?" that turns low social skills in childhood and teenage years into something that deserves ostracism, shunning and mockery, assuming that those kids later grow up to be conservatives. The writer obviously identifies with the bullies and thus makes the victim's desire to get even to be a moral failure in the victim. But funny thing: I don't remember the progressives usually reacting to shunning kids who happen to be different or more insecure with such malicious glee. Oh well. I guess we'll just have to remember this attitude the next time some gay or morbidly obese bullied teen pariah kills himself.
All this assuming the study of this article is even real, and not just some hoax like that famous IQ ranking of U.S. states that leftists instantly accepted totally forgetting their usual IQ denial, since the results flattered them so much. The news article linked to in the post provides some additional caveats, such as the fact that n is about 100 and the geography was limited to a single town that is in many important ways highly atypical when compared to the nation as whole.
And it's not like the leftists have a great tradition in accepting results of longitudinal studies in the first place, since these results so often turn out to be inconvenient for their purposes, especially in how IQ correlates with various objective metrics of success. What do you think the leftist reaction would be if some study "proved" that one of their beloved minorities was somehow morally inferior, if that study had the same statistical basis as this one? I'm pretty sure that leftists would quickly rediscover their sacred principle that everybody is an individual and you can never say or predict anything about anybody based on the groups that he belongs to, especially if these predictions are based on correlations of about 0.27 as in this study.
The acceptability of mocking low-status people seems to be fluid and depend mostly on the rhetorical needs of the moment. If there are some rules that determine when such mockery is acceptable and when it is not, I would be happy if somebody guided me to right direction to find them out. For example, am I a bad person if I say that I found the post "Monday Afternoon at the Welfare Office" hilarious and it made me laugh? Jebus, what a bunch of losers!
The post "Humorless Feminism" of Ann Bartow of Sivacracy nicely illustrates this general principle by complaining about the fact that the well-known leftist blogger Tbogg mocks conservative women for being ugly and unattractive and thus sexually undesirable. However, she doesn't seem to have a problem about the exact same mockery directed towards men. Judging from the long list of example posts that she has dug up for being somehow sexist against women, she can't possibly be ignorant about this tendency of Tbogg and the leftist blogosphere in general. (Two simple words should be more than sufficient as proof: "Virgin Ben". A while back, I also made a curious observation about how very differently the progressives tend to view a woman who chooses to forgo the opposite sex and prefer sex toys, and a man who does the same. Nothing that wouldn't follow from Sociobiology 101, of course, but it's still revealing.)
The "TBogg's law" quoted in the same post, "Some people choose abstinence. Others have it chosen for them", is undeniable and apt, since the sexual marketplace can be very discriminating, cold and cruel towards the unattractive, especially men. But I still have to wonder what would happen if conservatives started to use an analogous law "Some people become poor due to just being unlucky. Others choose it with their own actions and character" to mock leftists whenever they complain that they and their groups are unfairly discriminated against and thus suffer because of their poverty.
Perhaps I am being a bit pompous, but maybe the latter law could from now on be called "Ilkka's law". After all, as you can see in many leftist blogs, the phrase "I am sorry... the position has already been filled" said in an awkward or a dismissive tone is not entirely unfamiliar to them. Obviously, you would expect that those who other people demonstrate to be worth the least with their individual actions and choices in the free market would also burn with the fiercest hatred towards the free market and individual choices. Surely a lot would be explained by this hypothesis.
It is also interesting that the bitterness, anger and desire for revenge in somebody who has been relegated to the bottom rungs of some important social hierarchy can be considered evidence of either good or bad character and thus worth either sympathy or mockery, solely depending on the rhetorical needs of the moment. For an excellent illustration of this principle, see the post "Is your kid a whiny, insecure tattletale?" that turns low social skills in childhood and teenage years into something that deserves ostracism, shunning and mockery, assuming that those kids later grow up to be conservatives. The writer obviously identifies with the bullies and thus makes the victim's desire to get even to be a moral failure in the victim. But funny thing: I don't remember the progressives usually reacting to shunning kids who happen to be different or more insecure with such malicious glee. Oh well. I guess we'll just have to remember this attitude the next time some gay or morbidly obese bullied teen pariah kills himself.
All this assuming the study of this article is even real, and not just some hoax like that famous IQ ranking of U.S. states that leftists instantly accepted totally forgetting their usual IQ denial, since the results flattered them so much. The news article linked to in the post provides some additional caveats, such as the fact that n is about 100 and the geography was limited to a single town that is in many important ways highly atypical when compared to the nation as whole.
And it's not like the leftists have a great tradition in accepting results of longitudinal studies in the first place, since these results so often turn out to be inconvenient for their purposes, especially in how IQ correlates with various objective metrics of success. What do you think the leftist reaction would be if some study "proved" that one of their beloved minorities was somehow morally inferior, if that study had the same statistical basis as this one? I'm pretty sure that leftists would quickly rediscover their sacred principle that everybody is an individual and you can never say or predict anything about anybody based on the groups that he belongs to, especially if these predictions are based on correlations of about 0.27 as in this study.
I really liked the ending to the nice piece of poetry in one of the responses:
Here comes the revolution
Who's got the guns now?
Run, rich! Run!
Boom, boom.
Dream on!
Posted by beenaround | 4:06 PM
It is also most interesting that one of the comments on the Sivacracy posting you linked to suggested that the phrase throws like a girl should be abhored as demeaning.
Unfortunately, it is very accurate, since, as Geary points out in his book on sex differences, males are born with longer forearms (no, not for playing with that), and more brain cells in the regions dealing with throwing accuracy and projectile avoidance etc. Indeed, so much so, that only something like one in twenty women will be able to throw better than the average male, and very few females are better than the worst males.
Oh well.
Posted by beenaround | 4:19 PM