A few days ago I made a post to gauge this community’s opinion on whether it should allow nice comics by bigoted artists. I think we have a consensus.
The majority of comments were very in support of banning comics by artists like Stonetoss and Jago. I heard from queer people who said they’d feel safer if the rules were changed. A lot of people were concerned about this community becoming a “Nazi bar”, the comment expressing that feeling got a LOT of upvotes.
The people against the change had two main arguments: anti-censorship, and personal responsibility. A few people equated active moderation practices with book burning. Nearly all of these “against” comments were downvoted or ratiod, and tended to have a lot of arguments underneath them, while the “pro” comments went uncontested.
On the internet, 10% of people will disagree with just about anything. With that in mind, I think we’ve reached a consensus. The community wants a rule change so that users can’t post inoffensive comics by bigoted artists.
That means no more Jago comics. I see a lot of people in the comments under the Jago posts, getting angry and saying they want this rule change. People aren’t happy with the user who’s posting all the Jago comics.
Mods, this is what we want. Please change the rules and get Jago’s comics outta here.
I don’t feel unsafe because someone posted a comic by someone who at some point said some stuff that might imply they hate me or some aspect of me, no. No-one’s asking you to get in a room with them, or even read the offensive stuff they said.
As I said, good for you to be privileged enough to have never felt unsafe because of that.
Now get out of your own ass and understand that not everyone is like that, and that if people here are agreeing on the opposite, maybe it means that you’re not the general rule.
If everyone who disagrees with you can be assumed to be privileged, and every disagreeing privileged opinion can be dismissed due to being privileged, you will indeed be able to manufacture whatever consensus you want. And the more you wag fingers at people who don’t agree, the more you’ll cement it.
There’s a simple principle: if something just makes you feel bad, but doesn’t actually harm you, then you can be an adult about it and regulate your own exposure. It’s not like stuff that does harm you, which society ought to try and prevent.
This way, society can concern itself with stuff everyone can see and test and verify, rather than stuff that makes some group of people feel unsafe, which only they can attest to. That’s a good thing, because on the latter route, you end up either letting the most frightened person censor everything for everyone, or privileging certain groups of people censor everything for everyone, neither of which is a good outcome.
People spreading horrible ideologies hurt everyone, even if not directly. Lower exposure doesn’t change that.
Hiding your head in the sand doesn’t fix problems.
Also, going form what the conversation was, to “the most frightened person censors everything for everyone” is one of the most gigantic slippery slopes I’ve seen. Blocking sexist, homophobic, racist, transphobic, or discriminatory in whatever other way, content is not “censoring everything for everyone”, it’s not even censoring, it’s telling the hostile pieces of shit that try to destroy society to shut up. And people who want to see that kind of crap can do it on 4chan or whatever shithole so here, there’s no censorship at all.
The more you talk the worse you look, by the way, so you should wonder what kind of message you’re trying to convey. For now it’s looking a lot like enlightened centrism.
I’m trying to convey the classic ideals of liberalism.
You’re not talking about people “spreading horrible ideologies” you’re talking about people who have made comments you find to be wrong, hateful and offensive in one place, and for that reason preventing an entire forum from hearing or seeing anything that came from them.
No. That would be more like following the liberal ideal of defeating corrosive ideologies by countering it with a robust defence of your own principles. You don’t want to tell people to shut up, you want to make them shut up.