That cutie Bob Krumm and Adam “Grrr” Kleinheider have me thinking about how hard it can be to have discussions across political ideologies, just because it’s hard to even understand each other.
Let’s take Kleinheider first. He’s talking about abortion and he says:
All this bill does, from my reading of it, is take the constitution out of the equation. It merely states that the constitution contains no inherent right to abortion. It doesn’t say that you can not legislate for or against abortion it only states that the constitution does not proscribe it either way.
Does Kleinheider not get how big a deal this is? I honestly don’t know. What if you believe, as I do, that a woman cannot be a full citizen if she cannot control what happens to her own body? If a woman cannot decide whether to let another being use her body to sustain its life, but instead must acquiesce to the wishes of the state, she’s not free in the same way men are. Her biological differences are being used to create legal distinctions between her and the “real” citizens.
When I read that quote from Kleinheider, I read:
All this bill does, from my reading of it, is take the constitution out of the equation. It merely states that the constitution contains no inherent right to bodily autonomy. It doesn’t say that you can not legislate for or against bodily autonomy it only states that the constitution does not proscribe it either way.
And, honestly, there’s no way I can have a good-faith discussion about abortion with anyone who refuses to acknowledge that underlying current to the discussion–that I don’t have any inherent right to decide what happens to my body–and who cannot address my concerns about it.
Which, actually segues nicely into Bob Krumm’s post today (since he’s still finding the ERA silly, since there’s no threat to women’s autonomy or anything). Bob says:
America and its allies are superior. (Don’t think too hard on it; it’s simple math after all. There are only three options in any comparison equation: greater than, less than, or equal to–and argument in favor of the latter two is specious at best and treasonous at worst.)
And I don’t think I’m an idiot, but I literally cannot understand what Krumm is saying. If we determine–through use of math!–that the United States is the best country in all of the world, what does that mean? Because I believe that the bar is so low that, even if I believe that the United States is the best country in all of the world, I still think we have a lot of work to do in order to reach our full potential. It’s pretty damn easy to be the best country in the world when most of the countries in the world suck as much as they do. So what?
Is Krumm suggesting that we have no more to do, that this is as good as it gets and that anyone who complains should just suck it up and be thankful we’re not stuck some other country, which might be a real hellhole? That’s just weird to me. It’s like we’re sitting around in this beautiful 230 year old house that needs to have the foundation shored up and some holes in the roof patched and some massive rewiring and plumbing, and we have a house full of people who have those skills and could easily do that work and yet, every time someone suggests we get started on it, folks like Krumm start hollering that, if we think the house is so god damn ugly, we can go live in the chicken shack and see how we like it there.
Tiny Cat Pants 
“What if you believe, as I do, that a woman cannot be a full citizen if she cannot control what happens to her own body? If a woman cannot decide whether to let another being use her body to sustain its life, but instead must acquiesce to the wishes of the state, she’s not free in the same way men are. Her biological differences are being used to create legal distinctions between her and the “real” citizens.”
Amen. As a woman, the idea that of not being able to control what happens to my own body gives me cold chills.
It makes me want to revolt.
“through use of math!”
That made me LOL.
You ladies had “body autonomy” when you decided not to keep your legs together.
Just Kidding. I do that so I can picture Aunt B’s head exploding. Tee Hee!
Shoot, boy, I was halfway to the car with my car keys in one hand and a mace in the other before I read that second sentence.
Treasonous at worst? Scariest goddam sentence in his whole post.
The Founders were considered traitors in some circles too. (Damn their impudent authority-questioning hides.)
“through use of math!”
What’s with the (mis)use of math these days?
Okay, just to cut Krumm a little slack from over here in Conservativeland, when he says
I gathered that he was talking in that particular sentence solely about firepower. Objectively speaking, he’s telling the truth. We are superior in terms of military strength. I guess. (Granted, I haven’t gone over all our ordinance reports, so maybe there’s someone else out there not pouring all their money into butter….)
I’ve been going back and forth with Krumm over there, and don’t want to repeat myself all over cyberspace today. However it seems to me that he’s trying to advance two separate arguments at the overall expense of both.
The way I see it is that he seems to be saying that
1. Although imperfect, our culture and government have gone farther down the road to societal utopia than any other, insofar as we all agree on the definition of utopia. (subject to another discussion.)
2. By mirroring our culture and government in the British culture and government he is trying to excuse the missteps in Iran that led to the capture of these 15 British soldiers and the subsequent accusations that those Britons ‘had it coming’.
Of course that was my read on it.
I, of course, agree in part but not in the whole.
Of course the irony is, to whatever extent “America and its allies” are superior to other countries, it is *because of* all the pesky do-gooder liberals who have spent the last 200+ years fighting the conservative culture that always wants to take credit after the fact for what a great, liberal, progressive nation we are!
That makes my head explode.
I have to admit I’m a fence sitter on the abortion issue. But I am sure that as long as the pro-choice side refuses to admit that consenting and informed adults having any responsibility what so ever for their actions freely committed I’ll never join your side.
I can understand a lefty struggling with Krumm’s point. What I find ironic is that as a centrist on the issue your “less than a citizen” rhetoric is so far left that I have a hard time taking your argument seriously and I’m coming from the middle!
You’ve made your own point.
Well, sk, as long as you’re coming from a sex-negative position that can’t understand the importance of pleasure for pleasure’s sake, it will be hard for us to have a meaningful conversation. I don’t believe that children are the proper punishment for sex, both because I don’t believe that children ought to be thought of as a punishment and because I don’t think that sex is something that should result in punishment. But whenever you all talk about “taking responsibility” it seems to me what you mean is “how dare you have fun and want there to be no consequences?”.
That seems to me to be a really depressing way to live–assuming that everything that feels good must bring misery or you’re not doing it right.
No, it wasn’t about firepower. It’s about forms of government. And it’s not just America I referred to but the majority of the English-speaking countries, which if you compare them any other country, then you would have to say must rate either equal to, greater than, or less than. Simple math–or perhaps more accurately, simple logic. Or is there another comparative operator I’m not aware of. So which of the three is it: better than, worse than, or equal to.
Nor did I ever declare that we have no more work to do. In fact, I implied the opposite: “Now that doesn’t necessarily make us right. That’s a fair (I would say wrong, but still fair) argument to make. But to say that we are wrong does not negate the fact that we are better.”
What I am encouraged by is that no one has yet argued that America along with the most of the rest of the English-speaking countries are inferior to the rest of the world. As screwed up as we all think things might be here at times, it beats all the known alternatives.
KC,
I’m not trying to excuse any British missteps, whatever those might have been. What I am responding to is Derbyshire’s post that uses that incident as a jumping off point to discuss a larger point about how cultural relativism has created a weak culture at home in Britain (weak, in the sense that too many are quick to apologize for perceived offenses when no apology is necessary or even due).
I would ask those uncertain of what I’m trying to say (and I certainly hold out the very real possibility that I didn’t say it well enough to easily explain my point), to read what I wrote–not just the couple sentences that B or Brittney or others might have excerpted, and to also read Derbyshire’s article which I linked.
B,
Also, it is the foundation that is strong here and in most other culturals that have English Common Law at their core. However, that doesn’t mean that the house doesn’t need renovation from time to time.
Also, I’d like to remind sk that there was a typo in the phrase: “…that consenting and informed adults having any responsibility what so ever for their actions freely committed.”
What that really means is “that consenting and informed adult women having any responsibility what so ever for their actions freely committed.” Because last time I looked, men weren’t getting pregnant. So it’s back to punishing those dirty whores for having sex by making sure they have children.
Or you could just issue us all with that good old scarlet “A.”
Of course, there is an underlying erroneous assumption: that every female who gets pregnant is (a) an adult, and (b) consented.
Trying to be the conservatives’ advocate for a minute…
I think we can all agree that a fetus is human tissue. The conservative view is that it is a human being, really, a citizen with rights. Whether it is or not, is the argument that has gone on for decades, but for now let’s say it is.
Isn’t there a legal definition for when a person is obligated to not let another person die?
Isn’t it called criminal neglect? If you do nothing, and it results in somebody dying, you are held responsible for that death. In those cases, you are legally obligated to lend aid, even though it would impede on your “right to go about your business”.
This calls in the whole “body autonomy” issue, since you are required to use your body to care for another person to the extent of preventing harm to them, in both cases.
I’m sorry. I have to take a moment to laugh yet again at this idea that women needing to have control over what happens to their body is some crazy far left idea. That’s not very condusive to meaningful discussion–laughing–but I must do it anyway. Oh, us crazy lefties with our crazy ideas about wanting to have control over our own bodies and not wanting to be compelled by the state to do something inherently dangerous and painful.
Okay, I’m done.
Bob, I’ve got to pick on you a little bit, just because. I don’t think that there are only three options–less than, greater than, or equal to. There’s also, less than or equal to AND greater than or equal to.
Plus, I think that this idea that liberals think America is the worst place in the world to live is a kind of conservative boogey man, a story y’all tell your children in order to scare them into going to sleep.
I think most liberals think it goes without saying that they love this country. Conservatives seem to need a lot of reassurance that that’s true. Which is fine, but liberals in general feel no need to let conservatives set the terms of the debate as if y’all are “true” Americans adn before we can speak, we have to genuflect and pay homage to what y’all think are ways true Americans should talk.
Plus, the things that make our country great, like our basis in English Common Law and our committment to democracy and three separate branches of government are under grave threat. When a president can decide to suspend habeas corpus or expect his signing statements to carry the weight of law… I wish you guys could see how, from our perspective, it seems like you give great weight to talking about how great our country is and what makes it great, but little to actually holding all of our leaders accountable to those standards.
Plus, no offense but Derbyshire is a dink. Not about this in particular, but in general, he’s a dink. With as grown woman unfriendly as he is (and as weirdly excited as he gets about underage girls), I think you’ll have a hard time finding folks here willing to take his opinions on anything very seriously.
Ex, yeah, but I think this is more along the lines of whether one person can be compelled by the state to donate organs or blood to another.
Right, if you are shot and dying in the street and I just kick you a little and steal your wallet instead of calling for help, I could be in legal trouble.
But if you are shot and dying in the street and you need a blood transfusion and only I have your type, even if you are surely going to die without my blood, the state cannot compell me to give it to you. Now, of course, I would, if only in hopes of one day seeing a picture of you in that kilt, but that’s my choice. And everyone respects that I have the right to choose to save your life.
I don’t see how this is any different.
I see your point, and it’s definitely a matter of scale.
Still, I don’t think your analogy is much better than mine, since you are not really donating organs. It’s even a stretch, and I think technically incorrect (osmosis and all) to say that you are donating your blood.
Granted, you are temporarily donating the FUNCTIONS of those organs. That’s a not an insignificant deal. But if you are forced (legally) to lend aid to shot Exador, than you are temporarily using all your organs to lend that aid. It’s not like you could help me without the use of your heart, lungs, etc.
I see your point, but also, helping you when you’re shot doesn’t hurt me. It doesn’t cause my body to go through a bunch of changes. It’s not painful. There’s very little risk that I’ll die or even that something could go wrong and prevent me from being able to help anyone else in the future.
Even in the U.S., pregnancy is not a safe and easy process. People who choose to do it should be commended, but people who can’t go through with it shouldn’t be treated like they’re evil.
That’s a good point too. I don’t think that even in the shot-Exador scenario, the law would require you to take on personal risk, such as fending off whomever shot me, in its obligation that you render aid.
I’ll bet that’s a big part of the anti-abortion mindset; they don’t fully take into consideration the dangers to the woman. They have more of an idealized view of childbirth: lots of yelling, but an otherwise wonderful event. (Just broadbrush painting there, I know)
Then again, with an abortion, you are not just “failing to render aid”. You are facilitating the “death”. I’m not sure which analogy would apply for that one. I was trying to just stay in the “body autonomy” realm, but it’s getting muddy.
Aunt B., you have a way of getting right to the core of these issues. You are wonderful.
I have a really difficult time taking seriously the anti-abortion protestations of concern for ‘the children.’ I’m not claiming to inject any “math” into this, but I wonder how anti-war (and anti-neoliberal economic policy) the anti-abortion people tend to be. I’m guessing there’s typically a negative correlation. The average person who rails against the elimination of the pre-born likely has little trouble supporting an imperialist political, economic, and military machine that has been responsible (directly and indirectly) for the deaths of millions of post-born children. This makes me think that– as much as they convince themselves that it is about ‘the children’– anti-abortion adherents are really about controlling women and maintaining a preferred social order. Along these same lines, I’m also guessing there’s a negative correlation between anti-abortion sentiment and support for universal health care and child care for working mothers.
“Save the helpless babies! Until they’re born, that is, then it ain’t my problem. And to hell with ’em if they’re foreign and brown.”
For the record, I value every human life, pre-born and otherwise. The sanctity of life prevents me from ever– ever aborting any fetus that I might carry. Oops; I’m a man; never mind. Ladies, the choice is yours.
CS,
I think it ties in with the binary, good vs evil, innocent vs sinner mindset.
That’s what allows someone to be anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. The unborn are innocent, whereas, everybody else has sinned and is therefore subject to judgement.
Now, I would expect that your next statement would be that there are innocent children that are also killed during war, but I think the thinking is that those deaths were by accident, so also within God’s realm, and ultimately within his mysterious plan.
I think there’s a lot of blame involved, although I disagree with B’s assertion that the belief is that children are womens’ punishment for sex, at least not in the mind of the anti-abortion people I’ve come into contact with.
Thanks for playing Devil’s advocate, Exador. That had to have hurt. Anyway, I know what you’re talking about, because I’ve heard those rationalizations before. Leaving aside the death penalty issue for now, I’d like to address the rationalization for killing innocent children in war.
At least the Marines are honest about it: “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.” When I hear it cast in more sanctimonious terms, I cringe at the pusillanimous hypocrisy. God doesn’t tell us to drop everything from cluster bomblets to Daisy Cutters on populated areas where we know children (and other innocent human beings) will be killed. God doesn’t tell us to fire round after round of infinitely poisonous DU ammo into other people’s environments.
Such actions are carried out by a (more or less) democratically elected government, and the actions have the open moral support of millions of self-imagined ‘pro-life’ individuals. It is laughably blasphemous for us to act like the Devil then pass the buck to God. Such ‘moral’ stances can not be taken at face value, which is why analyses such as Aunt B.’s carry so much weight in addition to the heft of their own validity.
Good Lord, Church Secretary, are you trying to ensure I wander around all day with a large head? “Which is why analyses such as Aunt B.’s carry so much weight in addition to the heft of their own validity.” Damn.
Exador, I think I’m right, but in a round-about way. Look at sk’s talk of “taking responsibility for one’s actions.” So, if you have sex and you get pregnant, you’re not taking responsibility for your actions if you choose not to carry that pregnancy to term. But on its face that’s a ridiculous position. Having an abortion could very well be the responsible choice for you–you might not have enough money to feed another child or carrying a pregnancy to term might be dangerous or you might not be able to take care of yourself well enough while you’re pregnant to ensure a healthy outcome at the end.
So, if this talk of “taking responsibility” isn’t actually about making responsible decisions about what you’re capable of, what is it about?
And this is where I would argue that anti-abortion folks feel that, if you have sex without being open to being pregnant, you are somehow cheating. You are getting out of something you are morally obliged to submit to.
And they want to codify that moral obligation into law. Well, if you are legally obliged to submit to something painful, dangerous, life-altering, and so on, isn’t that punishment?
No, I don’t think that most pro-lifers are willing to draw that conclusion out-loud because running around saying, “you deserve to have a kid, you slut, and I won’t let you get out of it” makes you sound like you hate children and that you want to control women.
That’s why they’re so fixated on the fetus, to the point where they can deny the reality of the dangers of pregnancy and talk about it as if the fetus is just suffering from a real estate problem (it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time) and as if it’s really no trouble at all for women to carry pregnancies to term.
Again, it is trouble and it is dangerous and women who do it should be commended and women who don’t should not be looked down on and disregarding that danger is insane.
Plus, just to take us off onto a side tangent, could you imagine if we women really started enforcing this rule that we’re only going to have sex if we’re willing to have a baby? I mean, seriously, if your wife came to you and said, “Ex, I love you but I really, really, really don’t want to have kids because my doctor told me that any pregnancy I have would be high risk, so I can’t fuck you again until I’m certain I’m through menopause.” would anybody have the gall to suggest you should be okay with giving up sex with your wife for the next fifteen years (or so)?
I would hope not.
“…submit to something painful, dangerous, life-altering, and so on…”
Are you talking about the sex? Have you been talking to Mrs Schwartz?
“…so I can’t fuck you again until I’m certain I’m through menopause.”
There’s always blowjobs.
CS,
I say, if get the chance to use ‘pusillanimous’, you take it!
‘D’ is for depleted. To say it’s “infinitely poisonous” is a bit much, I’d say. That doesn’t mean I’d want to stir my morning coffee with it, but come on.
I don’t KNOW what’s in these peoples’ minds, not being one of them. All I can do is provide what little insight I have gleened from them.
I know I’m coming late to this, but what bothers me is this from sk:
Is everyone but me going to sit there and let pass unchallenged the claim that “having an abortion” = “irresponsibility”? Because for a woman who for whatever reason is not prepared to have a child, abortion is one highly responsible option. Not the only one, to be sure, but refusing to bring an unwanted child into the world is not irresponsible.
Exactly, NM. I typed out a longish response last night about how we *are* being responsible, but that SK chooses not to see the taking responsiblity aspect of it…but then I thought, “Fuck it.” I hit delete and went to bed.
NM, I said that in comment 26, but maybe didn’t emphasize it enough.
Exador, I swear, I would only talk to your wife behind your back in order to bring to the internet sexy pictures of you in your kilt. All other topics would include you.
Damn. I just saw this:
“Save the helpless babies! Until they’re born, that is, then it ain’t my problem. And to hell with ‘em if they’re foreign and brown.”
Anybody want to fill in CS about me?
I am but a figment, a wisp of smoke, a myth. In CS’s world, I do not exist.
I LOVE being a party pooper!
Er, Slarti… do we need to have the ‘levels of discourse’ conversation again? Because being a person who personally has adopted brown babies and supporing policies that prize the fetus over the mother, in the absence of policies which make provisions of the support of the child once born, and in the presence of a set of policies which actively and passively disenfranchise said children once born, if they are brown/poor/other, are not on the same levels of discourse at all.
CS, while inflammatory, was pointing at those policy-level problems, not at the individual-level issue of whether one person or another likes brown babies enough to invite them into their home.
Repeat after me: Not everything that is said at Aunt B’s place is about me, personally. I am not the subject of, target audience of, or object of all of the conversations that go on there. People can talk about group-level phenomena that may touch on my life without talking about me specifically. Even if a person disgrees with a policy that affects my life personally/a belief I have/an action I have taken, that does not mean it is a personal attack on me/an erasure of my experience/an indictment of me and my kind as a whole. Who I am and the goodness of my life is not at issue here. Not everything is about me.
Thanks, Magniloquence. I intended no personal offence to Slarti, especially since his/her (?) personal relationship to this issue is a complete mystery to me.
Your point, Mag, is well taken. My wife and are seriously considering adopting a foreign brown baby or two for our own (not kidding here). I’d feel like a real asshole (one worthy of demonization), though, if I adopted foreign brown babies while supporting policies that impoverish/destabilize/burn down the land whence they were taken, thus resulting in the preventable suffering and death of thousands of other foreign brown babies. The same goes for claiming to value the lives of the domestic pre-born while supporting a policy paradigm that leaves many of them hanging once they hit fresh air.
The cognitive dissonance that facilitates this moral inconsistency is an inescapable element of human nature. It is also to be expected, I guess, in a large, complex civil society. We’re all guilty of it in one way or another.
I think Hillary Clinton once expertly triangulated around a Roe v. Wade question by suggesting that abortion can be best opposed by making abortion unnecessary. I’m with Hillary on this one. But family planning, universal health care, and comprehensive sex ed are just the sort of progressive concepts that anti-abortion activists tend to oppose. Oh, well.
One of the big problems with the ERA is that Section 2, as currently written, would allow the government to suppress the first 10 amendments in order to execute the mandate in section 1 of the ERA. Do you REALLY want to hand the government that much more power to futz around with? That being said, yeah, something needs to be done, but the powers given and the exact mandate given to those executing those powers must be very carefully defined and watched with someone standing over them with a nerf bat the entire time.
Section two says, “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” How do you get from that that they’d be able to suppress the Bill of Rights in order to do that? We see nearly identical language in the 13th: “Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”; identical language in the 14th amendment: “Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”; and the 15th, 19th, 23rd, and 26th. If none of those amendments have caused the government to chuck the Bill of Rights, why would this one, with the exact same language?
magniloquence:
Damn.
You disappoint me. Think about what you’re saying.
A person makes an outrageous, blanket (and downright MEAN) accusation of every person that disagrees with a certain policy. It was insulting, and as I pointed out, untrue. Yet, CS gets a pass. The harshest word from you is “inflammatory”.
I very politely point out that I break the sterotype put forth, and you jump me.
Level of discourse, my ass.
Very, very very unfair. Your outrage appears to be quite selective.
And let’s be clear of the sterotypes being put forth:
Those who are pro-life do not care about the child after he is born, and
those who are pro life only care about white, American babies. Look at the statement again:
“Save the helpless babies! Until they’re born, that is, then it ain’t my problem. And to hell with ‘em if they’re foreign and brown.”
Please parse that statement and tell me what else it could possible mean.
Heh. I don’t agree with everything he says, sure. And yes, it was a bit mean. I’m not defending him, I’m arguing with you.
But your response was silly. “Look! Look at me! I’m an exception!” I’m not sure in what way that counts as “very politely” pointing out that one breaks the stereotype. For that matter, without further clicking or prior knowlege, I don’t believe your words, as written, actually pointed out anything other than that there was another story to be heard.
You could have taken issue with his tone. You could have pointed out that the existence of people like you means that it’s more complicated than just white babies vs. brown babies. You could have laid out your own viewpoints on the issues. Instead, you just crowed about your exceptionalism (without so much as a link to support it), and … left. “Party pooper” indeed.
And, while you’re not obligated to respond, of course, I find it interesting that at no point have you ever engaged my points about the fact that there is more than just the individual level to consider. By “level of discourse” I don’t mean tone, I mean units of measurement. Are we talking about what happens on an individual level, or a group level? Are we talking about what you, Slartibartfast, did this morning, or are we talking about what happens on average as the result of these larger policies? That is what’s at issue, for me.
I think it’s intellectually dishonest to go into a conversation and continually conflate the individual and group levels. The existence of one exception does not invalidate the rule. And while personal anecdotes and individual data are immensely valuable and do have relevance to group-level discussions, the assumption that one’s personal experience with something is somehow enough to invalidate the exsitence of said group-level discussion is at best irrelevant, and over time downright annoying.
Moreover, with the exception of the quoted, hyperbolic-for-effect text, the statements in question were general and pretty well hedged. Again, I don’t agree with all of it, but it seems an odd read to not think about the wiggle room in a paragraph like this one:
Let’s see… we have “I” statements (“I wonder” “I think” “I’m guessing”), qualifiers (“likely”), restrictions of scope (“average person”), and relational language (“positive/negative correlation”). That’s not exactly a scathing indictment of all people who are vaguely anti-abortion. It’s not a nice statement about the people who do fall under those umbrellas, true… but it’s not saying “all people who are opposed to abortion are mouth breathing racists.”
But this seems not to matter. Whenever anyone has mentioned anything to which you are even vaguely tied, you have either pronounced your exceptionalism or had a hissy fit for us not being nice to you. You refuse to see that a) there might be more aspects of the issues than your personal action, b) group level phenomena exist and are worthy of study, even if you disagree about what might be done about them, and c) it’s not all about you. Instead, you have been flip, dismissive, smug, condescending, and very loudly affronted about it all without acknowledging, considering, or even engaging the things set before you. That’s your choice, fine, but it’s not discourse.
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Yeah, so I’m coming late to all of this and reading it under the influence of much drugs.
But am I the only one whose seeing both sides of the argument talking about “brown babies” as though they’re some kind of trading stamps?
Instead, you have been flip, dismissive, smug, condescending, and very loudly affronted about it all without acknowledging, considering, or even engaging the things set before you.
In all fairness to Slarti, and again, I’m high right now, but these words are not what I would consider to be applicable to him at all. I realise that he may have come across that way when viewed outside the context of his life. AS I’ve come to know him in the world I can vouch that he is none of these things. And he IS engaging the things set before him. It just happens to be an issue about which he has strong personal feelings.
I’m sorry I’m not better at expressing myself right now. Essentially what I’m trying to say is that this is a topic where tempers run high anyway, and I don’t know that it would hurt to cut anybody some slack on either side.
Heh. In my case, the ‘brown babies’ label is actually intended as just that. It’s language that’s drawn from another set of discussions happening in another set of contexts. (That last, for the record, being what sprang to mind with Slarti’s last post) It is likely not appropriate here without the rest of the background, and I apologize for using it without at least providing the links to show where I was coming from.
As for tone… it’s entirely possible I’m misreading. The medium is like that. I’m sure he likes those of y’all he knows well enough not to be rude. And, of course, if y’all like him, there has to be something nice about him. I trust you on that. I do, however, stand by my characterization of the interactions we (specifically) have had; he has been dismissive and has not addressed any of the things I’ve been talking about. When he has, it has been with rhetorical questions, or namelessfaceless trackbacks bemoaning my lack of politeness. Never directly engaging why I was upset or what my actual point was. (Though I will concede that his apology in the other thread was nice, even if the behavior in question didn’t change at all) That’s fine. It’s not my sandbox. I won’t pretend it doesn’t bug me though.
Oh Aunt B, Akismet ate my reply to Kat! Can you fish it out, please?
Thank you! You can delete this post and the one above it (42), if you’d like.
Heh. In my case, the ‘brown babies’ label is actually intended as just that. It’s language that’s drawn from another set of discussions happening in another set of contexts. (That last, for the record, being what sprang to mind with Slarti’s last post) It is likely not appropriate here without the rest of the background, and I apologize for using it without at least providing the links to show where I was coming from.
Okay, I get it now. (Again, still high…)
I was just gettin’ a little bothered by the commoditisation of human beings…
I can certainly imagine. That would really annoy me too if I didn’t know the context. Once again, you have my aopolgies. I promise to link whenever possible, if I use terminology that laden! (Akismet is going to haaate me.)
And I hope you feel better soon! Being sick is no fun, even with all the drugs.