| |
|
Very well, I do not understand why John first post elicited such a vitriolic response, unless you took it entirely seriously?
The same way you took my response "entirely seriously"? That seems to be making an assumption, based on giving John the benefit of the doubt which is denied to me, even though he has made a perfectly simple statement and I have made a humorous extrapolation therefrom. Which is also rather disingenuous, isn't it?
I could of course claim that IT WAS A JOKE!!!, and it is clearly more credibly composed with humorous and exaggerated intent than:
Meh! Leave it to Barbelith to find 'offence' in this song, eh?
Which is quite clearly John's usual, and perfectly sincere and serious, refrain that the world of other people, if it finds offence in things where he does not find offence, is looking for things to be offended by. As I have said repeatedly and you appear not to have noticed - unless you are being disingenuous by pretending that you have not noticed it - this is not for me about John's attitude to the disabled, but his attitude to other people's right not to have their beliefs and reactions sneered at and dismissed out of hand.
As I said, I didn't, which put a very different spin on the rest of the thread - your barbing him, and he seeing it as personal attacks (as stated on the previous page).
Dealt with above. I don't recognise the interaction that actually happened in your description, and would particularly take issue with "vitriolic" and "barbing", assuming that means "subjecting to barbed commentary". John's attempt to make this about a personality clash rather than about his obsessive belittling of people who dare to suggest that there may be something going on that he hasn't detected which others might without looking for offence where no reasonable person would is no doubt tempting, because it is easier to talk about people than issues, but I would ask us not to be detained by it too long.
I also don't understand how you can't see that directing posts along the lines of 'normal-bloke opinions' are far from helpful, and how "the funny thing about the bald fat one's character is that he's not really got to be in a wheelchair" doesn't primarily imply that you believe John agrees with this point of view?
Now, that's a very big assumption, isn't it? First up, John's opinion on the disabled is, as has been mentioned, not relevant and was at no point relevant - you and John have picked up on something there which simply does not exist in the text. Second up, you are misunderstanding the context, I think. The comment:
"the funny thing about the bald fat one's character is that he's not really got to be in a wheelchair" etc
Has nothing to do with John's point of view, except insofar as John was denying that anyone had any right to be offended by anything he does not himself find offensive. It is a reference to a comment, brought to the attention of Barblith in another thread, in a television programme about the best sketch shows in the UK - link here. I fear you have made an assumption.
And finally, I don't understand why you felt John would refuse to accept anyone else's objections in the proclaimers thread without thinking that they had no-good reason for holding those objections, given that he had made 'a bit of progress' previously?
Well, it might be because he had already said:
Meh! Leave it to Barbelith to find 'offence' in this song, eh?
It might also be because he had just said in the discussion of 300:
I think there are certainly conspiracy theories here for those that want to look for them and be outraged by the film, but sometimes it's fun just to appreciate a work for it's purely aesthetic and sensory qualities and just not look for the dodgy politics to spoil your enjoyment of the work's many surface charms.
This is explained at length in my very detailed post within the thread. I put in the effort for John and the general reader to explain this, and to do so in detail, and I would appreciate it if you returned the courtesy by paying a measurable amount of attention to it.
So, the progress he had apparently made over calling women slags and claiming a) that Barbelith was oversensitive and b) that calling women slags was a part of "working-class culture" - an insult to my working-class ancestors, incidentally, who did not to my knowledge feel that misogyny was a compelling part of the labour movement had evidentially fallen into backsliding, here and in the discussion of 300. The fact that these followed close on each other's heels contributed to my disappointment that we were, essentially back to (John the Exploding Boy, also talking about Little Britain, November 2005):
I'm not really a fan of the show (as I said upthread), but I get the feeling that (Johann) Hari (who was complaining, among other things, about the show's portrayal of the disabled, oddly enough) is trying almost too hard to be offended by this show.
That is, that any self-examination, or any understanding of the need not to dismiss everybody else's beliefs out of hand(*) as looking for things to be offended by, as perversity, as - let's face it, although John is probably not so foolish as to try to use the phrase on Barbelith - Political Correctness gone mad - had been rolled back to Q3 2005 levels.
Why someone would go to a discussion board just to demand that nobody else should feel they have a right to an opinion that is not the same as one's own, and that if they do they are perverse, offence-seeking cranks, I don't know, but we're not here as psychoanalysts. We are here, among other things, to try to maintain a respectful space in which people can feel able to express themselves, and in which the quality of the discussion is maintained at a decent level. Having one person feeling entitled mindlessly to insult anyone with doubts that they do not themselves share is contrary to that aim, and it's really not as if John has contributed anything so outstandingly worthwhile to the board as to argue for a special exception to be made.
Basically, I think instant flame-war was probably not the best way to handle the post, and that especially given your apparent somewhat tense history, a more measured/explorative response such as AG's or feverfew's would probably have been better, following which a flaming might have been more than appropriate. Can you understand my reasons for thinking this?
Well, yes, I can. However, you were not in the thread, and you are currently misrepresenting what happened in the thread. Faced with the risk that this would happen, I should indeed possibly have made more of a show of being reasonable, like a Normal Bloke. I should not have assumed that people would be able to understand the point immediately. However, the other option would have been, essentially, to lay out the whole thing at the start - essentially, to have gone straight to the very long post of explanation the apparent ignoring of which is currently causing us some problems here, and with John within that thread, who was clearly looking for something to be offended by, and settled on the appalling and scandalous suggestion that he had demonstrated growth as a person regarding his attitudes towards women. Would this have led John to respond in a more useful way? Probably not. As has been demonstrated here and elsewhere, lengthy discussions and interventions with John, which had previously been represented as having some beneficial effect, appear not to induce him to decide not indulge in exactly the same disrespectful attitude to his fellow members of Barbelith in every field not involving calling women slags. We'll never know, though.
Now, that time could have been spent in adding something worthwhile and constructive to Barbelith. This is why, for reference, this kind of thing makes Barbelith shit.
(*) Actually this only really applies to people seeing prejudice or insensitivity where John does not. he doesn't generally pull people up for not noticing prejudice or insensitivity where he does. This is presumably because it is important not to get distracted by apologists for or proponents of various -isms when the real enemy - people who are looking for offence where no reasonable bloke would detect it - roam free. |
|
|
