Haus, banning the ass-candling jokes must surely be at the top of the agenda for anyone appointed to a newly created post of Taste Czar.
Hey, they're up there with "stumpfucking" and "faceknives". Same argument.
Isn't this the central bone of contention that runs through the discussions about ShadowSax, neuromancer, and many others, though? To a large extent I sympathise with your position, in that I think that that position (responding to modes of interaction not moral/political points of view) is a potentially workable one: although it would not be ideal for many people, it would at least be relatively consistent up to a point. The principle is still enshrined in the Wiki, there for all to see:
"You can pretty much get away with arguing any position in the world on Barbelith, which is as it should be."
...But it's not actually true in terms of the precedents that have been set, is it? The banning of neuromancer and the Fetch - and now of ShadowSax - would appear to demonstrate that there are some positions you cannot advance on the board without getting into banning-or-close-to-it-sized trouble, sooner or later.
I agree with you - and I agree that the precedent that's been set makes things difficult. I'd point out here and now that I'm not touting 'modes of discourse not subject matter' as my stated position (although I do think it's a good rule of thumb) so much as what I understand to be Tom's position. And yes, I think the anti-Semitic rulings have set a precedent that's called this into question. It's created an inconsistency that has never been resolved and continues to chafe. I guess it's where we go with that inconsistency that's the nub.
Personally, I think that's as it should be, because I believe that certain moral/political positions constitute harassment, and are in themselves inherently abusive. This is what is meant by non-negotiables. The problem is that accepting this is often seen as "bias" or a form of "absolutism" by those more given to relativism, unless one couches it explicitly in "it causes people offence/upset, and you wouldn't want to be caused offence/upset, would you?" terms.
I suspect that, as a subject, this may deserve a thread in its own right. As one of those pesky tending-to-relativists, I'm instinctively uncomfortable with the idea of equating certain viewpoints directly with harassment - but, at the same time, I can appreciate that line of reasoning up to a point. I think I was touching on it with my "overlapping" comment upthread.
'Offensive' as a way of describing what-Barbelith-objects-to is a short-cut, then, but in the end it is one with in-built problems - namely that, as has been pointed out, anyone can claim that they have been 'offended' by something (was it Jade v1.0 who couldn't think about two men having sex without almost losing his lunch?). This, IMO, is why we just need to accept the fact that, as dizfactor rather marvelously said elsewhere:
In order to share a common community, a group of people needs to share at least a few core values and long-term goals. They need to share a common vision of what their shared society should be. Everything outside those core values should be up for general discussion and debate, but certain things need to be off the table for people to have enough in common to actually make a society function coherently.
My instinct is that this thread is partly about deciding what does and what does not fall outside Barbelith's core values.
I'm inclined to think that this thread is more about deciding whether Barbelith has and/or should have explicit "core values" as such, in terms of subject matter (as opposed to modes of engagement) - and I actually see that as largely down to Tom. If this can be decided, then we could certainly go on to decide what does and doesn't constitute "core values" in this context. |
