Interesting Links for 08-01-2023

[andrewducker]

1. The Power of Indulging Your Weird, Offbeat Obsessions

(tags:obsession science research advice viaPatrickHadfield )

2. Trigger warnings for innate parts of people's lives are not a good idea

(tags:triggerwarnings minorities )

Comments

[wildeabandon]

But surely the people who are mostly likely to want to escape from the politics of a particular axis of oppression are precisely those who are affected by it? I'm not someone who find trigger warnings particularly helpful, but if I was, the things I would want warning for would be discussion of homophobia, transphobia, and anti-autism sentiment.

[andrewducker]

For a particular axis, I strongly suspect you're right.

But there's a lot of people who are just "I don't want to encounter politics at all." - and it's that which has been driving the discussion on Mastodon recently. On the one side people saying "This has been my escape from the real world, where I can talk about my passions." And on the other side various minorities saying "I don't get to escape from racism/sexism/homophobia/etc, and I'm not going to hide my posts to make you comfortable while you ignore it all."

[wildeabandon]

Is it possible that the side who want a space free from politics are a mixture of those who want it because they're uncomfortable thinking about other people being oppressed and those who want it because the real world is full of people directing racism/sexism/homophobia/etc at them?

[andrewducker]

Many things which I've seen no evidence of are possible.

[wildeabandon]

But you just acknowledged that the people who are most likely to want to escape from the politics of a particular axis of oppression are precisely those who are affected by it. That is evidence - probabilistic, admittedly, but is there anything more concrete causing you to assume otherwise?

[andrewducker]

I've said that it seems likely.

But the evidence I've seen so far is of a bunch of (entirely white) people saying "we like our nice space here with no politics in it" while black people tell them that they aren't going to go back in their box and hide their lives away.

So while it's possible that that's the case, I've (as I said above) not seen any evidence of it.

[andrewducker]

To be clear, by:
"For a particular axis, I strongly suspect you're right.

But there's a lot of people who are just "I don't want to encounter politics at all." - and it's that which has been driving the discussion on Mastodon recently."

What I meant was:
Percentage of all people who are gay and want an escape from politics so much that they're willing to never discuss the interaction of society and homosexuality: 0.1%
Percentage of all people who are straight, but specifically don't want to encounter discussions of homosexuality: 0.05%

Percentage of all people who are black, and want an escape from politics so much that they're willing to never discuss the interaction of society and race: 0.1%
Percentage of all people who are white, but specifically don't want to encounter discussions of race issues: 0.05%

Percentage of all people who are women, and want an escape from politics so much that they're willing to never discuss the interaction of society and gender: 0.1%
Percentage of all people who are white, but specifically don't want to encounter discussions of gender issues: 0.05%

Percentage of all people who are straight, white men who don't want to discuss race, gender, or homosexuality, because doing so makes them uncomfortable: 10% (Maybe 30%)

So for any individual axis, yes, it's more likely to be a person on that axis who is so fed up with it that they need an escape. But the big mass of complainers about discussion is still that wodge of somewhat-privileged-if-not-deliberately-oppressive people who "Just want to play my wizard school game without having to think about it too much." and object to people bringing "politics" into it.

[wildeabandon]

Thanks for spelling that out. And I must of course recognise that I'm not seeing any of these discussions because I'm allergic to social media that aren't DW.

I think the thing that made me inclined to push back was the phrasing you used earlier of "This has been my escape from the real world" because whilst I agree that the proportion of people who are $oppressed group who want to never discuss that oppression is pretty tiny, I would guess that the proportion of people who want to be able to ringfence a space in which they can choose not to discuss it right now is probably close to 1. And contrariwise, I'd be surprised if the real world of the average straight white abled &c man is especially full of discussions of race, gender &c that they need to escape from. My experience is that far more of those kinds of conversations are intracommunity.

[andrewducker]

I agree that there are going to be a desire for ringfenced spaces. But I wouldn't expect those spaces to be on Twitter/Mastodon/general blogs. I'd expect a small community on a BBS/Discord/etc. where they could contain the discussion more easily.

I wonder if the "Discussions of politics are taking over" feeling is similar to the "Women are taking over the conversation" effect - where it only takes 30% of the speech to be by women before people feel like they've dominated the conversation. In a group of a dozen or more people you wouldn't need to have each person bring up an issue more than once a week before at least some people felt like "politics is taking over".