Factual Feminist on intersectionality

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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by brimstoneSalad »

EquALLity wrote: Well, they're not trying to suppress minority votes because they hate minorities,
That's the only important point; it's not racism.
EquALLity wrote: but they are intentionally suppressing minority votes.
They intend only to suppress democrat votes, it's just a correlation.
EquALLity wrote: The cruelty towards religious people in that regard, while unfortunate, is less cruel than brainwashing students.
Why?

And if the students don't know any better, how is brainwashing them cruel at all by the definition?
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EquALLity
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by EquALLity »

brimstoneSalad wrote:
EquALLity wrote: Well, they're not trying to suppress minority votes because they hate minorities,
That's the only important point; it's not racism.
EquALLity wrote: but they are intentionally suppressing minority votes.
They intend only to suppress democrat votes, it's just a correlation.
EquALLity wrote: The cruelty towards religious people in that regard, while unfortunate, is less cruel than brainwashing students.
Why?

And if the students don't know any better, how is brainwashing them cruel at all by the definition?
Alright, that's fair.

It's cruel because it's lying to them in a way that will impact their lives and others in a harmful way (they could be opposed to equal rights, for example).
"I am not a Marxist." -Karl Marx
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by brimstoneSalad »

EquALLity wrote: It's cruel because it's lying to them in a way that will impact their lives and others in a harmful way (they could be opposed to equal rights, for example).
Don't forget the definition:
"willfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it."

Those who brainwash students are not willfully causing pain and suffering; they think they're doing a good thing for those students and society, and are ignorant of the consequences.

At least with cruelty to non-human animals, the immediate pain and suffering an animal experiences is transparent. The brainwashing doesn't provide any immediate feedback of pain or suffering from those students; they aren't in any pain, because they don't even know what's being done to them and even agree with it (due to the brainwashing).
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by Volenta »

I'm a bit confused brimstoneSalad. I like the video for the style and the calm tone in it. The problem though is that she starts with explaining the theory of intersectionality, and then suddenly completely ignores this and makes arguments about the movement. Did you actually fell for that trap, or are you more interested in the shortcomings of the movement around the theory?
PROBLEM 1
IT'S A CONSPIRACY THEORY
I mean if intersectionality theory were merely a reminder to be sensitive to different kinds of social advantage and disadvantage that would be fine but it's much more than that. It's an all encompassing theory of human reality constructed to be immune to criticism. If you question it, that only proves you don't understand it, or that you're just part of the problem it's seeking to correct.
Here she claims that a reminder of social advantages/disvantages would be fine, I assume to imply that it in reality is more than that, which she presumably would consider to be a problem. But never in this argument she actually argues why this would be a problem. Rather, she's changing the subject to how some intersectional proponents are unwilling to participate in a constructive discussion. This could be true, and yet the theory might still be valid. I'm sure she doesn't want to make a genetic fallacy.
PROBLEM 2
VICTIM CREEP
According to this theory, victimization confers wisdom, moral authority, even prestige. So in places where intersectionalists gather on campuses and in social media there's now a mad scramble for victim status [...]
The first sentence is actually about the theory, which is great. I'm not able to find a credible source that this victimization is indeed part of the theory (and I haven't researched the theory myself), but lets assume it's true. Instead of telling what's actually wrong with this statement (assuming she thinks it's wrong), she immediately moves on to the failings of proponents. Does this part of the theory, assuming it is part of it, inherently lead to this behavior when accepted? This depends on whether the theory states that:
A) one should openly victimize when belonging to a group that the theory just states to be one of the groups
B) one can be an actual victim when belonging to a group in certain societies or environments, and experiencing this first-hand gives insight
There are more possibilities (again, I don't know what the theory actually says), but the point is that she doesn't say what the theory actually says. We can't reason backward and choose option A because it fits better with how the movement looks. People act irrational all the time, so it is just as plausible people in the movement are misunderstanding the theory, or behaving this way despite option B being true. It just doesn't follow from what she has told about the theory that proponents have to behave the way they do. So basically, the argument is incomplete, or possibly even deliberately put in a vague way to avoid addressing this problem.
PROBLEM 3
BULLYING
Intersectionality tells us that white males are in charge of the capitalist white supremacist patriarchy and that they enjoy most of the unearned privileges, so on many campuses that has given marginalized victims permission to treat them badly. Ironically, members of the insider victim class now routinely do to others what they accuse the privileged class of doing to them: they stereotype, demonize, shame, and silence people.
This argument has the same problem as the previous one, but in this case it's pretty clear that the behavior of proponents is not a necessary component of the theory. One could agree with the theory, and yet dislike the behavior of these campus people. Again, she's not even trying to refute the theory.


Now let's turn to your arguments, brimstoneSalad, which are more interesting.
1. Adversarial nature
There is no true equality in asymmetrical issues. Matters like reproductive rights are inherently asymmetrical, and obtaining something that seems fair is about compromise; that means an adversarial negotiation. That doesn't mean people have to be unfriendly, but that they're advancing different and inherently opposing interests in negotiating that compromise.
The existence of asymmetry is indeed an important point to make. It is in these inherently asymmetrical issues that legal rights should differ, because it wouldn't make much sense to do it otherwise. But I think you are wrong to think this gets at the essence of, or is incompatible with, intersectional theory. Isn't the theory about addressing illegitimate asymmetry in the real world in what is symmetrical in theory, and thus should be symmetrical in the real world as well?
2. FAIR doesn't mean GOOD
This is something many people misunderstand, because intuitively fair feels good, and unfair feels wrong. This is deontological nonsense, and you need to understand that in order to substantiate the wrongness of something you have to provide some evidence for the ultimate and global consequences being harmful.
Surely I can sympathize with this argument. Social equality isn't inherently good indeed. Giving equal consideration to similar interests is though. So the question for me is: is the theory trying to address issues where the interests are the same, yet unequal consideration is given, or is it trying to give equal consideration to interests having significantly different weight? I probably can assume intersectionality isn't based on utilitarian grounds, but as a rule of thump (a.k.a. being more deontological based), they might be about addressing the right issues. Your argument seems to take a different position, but this is never explicitly stated nor explained.
3. Parsimony
This is as important in charity and activism as it is in science. If asking people to "go vegan" makes people less likely to actually go vegan, we should avoid it and do something more effective. If looking like morons by being obsessively politically correct makes our outreach less effective to the majority with only minor gains from minorities, we shouldn't do it. Cost and benefit analysis is essential to any situation where we have limited resources, and both human effort and compassion are in very limited supply.
And now you're making the same mistake as the woman in the video, focusing on the movement in dismissing the theory. That's not to say this isn't an important point, because I do agree with you fully on the substance itself.


This all is not to say intersectionality theory is right. I don't know that, because I haven't studied it. All I claim is that all these arguments are bad ones, or at least have problems.
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Volenta wrote:The problem though is that she starts with explaining the theory of intersectionality, and then suddenly completely ignores this and makes arguments about the movement.
She talks a little about both. I mentioned that problems in the movement (bad eggs) don't invalidate the theory.
Volenta wrote:Did you actually fell for that trap, or are you more interested in the shortcomings of the movement around the theory?
Both. If the theory is bad, then advocating it is irrational and will always have that Achilles heel.
If the movement has negative perceptions (and the theory is sound), then we should use the theory only privately (in philosophical circles) and avoid associating with the movement.
Volenta wrote:Rather, she's changing the subject to how some intersectional proponents are unwilling to participate in a constructive discussion. This could be true, and yet the theory might still be valid. I'm sure she doesn't want to make a genetic fallacy.
I think she's trying to get at falsifiability in the theory. The theory makes certain empirical assumptions about reality which can not be falsified because disagreement is considered invalid.

I have to go, but I'll get to the rest later.
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

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Getting back to the point about falsifiability, I'll draw an analogy:

Intelligent design asserts the concept of "irreducible complexity". It may very well be true that there's something, somewhere, that is irreducibly complex, but the problem is that there's no way to know it's not irreducibly complex until you find how it's reduced: it's basically an argument from ignorance. It should not be taken seriously as a theory, because it's not a theory, it's an unfalsifiable assertion (that something, somewhere is irreducibly complex; if you falsify one thing, they just move on to the next unknown).

In the case of certain versions of intersectional "theory", one of the key ideas being advanced is that only people subject to a particular oppression can understand that oppression, so if you claim there's no oppression going on, you're obviously not subject to the oppression so you just can't understand it. Kind of an "emperor's new clothes" thing. It can't be taken seriously, because there's no means of outside verification.

Volenta wrote: The first sentence is actually about the theory, which is great. I'm not able to find a credible source that this victimization is indeed part of the theory (and I haven't researched the theory myself), but lets assume it's true.
I think this was kind of her first point too. I assume that not all people who regard themselves as intersectionalists believe this, but if there are multiple versions of intersectionalism (as there are of veganism), this is a strong argument (as I mentioned above) against the versions that hold this.
Volenta wrote:Does this part of the theory, assuming it is part of it, inherently lead to this behavior when accepted?
That's a good question, and I think it probably does. This isn't, of course, an argument against its validity, but may be a good one against it's practice if you're into pragmatic ethics. Kind of the same arguments that suggest rule consequentialism should be advocated, it might be an argument to NOT advocate this even if it were true.

E.g. even if law breaking has a good outcome, just don't do it because it usually won't and we don't have an individual ability to assess that properly.
Volenta wrote: There are more possibilities (again, I don't know what the theory actually says), but the point is that she doesn't say what the theory actually says.
I think that's going to be a theme, and probably comes down to the "theory" not being well articulated. It is coming out of the "social sciences", of course, which have a lot of issues, and are very different from the natural sciences (i.e. actual science). I see similar problems in academic philosophy.
Volenta wrote: One could agree with the theory, and yet dislike the behavior of these campus people. Again, she's not even trying to refute the theory.
Right, I think she only has one really solid refutation of the theory, which is half covered in the first point and half in the second, and then one refutation of the consequences of its advocacy as currently practiced. So, I'd say she has two real points which she broke down into three due to lack of careful examination, and it kind of confused her message. This would be the best criticism of the video, I think, but I don't believe it was deliberate on her part.
Volenta wrote: But I think you are wrong to think this gets at the essence of, or is incompatible with, intersectional theory.
I'm not sure what you mean. Intersectional theory traces all social ills to some invisible oppressive ideology -- kind of how Christians trace all evils to the devil.
What I'm trying to say is that there are legitimate conflicts that arise not from malice, but from reasonable people disagreeing about what a non-obvious compromise should be.
Volenta wrote: Isn't the theory about addressing illegitimate asymmetry in the real world in what is symmetrical in theory, and thus should be symmetrical in the real world as well?
I don't think so. At least, I've not seen intersectionalists limit themselves to this (which would basically be equality in property law, and other things that don't relate to sex or personal choice).

If somebody points out that men have more employment options because stupid men can do manual labor better than stupid women (construction, etc.), and that this difference influences income, or that employers are hesitant to hire women for other jobs because they may become pregnant and take a long maternity leave which costs the employer money, intersectionalists don't typically just respond "OK, that's fair then".

The fact is that there are so many asymmetries resulting from biological differences that it's nearly impossible to control for them to the extent of proving any kind of systemic sexism that isn't related to those differences. Proving illegitimate asymmetry becomes a nearly impossible task which the social "sciences" are not up to (being so reluctant to use scientific methodology, and considering it less important than political rhetoric).
Volenta wrote:Giving equal consideration to similar interests is though. So the question for me is: is the theory trying to address issues where the interests are the same, yet unequal consideration is given, or is it trying to give equal consideration to interests having significantly different weight?
Good question, but I don't think they even think about this.

It seems to be trying to give no consideration to some interests in favor of others; more of the deontological approach.

A good example is a man's interest in his unborn child, if the woman wants an abortion, and his interest in an equal opportunity to opt out.
Intersectionalists usually are not interested in the interests of the "privileged" class.

If we took an "equal consideration to equal interests" approach, or "proportional consideration based on interests" I think that would be a much more valid theory which maps better to morality.
Volenta wrote:And now you're making the same mistake as the woman in the video, focusing on the movement in dismissing the theory. That's not to say this isn't an important point, because I do agree with you fully on the substance itself.
Not at all. I'm not dismissing the theory with that. I'm dismissing the prescribed actions if they interfere with more important endeavors.
It may be that we shouldn't call people "blind" for ignoring the evidence, because this could be offensive to blind people -- maybe we should find better words. But this harm is probably very small relative to the overall utility of normal word usage.

I think this is basically the same as the Factual Feminist's second real argument (of the two), that the consequences aren't good of putting the theory into practice -- at least, how it's currently done.
I would ask for a more friendly and socially acceptable intersectionality, in the same way I wouldn't want to pull a Freelee or Vegan Gains to advocate veganism.
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