I can't tell you how many Facebook arguments I've gotten into where we end up talking around each other because we're making (usually reasonable) assumptions about what each other believes that end up being wrong (or perceived as wrong). I got 50 messages deep trying to convince someone that transphobia is bad, when the central disagreement was not about trans people generally, but a very specific idiosyncratic opinion this person had about a trans athlete he knew personally.
It was still frustrating that he didn't realize how much underlying transphobia was in his opinion/Facebook post, but he took extreme umbrage at the implication that he held more generally transphobic views, and it was of course a huge waste of my time and energy to try to talk him out of views he doesn't hold.
Over the convo, we somehow ended up further away from each other, with less respect for one another, despite discovering that our views were much closer than we'd thought.
Nicely put. Much of what you share is also a part of my own experience, a part I both dread and cherish. Question: how might we view this trend as symptomatic? How might we move beyond simply calling attention to and denouncing it and move toward recognizing its desiderata, desiderata that may be quite older and more urgent than even such disinterpreters may realize? Loofbourow moves toward this even. The democratized access to information and platforms characteristic of the internet is exactly what the anti-neoliberal left wanted for so long. Now that we have it, might we not rightly view it as a status quo in need of redemption? If Loofbourow is correct that we've already experienced all these stale debates before, might that not point to a need to overcome them in practice, and not merely in word, in 'theory' even? I cannot offer much more here regrettably, but perhaps recognizing the present as symptomatic of a past in need of redemption (i.e., the need for international proletarian socialism that has still gone unfulfilled) may point the way toward a future whose ember may still flicker on the horizon.
(just found a missing syllable in: "Or maybe don’t call it disinterpration, it’s kind of an ugly word." To Zeesham Aleem's point, I only discovered this when I slowed my reading down enough in order to ensure the pronunciation of this new word". Excellent writing and an argument needing to be broadcast.
I can't tell you how many Facebook arguments I've gotten into where we end up talking around each other because we're making (usually reasonable) assumptions about what each other believes that end up being wrong (or perceived as wrong). I got 50 messages deep trying to convince someone that transphobia is bad, when the central disagreement was not about trans people generally, but a very specific idiosyncratic opinion this person had about a trans athlete he knew personally.
It was still frustrating that he didn't realize how much underlying transphobia was in his opinion/Facebook post, but he took extreme umbrage at the implication that he held more generally transphobic views, and it was of course a huge waste of my time and energy to try to talk him out of views he doesn't hold.
Over the convo, we somehow ended up further away from each other, with less respect for one another, despite discovering that our views were much closer than we'd thought.
Nicely put. Much of what you share is also a part of my own experience, a part I both dread and cherish. Question: how might we view this trend as symptomatic? How might we move beyond simply calling attention to and denouncing it and move toward recognizing its desiderata, desiderata that may be quite older and more urgent than even such disinterpreters may realize? Loofbourow moves toward this even. The democratized access to information and platforms characteristic of the internet is exactly what the anti-neoliberal left wanted for so long. Now that we have it, might we not rightly view it as a status quo in need of redemption? If Loofbourow is correct that we've already experienced all these stale debates before, might that not point to a need to overcome them in practice, and not merely in word, in 'theory' even? I cannot offer much more here regrettably, but perhaps recognizing the present as symptomatic of a past in need of redemption (i.e., the need for international proletarian socialism that has still gone unfulfilled) may point the way toward a future whose ember may still flicker on the horizon.
(just found a missing syllable in: "Or maybe don’t call it disinterpration, it’s kind of an ugly word." To Zeesham Aleem's point, I only discovered this when I slowed my reading down enough in order to ensure the pronunciation of this new word". Excellent writing and an argument needing to be broadcast.