09-27-2015, 06:41 PM
Oh I agree with you, divisiveness is bad. But a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction. Like the article stated women are 27 times more likely to be harassed online. So if we just ignore that fact and target the bigots as a whole, then...nothing will happen.
The flu can cause a wide variety of symptoms, such as fatigue, achiness, clogged sinuses, and nausea. Let's assume that you have the flu and that you have all three symptoms, but the nausea is the worst of the three making you vomit constantly. Are you going to puke-propel your way to the store and buy antibiotics to try to cure the flu but not anything to treat the associated symptoms? Well congratulations, you died of dehydration because you kept vomiting and couldn't keep enough liquid in your system to get better.
No you recognize the problem is on many levels. You take the antibiotics to try to cure the flu, even though antibiotics won't actually do much to the flu since it's a virus (as you pointed out, "bigots gonna bigot"). You also pick up some anti-nausea medication to treat the nausea.
Just because the problem is bigger than one thing doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to treat any of it. And just because you treat the nauseating symptoms, doesn't necessarily mean that the achiness will be worse. It may seem worse, yes, but that's because you've improved the nausea. Next you can start treating the achiness until in the end you're all better.
The key is to try to fix something. If it doesn't work or it makes something else worse, either revert or try a new stance. To play devil's advocate, let's use my example on your side of things. You take the anti-nausea medication, but it has the side-effect of making your congestion worse.
You now have to look at things logically. Which was worse? My nausea before the medication or my current sinus congestion? I had a near-fatal amount of nausea, so I don't want to give up the medication. But now I can't breath and my sinuses are draining into my throat, causing me to almost drown (hyperbole, it's really just turning into a bad cough) any time I try to rest. I can't get any sleep, so I'm not getting better. What can I do?
I can asses that the solution to the nausea is making another problem worse and I buy a decongestant. Now I've actually improved two situations to be better than they were before I sat back and did nothing. I am no longer nauseated or congested. I am still achy and fatigued, though, so I want to continue taking the antibiotics in the hopes that I can get over the flu entirely.
And maybe, some day, I'll come up with the idea to actually get an anti-viral medication and won't be sick at all anymore. In the context of this debate, that anti-viral would be to change the education of the culture so that it is not treat a certain subsect like an inferior type of person.
I.e. we need to eventually educate our society that women are not inferior to men in everything, black people are not all uncultured swine, muslims are not inherently violent, gays are not virally infected promiscuous clods, and elves are not all mute psychos who murder chickens.
Progress is progress. If we start by doing something about harassment against women, maybe we can make online harassment lessen over the entire populace. And if not, well...better than not trying anything at all, right?
And like I said before, too, if you are a person being targeted because of a specific type of bigotry...that is what you would fight against. If you are a woman who is harassed and threaten with death because you are a woman, you would fight to help women. If you are a black man who makes Youtube videos about reviewing anime and is harassed for being a black anime fan, you would probably fight against harassment of black people (and maybe against anime fans). If you are a gay man who reviews combs and are being harassed because you're gay...you would probably fight against anti-LGBT harassment.
You can't really fault someone for trying to stop the people who are harassing them, just because they don't have any ideas or experience on how someone else might be getting harassed. I'm sure that super-wealthy people have problems, too, but I'm more likely to help out a homeless person because I understand his problems better and feel I am more apt to help him. I'm better at giving a guy by the side of the road a poptart than understanding the difficulties of keeping a four million dollar mansion from sliding off the cliff it was built on when rain causes mudslides. I still understand that having your house slide off a cliff sucks, but I don't care for your plight nearly as much as the janitor who had his house burn down. They're both homeless, just one of them is hurt worse by the homelessness in my personal shell of a world. So if I'm a harassed woman, I'm going to try to fix the harassment of women. If bringing it to light means that millionaires with cliff-side houses aren't getting news coverage or something, then hopefully when there are fewer homeless poor people we can help to address the homeless millionaire issue that is beginning to pile up.
The flu can cause a wide variety of symptoms, such as fatigue, achiness, clogged sinuses, and nausea. Let's assume that you have the flu and that you have all three symptoms, but the nausea is the worst of the three making you vomit constantly. Are you going to puke-propel your way to the store and buy antibiotics to try to cure the flu but not anything to treat the associated symptoms? Well congratulations, you died of dehydration because you kept vomiting and couldn't keep enough liquid in your system to get better.
No you recognize the problem is on many levels. You take the antibiotics to try to cure the flu, even though antibiotics won't actually do much to the flu since it's a virus (as you pointed out, "bigots gonna bigot"). You also pick up some anti-nausea medication to treat the nausea.
Just because the problem is bigger than one thing doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to treat any of it. And just because you treat the nauseating symptoms, doesn't necessarily mean that the achiness will be worse. It may seem worse, yes, but that's because you've improved the nausea. Next you can start treating the achiness until in the end you're all better.
The key is to try to fix something. If it doesn't work or it makes something else worse, either revert or try a new stance. To play devil's advocate, let's use my example on your side of things. You take the anti-nausea medication, but it has the side-effect of making your congestion worse.
You now have to look at things logically. Which was worse? My nausea before the medication or my current sinus congestion? I had a near-fatal amount of nausea, so I don't want to give up the medication. But now I can't breath and my sinuses are draining into my throat, causing me to almost drown (hyperbole, it's really just turning into a bad cough) any time I try to rest. I can't get any sleep, so I'm not getting better. What can I do?
I can asses that the solution to the nausea is making another problem worse and I buy a decongestant. Now I've actually improved two situations to be better than they were before I sat back and did nothing. I am no longer nauseated or congested. I am still achy and fatigued, though, so I want to continue taking the antibiotics in the hopes that I can get over the flu entirely.
And maybe, some day, I'll come up with the idea to actually get an anti-viral medication and won't be sick at all anymore. In the context of this debate, that anti-viral would be to change the education of the culture so that it is not treat a certain subsect like an inferior type of person.
I.e. we need to eventually educate our society that women are not inferior to men in everything, black people are not all uncultured swine, muslims are not inherently violent, gays are not virally infected promiscuous clods, and elves are not all mute psychos who murder chickens.
Progress is progress. If we start by doing something about harassment against women, maybe we can make online harassment lessen over the entire populace. And if not, well...better than not trying anything at all, right?
And like I said before, too, if you are a person being targeted because of a specific type of bigotry...that is what you would fight against. If you are a woman who is harassed and threaten with death because you are a woman, you would fight to help women. If you are a black man who makes Youtube videos about reviewing anime and is harassed for being a black anime fan, you would probably fight against harassment of black people (and maybe against anime fans). If you are a gay man who reviews combs and are being harassed because you're gay...you would probably fight against anti-LGBT harassment.
You can't really fault someone for trying to stop the people who are harassing them, just because they don't have any ideas or experience on how someone else might be getting harassed. I'm sure that super-wealthy people have problems, too, but I'm more likely to help out a homeless person because I understand his problems better and feel I am more apt to help him. I'm better at giving a guy by the side of the road a poptart than understanding the difficulties of keeping a four million dollar mansion from sliding off the cliff it was built on when rain causes mudslides. I still understand that having your house slide off a cliff sucks, but I don't care for your plight nearly as much as the janitor who had his house burn down. They're both homeless, just one of them is hurt worse by the homelessness in my personal shell of a world. So if I'm a harassed woman, I'm going to try to fix the harassment of women. If bringing it to light means that millionaires with cliff-side houses aren't getting news coverage or something, then hopefully when there are fewer homeless poor people we can help to address the homeless millionaire issue that is beginning to pile up.