[aaronem]

Having grown up as a gay teenager in the 90s, I don't really remember having had my bones broken by any jokes people made about me. I did get my ass kicked pretty good a few times, but in those cases, it wasn't words doing the damage.

Conflating jokes with beatings, and assuming that incidence of one has an effect on incidence of the other, does no good for anyone subject to either -- I also don't remember, in any of the cases where people beat the shit out of me, wishing someone would step in to stop them making jokes about me.

I'm also curious: What about kids who get beat up, not because they're gay or trans or what-have-you, but just because they're nerds? I was one of those, too, as it happens, and that bought me more beatings than being gay ever did. Those beatings are of less concern, in the realm of social justice, than the ones I got for being gay. Why? Certainly the latter didn't hurt worse than the former, nor did it particularly matter to me which was which.

Based on that experience, it seems to me less reasonable to consider that the reasons behind any given beating are the problem, than that the beatings are the problem; worrying specifically about gay kids getting beaten, or trans kids getting beaten, or what-have-you, seems roughly as risible as worrying specifically about guns being used to kill people, rather than about people killing each other.

[AlexMax]

> Having grown up as a gay teenager in the 90s, I don't really remember having had my bones broken by any jokes people made about me. I did get my ass kicked pretty good a few times, but in those cases, it wasn't words doing the damage.

Do you not think that words contributed to the atmosphere of oppression that made it easier for others to stand by and do nothing or think you deserved it somehow? Or that it doesn't have the effect of tearing someone down mentally? If someone is hurt by the things someone says, is it the victim's fault for letting it get to them?

Why can't people just be nice to each other? Why can't we just start from that? Why can't we as a society frown on that sort of bullying behavior instead of insisting that it's the victims who should take two "life experience" pills and get over it?

[aaronem]

You seem to be missing my point entirely. Of course hearing nasty jokes about me hurt! How could it be otherwise? But if the problem is that I'm being beaten for the same reason that people are making nasty jokes about me, I don't see how spending effort on stopping people making the jokes does more to solve the problem than would spending the same effort on stopping people doing the beating.

> Why can't people just be nice to each other?

Because human nature frequently requires otherwise.

> Why can't we just start from that?

Because it doesn't work; see above for why.

> Why can't we as a society frown on that sort of bullying behavior instead of insisting that it's the victims who should take two "life experience" pills and get over it?

I'm arguing that it's precisely that behavior on which the utopians should focus, instead of generating a lot of hot air on the subject of harsh language.

And it's pretty rich, I think, for you to be suggesting to me that I'm blaming the victim. I've been that victim, thank you very much, and it is in precisely that experience that my arguments on this subject find their motivation.

[gavanwoolery]

Sorry to hear it - I was also bullied, even though I was stronger than my bullies I was not allowed to fight back (by my parents demand) so I was an easy target. I actually felt sorry for one bully though because I'm pretty sure his parents abused him.

[aaronem]

Wow. I'm sorry to hear your parents abused you in that fashion -- getting your ass kicked has got to be bad enough already, without such foolishness as being required, by your own parents, to just curl up and take it; mine, for all their other faults, at least had sense enough to grant me the right to defend myself if I could. (My schools mostly didn't, but that's a different matter, and one in which my parents took my side, as well.)

[gavanwoolery]

Yeah, in retrospect it was for my own safety - if I got on a bully's bad side who knows what could have happened. A few years before me a kid brought a gun to the school (this was prior to Columbine), and there were also gang associations at this time, for which reason bandannas of any color were not allowed). (I went to school in Napa, which you would think would be the safest town in the world but it had one or two gang shootings and bordered the high-crime city of Vallejo, not to mention one of the most famous serial killers spent at least a little time there (the Zodiac killer) ).

[aaronem]

It still seems like an ideal way to inculcate learned helplessness, though. (And I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that getting beat up at his hands suggests you're already pretty well "on a bully's bad side.")

I grew up in Mississippi. Firearms were pretty ubiquitous; especially as I got into high school, a lot of kids I went to school with were already experienced hunters -- you could always tell the first day of hunting season by the way your classes were suddenly half empty -- and it wasn't all that uncommon for someone old enough to drive to school to have a rifle or a shotgun locked in his trunk. In spite of what might seem like a fertile environment for such enormities, no bully ever shot anyone.

But, to someone who's familiar with the history of school shootings, this should not come as a surprise. Perhaps the first instance of the modern spate was Luke Woodham's rampage in 1997, a case near and dear to my interest in the matter both for having happened while I was in high school and for having happened in my own home state. Woodham's "manifesto", as excerpted by Wikipedia, reads as follows:

> I am not insane, I am angry. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day. I did this to show society, push us and we will push back. ... All throughout my life, I was ridiculed, always beaten, always hated. Can you, society, truly blame me for what I do? Yes, you will. ... It was not a cry for attention, it was not a cry for help. It was a scream in sheer agony saying that if you can't pry your eyes open, if I can't do it through pacifism, if I can't show you through the displaying of intelligence, then I will do it with a bullet.

This is, again, the first instance of a pattern all but ubiquitous among the type: it's not bullies who kill, but rather their victims, who believe their actions to be their last resort in self-defense. Bullies have no reason to kill; they do what they do because it suits them, for whatever reason, to inflict pain, and you can't do that to a corpse. Their victims, on the other hand, can reach a point where killing seems the only option available, not just to defend themselves from those specific people who beat them, but in a larger sense to reclaim their agency and their power of self-determination, and that's the wellspring from which this sort of violence flows.

[gavanwoolery]

In some cases it is desperation, but often (I suspect) it is the dangerous mixture of being bullied and having psychological or socially-incurred disorders. Of course, it is never these things that are blamed, it is gun laws, or video games, or movies, or music...

[aaronem]

I'd argue that such disorders, where present, contribute in that they make it more likely that any given bullied kid will reach that rare pitch of desperation which finds its expression in a shooting spree.

[patdennis]

Of course violence has to be targeted and stopped, regardless of the reason.

But cultural change is important. Lynchings were bad because of the violence, but just as bad was the culture that lead to such violence being sanctioned. Gay bashing is horrible, but the culture that sanctions it is also horrible. Same with trans bashing, but there has been less progress at targeting that culture. Include nerds in the targeted groups, there.

Sure, maybe you don't agree that targeting the culture that sanctions violence is important, but a lot of people disagree with you there, including me.

[aaronem]

But you're not talking about targeting the culture that sanctions violence. You're talking about targeting the culture that sanctions violence against the protected groups of your choice. There's a substantive difference there; the latter proposition has holes in it which I'd argue are, if not dangerous, then at least compromising to the goal of reducing violence, period.

I'll grant that not getting beaten up for being gay would've fetched me fewer beatings, and fewer would've been better than more. But no matter how thoroughly you manage to instill "don't beat up people because they're gay", fewer beatings is all you'll ever achieve by it. Considering that, if your movement has the power to succeed at the "don't beat up people because they're gay" social engineering project, it also has the power to succeed at the "don't beat up people, period" social engineering project, aiming for a lesser goal than you can attain seems to me a bit crass. (As it happens, I don't think your movement has the power to succeed at either project, so for me the question is academic. But you think otherwise, so, for you, I should think it'd be a matter of some import.)

[patdennis]

You're suggesting there are groups where I don't support targeting such a culture?

Edit: Yes, I support targeting a culture of violence, period. Areas of disproportionate violence, like vulnerable minorities, need disproportionate targeting.

Edit2: You admit that there's been a cultural change away from gay bashing. Doesn't that indicate that cultural change can and does work in preventing sanctioned violence against vulnerable minorities?

Edit3, in response to below: I'm on Hacker News for fun. Do you really think it never occurred to me that nerds get beat up?

[aaronem]

Yet it didn't occur to you, to worry about nerds getting beat on, until someone pointed out to you that that happens. Disproportionate targeting just conveys the idea that the problem is not one's propensity to deliver beatings, but rather merely one's choice of victims.

Edit in response to your Edit2: I admit no such thing, but even conceding the point, you still ignore mine, which is that "against vulnerable minorities" is a problem. If you're going to shoot for a utopia, why not aim as high as you can?

Edit in response to your Edit3: No, I suggest that it matters less to you that nerds get beat up than that gay and trans people do, and I suggest further that, having been beat up both for being a nerd and for being gay, worrying more about one than about the other misses the point that it's not the cause of the beatings, but the beatings, which are the problem.

And, for pity's sake, will you comment in response rather than editing? It's a lot easier to keep track of the former than the latter.

[Jtsummers]

> for pity's sake, will you comment in response rather than editing? It's a lot easier to keep track of the former than the latter.

Repyling gets delayed the further down the chain it goes. I didn't see the edits as they came up live, but that may have been why.

> which is that "against vulnerable minorities" is a problem. If you're going to shoot for a utopia, why not aim as high as you can?

I'm also in favor of this goal, but you seem to be thinking we can target all violent or violence condoning cultures en masse, which is a much harder proposition. You're also suggesting that we leave step 2 with just ??? and go to step 3 "world peace", we have to finish step 2 first and define it. It turns out it's really a thousand steps, some that can be taken together, and some that enable the rest. Consider just the general anti-gay culture in the US, it would be awesome if we could wake up tomorrow and see a free and open world. It's not going to happen, but there are steps in that direction. Until 2 years ago a number of friends and some family members who were in the US military couldn't openly discuss their relationships because of DADT, if they had they risked being discharged from the military. That same military now provides benefits to same-sex couples that used to be reserved for opposite-sex couples. Is the problem solved? Hardly (see Oklahoma), but it's getting there. We have to choose the battles that we can win, the battles we want to fight even though we will lose (at least this time, but maybe tomorrow), and the battles we'll have to wait to fight. It's not a surrender, it's not quitting, it's accepting that sometimes with our finite lives and finite energies we can't solve every problem at once. If one group wants to take on transphobia as a cause, and another wants to take on homophobia as cause and another wants to take on misogyny as a cause (opposition to these things, I mean), they aren't at odds with each other. And a victory with one often leads to victories in the others.

[aaronem]

The appearance of the "reply" link on the thread page is delayed, but you can reply immediately if you visit the comment page (by clicking the "link" link above the comment body), where the "reply" link always appears immediately.

I think you're still missing the point I am making, which is that it seems both simpler and more effective, not to target "cultures", but rather to target violence. Your anti-transphobes and your anti-homophobes and your anti-misogynists aren't working at cross purposes, exactly, but they are by default in silos, which is what necessitates the whole concept of "intersectionality" -- something which doesn't go nearly far enough, in my opinion, in that it still refuses to look outside the narrow categories of "vulnerable minorities" on whose behalf it is regarded as worthwhile to expend effort, but at least it's a start.