[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.

[Jtsummers]

Re replying: True, and I should have mentioned it, but I think most people don't know about it (evidenced by even older HN members still side-replying to messages far down a thread).

Re main topic: I'm trying to state my position and view more clearly. I'll either edit this later or post another reply. Short version: In my view violence is a product of the cultures it occurs in (or cultural boundaries).

[aaronem]

Not to preëmpt your longer formulation, but just as culture can engender violence, successful violence reinforces the culture which engendered it. Interrupting the cycle at the point of culture strikes me as a long and subtle process by comparison with interrupting it at the point of violence; after all, once people realize something won't produce the result they desire, they won't bother to waste their effort doing it.

[Jtsummers]

Well, it's a really long rambling mess. So I'll pose this question instead. I type my long replies in emacs so I'll keep tinkering with what's probably best used as a blog post (if only I blogged) or essay than an HN post.

How do we interrupt the violence if we don't try to change the cultures that the violence comes from?

EDIT:

BTW, I really do think we agree on the end goal, it's just the way to it that we differ. I understand my view and will continue to try and get it down to less than 20 pages (exaggeration, though I've likely deleted about 10 pages of material so far in restating it over and over again), I just don't understand yours yet. And since I'm the one that's not understanding, I'd rather get your view first, I might find that my long-winded reply is unnecessary.

[aaronem]

(I also write long replies in Emacs, and use the "It's All Text" extension for Firefox to integrate Emacs more directly into that workflow. If you use Firefox but don't use It's All Text, you might want to give it a look; if you don't use Firefox, I'm sure other browsers have something similar.)

> How do we interrupt the violence if we don't try to change the cultures that the violence comes from?

Outlaw the violence, and make it stick, by passing laws which motivate those with the power to curtail such violence to act in a fashion which does so.

Consider, as a somewhat caricatured example, a state law under which school officials, specifically including principals, who are demonstrably aware of bullying among the students for whom they are responsible, but who do not act effectively to curtail it, can be considered accessory after the fact to assault and battery, or to some similar violent crime whose definition is more closely satisfied by the events over which they have so blithely presided. Consider the effect such a law is likely to have after the first two or three school principals are convicted of violating it, and imprisoned accordingly -- as Voltaire put it, pour encourager les autres, and encourager les autres it would! Sufficiently encouraged, they will find a way to solve the problem.

Consider further the effect on federal law it is likely to have when it's not just a single state which passes and enforces this sort of law, but five, or ten, or twenty -- it worked for marijuana legalization; why not for this purpose as well? And consider how well it might work if, in the fullness of time, parents of bullies are themselves implicated in similar fashion -- granted that schools stand in loco parentis, and no progressive is going to want to roll that back save a few homeschoolers who inhabit the wild-eyed radical leftward fringe of the movement, but a certain judicious revitalization of the concept that parents are responsible for their children's behavior seems like something which would have a salutary effect in this case.

Culture change is almost of necessity a generational process; legislation is not, especially when you can trivially tar opponents of legislation like this as enablers of bullies and bullies themselves -- tactics which, while perhaps slanderous and certainly unsavory, are well within the progressive playbook, and far from the only pages of that playbook which could be deployed in favor of an effort like the one I describe.

I'm a theorist and a (sloppy) rhetorician, not an activist. I wouldn't know where to begin putting together a campaign actually to enact such legislation. But I don't see where the idea is intrinsically flawed, and while it lacks the theoretical elegance of extirpating the problem from the roots on up, it most certainly offers the prospect of saving a lot of kids from a lot of beatings, and I think much more quickly and comprehensively, too.