This weapon has been deployed to good effect against bad things.
It’s good to dethrone powerful predators. Weinstein should not get to be a Hollywood power-broker.
The weapon is a weapon of connotation, it accuses someone (or something) of being bad by being somehow connected to a category that is known to be bad. But of course, you don’t need to do this for things that are actually bad. “Harvey Weinstein has sexually assaulted multiple women and used his power to scare them into silence” is a much more persuasive argument than “Harvey Weinstein is sexist”. The Nazis weren’t bad because they were “nazis”, it’s because they committed genocide.
If the only statement you can make about someone is “Person X is Y-ist” without any further argument about what X is doing that’s bad and harmful, the weapon is probably not deployed in the service of good.
hmm .. if “sexist” == “sexually assault[ing] multiple women and us[ing] [] power to scare them into silence” then i dont understand. basically, isnt sexist shorthand for all that?
[Mod note]: This conversation seems to me somewhat likely to get heated, so I would encourage all participants to try to put in more interpretative effort and charity than usual (not a specific response to this comment, just a suggestion for future comments)
The weapon is a weapon of connotation, it accuses someone (or something) of being bad by being somehow connected to a category that is known to be bad. But of course, you don’t need to do this for things that are actually bad. “Harvey Weinstein has sexually assaulted multiple women and used his power to scare them into silence” is a much more persuasive argument than “Harvey Weinstein is sexist”. The Nazis weren’t bad because they were “nazis”, it’s because they committed genocide.
If the only statement you can make about someone is “Person X is Y-ist” without any further argument about what X is doing that’s bad and harmful, the weapon is probably not deployed in the service of good.
hmm .. if “sexist” == “sexually assault[ing] multiple women and us[ing] [] power to scare them into silence” then i dont understand. basically, isnt sexist shorthand for all that?
[Mod note]: This conversation seems to me somewhat likely to get heated, so I would encourage all participants to try to put in more interpretative effort and charity than usual (not a specific response to this comment, just a suggestion for future comments)