> It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.
I've heard people say something similar, about how they were left-wing when they were young, but found themselves right-wing when they were older, without changing their politics, because the next generation had moved the Overton window, but it's surprising to hear of an environment where the shift happened in the space of 18 months.
I think that many people on the right imagine that identity politics is the true form of left-wing politics, and that it was invented by Karl Marx for some reason, but experiences like Tara Henley's suggest that identity politics is more like an aggressive meme that takes over the brains of some subset of people who happen to gravitate towards left-wing politics, and it perhaps has a disingenuous astroturf form which appeals to people on the right as a way to shield themselves from left-wing criticism.
The article didn't say what happened. Did they turn over everyone but her in the 18 months? Or did everyone but her change their position? Or did everyone but her decide that they had to look and act like they changed their position in order to fit with new directions coming down from on high?
She didn't say. I wish she had; I would like to know what drove the change.
So if the funding for the CBC is allocated on similars concerns, her colleagues are probably scared. That would also explain why they produced this mostly absurd list of banned words https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/words-and-phrases-comm... , a list that include violent words like brainstorm, lame, grandfathered and tribe. The CBC used to be a bastion of integrity and reason, now it is a novlang factory.
I’ll admit that I’m one of the people who’s increasingly convinced that what she’s describing is the true form of left-wing politics, at least right now, and I’m saying this as a leftist.
I think at its core, true workable leftism is about compassionate pragmatism: trying to make the world better for as many people as possible. What disturbs me most about the ultra-woke brand of leftism is that it isn’t pragmatic at all, to say nothing of compassionate. I believe you’re correct that what Henley describes is very similar to a meme: it’s simplistic, reductive, and easy. You can feel like you made a difference without having to do the hard work of actually making a difference.
That’s what bothers me so much about it. It’s an approach that’s primarily self-focused: venting one’s rage, posturing for the sake of boosting one’s social status. It's not really about helping other people—any more than the moral codes of right-wing religious fundamentalism are about actually being a decent person—and it definitely isn’t close to realistic as far as effectively changing anything.
It’s easy to be high minded when you don’t have power. Hell, even Rush Limbaugh sounded intelligent in the early 90s. His successors have devolved to “fuck you” as a political slogan.
High minded ideals fall to power. It’s easy to see at the local level, when black and LGBT voting blocs put the Mayor in power, the political spoils get divvied up. As time goes on you get conflict between the various stakeholders, and everyone forgets about the ideals and focuses on the street fighting. That’s why you need competitive elections.
You can be left as all get out, but if you don't speak in the stilted expected movement oriented language, and swallow the whole enchilada - and sign on to every policy no matter how worthy or good, you don't have the required pieces of flare - and even though you want the same things and would vote for 95% of the things they support, you're thought of as at least suspect if not outright as one of the enemy.
Like I have a focus on broad based poverty reduction, but because I'm not focused on poverty for urban poor people, or BIPOC people, I'm suspect in their head - I support broad based poverty reductions because they create durable electoral coalitions, just focusing on one group or another does the opposite. I have other similar "problematic" perspectives.
Outrage politics works great for winning social credit on social media, but it does very little to solve actual problems.
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but you're assuming your conclusion by using a word like 'murdered' in any case.
In general, there's a lot of space on HN for arguing contrarian or minority views, as long as you're actually using the site as intended, i.e. for curious, thoughtful, respectful conversation. Most accounts that I see complaining that they've been suppressed haven't been doing that to begin with.
What are some flagkilled comments in this thread that haven't been breaking the site guidelines, such as by calling names or posting flamebait?
You're breaking the site guidelines yourself here, btw, including the one asking you to avoid snark ("Duh") and the one that asks you to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says ("So you think").
> "It is to endlessly document microaggressions but pay little attention to evictions; to spotlight company’s political platitudes but have little interest in wages or working conditions. It is to allow sweeping societal changes like lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school closures to roll out — with little debate. To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny. And to watch the most vulnerable among us die of drug overdoses — with little comment."
Your movement (progressivism) has been co-opted. The same happened to the religious right a generation ago. Grifters told you that winning was the most important thing, and that politicizing identity was how to do it. Now your views have been reduced to platitudes and slogans meant to mobilize sheep and distract from real issues while the powerful plunder (as they always have). I'd say, "learn for next time," but let's be honest, it will be some other movement (likely one that rises out of opposition to this current one) that will be the next one to be co-opted, and you won't be part of it because it will be ostensibly "right wing."
Henley's departure from the CBC is a real blow to that organization. The loss of her reporting on critical issues like "Can hitting snooze and taking a long lunch be the real keys to success?" [0] or "Five West Coast hikes you probably don't know about (but should!)" [1] will be catastrophic to Canadians' ability to understand what's happening in the world around them.
In all seriousness, I imagine that Henley decided that writing sponsored content for CBC wasn't a solid career, and wanted to get on that contrarianism gravy train that folks like Bari Weiss have been pioneering.
This is interesting, but all downstream of her complaints. i.e. The article alleges her freedom to write meaningful articles was constrained by political problems.
You can't judge a player for having a low batting average as a way to discredit their claim that the game is rigged.
Assuming it is true that discussions on "free speech" always lead to "That Topic", maybe it is because a clique of political activists that claim for themselves the exclusive right to speak on any matter pertaining to "That Topic" are among the most censorious and intolerant that most people are likely to ever encounter?
I'm curious if taking a little time to organize your thoughts and expressing them succinctly would be a net-win for your argument.
I get the impression that you're really fired up about this topic. Partly because you're writing numerous, small comments. Unfortunately that commenting style makes it hard for (at least) me to understand your point(s).
Moreover, dang, look at the vibe you're managing. This is on you, boo:
1. A group of people repeatedly use a euphemism to attack a much smaller and less powerful group
2. When a member of that group points it out, the comment is literally faded, erased, by the editor responsible for managing the tone of that more powerful group
And before you say it, this is me assuming good faith. I know you don't hear it. You're not evil. Neither is (most of) HN.
But this is legit every day now. I've been a contributor to HN for over a decade, but now I hesitate before letting my fingers type 'news.ycombinator.com' into that location bar.
It simply hurts too much. Like someone putting glass in your porridge.
I hear you, I'm sorry that you're having that experience, and I would like to find a better way to address it. I'm not sure what more we can do about it, short of imposing a single view on divisive topics—which would not be in the spirit of this community, nor something the community would support.
We try our best to moderate the cases when people break the site guidelines and cross into attacking either persons or classes of people—those things are definitely not ok here. I'm not saying we catch all such cases, but rather that when we miss them, it's usually because we didn't see them—we can't come close to reading everything that gets posted here, and rely on users to point out most of the worst stuff. When we do see it, we do moderate it. But there are questions of interpretation here (more on that below).
I don't see the community the way you describe it, in the following sense: yes, the comments that you're talking about exist, but so do a great many comments arguing the opposite (many more, in fact, from my perspective), and it's by no means the case that those comments get "literally faded/erased" either by users or by mods—quite the opposite (excepting the cases where such comments are breaking the site guidelines in their own right, and that's a different issue). On topics where much social change and churn are happening, I don't see how it's realistic for a large, pluralistic internet forum to avoid having a spectrum of views. It seems to me that it's probably in everyone's interest to tolerate that, because it's the way these things get hashed out in the long run. Winning people over happens by persuasion, not by punishment.
Unfortunately, there's no agreement at all about what an acceptable spectrum of views should look like. In other words, it's not always clear how to distinguish being wrong (which is not against the rules, and not an abuse) from being abusive. Different people want us to draw that line very differently. One person will read a comment as "using a euphemism to attack a group" while another person (often the commenter themselves) will insist that the very same comment is well-intentioned good-faith discussion, rooted not in hate but in a desire to understand. If the first interpretation is correct, then the comment is abusive and should be moderated. If the second is, then the comment may be wrong, but it is not abusive, and therefore it should be tolerated and reasoned with.
This disagreement means that not only can we not satisfy everyone, we can't even avoid plentiful accusations of being abusive in our own right, from every angle. From a moderator perspective, this is a lose-lose situation. All we can hope for is to lose more generously, and while I'm willing to do that better than we currently are, I'm not sure yet how.
Add to that the international dimension—a high portion of the most provocative and/or bitter fights about these things are happening across national (and cultural) lines. The baselines in different countries/regions are in very different places about this stuff, and most people don't take that into account—they just assume they're talking to extremists from their own region, rather than moderates from further away. Those distinctions are easier to perceive in person than they are on the internet. In person, we all automatically regulate our responses to each other to avoid feeling quite so angered and hurt. On the internet, unfortunately for us all, the dynamics work exactly the other way, so many people end up feeling angry and hurt, and also feeling like the forum is being managed in a way that is unfair to their views and their group. I wrote more about that here, if anyone cares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
The article opens with an opinion that drawing awareness to non-binary pronouns is too much of an "editorial priority." That the author hides behind "people want to know" is a distinction without a difference.
The "strongest plausible interpretation" is that the author believes LGBT issues should be talked about less. But the author is not simply talking about it less; they are using their platform to advocate that it be talked about less.
That is, quite literally in this instance, free speech being used to complain about trans people, or at the very least their visibility in society. With 92 upvotes as of the time of writing, it's arguable that this opinion is being "celebrated" by many members of this community. And many HN comments are obviously hyperbolic for effect; this one is no different.
> The "strongest plausible interpretation" is that the author believes LGBT issues should be talked about less.
I disagree. I think the strongest plausable interpretation is that the author believes that the specific LGBT issues getting the most airtime are less important and more trite and divisive than things that are being largely ignored. That the issues themselves are not the focus, but the goal of making corporations more powerful and wrist-slapping individuals for the most mundane slights.
The way I read it has little to do with the issues themselves, but rather that the extreme focus on identity is a powerful tool for keeping the common people fighting with each other while wealth inequality very quietly gets much more and more extreme.
Personally, I am queer and I would like LGBT issues talked about less. They should get some focus for sure, but it's hard for me to see a constant flow of sexuality and gender permeating every facet of discussion and think it isn't excessive. I don't think that my queerness is more important than a lot of other issues, and I don't want my queerness used as a tool by the powerful to turn people against each other and amass even more power, unchecked.
In short, LGBT issues are important, but that does not justify every single pro-LGBT conclusion, talking point, or moralization, and it doesn't justify the amount of constant attention it gets.
The weaponization may in fact cause more harm and shift back a lot of good progress that has been done over the years. You are the perfect person to speak up about this issue because you're supposed to be a beneficiary and you're not going to be attacked to harshly for speaking your mind.
“The last 18 months” coincides perfectly with start of the BLM protests.
I’ve been involved with an arts-based non-profit for a long time. They do very specific type of older art. They produce it, exhibit it, encourage others to produce it, etc.
The art form is Eurocentric, with a political history that contains some small instances racism, and vast oceans of mainstream liberalism.
Every since BLM protests happened (the second time - in June 2020), they’ve been freaking out.
Suddenly they’re trying to hire as many “BIPOC” as possible, even though there aren’t many open slots.
They’re acknowledging every racial injustice under the heavens. They’re apologizing for existing (literally).
Most of all, they’re scared.
When I go to their exhibitions, every single person, is white. Occasionally a Black family will be there. Everyone in the crowd parts to allow them through. Everyone greets them - and only them.
I imagine this awkward veneration is one reason why so few Black families come.
Most of all, the leaders of this org are scared. Terrified. They don’t want to be considered “non-anti-racist.”
When speaking with others, the terror is palpable.
Edit: just to be clear this is an author specific type of performance art. Think a Bach symphony, a Wagner opera company, or a Shakespeare theater.
Suggest to them that they talk about exactly what you are saying here. Say that it's difficult. That we are figuring it out. Put together exhibitions that talk about it. That's a hell of a lot better than shutting down communication. Be inclusive. Ask for help from other galleries who have better representation. Maybe they can do an exchange.
Identify what there is to be afraid of - it's the necessary step to moving forward.
Regarding putting together exhibitions, this is an author specific type of performance art. Kind of like a Shakespeare theater company.
There’s room to reinterpret the artist, but frankly interpreting this author as socially conscious has been done so many times it’s boring.
It would be like putting on a feminist production of Antigone, or a pacifist recitation of the Iliad, or an anti-racist production of Othello - not only “already done” but probably what the author intended.
The folks running the show have been avoiding actual “woke” (so hate the phrase) art for exactly this reason - already done 1000 time - and the new era demands new efforts!
Instead it’s hiring and outreach that’s gone bonkers.
Regarding communication- it isn’t that people have stopped talking. They’ve stopped listening.
Realistically, the donors are in charge. They’re the only ones listened to.
And currently the powers that be are trying very hard to find new “anti-racist” donors, preferably BIPOC donors.
I’m not sure what anyone can do about that. Other than stop donating.
What do you mean when you talk about doing an exchange with other galleries?
Thank you for the response, it's interesting to read about the perspective.
>What do you mean when you talk about doing an exchange with other galleries
You've been really clear at outlining some of the concerns of the artists and the economic concerns. It would be interesting to take those concerns and questions and ask for feedback from others in the community who are underrepresented. Perhaps an informal gathering of some other people in the field in the form of a structured symposium. Or just a sit-down.
One of the world's worst offenders of pushing a euro-centric history recently went full frontal and acknowledged their history (the Rijksmuseum,https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/past/slav...). Might be helpful also to seek out similar situations and how they are working through it.
They are afraid of online mobs and local activists looking for a target. That's what everyone is afraid of when it comes to this foolish moment in history. If it was simply a matter of being more inclusive there'd be nothing to worry about. Instead, everyone's trying to cover their ass and not stick out so they don't become the next takedown. The funny thing is if you just ignore social media, none of this has any direct consequence. The only real world consequences are from someone higher up the chain getting spooked and trying to appease the mob by throwing you under the bus. It's like a prisoner's dilemma writ large. The consequences of this will be interesting, it already looks like a lot of people are just deciding to self-sort into groups that won't defect. Others, like the author of the article, are going independent so they don't have to worry about their employer or coworkers defecting.
>online mobs and local activists looking for a targe
Do these actually exist in their local environment or are people just afraid because of what's going on over the media networks? Forgive me, as I'm outside of where you are and I often see people being afraid of things that aren't often there.
They’re mostly older folks. Not tech savvy. I doubt it’s the twitterotti.
Not sure where there fear is from. Part of it is simply not wanting to be racist, but not knowing what racism means (as a consensus definition).
The author mentioned going from most left wing to right wing without changing opinions. That’s what’s going on here … the definition of “racist” is vague so it’s better to move as far to the left as possible.
I think it’s the uncertainty over what is acceptable that’s causing fear.
Scared of criticism. Why shouldn't they be? They've created an exclusively white environment, possibly subsidized by public funds.
A lot of people in the US grew up in sundown towns, but think that the reason that there are no black people where they live is because black people didn't want to live there. They see racism how a fish sees water.
They should be relieved that it's almost over. They were victims of media trying to get the anti-Trump clicks while also being anti-Sanders, leaving them with Russian conspiracy theories (are you spreading them?) and talk about race and gender (are you a bigot and don't know it?). It'll be over once Trump fully eclipses along with public anxiety about helping him, and they'll only have had to deal with one black family.
What clearly seems wrong is the requirement to fill out forms on the race and gender of people you interview, and to have quotas to control whose voice is heard based on those irrelevant traits (irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.)
My policy is to refuse to give my gender or race. If everybody did this, high frequencies of "other" or "unknown" could be spun any way they want to people looking at statistics. If they aren't satisfied with this, they have to go on record clarifying exactly how they define race - which seems difficult since they're also the people who claim it's not a real concept.
Isn't preferred pronouns kind of orthogonal to the rest of the stuff? It has nothing to do with attempting to ensure representation and is instead about addressing a person in the manner of their choosing, akin to asking a woman if she prefers Ms, Miss, Mme, Mrs, etc.
I expect it's probably way more appropriate in most contexts to directly ask a person what their preferred pronouns are than to ask what their gender identity is; the pronouns are what you actually need and this way you're finding them out with certainty rather than trying to guess based on some internal gender->pronoun mapping table.
Pronouns are merely virtue signaling acts of control. By specifying pronouns if they are obvious (99% of the time) you are signaling you are part of a non-bigoted, non-hateful club. Surely you don’t hate people right? So why don’t you have your pronouns visible, fellow citizen?
It’s also a form of control in redefining the obvious. You want to just live your life? Nope, sorry, you need to consciously be aware of my preferred pronouns at all times. It’s a very narcissistic and attention seeking thing too.
This. The crowd that replaced suits and ties with jeans and t-shirts are now nervous that someone is coming along to upend their status quo of culture and norms and they don't much like the idea.
The people who fought against the changes in dress codes claimed jeans and t's had all manner of impact on the professional setting of the workplace.
Is it really an imposition, when your profession includes declaring what OS you're using so you can create usable bug reports, to declare your pronouns on some form somewhere?
>by specifying pronouns if they are obvious (99% of the time)
Except they aren't obvious 99% of the time. They aren't even "obvious" like 60% of the time. They aren't even "obvious 99% of the time" for cis-straight (non-LGBTQ) folks.
"Hi, Sam Shepard will be on the call with you today, and will be joined by Alex VanBeckran and Kegan Marton" -- are these folks hoping to be addressed as men, or women, or non-binary? There's no way to tell, and it's kind of disrespectful to be wrong.
> It’s also a form of control in redefining the obvious.
Form of control? What on earth? It's literally just a tiny amount of human dignity. It's basically no different than being asked to address someone as "Mr. / Ms. / Mrs. / Mx." from decades prior.
> Nope, sorry, you need to consciously be aware of my preferred pronouns at all times.
It takes literally almost no extra effort, you just file it along with their name (or phone number, or timezone, etc). If you are thinking that hard about it, your probably doing it wrong.
> "Hi, Sam Shepard will be on the call with you today, and will be joined by Alex VanBeckran and Kegan Marton" -- are these folks hoping to be addressed as men, or women, or non-binary? There's no way to tell, and it's kind of disrespectful to be wrong.
As another commenter pointed out, in a professional setting you would ideally address these people by their proper nouns (names) and not by their pronouns. And if you're addressing more than one person, it's the gender-neutral we/they/them anyways.
I'm actually struggling to think of a business scenario where using the proper pronoun would be more professional or polite than just using someone's given name.
> I'm actually struggling to think of a business scenario where using the proper pronoun would be more professional or polite than just using someone's given name.
It works at first to just always use names and theys, but the longer a conversation goes on, the more awkward little nooks and crannies you find where it sure would be convenient to have a third-person singular pronoun for referencing the thing the person just said as you expand on it or synthesizing between statements made by multiple other participants. Maybe each one individually has a solution, but the cumulative effect of these small hitches and inefficiencies does build up.
Anyway, it's not impossible to make this feel natural, of course, and some people put in the work to master it. But there's a reason To Kill A Mockingbird stands out as a book that almost completely conceals the gender of its narrator and main character until about halfway through the story.
I don't know about everyone else but I've been using non-gendered pronouns my entire life. I was taught words like "they" and "them" in first or second grade. At this point I just assume anyone bothered by this is the actual narcissist.
> They/them is extremely unnatural in American English to refer to a singular person who you’ve seen in person. It requires mental effort and it’s just plain silly.
They/them is almost always appropriate english when the gender of the person being spoken of is unknown. They only change in thinking required is to let go of the assumption that you can determine someone's gender from looking at them or reading their name.
Being asked them on a form alongside other obviously-related info is a very different thing from being pressured to make them part of your Slack username or Twitter bio.
Yes, there's arguments both ways that broadcasting them may be virtue-signalling, but I don't think it ever is to ask someone what theirs are, especially on something like a form.
This was at one point a controversial topic. Conservatives objected to the new construct of neutral meaning "Ms" and feminists objected to "Miss" and "Mrs" because they indicated marital status. The argument being that viewing a woman's name with those titles was reducing her to an object who's worth was determined by if she was available or not to men.
There was a controversy, but the controversy was never over whether it was appropriate to ask for your honorific on a form, just what the options should be. E.g. nobody thought it was weird to ask if you went by Dr.
No, preferred pronouns are like he/him, she/her, they/them. These pronouns are only used when other people are talking about you. In most contexts it’s considered rude for people to talk about you like you’re not even there. So in fact, the only time your pronouns should be used is when people are talking about you and you’re not present!
I'm a strict egalitarian and have been doing exactly this, and always encourage others to do exactly this. I refuse to state my gender, race, class, health status, sexuality, or any other qualifier that could categorize me into being discriminated against or in favor of. Let my actions speak to the quality of my character.
edit: Not sure why this thread has gone deep into a discussion about pronouns. I don't identify as any gender and welcome any pronouns to refer to me. My humanity is the only classifier I accept. Think of my pronouns as a `void *`
Good. This pronoun virtue signaling meme has gotta go. Or at least don’t censor us by limiting us to the ones Officially Approved by the Pronoun Establishment like Instagram and most other places do.
If they can have custom pronouns, why can’t we?
(The answer is because it would immediately undermine the “cause” by shedding light on just how silly but also how 1984-esque the concept is.)
If someone wants to tell me pronouns they want to be referred to, sure, I’ll try to remember as long as they’re not asking for something extreme, but honestly I’m not that good with even names so… best effort.
I would rather not give out pronouns and don’t really care how people refer to me though “they” in forums when my username is my real name does come off as a bit strange… though again, this is a trivial annoyance.
Yes, it's a trivial annoyance. That's the human, normal way of looking at this, not like it's some massive festering grievance as some people seem to feel.
Because it’s just another tip of the iceberg. In reality it’s a concerted effort amongst a certain group of people to add more and more trivial annoyances to normal peoples’ lives to satiate their own desire to control others who they feel don’t deserve to be able to live their lives in peace. Because misery loves company.
It all adds up. You can attempt to minimize it all you want but it’s like the person who nitpicks everything: “can I have 3 ice cubes? Oh when you make my sandwich can you go light on the salt? Hey I know this is your house but could you turn that music down a bit? Boy it’s cold in here… you should turn up the heat! Wow you take these vitamins? You should be taking these instead! Oh hey I know I’m obviously a girl but can you refer to me as they? I want you to have to think hard before you use my pronouns and make sure you remember each person’s custom pronouns. Wait, why are these little trivial comments bothering you? It’s not some massive festering grievance. Just deal with it it’s no big deal, it’s common decency to adhere to all of my requests. :)”
Pronoun-memers tend to claim they are more sensitive to feelings. Therefore they should be sensitive to most of the world’s feelings of general annoyance around the current pronoun meme.
I would think that virtue signaling is good. It sure sounds good.
"Virtue" means " Moral excellence and righteousness; goodness."
"Signaling" means "An indicator, such as a gesture or colored light, that serves as a means of communication."
So, basically if I'm morally excellent and I communicate that to you, that's a bad thing? Why is that? Is it because it makes you feel bad?
Same question about "woke". Like, "not asleep"? How is that bad?
I just feel like these terms are thoughtlessly bandied about. They're never really defined. They actually don't sound bad, but they're used in a pejorative context. It's just really strange.
When someone asks me about preferred pronouns, my answer is "I prefer a raise over pronouns and thank you letters". I wish more people would do the same.
This weird hatred of not sharing pronouns is harmful - it's.. a few characters next to your name to help people talk to you and to help people who use different pronouns to what society has given them. Please stop acting all high-and-mighty over them - it's always with good intent.
Oh, it's not hatred. It's calling out the employers' bullshit. People have an inherent need to have "wins". Getting something you could envision. Used to be simple things like money, property, vacations, you know. Then the corporate psychologists figured out that instead of giving you a raise out of the corporate budget, they can let people have non-monetary "wins". "Thank you" letters, "parking for employee of the month", "product owner" titles, etc.
Pronouns are just another step in this sequence, but it's more divisive, since it comes with a tiny little power over other employees - occupying a slightly larger slot in their attention by having them remember them. All while the wage/home price ratio keeps plummeting, and retirement at any reasonable age has gone completely off the radar.
These problems affect ALL of us, regardless of our race, gender, sexual preferences, etc. They are not divisive at all, but they are harmful to the corporate profits. So the HR and the media are doing their best to bump made-up divisive issues to the top of our priorities, so we won't notice how we are being screwed.
I am a man. My pronouns on my LinkedIn profile do nothing other than to appease a fringe part of society who thinks being incorrectly referred to by a different pronoun is an attack on their character. I don't feel the need to give in to these people. Someone who would repeatedly refer to you by the wrong pronouns doesn't care that your pronouns are on your profile. It is a solution looking for a problem.
Well sometimes it can be tough to know. Is that a trans man showing a bit an effeminate side sometimes or a woman? Is that person trying to look androgynous or masculine or is it just what they like to wear?
Well, if it really bothers someone when someone else uses the wrong pronoun, they could always just politely ask. Just like people with hard-to-pronounce foreign names. And if someone else refuses, you know, just don't be friends with that guy - be professional, to-the-point and spend your free time with the people that share your values.
If you actually have a great home, friends, hobbies, and are generally happy about your life, someone using the wrong pronoun or giving you a weird look shouldn't bother you more than an unexpected rainy day. The problem is that most people that are vocal about pronouns are actually deeply unhappy, and the HR has sold them the bullshit pill that devoting your life to correcting others will somehow make you happier.
Or you could agree to disagree on pronouns, and agree to agree on pursuit of financial independence like in the good old times. Easy common goal. After all, you don't care if your colleague likes heavy metal while you love rock, as long as they can reliably answer questions that would otherwise take you days to research.
>Just like people with hard-to-pronounce foreign names. And if someone else refuses, you know, just don't be friends with that guy - be professional, to-the-point and spend your free time with the people that share your values.
I'd argue it's the person refusing to refer to someone how they'd prefer to be referred to as being unprofessional. It's odd you use foreign names as an analogy, when refusing to pronounce someone's name correctly would probably get you a call from HR.
I actually don't mind using/learning pronouns. But I'm a male, I identify as male, and I present as male well enough that no one has misgendered me in 32 years. Something about listing my pronouns feels not only silly, but distinctly wrong in light of that.
Perhaps you would like me to publicly declare my other protected characteristics in all my correspondence? My religion perhaps? Ethnicity, race, that I have a disability? It is not always with good intent, instead it is a demand to publicise a characteristic by which others will often judge you. If you want to announce that you are he/him she/her, they/them go ahead. But don't demand other people do it, because I have a right to privacy.
I'd politely push back a bit. It makes sense that trans people don't want someone else assuming their pronouns - I wouldn't like it if someone called me something besides "he" - so the question in good faith is reasonable, unless someone is offended to be treated in a trans-friendly way.
I am actively looking for a new job and disqualifying companies where people have pronouns in the signature. I’ve seen it go full woke crazy, not trying to deal with that again
While I understand the sentiment, I think to some degree putting a pronoun down is for the benefit of those conversing with you, so they don't have to wonder or get it wrong.
In lieu of this, and because I don't really care what pronoun is used for me, I sometimes just put "any" if it's an option to denote that I don't care.
They hem and haw because some people care a lot and make a big deal if you get it wrong and it can have social consequences depending on where you live/work, etc, and if you repeatedly ignore what other people want to be called it can be seen as an act of aggression.
In the current climate, people want to get it right for other people because either they don't want to be an asshole, they believe it's important, they're afraid of being called out, or some combination thereof.
If you actually don't care, the easiest thing to do is just advertise that you don't care so people don't have to wonder. If you actually do care, but about how you shouldn't have to care and are trying to make a point about that, well that's something different, isn't it?
That is just one of three reasons I listed. I'm not sure why you'd focus on that exclusively, it seems a bit silly to me.
What's being asked of you is a common courtesy. Anyone that refuses this courtesy that takes so little when specifically asked for it is taking actions that speak for themselves.
You're being asked something as simple as "how do you prefer to be addressed" and you've scoured the area for all the loose dust and detritus you can find to make yourself a mountain to die on. Is it really worth it? Perhaps there are other aspects to recent culture shift that are slightly less defensible that are better targets?
You seem really obsessed about this, much more so than most people who might be in favor of supplying pronouns. I think that most people do it as a common courtesy. I generally don't, but it doesn't bother me if people do, and it doesn't hurt me in the slightest if someone asks me to supply my pronouns. My pronouns are "he/him". Not difficult at all.
So if you are "she" and someone calls you "he" out of ignorance and you correct the person, and he says "Oh, I'm sorry for my mistake" can that not be the end of it? Is that such a terrible thing to have to deal with?
I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.
One place where the "pronouns in the signature" can be helpful is if your name is foreign. I work with a group of international folks and if I haven't met the person, I don't always know if a person's name is a male or female name. So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.
> Is that such a terrible thing to have to deal with?
For me? No. I imagine that someone that might deal with that 10 times a day or more might feel a bit different about it, and be tired of being in the situation of either correcting people or just letting it go because it's too tiring to deal with. I mean, I used to get that way because of my first name which has an uncommon spelling, and just correcting people writing it down for me (because otherwise I always have to worry if they search digitally where they recorded it whether their system is smart enough to do levenshtein distance or something similar to find it). I imagine it's much worse when it's something you might really care about, like gender identity, or even just people that get mistaken for the other gender often.
I'd like to think that everyone deserves the benefit of a doubt and one or more times being corrected, but some people are worse at remembering than others, and I don't see a problem with people putting preferences down, or people being asked for their own preference, especially when they think it's such an obvious thing to see.
> I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.
I mean, so do I, but if Jim has corrected me once already or has registered a preference that I've seen, I should probably address them as they'd prefer, right? Anything else is just being an asshole, IMO.
> So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.
They/them went out of favor a while back in English for gender neutral communication, which I think is weird, because it's super useful. I remember an English teacher in college telling me not to use it, because it was less direct and impactful. I always disagreed. I just default to you/they/them whenever I don't know specifically. It doesn't seem to cause problems, from what I can see. If someone asked me to use something else for them, I would try to remember to do so as a courtesy to them.
> if Jim has corrected me once already or has registered a preference that I've seen, I should probably address them as they'd prefer, right? Anything else is just being an asshole, IMO
I agree (but honestly, if the preference is for something like "zhe" I will be rolling my eyes a bit).
> They/them went out of favor a while back
I really don't like the singular use of "they" as it was drummed into my head in 12 grades of English classes that it was wrong, and now it's a mental speedbump whenever I see it in writing.
> I really don't like the singular use of "they" as it was drummed into my head in 12 grades of English classes that it was wrong,
Yeah, that's the sad thing. At some point we decided that gender neutral pronouns were less favorable, and then taught generations of people not to use them, a couple hundred years before a big cultural mixup where it would have been very useful to have. I was lucky enough to always feel it was appropriate and that the recommendations to not use it were shortsighted. This came about when there was a shift towards people saying we should use "she" instead of "he" for generically referring to a person, but that just seemed silly to me, why would we shift from incorrectly addressing roughtly 50% of the population in writing to incorrectly addressing the other roughly 50% of people, when we could just use "they" and do away with that specific pronoun problem in an accurate and even handed way?
Singular “they” isn’t wrong if the subject is indefinite in either gender or number.
However, it’s absolutely wrong when used as a definite personal pronoun, as it introduces new, irresolvable ambiguity where none existed before; e.g.
I just heard Tom and Harry are getting a new puppy; I just ran into them while they were walking their dog.
If you do not allow for singular definitive “they”, the meaning is clear.
If you do allow for singular definitive “they”, whose dog is it, and who did you run into — Tom, Harry, or both Tom and Harry?
The problem with “personal pronouns” is that they aren’t personal in the first place — pronouns exist exist solely for the benefit of the speaker and the listener, not the subject.
They allow for two people in a conversation to refer back to an antecedent succinctly and unambiguously. That’s all. If they can’t do that anymore, they’re just extra noise.
Do you actually not give a shit or do people just tend to properly guess what you'd want to be called? Pronouns are part of how we communicate gender and many people do get bothered when others perceive them differently than how they perceive themselves
> putting a pronoun down is for the benefit of those conversing with you, so they don't have to wonder or get it wrong.
The type of people concerned with being addressed by the "correct" pronouns will list them without being asked, believe me. And for the other 99.9% of people, it's pretty obvious what to use.
Maybe for you, but I don't know what pronoun to use to refer to someone named Xie that I have never met, and it's not exactly unusual for it to come up in email discussions.
I was addressing the parent comment that said it's pretty obvious what to use, which I interpreted as being able to identify whether someone should be referred to as he or she. I agree that 'they' is the solution when you don't know, but I don't think that's what the parent comment was trying to say.
If people feel that it is important to them they will make sure you know it. Otherwise if unsure maybe ask?
I don't feel the need to put the pronouns as I don't care about it and find it toxic that it is being peer pressured uppon me.
I also support anyone who wants to put their pronouns in the signature or whatever. If it is something important to them then I'll respect their choice, even if they go with something silly like Xor/Xir.
Hum, do you actually agree with the idea that people care about how others perceive them? Are you saying that the only way we should get to communicate that is through crude things like the way we dress or our bone structure? I don't know, sometimes stating pronouns and the like can seem a bit much I'll admit, but I'm not sure what the good alternatives even all
I'm transgender and this business of putting pronouns everywhere bothers me too. If I'm in a group that usually doesn't do pronouns but does when I'm in the room it's like they're pointing a finger at me saying "you're different and we're afraid of offending you, so we're going to act differently around you".
No. I just want to be a human being. If you wonder about my pronouns, ask and I'll happily answer. If you get them wrong I'll happily correct you.
If you're an ass to me I'll report you to HR, but putting my pronouns at the bottom of my email isn't going to make you any less of an ass.
Hopefully it all settles down a lot more in the future. Around societal and cultural change there's always friction, and there's always people that take more offense to new norms (or what people want to be new norms) not being followed, whether to pump up their self importance or because they're honestly exasperated. I like to treat each thing as it comes, and whether I think it makes sense or is sully, if someone asks something of me with regard to dealing with them that doesn't require much as is accepting of people making mistakes, then I don't see a problem with humoring them, as long as they also accept neutral terms, such as you/they/them (which are the English language accepted neutral terms). There's only so many genders and pronouns I can wrap my head around, but as long as people are accepting that others can just use a generic term, I think we're all at a place that's workable.
But that’s a problem for like 1% of people who’re free to do so. Absolutely no one will confuse my bearded, balding, fat self for a “she”. Seems unnecessary to require this as a matter of policy.
I mean, not everyone interacts with people in person at work. I would go so far as to say that most these profile settings are used for textual communication, where it's not always obvious, but where some people still get upset over the wrong pronoun being used (possibly because for then it's such a contentious topic in their lives it's hard to disambiguate honest mistakes from passive agressive purposeful behavior).
Like you, I also wish that pronouns weren't a big thing, but the truth is that right now society has shifted a bit to the point that it is, so rather than upset people over something I really don't care about, I just try to address people how they prefer to be addressed, while noting I have no preference and don't care if you get it wrong.
Someone else commented about how this is basically coming back full circle to the formalities of Sir/Madam or Mr/Ms in writing, maybe there’s something to it.
> Absolutely no one will confuse my bearded, balding, fat self for a “she”.
I was confused once when a doctor gave me the direction "follow him" and there was no male around. A definitely female nurse had just walked out, and that's who I was supposed to follow.
Nothing strange was going on; this happened in China. Chinese doesn't have gender distinctions in pronouns (except in the spelling...), and Chinese speakers aren't able to make the distinction consistently in extemporaneous speech.
The default is 'he', though, so I guess you're still safe from being called 'she'.
I don't hate the idea of explicitly stating pronouns, especially online, because I had to interact with people with particularly ambiguous names (happens often in very international environments).
Even here in America, if you get an email from "Taylor Something" and their intranet picture is a houseplant how do you respond?
> I usually reply that it's an illegal question where I live.
It’s not. Questions about race or origin are allowed in France with some conditions; it’s a common misconception that they are prohibited. For example, it’s fine to ask which race you feel you belong to, or any similar subjective question [1, p.70].
This is pretty good, thanks. TLDR: institutional adventures from a national security employee challenging the requirement to declare their race.
This reminds me of "Seeing like a State" by James C Scott: attempts to simplify the world to allow generalizations about it always lose valuable detail.
Lol … I like the part about the Caucuses being in the USSR, so being Caucasian meant being Soviet.
I once told a friend from west India to put “Aryan” down for race, but then stopped him and apologized after I realized that was mean-funny, not funny-funny.
Kinda unrelated but Les is one of my favorite people to use as an example of how "websites" used to be. His writing is fun and honest, and some of his ideas were imo groundbreaking (and many are floating about waiting to be rediscovered).
I mean it sounds bad, right? But if all the people they talk to for stories are white - and they’re attempting to fix that, and track their progress in fixing that - how exactly should they go about doing that?
Even if it is a symptom – say they're interviewing CEOs for a piece on Canadian business, so it's tricky to find people who are not white men – then I would argue that what they're doing is important.
There's a chicken and egg thing, and media can be a part of addressing the root cause. To me it seems logical that a young black woman who sees a black female CEO interviewed on TV is more likely to become a CEO herself.
This is a strawman argument. That some claims aren’t proven or that some similar logic was used to do another bad thing doesn’t mean OP is wrong. What OP is referring to is largely documented and is not some small claim from a random article.
Lots of previously believed claims fail to replicate. One of those is "stereotype threat", which was basically taken for granted for decades and also looks logically plausible.
> Some researchers have suggested that stereotype threat should not be interpreted as a factor in real-life performance gaps, and have raised the possibility of publication bias. […] However, meta-analyses and systematic reviews have shown significant evidence for the effects of stereotype threat, though the phenomenon defies over-simplistic characterization.
I don't think it's the media's job to fix societal problems - just to accurately reflect them. But if CBC is only interviewing white male CEOs, they're not accurately reflecting anything.
This won't be a problem, because the people complaining about the woke wave now will suddenly become advocates of the Efficient Pundit Market Hypothesis. I mean, you can't blame the media if white people are the only ones worth talking too, right?
>which seems difficult since they're also the people who claim it's not a real concept.
A straw man if there ever was one. Insofar as anyone even says something like "race isn't real", the claim isn't that the concept doesn't exist. What would that even mean? The claim is that it isn't biologically grounded, or that it's socially constructed or some such.
I don’t really see that as a straw man, there is significant cognitive dissonance where the same movement seems to be both for and against putting things into categories like “race”. Like we should all be blind to this artificial construct but also classify everybody and every thing with it and all “stay in our racial lanes”.
Observe and it seems to be a real phenomenon and not just an invented opponent.
> they have to go on record clarifying exactly how they define race -
In these contexts, "race" is a stand-in for social segregation phenomena and not the Oxford dictionary defintion.
By not identifying the distribution of various discriminated-against groups, they are rendered invisible, or nonexistant when it comes to policy making. THis is fine if you are in the majority, because that is the de facto policy making consideration, but not so good if you are not represented.
Dismissing this as "spinning statistics" is a very privileged viewpoint, because it means you aren't affected by the statistics so why should you care?
All racial classification schemes in the Western world are running against the wind of interracial marriage. Mixed kids of the "25 per cent Lithuanian, 25 per cent Arab, 25 per cent Mexican and 25 per cent Japanese" type are becoming ever more common and the narrow racial classification into old fashioned racial boxes is unable to categorize them with any kind of precision.
In that case, either you revert to the "one drop rule" of the Old South and start classifying anyone with any non-white ancestor as a minority, or run into untenable contradictions.
That's one way to look at it, if you want to radically oversimplify the problem.
Another way to look at it is there currently exists very clear discrimination practices based other vectors (income, geography, history). System racism is intersectional.
Arguing that it is "all or nothing" is another tactic to erase the existence of discrimination. This fallacy is often deployed intentionally.
Of the things you mentioned, income and geography is actually much easier to classify objectively than history and race. As an added bonus, income-based social policies would not throw poor people with certain ethnic backgrounds onto the "won't help, are privileged" pile. Poverty is crushing for everyone.
> By not identifying the distribution of various discriminated-against groups, they are rendered invisible, or nonexistant when it comes to policy making. THis is fine if you are in the majority, because that is the de facto policy making consideration, but not so good if you are not represented.
It's not a majority/minority concern. The concern is whether people are counting you in order to help you or hurt you. Jews aren't so vigorously opposed to Jew-counting because they're a majority.
Yes, but there is a reason. Typically all the race and gender of people being interviews was usually "white" and "male" to the exclusion of other voices with a different perspective.
The push to equality (and we are not there yet) requires change and that change can be ignored unless you track it.
> irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.
I’m not sure I get you here. Of course race and gender have a huge impact on a person’s life, and thus on their ideas, experiences and ability to express themselves. White men virtually never experience racism or sexism, whereas women and/or Black people are reminded about their identity every day. All women have been bothered by men in the street and all Black people have heard numerous racist comments through their life. They are so used to it they don’t even talk about it; it’s just normal. White men can’t even imagine to what extend this goes because they never experience it. People who never experience discriminations often don’t see the problem or diminish it because it’s unfamiliar to them.
Some of your "nevers" are a bit too strong. While a majority where I was born, I spent 10+ years as a minority relative to my surroundings and definitely got different treatment, in some cases in a disagreeable way and sometimes favorably. The world is more complex than just blacks & whites in the USA - there's cantonese/mandarin speaker discrimination, caste discrimination, fluent vs accented mandarin speaking ability, being from the wrong side of the tracks/from the wrong neighborhood or social class discrimination independent of race. Heck, black and white cops like each other and hate firemen of all races with a passion; Non-muslims have paid Jizya in Muslim countries.
So I agree that minimizing discrimination shouldn't be done, but I disagree that this is something the racial or gender majority never experiences. I agree it is wrong to live in your own privilege and unfairly judge other people, but I think experience of both sides of the experience are more universal than you suggest.
In fact I think we should emphasize the extent of the problem on all axes, as a way to make people come to the moral realization that they should judge people as individuals and not by any other group trait - because they should remember how wrong it was when someone did it to them.
I am curious what Canadians think of this argument. Does it seem true? It's hard for me, a USA resident who doesn't follow the CBC, to really evaluate.
The CBC has fallen short on challenging the government on matters of public policy. They read like state media and this should not surprise given their funding situation. They also do focus on matters that aren’t of broad and general interest. The journalist hit the nail on the head. But cbc isn’t the only troubled media as of late.
CBC is widely criticized here for its distinctly liberal bias, usually from the nation's conservatives. Which is fair enough--you pay for it in taxes regardless of which side of the political spectrum you're on, so you'd at least expect it to have a balanced coverage of issues.
That's not to say that CBC does no good journalism, but like the author of this article mentions they are a bit lacking in journalistic integrity sometimes.
Yes, which leads to all sorts of griping about CBC just being a mouthpiece for the Liberal government. But to be fair their bias was the same even when the Harper government was in power.
I cannot speak about the alleged wokeness, as I don't consume enough CBC content to make an informed judgment. What I can say is that CBC is the only major Canadian media company that is not capital C Conservative, at least among English-language media. Toronto Star used to fit this description too, but they got sold to what I think is a private equity firm who has been selling off their assets, so I don't expect them to be around much longer. Toronto Star is/soon-to-be was leftist. CBC is supposed to be neutral. All other major media companies are Conservative. See party endorsements for federal elections for example. Note that all non-Conservative endorsements come from the late TorStar corporation.
So maybe the issue is not that CBC is too Liberal, but that every other publication is Conservative, so even a neutral publication will look far left by comparison.
Again, I don't consume enough CBC content to comment how their leanings are. I just know a bit about Canadian media atmosphere in general.
But the source you cited seems to only include newspapers? Media companies tend to pander to their readers, and newspapers attracts... a certain type of readers. It's not surprising that most newspapers are conservative.
These days their websites are much more prominent than their print editions, and it's what people read online and link to on Facebook and social media. They are not stuck in the past. The Globe and Mail is widely regarded as Canada's newspaper of record, and even they endorse Conservatives.
I generally do not read/watch/listen to the CBC. I got tired of their NPR-ish comofortable liberalism which always drifted into conservatism a long time ago. Sure, there were occasional nods to the idea that not all was happy in our settler colonial land, but in general it was smug "we're all nice" and "aren't Americans crazy?!".
Our local outpost plays hideous CanCon music in the mornings and repeats the same low-information density press releases disguised as news. There is little that is combative or thought provoking and lot of self-congratulation.
I have been especially un-impressed with their lack of willingness to address the abuse of power by the RCMP at the Fairy Creek protests including the detention of one of their own videographers; their supine acceptance of the insane tar sands projects; their lack of aggression in pursuing the Trudeau administrations failure to address the horrendous mistreatment of autochthonous people people and communities.
These days I mostly read The Tyee¹ and listen to Canadaland²
You are right that newspapers lean capital C Conservative [1] in Canada. It is mostly due to Postmedia. Ownership by Postmedia is quite conspicuous in the list.
CBC is really woke though. You don't need to suffer them too much to notice that. Randomly turn on the radio while driving a few times, and you will see.
Now that TorStar is on its deathbed, without CBC, Canadian English-language media will be comprised of solely Postmedia. That's not a future I am looking forward to, but one that is quite likely the next time CPC gets elected.
No party wins popular vote anymore (as in more than 50%). With FPTP, we are stuck with less-than ideal seats-to-votes correlation.
I think I broadly share your distaste for bias and corporate media in general. However, one would hope there could be better alternatives than woke to bland and indefinite conservatism.
> No party wins popular vote anymore (as in more than 50%). With FPTP, we are stuck with less-than ideal seats-to-votes correlation.
As a side-note, I recently learned that the more unambiguous terms for this are "plurality" (more than all others) and "majority" (more than half). I think "popular vote" is also often used as a synonym for plurality, but I am not completely sure. Sorry, I am ESL :-)
I regularly consume news and other content from the CBC (radio and news app). I haven't noticed a "hard left" turn at all. The CBC has ALWAYS interviewed pretty progressively.
I'm assuming what has happened is that, since MeToo/BLM/Trans issues and protests have become front and centre, people are talking about that more. But really, COVID is dominating the airways at the CBC too.
I can't speak for internal newsroom politics of course.
Another comment made the observation that the CBC is really the last news source that is left of centre-right with all of our other traditional media sources centre-right and slowly drifting right. Our most popular "left" newspaper, The Toronto Star, was usually taking centrist position with pro-business leanings, but it's been moving right too.
Full disclosure, I get a most of my news from the Economist or the CBC.
Most people consume CBC very differently. I mostly listen to the radio and the content is pretty good and has great local news coverage. I don't think I know anyone else who follows CBC closely but I do think its overall seen as a trusted source of news.
Personally, when I think of the recent content from CBC I remmeber reading more about climate change and reconcilation with our native history. Both of Which I think are fairly important to be informed of. But I do wish they do more investigative work.
The basic issue is that to be news, there has to be a conflict to tell the story about. Even if the conflict is fabricated expectations vs. some mundane reality, that conflict is the necessary condition for a story to be news.
The lens of victim/oppressor theory can apply to literally anything, and so with that tool for manufacturing the necessary ingredient of universal conflict, the news becomes anything they want it to be. It's stupid, but it works. Most of the people who use that technique even believe it, and the one rule they're taught is if you protect the narrative, the narrative protects you. I've heard reporters ask what all this concern about fake news was because they have all these objective facts, and it never landed for them that it's fake because the necessary conflict that drives the story was wholely fabricated by ideology.
I worked in print media as a freelancer just over a decade ago and knew a lot of other writers and editors, and even then CBC was seen as the partisan state organ. You have to remember that the mandate of the CBC is to create a federal narrative to hold a vast and sparsely populated country together with a coherent national identity. News is only one of its myriad projects, and it's not engaged in a mission of discovery.
What changed is milennials graduated from campuses that had been compromised by what is objectively a mass hysteria created by their professors - who themselves had previously graduated in the 90s during the first wave of what they called "political correctness," at the time, and who in turn were taught by radical boomer professors who had been indoctrinated with standard revolutionary playbooks, mesmerized by French postmodernists like Foucault and Baudrillard, and you can trace a lot of its intellectual roots back to things like the SCUM Manifesto, Weathermen, Black Panther Party, Situationists, and other cold war era soviet political projects.
No single thing happened so much as the state of the CBC is the effect of milennials being educated by two generations of carefully trained marxists to become a revolutionary corps of true believers. The rest of government is rotted through with that stuff as well. The center won't hold, and I really don't see the country intact in 15-20 years because the people running it are to weak and insincere to provide legitimacy.
I think CBC needs to return to gritty journalism, local, provincial, federal, and global. There’s no money in real journalism any more; it’s far more profitable to provide “news” entertainment, aka exaggerate and fabricate. I think the most important thing a government could do is pay a percentage of the budget strings unattached to independent, credentialed, public journalism. It helps keep a government honest.
>This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.
CBC does lean liberal. There's idpol drama, but it predates her timeline. Honestly looks like she's manufacturing a story to push her book / substack / fishing for conservative media eyeballs, which is basically most of private Canadian media that still has money.
But being privy to too much CBC goss in my social circle, I just want to say she's full of shit simply because CBC has had drama/tensions over idpol for years. Well over 18 months ago. There is almost zero chance she's even in the realm of being "furthest left" in the newsroom hearing shit I've heard from before her first published article on her CBC profile. And given her body of work at CBC is consisted almost entirely of mediocre listicles, I can understand the desire to attention merchant over more profitable cultural wars.
It doesn't really seem authentic. To an extent, yes there is an increased focus on some of the things mentioned. But for it to be entirely true, I'd kind of expect them to be inarguably soft on left-leaning politicians, especially the prime minister. But I don't see that at all, if anything, they've become more critical of particularly specious policy moves and bills being proposed. A more suspicious person would claim it's a smokescreen, but it seems to me to a reasonable source of news, at least more so than Global, The Gaurdian a lot of the time, and certainly any of The Sun variants out there.
I'm not sure these sorts of articles provide much value on HN.
By "these sorts of articles", I mean the ones that have claimed that "diversity efforts have gone too far this time." Regardless of your support or opposition to diversity, I think one would agree that these rapidly turn into unproductive, highly divisive comment sections that are out of place with the rest of HN.
You can use the flag button if you think that an article will attract low-quality discussion. I used to use it a lot. Be forewarned that your flags will stop influencing results if you use them too frequently, as I apparently did.
That even the well above average intellects here can't manage a dialogue much above what you'll find on other platforms seems like a situation that has great potential for providing value.
Maybe I didn't word it well enough, but I intend to comment on a broad category of discussion that I don't think is necessarily inappropriate according to the guidelines, but tends to produce unproductive, hostile conversations. I understand that anti-diversity blogs often gain a lot of traction with a particular subset of HN readers, but it consistently winds up producing flame wars and can make HN a less friendly place.
And, yes, there are people who get really hostile with these kinds of conversations (HN is a decent-sized community, so not surprising, and it's not always the same people in every discussion so I'd like to avoid any broad brush interpretation of this remark), but I think HN is one of the last places where it is possible, online, to have difficult discussions about challenging issues. That's an incredibly important, although possibly (originally) unintended, role.
On a personal note, I value hearing different perspectives, and often come away from HN discussions feeling like I've learned something, so I am against squelching it.
There used to be more discussion about the topic from the pro-diversity, anti-racist perspective until it was temporarily banned under the euphemism of "politics."
I think I saw a few of the posts that got flagged. I'm guessing they were flagged not because of their viewpoint or argument, but because of their tone/hostility.
FWIW, I do think that HN has a problem with downvoting minority viewpoints. I'm just not sure that's what happened here.
If this were some strictly academic or political debate, i'd completely agree with you. But these ideas and policies are having a pretty major impact on employment and hiring in the tech industry, which obviously directly impacts everyone here, and the culture of the industry. If HN isn't a forum where those sorts of issues should be discussed, where is?
You keep using this phrase and I think it's disingenuous at best. Sure, there are probably people here who genuinely don't want to be around people who don't look like themselves. But I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people who you would describe as "anti-diversity" are really just sick of stuff like this, from the article.
> To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others.
Even if you dismiss that as hyperbole (which it is), a lot of people are wondering why so many of our politicians/institutions focus so much on dividing up the populace by race.
I draw a line connecting the prevalence and vigor of anti-diversity flame wars on HN and the lack of gender diversity on HN. The ecosystem tolerates a high baseline of hostility so long as you couch that hostility in ways which meet the letter of the guidelines.
I've often wished for an alternative to HN because of it. This place doesn't really match my punk-rock hacker ethos where the underdog and the excluded are celebrated.
I would argue that the article highlights the biggest problem of the West. It used to be a society of strong independent and happy individuals, capitalizing on their strengths and trading with each other in search of prosperity. We traded it in for a steady paycheck in exchange for mindlessly fulfilling standardized corporate jobs, and are now surprised that the human ambition got redirected from finding ways to create new value to bashing someone who seemingly got a patch of greener grass.
I think, the way out is understanding that the current divisive ways the society is going are doomed, and that we all have a common problem to solve, and sweeping such discussions under the rug will only delay this outcome.
Division isn't stable but it often precedes change. The status quo hasn't served everyone, and the first part of improving a status quo is to make the case it cannot stand. When one does, division occurs.
Nope, "low interest rate policies + lack of antitrust enforcement" -> "mergers, buyouts, fewer small businesses" -> "fewer economic roles involving decision making" -> "fewer social ladders through hard work" -> "fewer push for education + general unhappiness" -> "bitter people looking for scapegoats"
In North America at least, I think this century will be the first time it has really run out of "unoccupied" land to grow into. Other parts of the world have been in this steady state for many centuries; it remains to be seen how the equilibrium will manifest here and where it will lead.
In terms of sovereign territory, I guess you're right, but if you want to go live somewhere with no neighbors, there are plenty of places in America and Canada where you can do that.
I’m not sure this idyllic West ever actually existed, or if it did, that it wasn’t inherently transient. (Genuinely not sure, not trying to make an unequivocal disagreement sound more palatable.) As in, the spirit of entrepreneurship and personal liberty did exist and wonderful things were built, but the most likely life for someone born in the advanced part of Western Europe or the US between say 1830 and 1930 seems to have been to slave away at a single factory for the entirety of your life, hardly ever encountering any money fit for general circulation, living in housing hardly worth the name amidst typhus and tuberculosis.
“Social democracy” seems to entail a creeping illiberalism, and I’m not sure what we admire was anything but a brief period after the start of the former but before the onset of the latter. Yet it also solved a real problem and, indeed, is the best currently-known solution to it.
One small counterpoint: Employers enjoy a bully pulpit on these issues. Employees with legitimate concerns about their employers' stances / policies sometimes can't even discuss them without the risk of losing their livelihood.
This can create a situation where individuals perceive that "the whole world" is telling them they're wrong, and are bad people for being wrong in this way. HN's anonymous-yet-respectful forum can somewhat help with this.
If nothing else, it's encouraging to know that they're not alone, but rather in an environment where other dissenters are also silenced.
>One small counterpoint: Employers enjoy a bully pulpit on these issues. Employees with legitimate concerns about their employers' stances / policies sometimes can't even discuss them without the risk of losing their livelihood.
There are endless platforms that are better suited for these discussions: Gab, 4chan, and Ruqqus to name a few. "HN's anonymous-yet-respectful forum" is best preserved by not hosting these types of deeply hostile, alienating discussions.
https://www.fairforall.org has a quality community. That said I think this a relevant topic for hn on many levels and I don't find the conversations repetitive. If OP doesn't think so maybe they're not the target demographic for hn.
Right. To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized to a few corners of the internet suffering from "the coven of the witches" problem.
And for the record, Ruqqus was shut down [1], so it really doesn't even exist.
There's a chicken or egg problem with the "coven of witches" conjecture. I also don't think Gab is all that marginal. It seems to exist largely to facilitate conversations around perceived excesses with diversity efforts.
My greater point is that communities that facilitate these types of conversations typically have less inviting, more hostile cultures. There's a spectrum of course, but you can see glimmers of the type of discourse found on sites like Gab in the comment sections of anti-diversity blogs on HN. I think that an HN which plays host to more discussions about perceived issues with diversity will alienate a lot of folks who aren't entrenched in those sorts of debates and self-select for the type of discourse associated with these so-called "covens of witches." It seems to me that there's no value in sliding down that side of the spectrum for a site that's largely meant not to play host to ideological battles.
Cf. Scott Alexander’s “three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches” quip[1]. This bootstrap problem has very little to do with current affairs anywhere, I’d say, and I don’t think it has ever been solved except where the more liberal (in the original sense) means of communication additionally had some sort of technical superiority as well.
Except maybe the founding story of the US—I’m not an expert—but that was literally several waves of “witches” (many of them profoundly illiberal) taking their ball and going elsewhere, and their genetic memory of the necessity of free discourse seems to have died out by the middle of the 20th century (and was arguably missing the point as to which discourse needs to be free for decades before that). Not a bad record overall, but we’ve run out of unsettled land to go elsewhere to.
I wasn’t commenting on the suitability of this kind of thing on HN, more on the sane-political-discussion-bootstrap problem.
I mean, here in Soviet Russia politics can and will do you whether or not you do politics, and it is indeed tech people, who seem to be the most eager to pull the separate magisteria trick with “politics” and “interesting stuff I care about”, that have been getting hit by that fact more and more often in recent years. Humans gonna hume, human life is political, and “politics is dirty” is as damaging as it is self-fulfilling (maybe not immediately, but over a couple of generations...). If your corner of the world affords you the luxury of ignoring that, I can only look on with envy.
But to go from this to “political discourse belongs on HN” is a leap I’m not interested in making on defending. Whatever my opinion on that (I’m not sure) I don’t have the power to make or help it come true in any case, and idle bitching is only satisfying in very small amounts. Somewhat relatedly, I don’t feel that cultivating strong feelings about the state of a discussion website that is completely owned and maintained by a single investment company is likely to be good for my social health. It’s a good place, and it will continue to be until it suddenly isn’t, and there isn’t a single thing I can do about it. (Been there, done that.)
Getting back to my original point, my actual hope is that a good-enough witch filter could be built without mentioning object-level norms, solely on meta-level ones like “don’t shout down or shame people you disagree with”. Certainly the quality of moderately large political discussions on HN (which exist, whatever you or I think about them) seems to be pointing in that direction. (The experience of some other places, e.g. the SSC subreddit and comment section, seem to point to other possible perils of that approach that are not avoidable by changes local to a single venue.)
>To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized
Seems that way. Parent explicitly wrote that it's only the articles that say "they've gone too far this time" that they find at fault. This means articles with the opposite view ("yay, more of those diversity efforts"), that touch on the same subject (and thus one would assume to be equaly divisive), are ok. I'd find it impartial and ok if they didn't wish either kind on HN, but only targeting one side is icky.
But even this framing (of articles like TFA as being anti-diversity) is wrong, if not disingenuous, to begin with.
As if TFA author is a seggregationist or wants less diversity (so agreeing makes you like that too), when diversity is not what the author complains about, but rather the inverse: lamenting the litany of the same facile rage-bait identity articles to the detriment of substantial reporting.
Actual reporting which would include substantial reporting on matters of opressed identity and lack of diversity, as opposed to e.g. gaslighting readers that Dave Chappele's special was met with uniform hostility when it was a huge success, or letting huge social issues be ignored, while covering inconsequential complains...
They very reliably rise to the front page (because people like arguing about this stuff) and then sink off again (because, I believe, the HN algorithm penalizes a low upvote-to-comment-count ratio). I predict this'll be gone in two hours...
To be fair, every comment that didn't agree with the conclusion of the article was nerfed. The top comment on this post for most of its existence immediately left the top and within seconds jumped to being the very last comment at the bottom with all the other even vaguely pro-diversity comments.
I think maybe my comment wasn't really clear. I know the pro-diversity comments had a lot of upvotes, what I was pointing out was that they were nerfed by a moderation tool or algorithm, not by downvotes, as evidenced from going from the top comment to the very last comment in the thread within a few seconds.
Ah, ok—I was probably reading your comment through the filter of "comments supporting my view are constantly getting downvoted/flagged/suppressed on this site", which is a more common complaint (which was also making appearances in this thread).
Software can indeed affect subthread ranking, and moderators do that too—but certainly not for pro- or anti-diversity (or any other $divisive-topic) reasons. We downweight top subthreads for reasons like this: (1) they're too generic rather than engaging with something specific in the article; (2) they're high-indignation/low-information; (3) they're meta; (4) they're offtopic in a predictable way*. What all 4 of those categories (and there are probably others) have in common is that they tend to both get heavily upvoted and to not be interesting in HN's sense of the word. Once they get heavily upvoted, they tend to hang out at the top of the page, accruing mass and choking out more curious conversation. We try to use moderation and (to some extent) software as countervailing mechanisms to these default tendencies, because we've learned over the years that this is one of the highest-leverage things we can do to make threads more interesting. But this has nothing whatever to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the points being made.
Edit: I'm guessing you were talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29785012, which indeed got downweighted in exactly this way, because it falls into categories #1, #3, and #4 above. But not into #2, at least, which is unusual and to your credit.
* Unpredictable whimsical offtopicness, by contrast, is often interesting and we try to give it a pass. Otherwise moderation would get too predictable in its own right. I often have to remind people about that.
I don't see a reason to treat that type of moderation decision separately from others, so your question amounts to whether we'd publish a complete moderation log. We've certainly considered that, but I don't think it would be a good idea—the fear is that it would end up just leading to a lot more procedural questions from a small minority of users, that would take tons of time to answer, without doing anything to benefit the majority of the community.
Instead, the approach we take to transparency is to be willing to answer specific questions when people have them. It seems to work fairly well. Not everyone is satisfied with that, but most users are, and of the ones who aren't, a nontrivial portion wouldn't be satisfied with a complete moderation log either.
They very reliably rise to the front page because this issue is endemic in the tech industry and yet people are afraid to speak out in public.
This has always been the problem with HN's stance on "this isn't a forum for political debate" or whatever. It's a way of status-quo enforcement by selectively ignoring how political tech has become these days. It's also diminishing the role HN (used to?) play in conversations within the tech industry. If everyone should go to Reddit to discuss fundamental concerns with working in tech, then why wouldn't people just replace HN with an RSS feed.
One thing I learned in my many years in this life: you can't fix inequity by inching slowly in the "right" direction. However, the "right" stopping point is too often controlled by the same oppressors. You have to be like a pendulum and swing waaayyy too far past "equity". Then the pendulum will eventually energy out at a more reasonable equitable point. This is a lot of anchoring point bias built in. This overcomes it.
What would be in your opinion the best historical example of a inequity that wasn't righted by moving slowly and one of an inequity that was righted by overshooting the target?
Not the OP, but I'd cite the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, whose enforcement provisions would not be necessary in an idealized democratic society which has come to terms with diversity.
(Sadly, the consequences of the Roberts Court gutting the act demonstrate that those enforcement provisions are still very much needed today.)
I think 'equity' is such an unfortunate choice of term. This usage popped up in the mainstream and then exploded all over in the last couple of years. I'm sure it was chosen for its phonetic adjacency to 'equality'. I haven't seen and concrete definitions for the usage, just borderline-meme webcomic illustrations of people looking over a fence at a baseball game. I believe understand the meaning, that being that equality before the law does not account for material quality of life imbalances arising from unquestionable historical wrongdoing. It seems to be most frequently used in describing the relationship of Black and Indigenous Americans to Americans of European "white" descent.
My big issue with it is that the word 'equity' has an extremely important financial meaning that many of the people wielding the new usage are unfamiliar with or don't know at all. There are lots of young people who don't have 'nu-equity' and are woefully ignorant of the overwhelming influence the accounting equation and cash flow valuation has on their lives. Teaching this new vague definition of 'equity' is going to divorce so many people from ever having productive conversations about wealth. Already, lots of people I follow in finance (white and nonwhite, male and female, immigrants and natural born) are dismissing this kind of language out-of-hand.
Or, perhaps I am wrong. Maybe this new usage of equity points, in fact, to exactly the same thing as the legacy financial definition. The activists want shares and they demand them now. I have not seen anything to support this identity, but maybe the meaning isn't too far off.
It's the hacker culture that has enabled this. The potential of internet has awoken an abhorrent greed that leeches off anger and polarization, and can only sustain itself by creating more: from facebook and twitter to reddit and tumblr, they're all guilty. The main-stream media has lost their cash cow, and now simply follows the money. Denying responsibility for this is like saying "guns don't kill people."
I think part of the challenge is that the "hacker" ethic has always been very libertarian. Open dialog about issues within corporations and industry has always been a thing here, until relatively recently.
I actually don't think it is that out of place on HN, many the top posts on Hacker News are related to politics (Joe Biden vowing different direction, Brexit, even youtube-dl facing a DMCA are all politics)
This is incredibly tedious. I can't fathom how this has anything to do with "Hacker News" but I guess it's appeal to a certain subset of the audience here overrides that.
The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. It seems reasonable that a subset of the culture that produced the work environment at Blizzard [1] or has historically rallied behind alt-right thought leaders would also be here on HN. Talk to any woman software engineer, I 100% guarantee they have multiple stories about dealing with a...specific type of guy.
> The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley.
I'm surprised to hear that. My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere. I probably got that from personal experience + news about Google (Damore), Facebook, etc.
But maybe in reality D&I has become commonplace in many U.S. companies, and I just started working with tech/SV companies as that happened.
D&I is definitely commonplace across the corporate world, and similar opposition is too. My brother and sister once worked at the same company for a while - my brother complained that everyone wanted to promote women and he was disadvantaged, while my sister got groped in a taxi by a colleague and was told by her male manager that if she wanted to get promoted she should make sure senior managers knew that she didn't want to have kids (not actually the case).
I think that this is because they're focusing on different issues. Your brother was noticing the push to make women 50% of the workforce despite them being a much smaller part of the recruiting pool (or some similar target); your sister was complaining about the treatment of and attitudes towards women, and how managers were abusing their power. A 50% women company can still have that behaviour.
> Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies. Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc. It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc.
Is it? Keep in mind that the target hires for these companies are grads from serious CS programs. Are CS programs 12% blacks? Were they 15 years ago (when a now L5 graduated)?
It's like setting shop in Puerto Rico and favoring whites because, since Puerto Rico is part of the US and the US is ~55% white you should have that same proportion in your business.
The real question is, and that's an uncomfortable one, is why aren't we seeing enough minorities in serious CS programs.
I think saying that "diversity is not prevalent at all" at these companies is being simplistic. Google's technical workforce is 50% white and 50% racial minority [1]. Facebook is similar. Granted, most of the latter is Asian and not Black or Latin.
On my team we have one Anglo American, one Cuban (me, and I consider myself white as my family is mostly Spanish, and I'm typically regarded as such by society), one Vietnamese, and one Indian. Are you really going to say that there's no diversity in this group because we lack representation from two specific continents? The fact that everyone is from different countries, thousands of miles apart isn't diversity enough? Unless "diversity" entirely a function the presence of people of African and South American descent, I fail to see how Google, Facebook, and my team are not diverse.
It's just an artifact of hacks trying to take a culture's temperature without going outside. Tech adjacent is only notable for being full of people who will talk about it in professional areas online.
If someones circles weren't internet-heavy before Eternal iPhone September, their politics don't get associated with their circles. They're just nameless or might as well be nameless wrongthinkers on $social_media_platform and/or not posting their views to social media in the first place.
This is totally wrong. At private law firms it's the tech clients more than any other hammering diversity quotas (literal quotas) in the racial composition of their outside counsel.
I guess this is why these discussions are unproductive, because folks on both sides of debates on diversity efforts have contradictory anecdotal experiences. I know many women software engineers who've felt deeply, uniquely uncomfortable in tech spaces. I have yet to have a woman software engineer friend who hasn't had one of these experiences, and the idea that the tech industry is uniquely hostile to diversity efforts doesn't seem to be all that uncommon or controversial.
> I guess this is why these discussions are unproductive, because folks on both sides of debates on diversity efforts have contradictory anecdotal experiences.
Actually, to me this shows that these discussions are really productive. Because through them we realize that perhaps we're working from different assumptions / data. That's a great stepping stone to understanding each others' views.
I don't think anyone on this site will argue that the culture at Blizzard was good or normal, in fact most engineers working in the Bay will tell you that the culture at their company is extreme in the opposite direction. I've worked in FAANG for the last 5 years in the Bay and can tell you that in my experience I could not even fathom how a culture like Blizzard was allowed to exist, my everyday experience has just been so extremely different. For example _all_ (and I mean literally every single one) corporate communication from the company to employees has to do with diversity/inclusion issues for at least 50% of its content.That's every newsletter, every speech, all the internal organizations communications, even things that are supposed to be technical in nature. Women and minority candidates are already given a more lenient interview experience as well as an abundance of communication that they are valued and welcome. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's just that most peoples' lived experience working in this industry is nothing like Blizzard's.
I think what you see on this site mostly is more of a moderate "hey can we chill out a little?" sort of response rather than an extremist alt right type of thing, though it may come across differently depending on how frustrated that person is. And yeah it can be frustrating to always feel like you are being lumped in with the group of oppressors and or bigots no matter what you do.
TL;DR I don't think most people are racist or evil.
It's so weird (being in the bay area) to hear that tech companies are not pushing diversity stuff but perhaps chicken farms in the south are?
Can you even do the types of strikes / walkouts that the tech workers do on these issues in the south and keep your jobs? Ie, the associates of an energy law firm in texas do a walkout over the lack of action by their firm on climate change?
I wonder where she will go after publishing her book. Postmedia? Bell media? Staying independent? The news landscape in Canada is rather limited and still consolidating. Think what you may about the CBC and its biases, its nothing compared to the National Post where the owner, Conrad Black, airs his crappy opinions.
I saw the National Post carried her article as well.
Hopefully she will stay independent, and focus on constructive reporting rather than just reactionary complaining. We see a lot of this in politics, people with what could be good ideas just getting caught up in getting upset and creating outrage about the ridiculous things the other side had done. Better to try and shift the dialog entirely rather than just complain.
Except at political groups to which I belong, I am almost always the left-most person in the room. The Lefts greatest weakness is an enthusiasm for splintering over small matters of doctrine. Identity politics, tribalism over principle, virtue signaling, whatever fad this is, it's deeply hurting progress.
I suspect you’re right. My personal solution to this problem, having once run a left-leaning organization that was taken over by all the things you mention, is to learn more towards the centre. I’m curious if you’ve considered the same, especially because you describe yourself as “the left-most person in the room”?
In the United States the Overton Window is so far right even the Democratic Party is center-right. In a Scandinavian Country I'd be a fairly moderate, conservative social democrat. Here, if people knew my thoughts, I'd be seen as a Wild-Eyed Radical. But given the politics in my country, I've given up compromise and actually moved further Left. And more militant, less quiet.
Luckily, the organization I'm currently involved with (the SRA), while hilariously disorganized, is firmly Left.
I don't mean this as any kind kind of criticism, but being a swede with an American friend who was partially brought up in Sweden during the good ol days of Swedish social democracy I wonder if Americans really know what they mean when they talk about Scandinavian social democracy. These days they're a lot more conservative than they used to be. Mostly I imagine their stance on immigration control, and crime wouldn't be what Americans have in mind. Or maybe you do! All I'm saying is that it's interesting hearing it come up a lot in American discussions as if it's its own thing when really they're quite the moving target.
EDIT: but i guess for you guys it might be more single-payor healthcare and reasonable taxation in which case, yeah, some things haven't changed :)
Almost exclusively when Americans talk about Sweden being "left" they are talking about economic issues. Parental leave (480 days!) mandated by the state, single-payer healthcare, free college, huge amounts of vacation time (8+ weeks on average, 34 days by law!), assistance with childcare, etc.
Compare that to the US with a mandatory rehiring after taking unpaid maternity (only) leave of up to 12 weeks, a complex healthcare system which causes people to go into debt, expensive college costing tens of thousands a semester, 0 (yes zero) vacation time by law, etc.
(I should note that some states goes further than that, but it's very dependent on the state and the most liberal example might be California's generous 6-week paternity policy.)
Anyone advocating any of the economic policies from Sweden I described in the US would be described in the same breath as Bernie Sanders and Fidel Castro.
This is reductive to the point of being incorrect. "Social stuff" includes things like maternity leave, childcare, healthcare, incarceration and drug policies. California is proud that they ended sentences of life-without-parole for children in 2017 - and replaced it with life-with-possible-parole-after-25-years, which remains far worse than Denmark permits even for the worst adult crime (life with possible parole after 12 years).
Fine, I meant "woke stuff" that excites Twitter so much and makes so many non-Twitterati confused and perplexed.
What you mention used to be a typical left-wing agenda, but is increasingly being utterly forgotten by the younger generations of left-wing politicians.
You must have missed the news on Chesa Boudin [1], San Francisco's district attorney. He's so far extreme left that criminals essentially have free rein in the city because his office refuses to prosecute anyone.
> In the United States the Overton Window is so far right even the Democratic Party is center-right.
I'm sorry, but what?
Within the party, they've promoted universal basic income (marxisim), state healthcare, universal education, etc. It's almost completely authoritarian marxist.
They're far left of most of Europe in terms of social policy (LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, drugs, etc) and economic (complete universal education, health, payments, work, etc)
Let's take the example of state healthcare. The Democratic Party talks a big game about universal healthcare at election time, but only ever proposes modest reforms (like the ACA) when it's time to craft policy. Meanwhile many (all?) European countries actually have some form of state-run or state-funded universal healthcare.
The Democrat Party is only "far left" if you believe their wildest election rhetoric and don't judge them on their actions. To call them authoritarian marxist is ridiculous when they fail time and time again to reign in corporate power and are financially beholden to that same power.
> The Democratic Party talks a big game about universal healthcare at election time
No, it doesn't, at least if you are talking about general elections since the failure of Clinton's reforms in the 1990s. Since then, it's talked about moderate mitigations of the problem of massive gaps in the healthcare system, or, more recently, simply about not continuing dismantling past progress on that issue.
Your comment calling political measures which are universally accepted across the entire range of politics in Europe (state healthcare, universal education, ...) authoritarian marxist is a hilarious example of what the top poster meant by "the Overton Window is so far right even the Democratic Party is center-right".
What you're describing are simply ordinary welfare state policies, and what you view as "high taxes" are not particularly high compared to historical tax rates even within the US. The idea that you'd have to be a Marxist to want to centralize health insurance to reduce costs so people don't go bankrupt paying for medical care is simply propaganda. In fact, most Marxists would probably view these kinds of measures as capitalist Band-Aids to keep the entire system from collapsing.
> What you're describing are simply ordinary welfare state policies
Yes, people who support these policies are authoritarian Marxists. I'm not disparaging it, it just is what it is.
The U.S. is authoritarian and largely Marxist.
> The idea that you'd have to be a Marxist to want to centralize health insurance to reduce costs so people don't go bankrupt paying for medical care is simply propaganda.
Not propaganda, it is by definition what it is. It's not really arguable. The propaganda are the opinions on whether or not it's good. There's a fair argument it's good to make centralized healthcare, there's a fair argument against.
The right and the religious are also known to splinter over small differences. I see it as a trait of fanaticism, and an indication of tendency towards extremism.
Peter Thiel (gay man), Caitlyn Jenner (trans woman) and Kanye West (black man) all publicly support Donald Trump. It's not identity that's the issue, it's economic inequality. Even as part of marginalized groups, these people's vast wealth allowed them the luxury to support a man who did not have marginalized group's best interests in mind.
If I was rich and wanted to take over a local government, I would channel my efforts toward dividing people on everything except economic class. Yeah, you're both poor and live in squalor next to the train tracks, but you're different races! How could you possibly get along!
IMO, most of the culture was a distraction from what really matters. People are up in arms on TV over who can claim to be a woman, but meanwhile, the concentration of wealth and economic power and worse than even the guided age.
If the bottom 50% of the population (economically) united on JUST this topic, they would see massive change - better structured education, housing, health, etc.
Instead we get what I call "hand grenades" that distract and mean almost nothing - like another biological male smashing records in a female sport and wanting to keep the medals.
I share a similar opinion. Everything and every group's voice should be heard at some point but not in a more divisive manner and to the detriment of attention to the immediate problems that affect us all in the most serious ways: housing, healthcare, wages, political corruption, conflicts of interest, and so on. We're in very bad shape and a risk major collapse. If we continue down this path we'll see homelessness and and inequality rise to catastrophic levels. What we really need at this point more than anything is some form of unity.
> Everything and every group's voice should be heard at some point but not in a more divisive manner and to the detriment of attention to the immediate problems that affect us all
The problem with this line of thinking is that there's a pattern to which peoples' issues are considered mainstream (i.e. they affect "us all") and which group's issues are considered divisive and a "distraction". But if you're in a marginalized minority group, those "distractions" may be your biggest problems every day. "Not yet" is practically the same as "no" and some folks are tired of waiting, so if you want unity you've got to build it by acknowledging those problems and support those people. Otherwise "unity" always comes at the expense of the same people.
To treat people differently is in the poor handbook of middle management. It creates resentment towards those with preferential treatment. This is pretty basic knowledge in psychology and that is why I cannot really believe in the good intend of academics selling idpol. They do it for themselves and themselves alone.
Perfect for manipulation, extremely potent as a union buster or to kill movements like occupy wallstreet.
> united on JUST this topic, they would see massive change - better structured education, housing, health, etc.
I think part of the issue is no one agrees on what causes it. Status-quo left says not enough taxes and social spending. SQ right says immigration, geo-arbing, and taxes too high.
Imo we actually need to be talking about interest rate interventionism, but good luck getting people to care about cash flow valuation denominators.
Or if you were China preparing to challenge the US in ten years, it would be wise to give money to key US insitutions so they would implement the most radical and divisive policies they can come up with.
People — of all backgrounds — only want a stable comfortable life where they can pursue their interests and goals.
Identity/race politics are just a distraction to keep the low/middle class fighting amongst themselves while the upper classes rake in unprecedented amounts of wealth.
I believe that individuals are complex and unique and deserve to be treated as individuals instead of a member of an identity group.
I fear the day when I have to take a side in the identity/race war. In the past 2 years I have noticed that identity/race politics have entered my workplace. Luckily I haven’t had to take a side, but the day I am forced to utter a political incantation is the day I quit my job.
The best way to live as a minority is advocating for civil liberties because they would profit as well. But the opposition to Trump failed here spectacularly and just blamed everything on Russia. With their childish attempts to block diverging opinions you will never make a good case for inclusion, diversity or minorities. The whole of DEI is little mroe than an extortion scheme at this point and I can fully understand people in a dire economic situation voting for Trump.
Broadly speaking, the left likes to go come up with new ways of doing things, the right likes to implement the "tried and true".
Almost by definition, this means the left is always trying many things (always need the next new thing) and the right is consolidating on what they perceive to be the best of the tried and true.
The antipathy between “try something new” and “stick with what works” is so frustrating because they so clearly go hand in hand. “If the Left wing or the Right wing ever got control of this country, it would fly around in circles.”
This is a classic centrist position - the left and the right are both radical, pick a point halfway between and you're good - but I would argue that the US and Canada have been largely ruled by centrism for the past 30 years and things have been getting worse and worse in that time.
In trying to make everyone happy, progress slows to a crawl because nobody can agree. Too many people have too many different perspectives, but people don't realise how very different others perceive reality
That doesn't match up with reality. Take climate change for example. The left was fine with coal until it became proven that it is a major accelerant to climate change. It isn't change for the sake of change. In a similar vein, the right may choose an action because it is convenient, not necessarily because it is tried and true. Not only does what you say not follow, it describes nothing by definition.
That being said it isn't a good look to simplify these perspectives as "the left" and "the right" as people do not really act within the confines of those labels.
I upvoted this because your criticism wasn't of "left" or "right" but the parent's lazy understanding of "progressive" and "conservative".
The right in America understands the left quite well, but many on the left think they're trying "new" things leading to progress while the right wants to keep things the same. This is the understanding of a child and why we have political conflict in the U.S.
The most conservative stalwarts that want things to remain the same in America are government, finance, tech, media, academia and education. The cultural institutions that the left built in the 60s are the ones failing and the ones they want to conserve.
Max dem donor, historically very "left" as well. This is an issue on both sides in the extreme. On the right just look at what to outsiders are TINY doctrinal differences in things like faith issues - have historically driven major internal divisions.
I always thought the American left would really endure / have the advantage long term because of what seemed like a healthier exchange of ideas (free speech support etc).
That has changed it feels like a bit. If you don't support the cause de jour (abolish ice / defund the police / violence at protests) or other orthodoxy there really isn't a place for you.
And despite the talk of love and acceptance, the left really seems to be driven by hate and outrage now more than I remember plus a very healthy dose of hypocrisy. Ie, defund police, unless a poor person shoes up on my doorstep - then I'm calling!
AOC jetting off to florida in the midst of a massive surge in NY? The irony (she made fun of others jetting off during crisis, and florida is the anti-NY in terms of COVID approach). Newsome and his lobbyist dinner unmasked inside while ordering lockdowns? It's annoying to have such harsh rhetoric from leaders (ie, they promised to destroy any doctor who gave vaccine to anyone but the anointed few) but then relatively unprincipled action by them (they go out and party, dine, get vaccines for themselves).
I'm hoping the next generation has a good take on this.
> And despite the talk of love and acceptance, the left really seems to be driven by hate and outrage now more than I remember plus a very healthy dose of hypocrisy.
Sounds like you're talking yourself into giving Nazis a "fair shake". Why would you do that?
Is the claim that the left is being fascist or the right is? Ie, who bum rushes someone off the stage these days - is that a left wing thing or right wing or both?
Is this claim meant to undermine my claim around the extremism now in the left and right?
> I'm hoping the next generation has a good take on this.
I believe the current generation has a good take on this: when your identity becomes enmeshed in a political religion, the creation of differences is mandatory to support your vision.
This necessity of finding a cause or something to believe in—the need for baddies and an existential battle of good vs evil—will exist in perpetuity on the left. If there are no baddies, they must be created.
The origin of "the left" in America is a road through the Darwinian origins of Progressivism which, along with its gross support of racial anthropology, believed in a better class of men to administer a society they believed incompetent. It then moved down the meandering corridor of postmodern Marxism in academia which took as an article of faith that dishonesty was required for social change. We're now at the weapons-grade, enriched version of that belief with Wokeness where the adherents privately believe they are better people, qualified to manage society's past ills but then publicly disown the idea when confronted.
Unless the cultural left in America wants to disown over a century of believing they are superior, the orthodoxy is here to stay. There is no difference between Wilsonian progressives and the modern day woke other than transparency and visibility into the worldview.
"the need for baddies and an existential battle of good vs evil"
I would argue this motivates a fair bit of the hard right too. Think of the folks fighting the "murder" of children, they come up with baddies (abortion doctors), take the law into their own hands (bombings etc). Same thing with the "stolen election". I'm not speaking about the merits of either of these issues, just that they serve to drive a similar situation on right.
> Think of the folks fighting the "murder" of children, they come up with baddies (abortion doctors)
This has been Christian doctrine for 2000 years: they didn't "come up with it." It's in the Didache, which is a first century document and puts abortion in the same category as pedophilia.
In contrast, there will never be a point where the left stops finding new niche epithets and specialized victims/oppressors because the Hegelian worldview requires it.
A mere 10 years ago, the idea of TERFs or people oppressing others because they didn't include pronouns would be unthinkable. Once that bridge is crossed, more bridges will inevitably need to be created. We live in a world where the left thinks thousands of unarmed black men are killed every year, when the number in 2019 was... 14 [1]
This same worldview thinks that there's a mass of white supremacists seeking to take over the country, and yet, where is the mass number of crimes that we hear about? If they were there, don't you think we'd hear about specific cases on the news, given that literally half of all unarmed black men killed by police made national news?
Left and liberal do not mean the same thing. Basically all of my blue or red friends agree with the principles of Liberalism, which brought us the enlightenment and [modern] civilization. You can ask your own friends, here's a definition:
In terms of numbers, about 8% of the US population is.. left. 25% is traditional conservative. And the other 67% is regular folks who in fact agree on most policy questions
From Wikipedia:
> Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), democracy, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and a market economy
Over the past ten years, there's been a weird collaboration between centrists and right-wingers to define not being a bigot as being left-wing and being a bigot as being right-wing. So corporate PR has transformed huge employers and the finance industry into left-wingers, and when right-wingers complain about being silenced, they're specifically talking about being censored about race and gender.
This creates the false drama. Instead, what the US has is two liberal parties, one trying to also appeal to a base of evangelical whites and the other trying to appeal to people who aren't white. Both are trying to pass the same liberal policies, policies that I hope you aren't trying to associate with some 67% silent majority. 67% of people aren't against antitrust enforcement or free health care.
Not trying to associate any specific issues, just pointing out the surprisingly broad appeal of Liberalism as defined. Really an eye-opener the responses I got sharing that with folks.
Yes both parties have a bizarre set of priorities, conveniently avoiding the really important questions (like the two you raise)
>It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like.
as a regular reader of CBC, this is the line here that resonates the most with me. If CBC was a left-wing organization advocating for tearing down the structures of power and building a more equitable society, their focus on whatever microagression is currently trending would seem a lot more honest. but their bias is overwhelmingly in favour of the governments and corporations who have built the status quo, so their articles decrying social inequities ring pretty hollow.
"Wokeism" is a pejorative catch-all term for all the negative aspects of trying to be against racism, so it's kind of true by definition, isn't it? Literally no one is defending "wokeism" any more than people are defending "racism", because the terms themselves are intended to convey something negative.
It makes the term kind of useless, wouldn't you think? It's a placeholder term for whatever you don't like.
The precise definition of the pejorative 'woke' can be debated, but I think we all can agree that "we know it when we see it".
And it is far from useless. IMO it accurately labels people who are either: 1. Taking liberal talking points to extremes for the sole purpose of attention seeking or 2. Naive, coming of age youth bumping against reality for the first time in their lives and use the distraction of politics and remote injustices to avoid confronting the "hard work" which will be required to thrive in the adult world.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of people implicitly or explicitly defend "wokeism" as interpreted in the most severe and uncharitable way.
I try to be charitable in my assumptions, but even then, it's hard to argue that it's safe to criticize any DIE or "woke" initiative. There always seems to be some risk in being fired/blacklisted or otherwise attacked for even modest criticism of the DIE movement.
It may seem that way, but I think that's because right wing media does a stellar job of surfacing extreme examples. Plus, right wing media fosters a collective sense of grievance, which I see in some of the comments here.
I don't necessarily think something is bad just because it belongs to one political side or another. Good and bad ideas exist on both sides of the aisle and the proportion of good to bad is always in flux.
I'm not convinced of those arguments. However, assuming I'm being charitable (which I will try to be to my utmost) and take these to be true, it's quite possible the right is correct when it comes to the worst excesses of "wokeism". Nothing about "they pick extreme examples" or "they foment a sense of grievances" means they are incorrect. Even if the problem is overstated, I still see it as a problem.
Not really, woke used to be a word people used to identify themselves with. [1] And Tyler Cownen recently wrote opinion piece on Bloomberg defending wokism. [2]
It is not "a placeholder term for whatever you don't like", not in any meaningful sense.
Hmm going on a tangent here: do HNers "consume" news from old style media any more? I'm pretty certain that I haven't got my news from either radio or TV in a billion years. Since I had a pet dinosaur.
I habitually listen to NPR (KQED in the bay area). I find that the PBS newshour is of high quality and I also like "Fresh Air".
On the Internet side:
I enthusiastically recommend the daily "Monocle 24" news podcast. It is very well done and regardless of what you think of Monocle magazine I would suggest that if you consumed just one world news show it should be this one.
> It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions.
I’m glad people are starting to realize that participating in culture wars, regardless of the side, is supporting American cultural dominance.
I say this as a fairly jingoistic American, who feels American influence does much more good than harm.
> To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny.
Not an accident, I believe. Occupy Wall Street made the billionaires and Wall Street take notice. As a consequence, they probably decided people need to be busy with something else, just in case, so they don't get any more funny ideas. Identity politics is a great one to divide people, fan anger, get more clicks and views, and at the same time get them uninterested what the billionaires and Wall Street firms are doing.
I find identity politics to be fascinating and scary. Essentially, it is a grouping of many individual fringe concepts/movements that form a large political power and is backed by masses of well-meaning people who are sold stories and imagery of oppressor vs oppressed. IMO it is a large distraction which draws a lot of attention and money from more pressing issues occurring in the world. I fail to see where identity politics have helped in any non-superficial way and the level of division it has caused in society will be hard to reverse.
440 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 317 ms ] threadGiven that diversity of thought and opinion is not tolerated, authentic diversity is not the goal.
I've heard people say something similar, about how they were left-wing when they were young, but found themselves right-wing when they were older, without changing their politics, because the next generation had moved the Overton window, but it's surprising to hear of an environment where the shift happened in the space of 18 months.
I think that many people on the right imagine that identity politics is the true form of left-wing politics, and that it was invented by Karl Marx for some reason, but experiences like Tara Henley's suggest that identity politics is more like an aggressive meme that takes over the brains of some subset of people who happen to gravitate towards left-wing politics, and it perhaps has a disingenuous astroturf form which appeals to people on the right as a way to shield themselves from left-wing criticism.
She didn't say. I wish she had; I would like to know what drove the change.
So if the funding for the CBC is allocated on similars concerns, her colleagues are probably scared. That would also explain why they produced this mostly absurd list of banned words https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/words-and-phrases-comm... , a list that include violent words like brainstorm, lame, grandfathered and tribe. The CBC used to be a bastion of integrity and reason, now it is a novlang factory.
I think at its core, true workable leftism is about compassionate pragmatism: trying to make the world better for as many people as possible. What disturbs me most about the ultra-woke brand of leftism is that it isn’t pragmatic at all, to say nothing of compassionate. I believe you’re correct that what Henley describes is very similar to a meme: it’s simplistic, reductive, and easy. You can feel like you made a difference without having to do the hard work of actually making a difference.
That’s what bothers me so much about it. It’s an approach that’s primarily self-focused: venting one’s rage, posturing for the sake of boosting one’s social status. It's not really about helping other people—any more than the moral codes of right-wing religious fundamentalism are about actually being a decent person—and it definitely isn’t close to realistic as far as effectively changing anything.
High minded ideals fall to power. It’s easy to see at the local level, when black and LGBT voting blocs put the Mayor in power, the political spoils get divvied up. As time goes on you get conflict between the various stakeholders, and everyone forgets about the ideals and focuses on the street fighting. That’s why you need competitive elections.
You can be left as all get out, but if you don't speak in the stilted expected movement oriented language, and swallow the whole enchilada - and sign on to every policy no matter how worthy or good, you don't have the required pieces of flare - and even though you want the same things and would vote for 95% of the things they support, you're thought of as at least suspect if not outright as one of the enemy.
Like I have a focus on broad based poverty reduction, but because I'm not focused on poverty for urban poor people, or BIPOC people, I'm suspect in their head - I support broad based poverty reductions because they create durable electoral coalitions, just focusing on one group or another does the opposite. I have other similar "problematic" perspectives.
Outrage politics works great for winning social credit on social media, but it does very little to solve actual problems.
We want thoughtful, curious conversation instead. Among other things, that means conversation where people listen to each other across differences.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. We ban accounts that post slurs, including veiled ones.
Can the hivemind be trusted with this power?
In general, there's a lot of space on HN for arguing contrarian or minority views, as long as you're actually using the site as intended, i.e. for curious, thoughtful, respectful conversation. Most accounts that I see complaining that they've been suppressed haven't been doing that to begin with.
So you think the hivemind makes a good conversation-dictator?
I don't.
You're breaking the site guidelines yourself here, btw, including the one asking you to avoid snark ("Duh") and the one that asks you to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says ("So you think").
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Your movement (progressivism) has been co-opted. The same happened to the religious right a generation ago. Grifters told you that winning was the most important thing, and that politicizing identity was how to do it. Now your views have been reduced to platitudes and slogans meant to mobilize sheep and distract from real issues while the powerful plunder (as they always have). I'd say, "learn for next time," but let's be honest, it will be some other movement (likely one that rises out of opposition to this current one) that will be the next one to be co-opted, and you won't be part of it because it will be ostensibly "right wing."
In all seriousness, I imagine that Henley decided that writing sponsored content for CBC wasn't a solid career, and wanted to get on that contrarianism gravy train that folks like Bari Weiss have been pioneering.
Check out the rest of the articles published under Henley's byline—they're all in the same vein: https://www.cbc.ca/life/work-money/author/tara-henley-1.4401...
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/can-hitting-snooze-and-taki...
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/five-west-coast-hikes-you-p...
You can't judge a player for having a low batting average as a way to discredit their claim that the game is rigged.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Im fine with trans people. I am asking literally are we not allowed to complain about them.
That's a roundabout way of saying "No, you aren't allowed to".
I get the impression that you're really fired up about this topic. Partly because you're writing numerous, small comments. Unfortunately that commenting style makes it hard for (at least) me to understand your point(s).
1. A group of people repeatedly use a euphemism to attack a much smaller and less powerful group 2. When a member of that group points it out, the comment is literally faded, erased, by the editor responsible for managing the tone of that more powerful group
And before you say it, this is me assuming good faith. I know you don't hear it. You're not evil. Neither is (most of) HN.
But this is legit every day now. I've been a contributor to HN for over a decade, but now I hesitate before letting my fingers type 'news.ycombinator.com' into that location bar.
It simply hurts too much. Like someone putting glass in your porridge.
We try our best to moderate the cases when people break the site guidelines and cross into attacking either persons or classes of people—those things are definitely not ok here. I'm not saying we catch all such cases, but rather that when we miss them, it's usually because we didn't see them—we can't come close to reading everything that gets posted here, and rely on users to point out most of the worst stuff. When we do see it, we do moderate it. But there are questions of interpretation here (more on that below).
I don't see the community the way you describe it, in the following sense: yes, the comments that you're talking about exist, but so do a great many comments arguing the opposite (many more, in fact, from my perspective), and it's by no means the case that those comments get "literally faded/erased" either by users or by mods—quite the opposite (excepting the cases where such comments are breaking the site guidelines in their own right, and that's a different issue). On topics where much social change and churn are happening, I don't see how it's realistic for a large, pluralistic internet forum to avoid having a spectrum of views. It seems to me that it's probably in everyone's interest to tolerate that, because it's the way these things get hashed out in the long run. Winning people over happens by persuasion, not by punishment.
Unfortunately, there's no agreement at all about what an acceptable spectrum of views should look like. In other words, it's not always clear how to distinguish being wrong (which is not against the rules, and not an abuse) from being abusive. Different people want us to draw that line very differently. One person will read a comment as "using a euphemism to attack a group" while another person (often the commenter themselves) will insist that the very same comment is well-intentioned good-faith discussion, rooted not in hate but in a desire to understand. If the first interpretation is correct, then the comment is abusive and should be moderated. If the second is, then the comment may be wrong, but it is not abusive, and therefore it should be tolerated and reasoned with.
This disagreement means that not only can we not satisfy everyone, we can't even avoid plentiful accusations of being abusive in our own right, from every angle. From a moderator perspective, this is a lose-lose situation. All we can hope for is to lose more generously, and while I'm willing to do that better than we currently are, I'm not sure yet how.
Add to that the international dimension—a high portion of the most provocative and/or bitter fights about these things are happening across national (and cultural) lines. The baselines in different countries/regions are in very different places about this stuff, and most people don't take that into account—they just assume they're talking to extremists from their own region, rather than moderates from further away. Those distinctions are easier to perceive in person than they are on the internet. In person, we all automatically regulate our responses to each other to avoid feeling quite so angered and hurt. On the internet, unfortunately for us all, the dynamics work exactly the other way, so many people end up feeling angry and hurt, and also feeling like the forum is being managed in a way that is unfair to their views and their group. I wrote more about that here, if anyone cares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
The "strongest plausible interpretation" is that the author believes LGBT issues should be talked about less. But the author is not simply talking about it less; they are using their platform to advocate that it be talked about less.
That is, quite literally in this instance, free speech being used to complain about trans people, or at the very least their visibility in society. With 92 upvotes as of the time of writing, it's arguable that this opinion is being "celebrated" by many members of this community. And many HN comments are obviously hyperbolic for effect; this one is no different.
Assuming good faith goes both ways.
I disagree. I think the strongest plausable interpretation is that the author believes that the specific LGBT issues getting the most airtime are less important and more trite and divisive than things that are being largely ignored. That the issues themselves are not the focus, but the goal of making corporations more powerful and wrist-slapping individuals for the most mundane slights.
The way I read it has little to do with the issues themselves, but rather that the extreme focus on identity is a powerful tool for keeping the common people fighting with each other while wealth inequality very quietly gets much more and more extreme.
Personally, I am queer and I would like LGBT issues talked about less. They should get some focus for sure, but it's hard for me to see a constant flow of sexuality and gender permeating every facet of discussion and think it isn't excessive. I don't think that my queerness is more important than a lot of other issues, and I don't want my queerness used as a tool by the powerful to turn people against each other and amass even more power, unchecked.
In short, LGBT issues are important, but that does not justify every single pro-LGBT conclusion, talking point, or moralization, and it doesn't justify the amount of constant attention it gets.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
I’ve been involved with an arts-based non-profit for a long time. They do very specific type of older art. They produce it, exhibit it, encourage others to produce it, etc.
The art form is Eurocentric, with a political history that contains some small instances racism, and vast oceans of mainstream liberalism.
Every since BLM protests happened (the second time - in June 2020), they’ve been freaking out.
Suddenly they’re trying to hire as many “BIPOC” as possible, even though there aren’t many open slots.
They’re acknowledging every racial injustice under the heavens. They’re apologizing for existing (literally).
Most of all, they’re scared.
When I go to their exhibitions, every single person, is white. Occasionally a Black family will be there. Everyone in the crowd parts to allow them through. Everyone greets them - and only them.
I imagine this awkward veneration is one reason why so few Black families come.
Most of all, the leaders of this org are scared. Terrified. They don’t want to be considered “non-anti-racist.”
When speaking with others, the terror is palpable.
Edit: just to be clear this is an author specific type of performance art. Think a Bach symphony, a Wagner opera company, or a Shakespeare theater.
Identify what there is to be afraid of - it's the necessary step to moving forward.
There’s room to reinterpret the artist, but frankly interpreting this author as socially conscious has been done so many times it’s boring.
It would be like putting on a feminist production of Antigone, or a pacifist recitation of the Iliad, or an anti-racist production of Othello - not only “already done” but probably what the author intended.
The folks running the show have been avoiding actual “woke” (so hate the phrase) art for exactly this reason - already done 1000 time - and the new era demands new efforts!
Instead it’s hiring and outreach that’s gone bonkers.
Regarding communication- it isn’t that people have stopped talking. They’ve stopped listening.
Realistically, the donors are in charge. They’re the only ones listened to.
And currently the powers that be are trying very hard to find new “anti-racist” donors, preferably BIPOC donors.
I’m not sure what anyone can do about that. Other than stop donating.
What do you mean when you talk about doing an exchange with other galleries?
>What do you mean when you talk about doing an exchange with other galleries
You've been really clear at outlining some of the concerns of the artists and the economic concerns. It would be interesting to take those concerns and questions and ask for feedback from others in the community who are underrepresented. Perhaps an informal gathering of some other people in the field in the form of a structured symposium. Or just a sit-down.
One of the world's worst offenders of pushing a euro-centric history recently went full frontal and acknowledged their history (the Rijksmuseum,https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/past/slav...). Might be helpful also to seek out similar situations and how they are working through it.
Do these actually exist in their local environment or are people just afraid because of what's going on over the media networks? Forgive me, as I'm outside of where you are and I often see people being afraid of things that aren't often there.
Not sure where there fear is from. Part of it is simply not wanting to be racist, but not knowing what racism means (as a consensus definition).
The author mentioned going from most left wing to right wing without changing opinions. That’s what’s going on here … the definition of “racist” is vague so it’s better to move as far to the left as possible.
I think it’s the uncertainty over what is acceptable that’s causing fear.
Scared of criticism. Why shouldn't they be? They've created an exclusively white environment, possibly subsidized by public funds.
A lot of people in the US grew up in sundown towns, but think that the reason that there are no black people where they live is because black people didn't want to live there. They see racism how a fish sees water.
They should be relieved that it's almost over. They were victims of media trying to get the anti-Trump clicks while also being anti-Sanders, leaving them with Russian conspiracy theories (are you spreading them?) and talk about race and gender (are you a bigot and don't know it?). It'll be over once Trump fully eclipses along with public anxiety about helping him, and they'll only have had to deal with one black family.
My policy is to refuse to give my gender or race. If everybody did this, high frequencies of "other" or "unknown" could be spun any way they want to people looking at statistics. If they aren't satisfied with this, they have to go on record clarifying exactly how they define race - which seems difficult since they're also the people who claim it's not a real concept.
It makes HR emails sound more subservient I think.
HR departments are famed for their sense of humour so I’m sure they’d be fine with it.
I expect it's probably way more appropriate in most contexts to directly ask a person what their preferred pronouns are than to ask what their gender identity is; the pronouns are what you actually need and this way you're finding them out with certainty rather than trying to guess based on some internal gender->pronoun mapping table.
It’s also a form of control in redefining the obvious. You want to just live your life? Nope, sorry, you need to consciously be aware of my preferred pronouns at all times. It’s a very narcissistic and attention seeking thing too.
Is it really an imposition, when your profession includes declaring what OS you're using so you can create usable bug reports, to declare your pronouns on some form somewhere?
Except they aren't obvious 99% of the time. They aren't even "obvious" like 60% of the time. They aren't even "obvious 99% of the time" for cis-straight (non-LGBTQ) folks.
"Hi, Sam Shepard will be on the call with you today, and will be joined by Alex VanBeckran and Kegan Marton" -- are these folks hoping to be addressed as men, or women, or non-binary? There's no way to tell, and it's kind of disrespectful to be wrong.
> It’s also a form of control in redefining the obvious.
Form of control? What on earth? It's literally just a tiny amount of human dignity. It's basically no different than being asked to address someone as "Mr. / Ms. / Mrs. / Mx." from decades prior.
> Nope, sorry, you need to consciously be aware of my preferred pronouns at all times.
It takes literally almost no extra effort, you just file it along with their name (or phone number, or timezone, etc). If you are thinking that hard about it, your probably doing it wrong.
As another commenter pointed out, in a professional setting you would ideally address these people by their proper nouns (names) and not by their pronouns. And if you're addressing more than one person, it's the gender-neutral we/they/them anyways.
I'm actually struggling to think of a business scenario where using the proper pronoun would be more professional or polite than just using someone's given name.
It works at first to just always use names and theys, but the longer a conversation goes on, the more awkward little nooks and crannies you find where it sure would be convenient to have a third-person singular pronoun for referencing the thing the person just said as you expand on it or synthesizing between statements made by multiple other participants. Maybe each one individually has a solution, but the cumulative effect of these small hitches and inefficiencies does build up.
Anyway, it's not impossible to make this feel natural, of course, and some people put in the work to master it. But there's a reason To Kill A Mockingbird stands out as a book that almost completely conceals the gender of its narrator and main character until about halfway through the story.
They/them is almost always appropriate english when the gender of the person being spoken of is unknown. They only change in thinking required is to let go of the assumption that you can determine someone's gender from looking at them or reading their name.
Yes, there's arguments both ways that broadcasting them may be virtue-signalling, but I don't think it ever is to ask someone what theirs are, especially on something like a form.
This was at one point a controversial topic. Conservatives objected to the new construct of neutral meaning "Ms" and feminists objected to "Miss" and "Mrs" because they indicated marital status. The argument being that viewing a woman's name with those titles was reducing her to an object who's worth was determined by if she was available or not to men.
edit: Not sure why this thread has gone deep into a discussion about pronouns. I don't identify as any gender and welcome any pronouns to refer to me. My humanity is the only classifier I accept. Think of my pronouns as a `void *`
Fuck that shit
If they can have custom pronouns, why can’t we?
(The answer is because it would immediately undermine the “cause” by shedding light on just how silly but also how 1984-esque the concept is.)
I would rather not give out pronouns and don’t really care how people refer to me though “they” in forums when my username is my real name does come off as a bit strange… though again, this is a trivial annoyance.
It all adds up. You can attempt to minimize it all you want but it’s like the person who nitpicks everything: “can I have 3 ice cubes? Oh when you make my sandwich can you go light on the salt? Hey I know this is your house but could you turn that music down a bit? Boy it’s cold in here… you should turn up the heat! Wow you take these vitamins? You should be taking these instead! Oh hey I know I’m obviously a girl but can you refer to me as they? I want you to have to think hard before you use my pronouns and make sure you remember each person’s custom pronouns. Wait, why are these little trivial comments bothering you? It’s not some massive festering grievance. Just deal with it it’s no big deal, it’s common decency to adhere to all of my requests. :)”
Pronoun-memers tend to claim they are more sensitive to feelings. Therefore they should be sensitive to most of the world’s feelings of general annoyance around the current pronoun meme.
"Virtue" means " Moral excellence and righteousness; goodness."
"Signaling" means "An indicator, such as a gesture or colored light, that serves as a means of communication."
So, basically if I'm morally excellent and I communicate that to you, that's a bad thing? Why is that? Is it because it makes you feel bad?
Same question about "woke". Like, "not asleep"? How is that bad?
I just feel like these terms are thoughtlessly bandied about. They're never really defined. They actually don't sound bad, but they're used in a pejorative context. It's just really strange.
Pronouns are just another step in this sequence, but it's more divisive, since it comes with a tiny little power over other employees - occupying a slightly larger slot in their attention by having them remember them. All while the wage/home price ratio keeps plummeting, and retirement at any reasonable age has gone completely off the radar.
These problems affect ALL of us, regardless of our race, gender, sexual preferences, etc. They are not divisive at all, but they are harmful to the corporate profits. So the HR and the media are doing their best to bump made-up divisive issues to the top of our priorities, so we won't notice how we are being screwed.
If you actually have a great home, friends, hobbies, and are generally happy about your life, someone using the wrong pronoun or giving you a weird look shouldn't bother you more than an unexpected rainy day. The problem is that most people that are vocal about pronouns are actually deeply unhappy, and the HR has sold them the bullshit pill that devoting your life to correcting others will somehow make you happier.
Or you could agree to disagree on pronouns, and agree to agree on pursuit of financial independence like in the good old times. Easy common goal. After all, you don't care if your colleague likes heavy metal while you love rock, as long as they can reliably answer questions that would otherwise take you days to research.
I'd argue it's the person refusing to refer to someone how they'd prefer to be referred to as being unprofessional. It's odd you use foreign names as an analogy, when refusing to pronounce someone's name correctly would probably get you a call from HR.
Blasphemy! Madness!
Heavy metal all the way, duh!
In lieu of this, and because I don't really care what pronoun is used for me, I sometimes just put "any" if it's an option to denote that I don't care.
People who hem and haw about getting pronouns wrong blow my mind of how weird this has all become
In the current climate, people want to get it right for other people because either they don't want to be an asshole, they believe it's important, they're afraid of being called out, or some combination thereof.
If you actually don't care, the easiest thing to do is just advertise that you don't care so people don't have to wonder. If you actually do care, but about how you shouldn't have to care and are trying to make a point about that, well that's something different, isn't it?
What's being asked of you is a common courtesy. Anyone that refuses this courtesy that takes so little when specifically asked for it is taking actions that speak for themselves.
You're being asked something as simple as "how do you prefer to be addressed" and you've scoured the area for all the loose dust and detritus you can find to make yourself a mountain to die on. Is it really worth it? Perhaps there are other aspects to recent culture shift that are slightly less defensible that are better targets?
I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.
One place where the "pronouns in the signature" can be helpful is if your name is foreign. I work with a group of international folks and if I haven't met the person, I don't always know if a person's name is a male or female name. So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.
For me? No. I imagine that someone that might deal with that 10 times a day or more might feel a bit different about it, and be tired of being in the situation of either correcting people or just letting it go because it's too tiring to deal with. I mean, I used to get that way because of my first name which has an uncommon spelling, and just correcting people writing it down for me (because otherwise I always have to worry if they search digitally where they recorded it whether their system is smart enough to do levenshtein distance or something similar to find it). I imagine it's much worse when it's something you might really care about, like gender identity, or even just people that get mistaken for the other gender often.
I'd like to think that everyone deserves the benefit of a doubt and one or more times being corrected, but some people are worse at remembering than others, and I don't see a problem with people putting preferences down, or people being asked for their own preference, especially when they think it's such an obvious thing to see.
> I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.
I mean, so do I, but if Jim has corrected me once already or has registered a preference that I've seen, I should probably address them as they'd prefer, right? Anything else is just being an asshole, IMO.
> So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.
They/them went out of favor a while back in English for gender neutral communication, which I think is weird, because it's super useful. I remember an English teacher in college telling me not to use it, because it was less direct and impactful. I always disagreed. I just default to you/they/them whenever I don't know specifically. It doesn't seem to cause problems, from what I can see. If someone asked me to use something else for them, I would try to remember to do so as a courtesy to them.
I agree (but honestly, if the preference is for something like "zhe" I will be rolling my eyes a bit).
> They/them went out of favor a while back
I really don't like the singular use of "they" as it was drummed into my head in 12 grades of English classes that it was wrong, and now it's a mental speedbump whenever I see it in writing.
Yeah, that's the sad thing. At some point we decided that gender neutral pronouns were less favorable, and then taught generations of people not to use them, a couple hundred years before a big cultural mixup where it would have been very useful to have. I was lucky enough to always feel it was appropriate and that the recommendations to not use it were shortsighted. This came about when there was a shift towards people saying we should use "she" instead of "he" for generically referring to a person, but that just seemed silly to me, why would we shift from incorrectly addressing roughtly 50% of the population in writing to incorrectly addressing the other roughly 50% of people, when we could just use "they" and do away with that specific pronoun problem in an accurate and even handed way?
However, it’s absolutely wrong when used as a definite personal pronoun, as it introduces new, irresolvable ambiguity where none existed before; e.g.
I just heard Tom and Harry are getting a new puppy; I just ran into them while they were walking their dog.
If you do not allow for singular definitive “they”, the meaning is clear.
If you do allow for singular definitive “they”, whose dog is it, and who did you run into — Tom, Harry, or both Tom and Harry?
The problem with “personal pronouns” is that they aren’t personal in the first place — pronouns exist exist solely for the benefit of the speaker and the listener, not the subject.
They allow for two people in a conversation to refer back to an antecedent succinctly and unambiguously. That’s all. If they can’t do that anymore, they’re just extra noise.
The type of people concerned with being addressed by the "correct" pronouns will list them without being asked, believe me. And for the other 99.9% of people, it's pretty obvious what to use.
I don't feel the need to put the pronouns as I don't care about it and find it toxic that it is being peer pressured uppon me.
I also support anyone who wants to put their pronouns in the signature or whatever. If it is something important to them then I'll respect their choice, even if they go with something silly like Xor/Xir.
No. I just want to be a human being. If you wonder about my pronouns, ask and I'll happily answer. If you get them wrong I'll happily correct you.
If you're an ass to me I'll report you to HR, but putting my pronouns at the bottom of my email isn't going to make you any less of an ass.
Like you, I also wish that pronouns weren't a big thing, but the truth is that right now society has shifted a bit to the point that it is, so rather than upset people over something I really don't care about, I just try to address people how they prefer to be addressed, while noting I have no preference and don't care if you get it wrong.
I was confused once when a doctor gave me the direction "follow him" and there was no male around. A definitely female nurse had just walked out, and that's who I was supposed to follow.
Nothing strange was going on; this happened in China. Chinese doesn't have gender distinctions in pronouns (except in the spelling...), and Chinese speakers aren't able to make the distinction consistently in extemporaneous speech.
The default is 'he', though, so I guess you're still safe from being called 'she'.
When conversing with you, your gendered pronouns aren't used. There is no gendered version of "you".
Even here in America, if you get an email from "Taylor Something" and their intranet picture is a houseplant how do you respond?
It’s only if you’re referring to them to a third person that you’ll need them.
You should still be able to refer to them with without explicitly using any pronouns even then.
It’s not. Questions about race or origin are allowed in France with some conditions; it’s a common misconception that they are prohibited. For example, it’s fine to ask which race you feel you belong to, or any similar subjective question [1, p.70].
[1]: https://www.cnil.fr/sites/default/files/atoms/files/ddd_gui_...
http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm
This reminds me of "Seeing like a State" by James C Scott: attempts to simplify the world to allow generalizations about it always lose valuable detail.
I once told a friend from west India to put “Aryan” down for race, but then stopped him and apologized after I realized that was mean-funny, not funny-funny.
I was really an asshole in my 20s.
Or is that a symptom of the real issue, which is something else?
And if it is something else, is there a better thing to track?
There's a chicken and egg thing, and media can be a part of addressing the root cause. To me it seems logical that a young black woman who sees a black female CEO interviewed on TV is more likely to become a CEO herself.
Beware logic in this case. A lot of claims in social sciences seem logical, but either aren't proven at all or the alleged proof fails to replicate.
A similar logic was used to argue for banning violent video games or porn.
Lots of previously believed claims fail to replicate. One of those is "stereotype threat", which was basically taken for granted for decades and also looks logically plausible.
https://replicationindex.com/2017/04/07/hidden-figures-repli...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat
> Some researchers have suggested that stereotype threat should not be interpreted as a factor in real-life performance gaps, and have raised the possibility of publication bias. […] However, meta-analyses and systematic reviews have shown significant evidence for the effects of stereotype threat, though the phenomenon defies over-simplistic characterization.
A straw man if there ever was one. Insofar as anyone even says something like "race isn't real", the claim isn't that the concept doesn't exist. What would that even mean? The claim is that it isn't biologically grounded, or that it's socially constructed or some such.
Observe and it seems to be a real phenomenon and not just an invented opponent.
In these contexts, "race" is a stand-in for social segregation phenomena and not the Oxford dictionary defintion.
By not identifying the distribution of various discriminated-against groups, they are rendered invisible, or nonexistant when it comes to policy making. THis is fine if you are in the majority, because that is the de facto policy making consideration, but not so good if you are not represented.
Dismissing this as "spinning statistics" is a very privileged viewpoint, because it means you aren't affected by the statistics so why should you care?
In that case, either you revert to the "one drop rule" of the Old South and start classifying anyone with any non-white ancestor as a minority, or run into untenable contradictions.
Another way to look at it is there currently exists very clear discrimination practices based other vectors (income, geography, history). System racism is intersectional.
Arguing that it is "all or nothing" is another tactic to erase the existence of discrimination. This fallacy is often deployed intentionally.
It's not a majority/minority concern. The concern is whether people are counting you in order to help you or hurt you. Jews aren't so vigorously opposed to Jew-counting because they're a majority.
The push to equality (and we are not there yet) requires change and that change can be ignored unless you track it.
I’m not sure I get you here. Of course race and gender have a huge impact on a person’s life, and thus on their ideas, experiences and ability to express themselves. White men virtually never experience racism or sexism, whereas women and/or Black people are reminded about their identity every day. All women have been bothered by men in the street and all Black people have heard numerous racist comments through their life. They are so used to it they don’t even talk about it; it’s just normal. White men can’t even imagine to what extend this goes because they never experience it. People who never experience discriminations often don’t see the problem or diminish it because it’s unfamiliar to them.
So I agree that minimizing discrimination shouldn't be done, but I disagree that this is something the racial or gender majority never experiences. I agree it is wrong to live in your own privilege and unfairly judge other people, but I think experience of both sides of the experience are more universal than you suggest.
In fact I think we should emphasize the extent of the problem on all axes, as a way to make people come to the moral realization that they should judge people as individuals and not by any other group trait - because they should remember how wrong it was when someone did it to them.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/12/opinion/colum...
That's not to say that CBC does no good journalism, but like the author of this article mentions they are a bit lacking in journalistic integrity sometimes.
https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/
So maybe the issue is not that CBC is too Liberal, but that every other publication is Conservative, so even a neutral publication will look far left by comparison.
Again, I don't consume enough CBC content to comment how their leanings are. I just know a bit about Canadian media atmosphere in general.
>https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/
But the source you cited seems to only include newspapers? Media companies tend to pander to their readers, and newspapers attracts... a certain type of readers. It's not surprising that most newspapers are conservative.
Our local outpost plays hideous CanCon music in the mornings and repeats the same low-information density press releases disguised as news. There is little that is combative or thought provoking and lot of self-congratulation.
I have been especially un-impressed with their lack of willingness to address the abuse of power by the RCMP at the Fairy Creek protests including the detention of one of their own videographers; their supine acceptance of the insane tar sands projects; their lack of aggression in pursuing the Trudeau administrations failure to address the horrendous mistreatment of autochthonous people people and communities.
These days I mostly read The Tyee¹ and listen to Canadaland²
1. https://thetyee.ca/ 2. https://www.canadaland.com/
That said, the author of the original article lost me when she trotted out the silly line about transgender Filipinos.
CBC is really woke though. You don't need to suffer them too much to notice that. Randomly turn on the radio while driving a few times, and you will see.
[1]: Which in its current form looks like a bland, toothless, uninspiring, "big tent" party. Roughly speaking, they only seem to win if you use irrelevant metrics like popular vote (https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/erin-otoole-conservatives-p...)
No party wins popular vote anymore (as in more than 50%). With FPTP, we are stuck with less-than ideal seats-to-votes correlation.
> No party wins popular vote anymore (as in more than 50%). With FPTP, we are stuck with less-than ideal seats-to-votes correlation.
As a side-note, I recently learned that the more unambiguous terms for this are "plurality" (more than all others) and "majority" (more than half). I think "popular vote" is also often used as a synonym for plurality, but I am not completely sure. Sorry, I am ESL :-)
I'm assuming what has happened is that, since MeToo/BLM/Trans issues and protests have become front and centre, people are talking about that more. But really, COVID is dominating the airways at the CBC too.
I can't speak for internal newsroom politics of course.
Another comment made the observation that the CBC is really the last news source that is left of centre-right with all of our other traditional media sources centre-right and slowly drifting right. Our most popular "left" newspaper, The Toronto Star, was usually taking centrist position with pro-business leanings, but it's been moving right too.
Full disclosure, I get a most of my news from the Economist or the CBC.
Personally, when I think of the recent content from CBC I remmeber reading more about climate change and reconcilation with our native history. Both of Which I think are fairly important to be informed of. But I do wish they do more investigative work.
The lens of victim/oppressor theory can apply to literally anything, and so with that tool for manufacturing the necessary ingredient of universal conflict, the news becomes anything they want it to be. It's stupid, but it works. Most of the people who use that technique even believe it, and the one rule they're taught is if you protect the narrative, the narrative protects you. I've heard reporters ask what all this concern about fake news was because they have all these objective facts, and it never landed for them that it's fake because the necessary conflict that drives the story was wholely fabricated by ideology.
I worked in print media as a freelancer just over a decade ago and knew a lot of other writers and editors, and even then CBC was seen as the partisan state organ. You have to remember that the mandate of the CBC is to create a federal narrative to hold a vast and sparsely populated country together with a coherent national identity. News is only one of its myriad projects, and it's not engaged in a mission of discovery.
What changed is milennials graduated from campuses that had been compromised by what is objectively a mass hysteria created by their professors - who themselves had previously graduated in the 90s during the first wave of what they called "political correctness," at the time, and who in turn were taught by radical boomer professors who had been indoctrinated with standard revolutionary playbooks, mesmerized by French postmodernists like Foucault and Baudrillard, and you can trace a lot of its intellectual roots back to things like the SCUM Manifesto, Weathermen, Black Panther Party, Situationists, and other cold war era soviet political projects.
No single thing happened so much as the state of the CBC is the effect of milennials being educated by two generations of carefully trained marxists to become a revolutionary corps of true believers. The rest of government is rotted through with that stuff as well. The center won't hold, and I really don't see the country intact in 15-20 years because the people running it are to weak and insincere to provide legitimacy.
CBC does lean liberal. There's idpol drama, but it predates her timeline. Honestly looks like she's manufacturing a story to push her book / substack / fishing for conservative media eyeballs, which is basically most of private Canadian media that still has money.
But being privy to too much CBC goss in my social circle, I just want to say she's full of shit simply because CBC has had drama/tensions over idpol for years. Well over 18 months ago. There is almost zero chance she's even in the realm of being "furthest left" in the newsroom hearing shit I've heard from before her first published article on her CBC profile. And given her body of work at CBC is consisted almost entirely of mediocre listicles, I can understand the desire to attention merchant over more profitable cultural wars.
By "these sorts of articles", I mean the ones that have claimed that "diversity efforts have gone too far this time." Regardless of your support or opposition to diversity, I think one would agree that these rapidly turn into unproductive, highly divisive comment sections that are out of place with the rest of HN.
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
https://twitter.com/TaraRHenley
This same article is also under active discussion on two subreddits:
https://old.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/rv9kvx/tara...
https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/rv9l8v/tara_henley_...
And, yes, there are people who get really hostile with these kinds of conversations (HN is a decent-sized community, so not surprising, and it's not always the same people in every discussion so I'd like to avoid any broad brush interpretation of this remark), but I think HN is one of the last places where it is possible, online, to have difficult discussions about challenging issues. That's an incredibly important, although possibly (originally) unintended, role.
On a personal note, I value hearing different perspectives, and often come away from HN discussions feeling like I've learned something, so I am against squelching it.
FWIW, I do think that HN has a problem with downvoting minority viewpoints. I'm just not sure that's what happened here.
You keep using this phrase and I think it's disingenuous at best. Sure, there are probably people here who genuinely don't want to be around people who don't look like themselves. But I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of people who you would describe as "anti-diversity" are really just sick of stuff like this, from the article.
> To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others.
Even if you dismiss that as hyperbole (which it is), a lot of people are wondering why so many of our politicians/institutions focus so much on dividing up the populace by race.
I draw a line connecting the prevalence and vigor of anti-diversity flame wars on HN and the lack of gender diversity on HN. The ecosystem tolerates a high baseline of hostility so long as you couch that hostility in ways which meet the letter of the guidelines.
I've often wished for an alternative to HN because of it. This place doesn't really match my punk-rock hacker ethos where the underdog and the excluded are celebrated.
I think, the way out is understanding that the current divisive ways the society is going are doomed, and that we all have a common problem to solve, and sweeping such discussions under the rug will only delay this outcome.
That is an absolutely wild series of logical leaps and generalizations, each sorely needing any kind of evidence or even intuitive explanation.
(if this were even the reality) that excluded those who didn't fit the perception of who deserved such independence or happiness
“Social democracy” seems to entail a creeping illiberalism, and I’m not sure what we admire was anything but a brief period after the start of the former but before the onset of the latter. Yet it also solved a real problem and, indeed, is the best currently-known solution to it.
Am I ever unhappy about that.
One small counterpoint: Employers enjoy a bully pulpit on these issues. Employees with legitimate concerns about their employers' stances / policies sometimes can't even discuss them without the risk of losing their livelihood.
This can create a situation where individuals perceive that "the whole world" is telling them they're wrong, and are bad people for being wrong in this way. HN's anonymous-yet-respectful forum can somewhat help with this.
If nothing else, it's encouraging to know that they're not alone, but rather in an environment where other dissenters are also silenced.
There are endless platforms that are better suited for these discussions: Gab, 4chan, and Ruqqus to name a few. "HN's anonymous-yet-respectful forum" is best preserved by not hosting these types of deeply hostile, alienating discussions.
If you know of another forum that has this quality, I'd be grateful for a link. There are large swathes of the Internet I'm ignorant about.
And for the record, Ruqqus was shut down [1], so it really doesn't even exist.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799199
My greater point is that communities that facilitate these types of conversations typically have less inviting, more hostile cultures. There's a spectrum of course, but you can see glimmers of the type of discourse found on sites like Gab in the comment sections of anti-diversity blogs on HN. I think that an HN which plays host to more discussions about perceived issues with diversity will alienate a lot of folks who aren't entrenched in those sorts of debates and self-select for the type of discourse associated with these so-called "covens of witches." It seems to me that there's no value in sliding down that side of the spectrum for a site that's largely meant not to play host to ideological battles.
Except maybe the founding story of the US—I’m not an expert—but that was literally several waves of “witches” (many of them profoundly illiberal) taking their ball and going elsewhere, and their genetic memory of the necessity of free discourse seems to have died out by the middle of the 20th century (and was arguably missing the point as to which discourse needs to be free for decades before that). Not a bad record overall, but we’ve run out of unsettled land to go elsewhere to.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
I mean, here in Soviet Russia politics can and will do you whether or not you do politics, and it is indeed tech people, who seem to be the most eager to pull the separate magisteria trick with “politics” and “interesting stuff I care about”, that have been getting hit by that fact more and more often in recent years. Humans gonna hume, human life is political, and “politics is dirty” is as damaging as it is self-fulfilling (maybe not immediately, but over a couple of generations...). If your corner of the world affords you the luxury of ignoring that, I can only look on with envy.
But to go from this to “political discourse belongs on HN” is a leap I’m not interested in making on defending. Whatever my opinion on that (I’m not sure) I don’t have the power to make or help it come true in any case, and idle bitching is only satisfying in very small amounts. Somewhat relatedly, I don’t feel that cultivating strong feelings about the state of a discussion website that is completely owned and maintained by a single investment company is likely to be good for my social health. It’s a good place, and it will continue to be until it suddenly isn’t, and there isn’t a single thing I can do about it. (Been there, done that.)
Getting back to my original point, my actual hope is that a good-enough witch filter could be built without mentioning object-level norms, solely on meta-level ones like “don’t shout down or shame people you disagree with”. Certainly the quality of moderately large political discussions on HN (which exist, whatever you or I think about them) seems to be pointing in that direction. (The experience of some other places, e.g. the SSC subreddit and comment section, seem to point to other possible perils of that approach that are not avoidable by changes local to a single venue.)
Seems that way. Parent explicitly wrote that it's only the articles that say "they've gone too far this time" that they find at fault. This means articles with the opposite view ("yay, more of those diversity efforts"), that touch on the same subject (and thus one would assume to be equaly divisive), are ok. I'd find it impartial and ok if they didn't wish either kind on HN, but only targeting one side is icky.
But even this framing (of articles like TFA as being anti-diversity) is wrong, if not disingenuous, to begin with.
As if TFA author is a seggregationist or wants less diversity (so agreeing makes you like that too), when diversity is not what the author complains about, but rather the inverse: lamenting the litany of the same facile rage-bait identity articles to the detriment of substantial reporting.
Actual reporting which would include substantial reporting on matters of opressed identity and lack of diversity, as opposed to e.g. gaslighting readers that Dave Chappele's special was met with uniform hostility when it was a huge success, or letting huge social issues be ignored, while covering inconsequential complains...
Oh - you mean the problem is white wage slaves might have less power to exclude and discriminate against non-white wage slaves.
There was no reference to wage slavery or even race in the comment you responded to.
More accurately, it's people flagging it and also manual nerfing by @dang
Software can indeed affect subthread ranking, and moderators do that too—but certainly not for pro- or anti-diversity (or any other $divisive-topic) reasons. We downweight top subthreads for reasons like this: (1) they're too generic rather than engaging with something specific in the article; (2) they're high-indignation/low-information; (3) they're meta; (4) they're offtopic in a predictable way*. What all 4 of those categories (and there are probably others) have in common is that they tend to both get heavily upvoted and to not be interesting in HN's sense of the word. Once they get heavily upvoted, they tend to hang out at the top of the page, accruing mass and choking out more curious conversation. We try to use moderation and (to some extent) software as countervailing mechanisms to these default tendencies, because we've learned over the years that this is one of the highest-leverage things we can do to make threads more interesting. But this has nothing whatever to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the points being made.
Edit: I'm guessing you were talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29785012, which indeed got downweighted in exactly this way, because it falls into categories #1, #3, and #4 above. But not into #2, at least, which is unusual and to your credit.
* Unpredictable whimsical offtopicness, by contrast, is often interesting and we try to give it a pass. Otherwise moderation would get too predictable in its own right. I often have to remind people about that.
Instead, the approach we take to transparency is to be willing to answer specific questions when people have them. It seems to work fairly well. Not everyone is satisfied with that, but most users are, and of the ones who aren't, a nontrivial portion wouldn't be satisfied with a complete moderation log either.
They very reliably rise to the front page because this issue is endemic in the tech industry and yet people are afraid to speak out in public.
This has always been the problem with HN's stance on "this isn't a forum for political debate" or whatever. It's a way of status-quo enforcement by selectively ignoring how political tech has become these days. It's also diminishing the role HN (used to?) play in conversations within the tech industry. If everyone should go to Reddit to discuss fundamental concerns with working in tech, then why wouldn't people just replace HN with an RSS feed.
I know it's not the main goal of this site but at the same time, the usual culture here makes it interesting to see how it unfolds.
I wonder if the drop of quality from those subject is because they get flagged fast.
Anyway, sometimes I wish there was a website of the same quality as HN but for politics.
(Sadly, the consequences of the Roberts Court gutting the act demonstrate that those enforcement provisions are still very much needed today.)
My big issue with it is that the word 'equity' has an extremely important financial meaning that many of the people wielding the new usage are unfamiliar with or don't know at all. There are lots of young people who don't have 'nu-equity' and are woefully ignorant of the overwhelming influence the accounting equation and cash flow valuation has on their lives. Teaching this new vague definition of 'equity' is going to divorce so many people from ever having productive conversations about wealth. Already, lots of people I follow in finance (white and nonwhite, male and female, immigrants and natural born) are dismissing this kind of language out-of-hand.
Or, perhaps I am wrong. Maybe this new usage of equity points, in fact, to exactly the same thing as the legacy financial definition. The activists want shares and they demand them now. I have not seen anything to support this identity, but maybe the meaning isn't too far off.
Well, if that doesn't get your blood boiling...
I actually don't think it is that out of place on HN, many the top posts on Hacker News are related to politics (Joe Biden vowing different direction, Brexit, even youtube-dl facing a DMCA are all politics)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I personally think it's rather one sided, but it's clearly important to many here.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22823991/activision-blizz...
I'm surprised to hear that. My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere. I probably got that from personal experience + news about Google (Damore), Facebook, etc.
But maybe in reality D&I has become commonplace in many U.S. companies, and I just started working with tech/SV companies as that happened.
Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies.
Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc.
It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc.
Is it? Keep in mind that the target hires for these companies are grads from serious CS programs. Are CS programs 12% blacks? Were they 15 years ago (when a now L5 graduated)?
It's like setting shop in Puerto Rico and favoring whites because, since Puerto Rico is part of the US and the US is ~55% white you should have that same proportion in your business.
The real question is, and that's an uncomfortable one, is why aren't we seeing enough minorities in serious CS programs.
On my team we have one Anglo American, one Cuban (me, and I consider myself white as my family is mostly Spanish, and I'm typically regarded as such by society), one Vietnamese, and one Indian. Are you really going to say that there's no diversity in this group because we lack representation from two specific continents? The fact that everyone is from different countries, thousands of miles apart isn't diversity enough? Unless "diversity" entirely a function the presence of people of African and South American descent, I fail to see how Google, Facebook, and my team are not diverse.
https://diversity.google/annual-report/representation/#metho...
It's just an artifact of hacks trying to take a culture's temperature without going outside. Tech adjacent is only notable for being full of people who will talk about it in professional areas online.
If someones circles weren't internet-heavy before Eternal iPhone September, their politics don't get associated with their circles. They're just nameless or might as well be nameless wrongthinkers on $social_media_platform and/or not posting their views to social media in the first place.
Actually, to me this shows that these discussions are really productive. Because through them we realize that perhaps we're working from different assumptions / data. That's a great stepping stone to understanding each others' views.
(Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your point.)
I think what you see on this site mostly is more of a moderate "hey can we chill out a little?" sort of response rather than an extremist alt right type of thing, though it may come across differently depending on how frustrated that person is. And yeah it can be frustrating to always feel like you are being lumped in with the group of oppressors and or bigots no matter what you do.
TL;DR I don't think most people are racist or evil.
Can you even do the types of strikes / walkouts that the tech workers do on these issues in the south and keep your jobs? Ie, the associates of an energy law firm in texas do a walkout over the lack of action by their firm on climate change?
But really it (identity politics) does touch us all in any workplace since HR in every organization aggressively enforces compliance.
Hopefully she will stay independent, and focus on constructive reporting rather than just reactionary complaining. We see a lot of this in politics, people with what could be good ideas just getting caught up in getting upset and creating outrage about the ridiculous things the other side had done. Better to try and shift the dialog entirely rather than just complain.
Luckily, the organization I'm currently involved with (the SRA), while hilariously disorganized, is firmly Left.
EDIT: but i guess for you guys it might be more single-payor healthcare and reasonable taxation in which case, yeah, some things haven't changed :)
Compare that to the US with a mandatory rehiring after taking unpaid maternity (only) leave of up to 12 weeks, a complex healthcare system which causes people to go into debt, expensive college costing tens of thousands a semester, 0 (yes zero) vacation time by law, etc.
(I should note that some states goes further than that, but it's very dependent on the state and the most liberal example might be California's generous 6-week paternity policy.)
Anyone advocating any of the economic policies from Sweden I described in the US would be described in the same breath as Bernie Sanders and Fidel Castro.
For example, Danish or Norwegian immigration rules would be a perfect fit for any R president, perhaps even too strict.
What you mention used to be a typical left-wing agenda, but is increasingly being utterly forgotten by the younger generations of left-wing politicians.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin
I'm sorry, but what?
Within the party, they've promoted universal basic income (marxisim), state healthcare, universal education, etc. It's almost completely authoritarian marxist.
They're far left of most of Europe in terms of social policy (LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, drugs, etc) and economic (complete universal education, health, payments, work, etc)
If that's center-left what is left, exactly?
The Democrat Party is only "far left" if you believe their wildest election rhetoric and don't judge them on their actions. To call them authoritarian marxist is ridiculous when they fail time and time again to reign in corporate power and are financially beholden to that same power.
No, it doesn't, at least if you are talking about general elections since the failure of Clinton's reforms in the 1990s. Since then, it's talked about moderate mitigations of the problem of massive gaps in the healthcare system, or, more recently, simply about not continuing dismantling past progress on that issue.
Marxism - attempt to remove classes from society
The Marxism is being implemented through high taxes and redistribution of wealth via services centrally administered via government.
That seems to meet the definition.
Yes, people who support these policies are authoritarian Marxists. I'm not disparaging it, it just is what it is.
The U.S. is authoritarian and largely Marxist.
> The idea that you'd have to be a Marxist to want to centralize health insurance to reduce costs so people don't go bankrupt paying for medical care is simply propaganda.
Not propaganda, it is by definition what it is. It's not really arguable. The propaganda are the opinions on whether or not it's good. There's a fair argument it's good to make centralized healthcare, there's a fair argument against.
They had nothing better to do than draw up lists of heretics and excommunicate them.
If I was rich and wanted to take over a local government, I would channel my efforts toward dividing people on everything except economic class. Yeah, you're both poor and live in squalor next to the train tracks, but you're different races! How could you possibly get along!
IMO, most of the culture was a distraction from what really matters. People are up in arms on TV over who can claim to be a woman, but meanwhile, the concentration of wealth and economic power and worse than even the guided age.
If the bottom 50% of the population (economically) united on JUST this topic, they would see massive change - better structured education, housing, health, etc.
Instead we get what I call "hand grenades" that distract and mean almost nothing - like another biological male smashing records in a female sport and wanting to keep the medals.
The problem with this line of thinking is that there's a pattern to which peoples' issues are considered mainstream (i.e. they affect "us all") and which group's issues are considered divisive and a "distraction". But if you're in a marginalized minority group, those "distractions" may be your biggest problems every day. "Not yet" is practically the same as "no" and some folks are tired of waiting, so if you want unity you've got to build it by acknowledging those problems and support those people. Otherwise "unity" always comes at the expense of the same people.
Perfect for manipulation, extremely potent as a union buster or to kill movements like occupy wallstreet.
I think part of the issue is no one agrees on what causes it. Status-quo left says not enough taxes and social spending. SQ right says immigration, geo-arbing, and taxes too high.
Imo we actually need to be talking about interest rate interventionism, but good luck getting people to care about cash flow valuation denominators.
People — of all backgrounds — only want a stable comfortable life where they can pursue their interests and goals.
Identity/race politics are just a distraction to keep the low/middle class fighting amongst themselves while the upper classes rake in unprecedented amounts of wealth.
I believe that individuals are complex and unique and deserve to be treated as individuals instead of a member of an identity group.
I fear the day when I have to take a side in the identity/race war. In the past 2 years I have noticed that identity/race politics have entered my workplace. Luckily I haven’t had to take a side, but the day I am forced to utter a political incantation is the day I quit my job.
Almost by definition, this means the left is always trying many things (always need the next new thing) and the right is consolidating on what they perceive to be the best of the tried and true.
That being said it isn't a good look to simplify these perspectives as "the left" and "the right" as people do not really act within the confines of those labels.
The right in America understands the left quite well, but many on the left think they're trying "new" things leading to progress while the right wants to keep things the same. This is the understanding of a child and why we have political conflict in the U.S.
The most conservative stalwarts that want things to remain the same in America are government, finance, tech, media, academia and education. The cultural institutions that the left built in the 60s are the ones failing and the ones they want to conserve.
I question your assertion that you are "leftist" when you describe progressive thought in dismissive, inflammatory, right-wing terms.
I always thought the American left would really endure / have the advantage long term because of what seemed like a healthier exchange of ideas (free speech support etc).
That has changed it feels like a bit. If you don't support the cause de jour (abolish ice / defund the police / violence at protests) or other orthodoxy there really isn't a place for you.
And despite the talk of love and acceptance, the left really seems to be driven by hate and outrage now more than I remember plus a very healthy dose of hypocrisy. Ie, defund police, unless a poor person shoes up on my doorstep - then I'm calling!
AOC jetting off to florida in the midst of a massive surge in NY? The irony (she made fun of others jetting off during crisis, and florida is the anti-NY in terms of COVID approach). Newsome and his lobbyist dinner unmasked inside while ordering lockdowns? It's annoying to have such harsh rhetoric from leaders (ie, they promised to destroy any doctor who gave vaccine to anyone but the anointed few) but then relatively unprincipled action by them (they go out and party, dine, get vaccines for themselves).
I'm hoping the next generation has a good take on this.
Sounds like you're talking yourself into giving Nazis a "fair shake". Why would you do that?
Is the claim that the left is being fascist or the right is? Ie, who bum rushes someone off the stage these days - is that a left wing thing or right wing or both?
Is this claim meant to undermine my claim around the extremism now in the left and right?
I believe the current generation has a good take on this: when your identity becomes enmeshed in a political religion, the creation of differences is mandatory to support your vision.
This necessity of finding a cause or something to believe in—the need for baddies and an existential battle of good vs evil—will exist in perpetuity on the left. If there are no baddies, they must be created.
The origin of "the left" in America is a road through the Darwinian origins of Progressivism which, along with its gross support of racial anthropology, believed in a better class of men to administer a society they believed incompetent. It then moved down the meandering corridor of postmodern Marxism in academia which took as an article of faith that dishonesty was required for social change. We're now at the weapons-grade, enriched version of that belief with Wokeness where the adherents privately believe they are better people, qualified to manage society's past ills but then publicly disown the idea when confronted.
Unless the cultural left in America wants to disown over a century of believing they are superior, the orthodoxy is here to stay. There is no difference between Wilsonian progressives and the modern day woke other than transparency and visibility into the worldview.
I would argue this motivates a fair bit of the hard right too. Think of the folks fighting the "murder" of children, they come up with baddies (abortion doctors), take the law into their own hands (bombings etc). Same thing with the "stolen election". I'm not speaking about the merits of either of these issues, just that they serve to drive a similar situation on right.
This has been Christian doctrine for 2000 years: they didn't "come up with it." It's in the Didache, which is a first century document and puts abortion in the same category as pedophilia.
In contrast, there will never be a point where the left stops finding new niche epithets and specialized victims/oppressors because the Hegelian worldview requires it.
A mere 10 years ago, the idea of TERFs or people oppressing others because they didn't include pronouns would be unthinkable. Once that bridge is crossed, more bridges will inevitably need to be created. We live in a world where the left thinks thousands of unarmed black men are killed every year, when the number in 2019 was... 14 [1]
This same worldview thinks that there's a mass of white supremacists seeking to take over the country, and yet, where is the mass number of crimes that we hear about? If they were there, don't you think we'd hear about specific cases on the news, given that literally half of all unarmed black men killed by police made national news?
[1] https://www.manhattan-institute.org/police-black-killings-ho...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism (quote below)
In terms of numbers, about 8% of the US population is.. left. 25% is traditional conservative. And the other 67% is regular folks who in fact agree on most policy questions
From Wikipedia:
> Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), democracy, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and a market economy
Civilization predates liberalism by about 7,000 years.
This creates the false drama. Instead, what the US has is two liberal parties, one trying to also appeal to a base of evangelical whites and the other trying to appeal to people who aren't white. Both are trying to pass the same liberal policies, policies that I hope you aren't trying to associate with some 67% silent majority. 67% of people aren't against antitrust enforcement or free health care.
Yes both parties have a bizarre set of priorities, conveniently avoiding the really important questions (like the two you raise)
as a regular reader of CBC, this is the line here that resonates the most with me. If CBC was a left-wing organization advocating for tearing down the structures of power and building a more equitable society, their focus on whatever microagression is currently trending would seem a lot more honest. but their bias is overwhelmingly in favour of the governments and corporations who have built the status quo, so their articles decrying social inequities ring pretty hollow.
It makes the term kind of useless, wouldn't you think? It's a placeholder term for whatever you don't like.
And it is far from useless. IMO it accurately labels people who are either: 1. Taking liberal talking points to extremes for the sole purpose of attention seeking or 2. Naive, coming of age youth bumping against reality for the first time in their lives and use the distraction of politics and remote injustices to avoid confronting the "hard work" which will be required to thrive in the adult world.
I try to be charitable in my assumptions, but even then, it's hard to argue that it's safe to criticize any DIE or "woke" initiative. There always seems to be some risk in being fired/blacklisted or otherwise attacked for even modest criticism of the DIE movement.
I'm not convinced of those arguments. However, assuming I'm being charitable (which I will try to be to my utmost) and take these to be true, it's quite possible the right is correct when it comes to the worst excesses of "wokeism". Nothing about "they pick extreme examples" or "they foment a sense of grievances" means they are incorrect. Even if the problem is overstated, I still see it as a problem.
It is not "a placeholder term for whatever you don't like", not in any meaningful sense.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
[2]: [Why Wokeism Will Rule the World](https://archive.fo/OaowM)
On the Internet side:
I enthusiastically recommend the daily "Monocle 24" news podcast. It is very well done and regardless of what you think of Monocle magazine I would suggest that if you consumed just one world news show it should be this one.
I’m glad people are starting to realize that participating in culture wars, regardless of the side, is supporting American cultural dominance.
I say this as a fairly jingoistic American, who feels American influence does much more good than harm.
Not an accident, I believe. Occupy Wall Street made the billionaires and Wall Street take notice. As a consequence, they probably decided people need to be busy with something else, just in case, so they don't get any more funny ideas. Identity politics is a great one to divide people, fan anger, get more clicks and views, and at the same time get them uninterested what the billionaires and Wall Street firms are doing.