The trouble began Friday when Green received a message from Tumblr user doctorswithoutboners accusing her of transphobia:Good job, Robespierre. That'll teach her to agree with you.
“Hi Laci. Why do you use the word ‘tranny’ in your video about Haters from 2009? … You really shouldn't be using that word as a cis girl and it's really disappointing for the people who look up to you.”
Green conceded her mistake and apologized (emphasis her own):
“Probably because I was 18 and ignorant. You are totally right and I sincerely apologize for my mistake. Before I educated myself about trans issues I had not the slightest inkling of how the word is used to dehumanize nor its place in the cycle of violence against transfolk. Now I have seen people hurt by it and seen it used as a nasty slur. Words have power, and ‘tranny’ is not a word for anybody but transfolk themselves to use because only they can reclaim it. If I knew that was in a video, it would have been long long ago removed. Consider it banished forever.”
Green took down the video, but some Tumblr users apparently didn’t find this adequate, also citing an apparent opinion Green once made about sexism and Islam.
The blogger tweeted she’d spent the morning on the phone with police and was becoming deeply concerned for her safety.
I'm not sure how 'sex-positive' I am, although I certainly approve of sex in its proper and well-reasoned bounds. I'm sure not going to be forced to adhere to anyone's special-snowflake vocabulary about how I allegedly have to refer to them. Her mistake was apparently caring what they thought enough to listen to them and show some sensitivity to their feelings. Once they smelled out that she could be intimidated, it was time to pile on.
Or, as John Wayne put it: "Never apologize. It's a sign of weakness."
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I think apologizing is fine. I make mistakes, hurt people, say things in anger, etc., and have no problem apologizing for that. To me that's not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.
If Green had simply said, "I used that word because at the time I didn't realize some people considered it a hateful slur. I'm sorry I hurt people by doing so," I think that would have been fine. (I'd have to see the offending video to know whether I think her taking it down was appropriate.)
Her mistake (besides courting the wrong kind of audience) was in conceding what you call "special snowflake vocabulary". I don't think her mistake was caring enough to listen and showing sensitivity; I think it was handing over to other people the right to decide how much sensitivity and what kind of sensitivity was enough. She pretty much said that she does not judge the correctness of her own behavior but allows others to do so.
(As a side note, Green is using her youth at the time - 18 - as a partial explanation. If I've understood correctly, she is now 21. Really? No wonder this all feels like a dorm squabble that escalated dangerously.)
The advice comes in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and probably has to be understood in context. John Wayne's character is the first to take -- indeed, to insist upon taking -- personal responsibility for errors happening under his command. That's true even though the plot sets us up with a much more clear and obvious explanation for the failure of his patrol, one he protests in writing. But he never tries to push the responsibility for the failure of his patrol on his superior because of that.
In that context, then, what he's really advising is not adopting a whining or wheedling tone in an attempt to avoid someone being upset about something you've done.
The blogger was apologizing for nothing. And death threats on the internet are just funny.
what he's really advising is not adopting a whining or wheedling tone in an attempt to avoid someone being upset about something you've done.
That I can get behind. Thanks for the context. Grim.
death threats on the internet are just funny.
"Funny" is not the word I would use but, yes, death threats strictly via Internet can be shrugged off. However the fact that those threatening her found her home address and took pictures of her apartment building means that the threats may be happening in virtual space but the thugs can find her in the real world. That's not funny at all.
So basically it's like how only blacks are allowed to say 'nigger'.
Yo nigga, my homie. But if you white or something, you can't say that because... only black people can retake that word back.
It makes no sense. Then again people's religions rarely do.
Sorry Elise, even if they found her address, please name me one person who's been killed by anybody threatening to kill them over the internet, where it wasn't already a domestic violence thing.
It is all bluster. And victimology.
It's not an area of specific interest of mine, but I know of something similar. Of course, the violence was done by the girls themselves; but "on-line" does not mean "harmless."
The problem with proving that to people (and I don't mean myself), is that it means someone has to die or be harmed.
So it's like martial arts. For someone to use it, someone has to die. The rest of the time, it's one big ideological debate.
After reading your link, let me clarify something. Humans don't consider people to be other humans, unless they go from abstract to real. Essentially, they need to care otherwise victims on a list is about as believable as abstract problems of non existent people.
So by proof of someone being harmed, I mean someone they care about and know, that they know is a real human, not some faceless, nameless, non entity on the internet fantasy land that they consider an abstract concept or Stalin's millions.
please name me one person who's been killed by anybody threatening to kill them over the internet
Not sucessfully, but does SWATing count?
I am that L.A. County prosecutor. And in this post, you’ll hear the hoax call that sent police to my house, pointing loaded guns at me.
Given the number of casualty lists I originally heard before Grim here started talking about this police issue of the American Regime, I wondered why the Left hadn't used it to conveniently call in teams at designated targets. Because random neighbors have already done so, since that's where SWAT gets a lot of their tips, given that they no longer gather intel via their own agents any more for some reason.
Breitbart's death was so convenient for some people.
Unfortunately for the kill team, the SWAT team that did the raid was doing a knock raid. So they didn't do the no knock version where they bust into the door .5 seconds after the knock, calling it a knock raid, and then happened to get the right/wrong house, see the target try to get a weapon to defend themselves against a home invasion and then execute the target.
That's more likely to happen in the no knock raids, rather than the full true knock raids.
The SWAT teams I love are the ones funded and trained by X, Y, Z organizations that think pets are a threat, so they execute the pets even though the denizens of the house are cuffed and on the ground or wall. Those guys, and the ones sent to kill deer being harbored at animal shelters, those are the teams that have been vetted. They should be put on the kill teams, cause they might actually get the job done.
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