Geek social fallacy corollaries

[yendi]

(Bringing out a comment I left on another post and expanding)

Beyond the original bunch of fallacies:

1. Being MUCH more willing to ostracize someone for "making trouble" - defined here as "things that could disrupt our parties" - than for raping or attacking someone within the community (as long as they don't disrupt a party when doing so). Obviously, these aren't people who are afflicted with GSF1, but they are ones who laser-focus their ostracism on people who are loud, or disruptive, or complain. If you do horrible things in private, but are happy and friendly in public (even if that's where you go to find people to do horrible things to), you don't get ostracized.

2. The notion that "our community is fracturing!" is more of a problem than "there's a predator in our community." This goes beyond GSF into outright "asshole" territory, imho. People who believe this way are living a childhood fantasy. Yes, it sucks when communities fracture, but ALL COMMUNITIES FRACTURE ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Life is not "Sex and the City," with your core four besties hanging out ever day, and in large open groups, people move in and out all the time. There are physical moves, there are petty arguments, there are philosophical debates that get out of hand, there are things that are interesting to some members and not others. And there are rapes, sexual assaults, and other horrific things (including people who defend rapists). The more people there are in a "community," the more change (both peaceful and calamitous) there will be.

3. Being flat-out unwilling to accept that someone you're romantically or sexually interested in might do wrong. Pretty self-explanatory, but especially in the sort of geeks who judge themselves based on romantic partnerships, this is a big issue. If you're interested in someone, what does it say about you if they're a predator? So clearly, there's a "misunderstanding," and maybe someone is "missing some of the facts," and your crush/fuckbuddy/partner isn't really a bad person. Or, you know, you're in fucking denial and would rather let your libido trump your empathy for a victim.

4. Redemption magically happens. "It's been a year or two, and surely he hasn't raped/assaulted anyone again, and can't we all just forgive him and move on now?" Has he actually done anything to warrant forgiveness? And by "done anything," I don't mean "offered to bartend for free at the next party." Has he acknowledged his wrongs? Sought counseling? Apologized? Anything? Or are you just tired of keeping someone out of your circle because it's work? Hint: It's probably the latter (or #3 above).

Comments

[greylistening.livejournal.com]

I've discussed #4 in the context of my religion, but I think it's a universal.

What I think of as reconciliation (what you're calling redemption, here) does not require your empathy or forgiveness alone. It also requires the other person to change. They must act, they must acknowledge their fault, they must seek to make amends in whatever way is possible.

But I think the most complicated and misunderstood thing is that other people (your community) can't forgive or redeem your attacker for you. Your community can't say, "I know ____ harmed you, but I/we forgive them, so it's ok now."

And so many times, in our communities, we really, really want to be able to do that.

[yendi]

*nod* That all makes a lot of sense. The desire from some members of the community to just "move on" gets privileged over the agency of the victim.

[ckd]

Regarding #3, a tweet of mine from last year:

Friend: listens to others, explains errors to you. Apologist: listens to you, "explains" "errors" to others. #knowthedifference

[yendi]

Very accurate!

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. A most useful post.

[spoothbrush.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure how to enunciate this, but in #2, framing "change" as "fracture" kind of implies a fundamental inability to handle change at all -- which goes right in with the "childhood fantasy" thing. It's not just that change is happening all the time -- it's that change isn't automatically negative. Conflict isn't automatically negative. (When it results in people showing their true colors, it might be considered more toward 'positive'.)

But some people see change and react... more or less like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TtGQnyPZ6g&feature=kp

[yendi]

You're welcome; I'm glad to hear it.

[yendi]

*nod* Garth is likely host to a bunch of the fallacies. I'm a little more tolerant of them in movies. :-)

[spoothbrush.livejournal.com]

At least in the movies, you can be relatively confident that it's an act. In real life...

I don't know. These days the more I encounter self-identified geeks and "geek chic" and "geek culture", the less geek-positive I get. In part because the entire scene seems to be fairly brittle and rife with a need for definition. This change in attitude has led to me being pretty much the opposite of me at 16 and I haven't spent enough time being introspective about it to figure out why.

[yendi]

Nick Mamatas wrote a good piece a couple of years ago calling for an end to "geek pride."

[spoothbrush.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything and I also keep encountering this qualification-policing that makes me just so over the entire thing, because I can enjoy the things I enjoy just fine without identifying as part of a community that will turn around and start questioning me for also enjoying other things that I enjoy, or hell, for thinking that the acting in Fellowship of the Ring was unintentionally comical and laughing so hard at that movie that I really shouldn't watch the rest.

Because really the whole "be proud to be geeky" thing is just a push by media companies to sell more merchandise.

(I'm joking there)
(mostly)