Arbitrary labels

[Perfect Infinitive Exitus]

I don't want to be labeled with <label i don't want to be labeled with> and i don't think anyone wants to, but people do it, why?

When is this practice of "shoving people into a box" of their perception valid?

What if they don't agree with how you label them?

Do labels matter?

Please tell me, I am fundamentally against labels.

[eclipse]

Because it's easier to say "apple" than "that fruit with a firm texture, red skin, white flesh, with seeds in it".

Applies to people, too.

Edited June 2, 2020 by eclipse

[Shoblongoo]

Labels:  Good
Arbitrary Labels: Bad 

("arbitrary" being the bad part; not "label")
______

Labels without arbitrariness are just descriptions. 

 

[eclipse]

8 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

Labels:  Good
Arbitrary Labels: Bad 

("arbitrary" being the bad part; not "label")
______

Labels without arbitrariness are just descriptions. 

 

The topic title and text say two different things.

[Hecatia]

What kind of arbitrary labels? Something more specific?

Edited June 2, 2020 by 1% Critical Hit
oops

[Karimlan]

If you want to tax your brain in distinguishing every single phenomenon and every single stimulus, be my guest. You will find the proposition fundamentally impossible, and you'll get tension headaches for your effort. The point of you taking this discussion to levels discussed only in the realm of learning and cognitive psychology is obscure to the rest of the forum regulars and bystanders alike, and I am being very kind with my words right now. 

You are presenting an argument (posited as a question) that is so disingenuous, it isn't even funny.

[Excellen Browning]

This line of reasoning is usually employed by racists and alt righters who don't want to be called racist scum. Not sure if that's you, but considering your posting so far I'm not holding out hope.

The problem is that the problem you have with it is banal. People who are in the army are soldiers, people who are driving their car are motorists, and people who think black people are inferior are racist. They're descriptors that are used to carry information in communication, and being mad about it is equivalent to being mad about air.

[Dr. C]

52 minutes ago, Excellen Browning said:

This line of reasoning is usually employed by racists and alt righters who don't want to be called racist scum. Not sure if that's you, but considering your posting so far I'm not holding out hope.

The problem is that the problem you have with it is banal. People who are in the army are soldiers, people who are driving their car are motorists, and people who think black people are inferior are racist. They're descriptors that are used to carry information in communication, and being mad about it is equivalent to being mad about air.

You know it’s funny you should bring up alt right because yes that label is very arbitrary.

Its a way to discredit a dissenting opinion by arbitrarily labeling it alt right.

I am a child of mixed racial heritage and yet if I were to make a  joke about Koreans, people would label me a racist white boy rather than accepting that maybe I am laughing about cultural quirks that I ACTUALLY grew up with.

You might claim that is an alt right opinion because I’m trying to justify racial humor and yet If I were fully Korean then no such racism would occur because I’d be the race in question.

Now it would be unfair to label you a PC femin-Nazi with anti mixed race racist tendencies due to a lack of evidence.

However, by your own admission, such a label would be okay as long as I had the arbitrary social standards to declare it.

Labels should be descriptive. Once they are used to arbitrarily quell freedom of speech and dissenting views, all it does is create a group think tank of ideologues that all look sound and act the same and oppress those who think differently.

The Soviets has labels they’d assign to dissenters to seize farmland, execute intellectual threats to political power, and ship off those who were “counter revolutionary” to the gulags.

The alt right label is a similar exercise in intellectual control.

[Lord Raven]

54 minutes ago, Dr. C said:

You know it’s funny you should bring up alt right because yes that label is very arbitrary.

Its a way to discredit a dissenting opinion by arbitrarily labeling it alt right.

I am a child of mixed racial heritage and yet if I were to make a  joke about Koreans, people would label me a racist white boy rather than accepting that maybe I am laughing about cultural quirks that I ACTUALLY grew up with.

You might claim that is an alt right opinion because I’m trying to justify racial humor and yet If I were fully Korean then no such racism would occur because I’d be the race in question.

Now it would be unfair to label you a PC femin-Nazi with anti mixed race racist tendencies due to a lack of evidence.

However, by your own admission, such a label would be okay as long as I had the arbitrary social standards to declare it.

Labels should be descriptive. Once they are used to arbitrarily quell freedom of speech and dissenting views, all it does is create a group think tank of ideologues that all look sound and act the same and oppress those who think differently.

The Soviets has labels they’d assign to dissenters to seize farmland, execute intellectual threats to political power, and ship off those who were “counter revolutionary” to the gulags.

The alt right label is a similar exercise in intellectual control.

Rhetoric of movements is about as important as the movement itself. You can recognize rhetorical things a movement preaches.

The alt-right are fairly covert in the way they operate, it's when they get blatant that they're easy to take down. But they tend to shroud it in long ass paragraphs like this and try to make arguments really really abstract and completely devoid of context, while saying statements like this:

Quote

I am a child of mixed racial heritage and yet if I were to make a  joke about Koreans, people would label me a racist white boy rather than accepting that maybe I am laughing about cultural quirks that I ACTUALLY grew up with.

to portray victimhood somehow.

I don't believe the government should use labels in any context, even to label "terrorist" groups, if that's what you're asking. I think people can though, and that's perfectly fine considering... well, I see two alt-right apologists in here already, and it's pretty fun to call them out. Especially as someone who grew up Muslim-American.

[Dr. C]

41 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

Rhetoric of movements is about as important as the movement itself. You can recognize rhetorical things a movement preaches.

The alt-right are fairly covert in the way they operate, it's when they get blatant that they're easy to take down. But they tend to shroud it in long ass paragraphs like this and try to make arguments really really abstract and completely devoid of context, while saying statements like this:

to portray victimhood somehow.

I don't believe the government should use labels in any context, even to label "terrorist" groups, if that's what you're asking. I think people can though, and that's perfectly fine considering... well, I see two alt-right apologists in here already, and it's pretty fun to call them out. Especially as someone who grew up Muslim-American.

Losing one’s temper should not be confused with someone being a closet conservative. 

I hate the word alt right because it means nothing and produces no meaningful new school of political thought. It’s sole function is censorship by those who insist on using it.

Theres far right like neo Nazi and there’s is libertarian but there is no “alt right” anymore than there is an alt left.

I can appreciate your viewpoint on the point of terrorists as a Muslim American certainly but you don’t know what it’s like to wish the world was more accepting of diversity as a mixed kid and The diversity you got told to suck up and accept is a counterfeit of what you were promised.

White privilege means nothing when educated white peoples set the standards of what is and isn’t racist.

I grew up my whole life fighting to be acknowledged as white in a sea of ignorant comments about the shape of my eyes and the size of my penis  and geographically ignorant questions of my being Chinese or Japanese and now that they FINALLY acknowledge that I’m white I have to be guilty of colonization and oppression now?

Excuse me?

my choices are 

“You’re not white and you’re not a minority except for when we want you to be white and shamed for it.”

or 

“You’re a mutt whose bloodline taints the master race. You filthy abomination!”

I am no fan of white supremacists but at least they have it figured out that I’m a damn minority!

thats the state of affairs of identity politics today.

The bad guys are more coherent (albeit far more hateful) than the supposed good guys (who also sound hateful but word it nicer)

Identity politics and the left and right have become a royal headache.

[eclipse]

5 minutes ago, Dr. C said:

I hate the word alt right because it means nothing and produces no meaningful new school of political thought. It’s sole function is censorship by those who insist on using it.

Reality disagrees.

[Lord Raven]

28 minutes ago, Dr. C said:

Losing one’s temper should not be confused with someone being a closet conservative. 

I hate the word alt right because it means nothing and produces no meaningful new school of political thought. It’s sole function is censorship by those who insist on using it.

Theres far right like neo Nazi and there’s is libertarian but there is no “alt right” anymore than there is an alt left.

this is A LOT to digest, but you are a funny ass guy. This a comedy routine?

Quote

I can appreciate your viewpoint on the point of terrorists as a Muslim American

Never said anything about terrorism. But I do hate the alt-right. Partially because they fucking exist.

Quote

certainly but you don’t know what it’s like to wish the world was more accepting of diversity as a mixed kid and The diversity you got told to suck up and accept is a counterfeit of what you were promised.

White privilege means nothing when educated white peoples set the standards of what is and isn’t racist.

I grew up my whole life fighting to be acknowledged as white in a sea of ignorant comments about the shape of my eyes and the size of my penis  and geographically ignorant questions of my being Chinese or Japanese and now that they FINALLY acknowledge that I’m white I have to be guilty of colonization and oppression now?

Dude you need better friends and you need to change what social media you use / follow and how.

I think everyone doesn't "know what it's like" to be of a different demographic. Hell, neither of us know what it's like to be a white rapist who got away with it because he was really good at swimming, that doesn't mean we can't find ways to describe the circumstances that led up to it.

Quote

White privilege means nothing when educated white peoples set the standards of what is and isn’t racist.

Luckily, there is no standard. It's a subject of academia. Academia is fairly diverse, and if white people are acknowledging that their privileges elevate them above the other races, that's pretty cool because it adds something to academia that we can all see.

That's not to say that every white person is super privileged, but white privilege is a label that relates to a very well-defined phenomena. That white people set our bureaucracy and therefore twist it to conserve the supremacy of white communities.

Quote

Excuse me?

my choices are 

“You’re not white and you’re not a minority except for when we want you to be white and shamed for it.”

or 

“You’re a mutt whose bloodline taints the master race. You filthy abomination!”

I am no fan of white supremacists but at least they have it figured out that I’m a damn minority!

thats the state of affairs of identity politics today.

The bad guys are more coherent (albeit far more hateful) than the supposed good guys (who also sound hateful but word it nicer)

Identity politics and the left and right have become a royal headache.

These are pretty strange statements. I too, can exaggerate two sides of a debate without acknowledging that there's multifaceted and multiple ways to view things. The fact that you believe there's "two sides" to a debate means you're not really ready to debate. I mean, I feel like I'm literally arguing against a strawperson.

tl;dr: the only two viewpoints are left and right now? Definitely not worth my time to discuss stuff in depth with someone who thinks that way.

Quote

I am no fan of white supremacists but at least they have it figured out that I’m a damn minority!

what the fuck???

[Tryhard]

1 hour ago, Dr. C said:

Losing one’s temper should not be confused with someone being a closet conservative. 

I hate the word alt right because it means nothing and produces no meaningful new school of political thought. It’s sole function is censorship by those who insist on using it.

Theres far right like neo Nazi and there’s is libertarian but there is no “alt right” anymore than there is an alt left.

It's more that they use that term of their own accord to describe themselves. Really, the term alt-right is very generous on the part of those who use it to describe themselves because they are implying they are the alternative to traditional conservatism. But those who actually call themselves that are more than a little into the whole ethno-nationalist theories indicative of the far-right throughout history.

I've not met anyone who describes themselves as alt-left. The ones who are left enough to be socialists or communists will just openly call themselves that.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Tryhard

[Dr. C]

59 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

this is A LOT to digest, but you are a funny ass guy. This a comedy routine?

Never said anything about terrorism. But I do hate the alt-right. Partially because they fucking exist.

Dude, you referenced terrorists and being raised as a Muslim American. It’s there in your post!

Dude you need better friends and you need to change what social media you use / follow and how.

I think everyone doesn't "know what it's like" to be of a different demographic. Hell, neither of us know what it's like to be a white rapist who got away with it because he was really good at swimming, that doesn't mean we can't find ways to describe the circumstances that led up to it.

Luckily, there is no standard. It's a subject of academia. Academia is fairly diverse, and if white people are acknowledging that their privileges elevate them above the other races, that's pretty cool because it adds something to academia that we can all see.

Put wealth power and influence in the hands of any rave and see what happens. Yes there happens to be more influential white people but it’s not like they’re making laws that benefit white people just RICH people. You conflate class with race.

That's not to say that every white person is super privileged, but white privilege is a label that relates to a very well-defined phenomena. That white people set our bureaucracy and therefore twist it to conserve the supremacy of white communities.

These are pretty strange statements. I too, can exaggerate two sides of a debate without acknowledging that there's multifaceted and multiple ways to view things. The fact that you believe there's "two sides" to a debate means you're not really ready to debate. I mean, I feel like I'm literally arguing against a strawperson.

tl;dr: the only two viewpoints are left and right now? Definitely not worth my time to discuss stuff in depth with someone who thinks that way.

I have a political science degree and I am able to grasp a multifaceted assessment of the political spectrum.

I’m describing my personal experiences to you not presenting a thesis and you in turn mock me which hilariously is the exact opposite of what you should be doing if you wanted to prove my personal experiences wrong. 

21 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

It's more that they use that term of their own accord to describe themselves. Really, the term alt-right is very generous on the part of those who use it to describe themselves because they are implying they are the alternative to traditional conservatism. But those who actually call themselves that are more than a little into the whole ethno-nationalist theories indicative of the far-right throughout history.

I've not met anyone who describes themselves as alt-left. The ones who are left enough to be socialists or communists will just openly call themselves that.

 

Thank you for your patience and taking the time to explain this to me. 

Much appreciated.

[Integrity]

i'll drop it in the thread, there's no reason to respond to dr. c, he's earned a serious discussion suspension for arguing out of good faith. peace.

[Lord Raven]

I was gonna say, I forgot I said terrorist because it was in a completely different sentence and context to the Muslim part. My man did a great job conflating Muslim with Terrorist.

 

ty ty

Edited June 3, 2020 by Lord Raven

[Rezzy]

9 hours ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

I don't want to be labeled with <label i don't want to be labeled with> and i don't think anyone wants to, but people do it, why?

When is this practice of "shoving people into a box" of their perception valid?

What if they don't agree with how you label them?

Do labels matter?

Please tell me, I am fundamentally against labels.

I tended not to reveal certain facets of myself, since it makes people assume I hold certain political views.  I don't like being lumped in with others.

[Integrity]

since that's over i do want to punch out an instance of a label being very real and being co-opted by shitheads to mean something else, and for once i'm not talking about how identifying as a gamer implies that you're a racist manchild.

 

i'm talking about two thousand and eleven. i'm talking about time magazine literally putting bronies on its top cool things of the year. less than a year later, the word brony would mean a basement dwelling white guy who makes a rainbow dash cum jar. i have intimate experience with this phenomenon. i was there.

 

we created something beautiful, us bronies. it became a byword for someone who was bucking the trends of toxic masculinity and becoming more than that, for, as sb nation would say, a moment in history. love the damn ponies. love your brother like a treasure - mlp:fim is all about found family. we shared remixes of winter wrap-up. we made our own songs. everything was amazing, for about six months. but for six glorious months, brony was a badge of pride. we were woke. we were better. we were healing.

 

then it began. the inevitable flurry of in no small part what we now call the alt-right, folks who missed the entire point of the show and just wanted to fuck the ponies for whatever reason, or folks who couldn't let go of their childhood and needed to believe that the show was Actually Targeted At Them. they started as pariahs that we accepted because hey, free speech, right? sure, they were weird, they weren't accepted by the mainstream community, but they were allowed to participate as long as they kept the whole i want to fuck pinkie pie thing under wraps and we agreed to not bring it up, tacitly. being a brony was all about being accepting, right? we should accept these guys. so we did.

 

it literally took less than six months. we let one in, he invited two, they invited two, and it played out like a virus contact infection schedule. suddenly, mlp:fim boards were dominated by these chodes. fallout: equestria released. cupcakes came out. now there's more shitty or straight up problematic bullshit in the mlp:fim fandom and ...what can we do? we opened the doors and said come in. they came in. they spread out. they took over. very rapidly, we original bronies became a minority. very rapidly, the term brony became a byword for a dude who wanted to fuck applejack. everything we built was crumbling, but the term hadn't changed.

 

the killer of it was that the brony name had prestige in the relevant circles, and the show meant to pander to what was perceived as its sick and cool adult male fans who were bucking toxic masculinity and learning lessons - but it was already gone. you can see it in the mlp:fim seasons 3+, where shit like derpy hooves (who was irrelevant before the takeover) get more cameos, alongside other random brony fandom faves like dj pony and dr whooves, because adult dudes interested in the show spend cash on stuff. at that point, though, it was already cornered by the shitheads. the alt-right, bluntly. the fandom started to bring up the earth pony - unicorn divide presented in a few episodes as an allegory for how the unicorns were white people and the earth ponies were black people, and see, it's correct that a superior race keeps an inferior one down as an agricultural and subservient faction, right? look how well it works? toss in a misunderstanding of episodes like when the bison rise up and you get this fucking magnificent fantasy racism borne of actual racism and here we are, today, where the word brony is a byword for someone who literally fills a jar with a rainbow dash figurine with his semen and lets it ferment.

 

labels are real. labels are powerful. disbelieve them if you like, but that's completely incorrect.  many of us rally to a label like a battle standard, and many battle standards get tainted and then shit happens.

[Rezzy]

@Integrity The transgender community has a stigma where people think you're mentally ill, a pervert, or just a generally bad person if you're trans.

[Shoblongoo]

1 hour ago, Rezzy said:

@Integrity The transgender community has a stigma where people think you're mentally ill, a pervert, or just a generally bad person if you're trans.

...I mean I think the problem there is stereotyping and assigning the label based on prejudice against the entire group rather than individual merit, rather than the labels themselves being problematic...

Because there's absolutely times when you want to label perverts as perverts, bad people as bad people, and mentally ill people as mentally ill.

Just--you know--people should be discerning in making sure that if you're giving someone that label, its because they as an individual are a sufficiently shitty person that they deserve it. And not because of unwarranted assumptions and group stigmas. 
_____

Perfect Example:  The drag queen Sherry Pie who was just disqualified from Ru Paul's Drag Race.

Sherry Pie is a pervert and a bad person.

I don't say that out of any animus towards drag queens. I say that because of the shit Sherry Pie got caught doing that earned the disqualification. 

Edited June 3, 2020 by Shoblongoo

[Integrity]

not to put words into rezzy's mouth since i'm definitely an outsider here (some of my best friends are trans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but i think what she meant is that the same mentality i described re: bronies pervades a lot of internet transgender communities. the idea being that as the Bad Bronies gained traction and the folks like me looked the other way, the word brony became an in-word to say you wanted to fuck those ponies, to other people identifying with the same label, and there needed to be specifications if not. rezzy's point, i think, is that there's an intrinsic assumption among trans folk in many communities that trans people (including themselves) are perverts, etc. this is painting a very large swath of people with a wide brush, obviously, and i might be completely off base. @Rezzy just in case i'm a dumb engineer.

 

assuming she meant it the way you're putting it your response is entirely unnecessary. yes, obviously, we enlightened folk ought to know that someone being subject to a stereotype doesn't remove them from accusations of that. i'm a bi guy and i'm horny all the time, which is 100% one of the massively harmful stereotypes that gets associated with the bi community, which is an entirely separate issue of outsider branding. pointing it out the way you did is just gratuitous.

[Shoblongoo]

I have no strong opinion one-way-or-another on the whole brony thing.

I’ll just say stereotyping people based on their likes and hobbies strikes me as less egregious than stereotyping people based on something like race, gender, or sexual orientation. 

And leave it at that.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Shoblongoo

[Rezzy]

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

not to put words into rezzy's mouth since i'm definitely an outsider here (some of my best friends are trans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but i think what she meant is that the same mentality i described re: bronies pervades a lot of internet transgender communities. the idea being that as the Bad Bronies gained traction and the folks like me looked the other way, the word brony became an in-word to say you wanted to fuck those ponies, to other people identifying with the same label, and there needed to be specifications if not. rezzy's point, i think, is that there's an intrinsic assumption among trans folk in many communities that trans people (including themselves) are perverts, etc. this is painting a very large swath of people with a wide brush, obviously, and i might be completely off base. @Rezzy just in case i'm a dumb engineer.

 

assuming she meant it the way you're putting it your response is entirely unnecessary. yes, obviously, we enlightened folk ought to know that someone being subject to a stereotype doesn't remove them from accusations of that. i'm a bi guy and i'm horny all the time, which is 100% one of the massively harmful stereotypes that gets associated with the bi community, which is an entirely separate issue of outsider branding. pointing it out the way you did is just gratuitous.

Close, while I certainly don't think trans people are necessarily perverts, mentally ill, or just bad people, we certainly have that stigma, and the aforementioned keep trying to sneak into the group, so to speak.  Pedos call themselves MAPs and keep trying to sneak into the LGBT umbrella despite a vast majority of us not wanting them there.  Because of stuff like that, people think trans women are just sneaking into bathrooms to try to spy on girls, and it's making life difficult for the rest of us.

[Tediz64]

I'm not particularly adding to this thread, I just wanted to thank you all. Reading some of these posts felt pretty eye opening.

They way it was formatted (worded might be a more appropriate word to use here maybe? Or articulated) gave me some new insight in to how some things work. I don't think I would have been able to observe this in person so hearing it described felt as if this is as close as I can get to understanding how some people feel or get treated in regards to labels being used.  How some people use them constructively and others use them to belittle an individual.  Its a lot of food for thought here. Well anyways, I just wanted to pop in and say that. 

@Shoblongoo can you give another example of how using certain labela or stereotypes is more or less earned as opposed to harmful and crossing into territory  of being bigoted? Or maybe link an event happening that shows it?

The only example I could think of right now that matches was that one guy who was angry that a salon wouldn't give him some kind of wax service because of his physiology despite him claiming he fit the description of who they cater to and then tried to sue. I heard other news surfaced he tried to host nude party with underage teenagers and that he/she specifically was a bad example to serve as a model for the community because that individual in particular was actually a bad person. Does that match what is being described in this thread? Using a label based off the individual's merit? I want grasp this concept better in my mind. So I need more examples.

Edited June 6, 2020 by Tediz64

[SullyMcGully]

People are complicated. A "label" is fine, but a generalization is not. You can say that anyone who views another race as inferior to their own is a racist. That would be accurate and honestly fine by my book. When you cross the line, though, is when you forget that underneath that label of racism is actually a complex group of people who have arrived at their conclusions for a variety of reasons. It is only by understanding those reasons that you can bring about true understanding and lasting change. 

So yes, there are people in this world who are "racists." But they aren't just racists. I feel like a great example of this is how it's considered offensive in formal writing to talk about "blacks" or "gays." Why? Because people are more than just their race or sexuality. So we say "black people" and "gay people" because that indicates that while we might be concerned mostly about that aspect of them for the time being, they are complex individuals who amount to far more than where they fall on a certain scale. Afford that kind of humanity and empathy to everyone, and you can have positive, understanding conversations with people who fall under labels you utterly despise. 

Peace and love, weebs.