"Derailing," "Concern Trolling" and the Pessimism of Argument

So Zak S got banned from rpg.net and this made me think a lot of how people argue on the internet and  what the hell they think they're doing. You can read the full text of the ban here, but I'll focus on this excerpt:

The Numenera thread is by no means the only one, and the post I've chosen as an infraction is just an example: Insisting that this one monster is Definitely Sexist because it doesn't meet an arbitrary definition of sexism you came up with, asserting that anyone who disagrees has to produce scientific studies about elfgames (that work with your definition of sexism) which have been mysteriously absent from your sexism thread derailing posts up to and also beyond this point, waving around your G+ followers as an army of faceless posters who totally have your back on this, and passive-aggressively insinuating that people who disagree think all women are alike, are the real sexists and need to do their research. That is the kind of un-chill posting we are talking about here.

I'm not even going to discuss whether these descriptions are a correct summation of Zak's posts in the discussion. From what I can see, the posted guidelines about derailing at rpg.net are less narrow than the ones the mods seem to use. But because these standards are coming from moderators, who are supposed to provide ground rules for civil discourse, we might presume that their reasons are valid rules that govern any kind of argument, right?

In fact, the same assumption is not made in the apparent source for this decision, the internet literature on "derailing" and in particular this bit. The "Dummies' Guide to Derailing" critiques specific rhetorical moves by privileged group members. The same rhetorical moves, presumably, are OK when used by non-privileged group members. At least I can't imagine rape statistics that support a feminist point of view being criticized as "intellectualizing," and so on. I wonder if the derailing guide is presented in that sarcastic, "Screwtape Letters" mode because it would just be a little much to come right out and say "The more privilege you have on a demographic basis, the less you are allowed to use these rhetorical moves in discourse."

So back to RPG.net. If we are to take these as universal guidelines for what is acceptable then:

• Nobody should be able to use an "arbitrary standard of sexism that they came up with", implying that all allowable references to sexism at rpg.net should be annotated with a reference to a non-arbitrary definition of sexism and which other person is, acceptably, responsible for that. (They aren't.)
• Nobody should assert that someone who disagrees with them should come up with scientific proof, especially if their own posts have been previously lacking in scientific proof. (This means it is not allowable to challenge, for example, a claim that female cranial sizes make women less intelligent than men, by using the scientific evidence that speaks against it.) At the same time even if Zak had, as requested, produced scientific evidence that was lacking in his previous "thread derailing posts," that would have been disallowable as a form of thread derailing - intellectualizing - under the Dummies' Guide.
• These games are silly things not worthy of scientific study - "elfgames." (Then why take them and their representations so seriously?)

Oh, I can't go on, but you get the picture.  It's particularly choice to say in effect "We are waiting for the good people who make the points you want to make but in a nice way," as if that's never used to shut feminists up.

I actually think a lot of people are arguing in bad faith because they have a model of how people's minds change, that has been drummed into them by a society and educational system, but that is profoundly out of touch with reality. They will try at all costs to pretend that they are working from this model, when they are working from another, and people's minds actually change yet another way.

The standard model is like a nice high school debate. People state point and counterpoint, present evidence and examples pro and con, sum up their piece, and the most convincing side wins.

But the standard model only works if everyone accepts certain things as true, certain ways of knowing as reliable, certain values as worth pursuing. This is precisely not what happens with gender debates on the Internet. This is why so much rhetoric is devoted to labeling and name-calling. People sense, somehow, that they belong to one of two mutually intolerant tribes, who at the base of it believe very different things about how the world is set up.

And right you are to exclude people who are not on the same planet from your discussion. I'm not being sarcastic. This is a social fact. You can't have a meaningful discussion about what the best role-playing game is, and include everyone who believes roleplaying games are evil or pointless.

The name-calling, argument labeling, "passive-aggressive" and "shaming" and "Tipper" and "white knight" and "mansplaining" are all terms of emotional warfare to push and exclude and claim a safe space. "Concern trolling" is often a term used to claim an even narrower space - to exclude not just people who disagree with your ends, but also the people who agree with your ends but disagree with your preferred means to achieve them (see definition 4 in that link).

We fought that battle, we maintain this armed perimeter, so we can play ball on this field.

It's honest to admit that. It's not honest to pretend that anyone can come play ball, and then require them to play without the same kind of equipment available to the home team.

So this is pessimistic. I think most people who put their heart and soul into arguing on the internet (including, evidently, me) are hoping to actually change minds on fundamental issues. How does that really happen? I have a suspicion, and I might write on that next post.

Unsexy Matriarchies

I’ve been vacillating about whether to include feminist/intersectional gaming blogs like The Border House and Go Make Me A Sandwich in my blog roll. 

On the one hand, it’s important to keep up awareness of these issues.

On the other hands, a) most of their articles are about computer gaming, which is not my focus here; b) a lot of the content boils down to outrage at the latest example of dumb and obvious sexploitation in the industry, which is a bit like writing about Hooters and saying “Boy howdy does this place objectify women.”

I really appreciated, then, this recent post on Border House that breaks away from both molds. It’s a breakdown of how a lot of fantasy matriarchal societies are unrealistic reflections of patriarchal male fantasies, centering on that ever-popular Gygaxian invention, the Drow.

The Underdark, as cast by Rick James.

Zaewen's line of argument: a real society in which women hold the power wouldn’t have them dressing up all sexy in thongs and 1980’s pirate boots. Flaunting sexuality is soft power, on those occasions when it even constitutes power. 

Which then raises the question, what would a more realistic society dominated by women look like? I think the answer to that question falls one of two ways depending on how much you want to incorporate la difference ... the biological differences between men and women ... as a part of this hypothetical female power.

Star Trek: The Next Generation ... well, tried, and failed famously, to flip la difference in the episode Angel One. It presented a society where women were big matronly amazons, men were little twinks, and everyone had feathered hair. Of course the whole setup ended up collapsing like a house of cards when some real men showed up, so the episode ended up being more regressive than progressive. But the squicky feeling at seeing those little guys with bare chests and earcuffs was a pretty good sign you weren’t just being treated to another Sexy Matriarchy.

Canadian writer and artist  Dave Sim took another obvious tack when he created a feminist dystopia in the latter half of his decades-long Cerebus comic book. Instead of reversing the gradient of physical strength, he based supremacy in Cirinist society on women’s ability to bear children. We get a pretty credible, if caricatured, matriarchal society from this convert to Islam and admirer of Oscar Wilde who explicitly hates women with every shred of his being (except for those who in Sim’s estimation carry, instead of extinguish, the creative spark that he associates with men ... like, uh, Coco Chanel ... I can’t make this stuff up). Men who don’t submit to female authority and take part in family life are confined to the company of other such men and encouraged to drink their life away in bars. This of course has nothing, I mean everything, to do with Sim’s own personal history.

What these random examples show, perhaps, is that even the most imaginative writers prefer to see female reign as just as morally bad as male domination. And that stereotypes run deep. The Star Trek episode plays with the discomfort of reversed sex roles but eventually upholds the Federation perspective which turns out to be only as semi-enlightened as 1980’s America. Sim’s world only feels plausible because it’s built on such solid stereotypical bedrock, where women entrap men sexually into becoming dads while men oscillate between creative genius and drunken dissipation.

I hear Joanna Russ did a better job of this, so I really need to pick up The Female Man.

Confronting Gaming Sexism

A brief break from the reminiscences (concluding act 3 up next) to scratch a mental itch.

In case you don't think there's a problem.

These here two blogs are trying to make the same point about sexism and other systems of inequality among gaming and gamers via very different tactics.




1. The Border House

2. Gamers Are Embarrassing

I find it interesting that I resonate more with the second approach. Why?

Short answer: I go more for irony than earnestness, though over the years I've learned to write with both hands.

Long answer: I read The Border House as appealing to morality. The emotions that come through are outrage, anger, disgust. There's the care and the desire to be fair, to avoid harm.  When it's seen by the people whose behavior it's aimed at, that moral appeal in theory should produce guilt, through empathy with the people their ways have harmed.

(I also recognize that this may not be the primary function of the blog. Indeed, it says right up front who it's for - the people who are collectively harmed. For them, a moral appeal can energize and give clarity. But inevitably, that style of argument will be exposed to the outside world.)

The problem with this theory is that this kind of guilt response requires empathy. Which is in definite short supply on the internet. The moralizing earnestness they project is a weak attack against a well-fortified place, the caring position easily subverted by mockery. It's only a game. Get a life.

How do you hit someone without empathy? Make it about themselves. This is where the "embarrassment" emotion comes in. If anger is about morality, embarrassment for someone else is about appearance. It's a contemptuous stance that shames the person you're embarrassed of, rather than guilting them. They don't need empathy or even a sense of morality to respond to shame, because it's in their self-interest to improve how they look.

Shallow? Maybe. But a lot of the cheap talk about "fags" or disparaging women out there is just that - people who think it's cool or edgy or establishing to do that, but don't have any real deep motive to. So if the shoe fits ...