Personally I got entrenched because I experienced a lot of people saying the negative interpretation wasn't valid because "she said..." And then they'd go on to quote something that wasn't directly in the text. There were people talking about misogyny and how the guy felt like he owned her or wasn't comfortable with the fact with her having had other partners, which was also just invented whole cloth. It's something that can exist in the meta-text and be part of a larger discussion, but it is not present in the text itself and arguing from the position that it is and those who don't see it are guilty of doing it, was something that ticked me off.

That's something that generally frustrates me. It is not nice when you are having a disagreement and the person you are disagreeing with is not willing to engage with your arguments. It really sucks when someone is telling you you are objectively wrong, but whatever they're quoting isn't actually present anywhere, but is instead, at best, their interpretation, which they pretend is the text itself.

That combined with dismissals like saying the people disagreeing just don't understand how attraction works for women (which is also some weird gender essentialist "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" bullshit) as if it's unique to women to have attraction be more than looks, and dismissals like saying you have sex with your spouse as if that's what people giving the negative interpretation we're saying, really pissed me off. Just immense condescension assuming people who disagree with you don't understand really basic shit, instead of engaging in good faith and actually trying to understand why the people disagreeing with you are disagreeing.

It seemed to me like a thread were a bunch of people came in pre-conceived about the whole thing, and then refused to interrogate their own views because they're leftists and therefore their opinions are correct, and therefore they never need to stop and reconsider, and therefore everyone who disagrees with them is wrong on a personal or ideological level. That's not extraordinary, it is what usually creates struggle sessions here.
This time was just extra frustrating because the people doing that kept claiming the other side was being unreasonable, but as far as I can tell most people that say they can see how the dude understood it how he did, also say they can see what she tried to say.
That was dismissed by a lot of people and I really hate it when things like that are just dismissed and then followed up with variations of "whats your argument tho?" Or accusations of bigotry. It's poor form, it's rude it's not good for site culture.

[+] ElHexo@hexbear.net 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] Egon@hexbear.net 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Thanks for reading thru my rant and responding. I really need to get better at letting things go.

Yeah and I think that's where the struggle part of the session came in, but I feel like that's on them. I'm not denying the presence of any of those things on a broader societal level and I feel like that would be part of a productive discussion, but it's not productive to present ones interpretation and what one infers from the text as if it were the text itself.

If people would interpret my argument as denying those broader realities despite me making it very clear what I am arguing about and from, then I feel like that's an issue of those people, not me. At the very least I would hope they would operate with doubt about my position instead of certainty, when I don't directly dismiss those larger structures as existing. That's not the impression I got from the thread, I got the impression a sunset of the user base had half-read the post, made up their mind that they were right, and then went in with the notion that since they were leftists and have read some theory or other, then everyone disagreeing with them is, at best, uneducated/unknowing.
That's the broader impression I got from the session at large, which is me making a lot of assumptions about a large group of people. It's also something I've seen happen a bunch of times on here.

[–] MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

then went in with the notion that since they were leftists and have read some theory or other, then everyone disagreeing with them is, at best, uneducated/unknowing

One of the biggest downsides to the "don't talk to them, dunk on them" approach to dealing with chuds is that it's easy to fall into the same pattern when disagreeing with other leftists. It's also easy to dig in on that approach if someone points out you're being an ass to people who are on your side, which often leads to the extremely productive "oh well if they disagree on [increasingly irrelevant dispute] they're no comrade of mine."

[–] Aru@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

With the other leftist critic here is that I felt people where not willing to engage in the "both sides are right/wrong" thing because they're used to centrism being a right wing option, this is not really a political problem unless you go deeply into systematic reasons, it's a relationship issue.

[–] Egon@hexbear.net 3 points 3 months ago

And not even that they both have to be right, but that they both could be. Not even that really, because people seem to agree that he overreacted, but just that they understand how he interpreted it as he did.

I think you're right that people have a reflexive apprehension towards anything that strikes them as "centrist". It's a good way to put it.

[–] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I missed it at the time, too, but I read through it and I totally agree with you.

Thank you for your service on that thread. fidel-salute-big

[–] Egon@hexbear.net 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Thank you <3
I don't know what's going on, but it seems like so many people online struggle with the basic concept of "reading". I constantly see people misinterpret basic shit, accuse the other of something heinous, then get a response that clearly explains how their accusation is unfounded or a misinterpretation that requires misreading or skipping large parts of text, and then they just dig in further, still apparently failing to read large parts of the responses they get.
More and more often I end up just answering "I didn't write that. Reread what I wrote." because people just make shit up.

One place in the thread I express frustration because I feel as though I experience that, because someone is trying to argue a lot of things I haven't mentioned at all and have no reason to disagree with.