Responding to me, Wendy wrote:
Indeed. There is nothing remotely as effective at getting me to ignore your posts, dismiss your opinions, and reinforce my commitment to my own position as taking that kind of insulting "anybody who agree with me is not only wrong but disgusting and stupid and evil" tone.
[which should be "doesn't agree," of course]
As I've just said to Neil, I didn't say that. You can post what you like. I'm posting what I like. I don't necessarily want you to agree with me, I just want people to THINK about what gets said. And if I have to offend a few people to get them to think about why they consider their opinions to be the right ones then offend them I shall
Several points here:
1) No, you didn't *say* that, but, believe me, that's how it's coming across to many of us. Your contempt for some of the people on this list -- not just disagreement, but *contempt*, and not just for the opinions but the people *themselves* -- is blisteringly obvious. If that's not the impression you mean to convey, you should think seriously about the means by which you express yourself.
2) You're implying that the people who don't agree with you aren't *thinking*, and that's both insulting and incorrect. Believe it or not, people who *are* thinking can still disagree with you.
3) To reiterate what I said above, being offensive is more often than not the *worst* way to go about getting people to think about your opinions and take them seriously. If you really want to make people think about the issues at hand, again, you might seriously want to reconisider how you're going about it. The tactic you're using is counterproductive.
But take any piece of hurt-comfort fiction at random, switch the sex of the character (e.g. make it Cally not Avon) read it through and see how it sounds. It's not the violence, it's the sadism I don't like. (and note: I said *I* don't like. If you like sadism, that's up to you).
Do you realize just how insulting that sounds? How you've basically just made it impossible for anybody to disagree with your opinion without "admitting" that they "like sadism"? That's not honest discourse. That's like asking "How often do you beat your children?"
As far as h/c goes, not all of it is "sadistic", not by a long shot. Not by my definition of "sadism," anyway.
-- Betty Ragan ** bragan@nrao.edu ** http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~bragan Not speaking for my employers, officially or otherwise. "Seeing a rotten picture for the special effects is like eating a tough steak for the smothered onions..." -- Isaac Asimov
--- Betty Ragan bragan@aoc.nrao.edu wrote:
Responding to me, Wendy wrote:
As I've just said to Neil, I didn't say that. You
can post what you
like. I'm posting what I like. I don't necessarily
want you to agree
with me, I just want people to THINK about what
gets said. And if I
have to offend a few people to get them to think
about why they
consider their opinions to be the right ones then
offend them I
shall
Several points here:
- No, you didn't *say* that, but, believe me,
that's how it's coming across to many of us. Your contempt for some of the people on this list -- not just disagreement, but *contempt*, and not just for the opinions but the people *themselves* -- is blisteringly obvious.
It's more annoyance than contempt actually, and I did try to keep to the opinions not the people. It's just that I obviously picked a topic which I thought was fine for open discussion but which people take personally. I was more blunt than this on the Deliverance thread, and people didn't accuse me of attacking Mistral personally!
that's not the impression you mean to convey, you should think seriously about the means by which you express yourself.
Point taken. I hope you're not taking this post personally :).
- You're implying that the people who don't agree
with you aren't *thinking*, and that's both insulting and incorrect. Believe it or not, people who *are* thinking can still disagree with you.
No. Neil for one disagreed with me on some of these points, and I would never say Neil doesn't think :). But Neil argues his points with me, he doesn't write back telling me what a despicable person I am.
- To reiterate what I said above, being offensive
is more often than not the *worst* way to go about getting people to think about your opinions and take them seriously. If you really want to make people think about the issues at hand, again, you might seriously want to reconisider how you're going about it. The tactic you're using is counterproductive.
I could of course point out that the same goes for other people in this thread than me...
But take any piece of hurt-comfort fiction at
random,
switch the sex of the character (e.g. make it
Cally
not Avon) read it through and see how it sounds.
It's
not the violence, it's the sadism I don't like.
(and
note: I said *I* don't like. If you like sadism, that's up to you).
Do you realize just how insulting that sounds? How you've basically just made it impossible for anybody to disagree with your opinion without "admitting" that they "like sadism"? That's not honest discourse. That's like asking "How often do you beat your children?"
As far as h/c goes, not all of it is "sadistic", not by a long shot.
And you've just proved that I *haven't* made it impossible to disagree with me on that point. You just did, by arguing that h/c is not necessarily sadistic. But that "not all of it" does suggest to me that you'd acknowledge that *some* is...
That is, if you want to debate the point with me :).
Wendy
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Betty Ragan -
Penberriss Wendy S.