Taking a break

[Gustaf]

They hate Sanders because his supporters tended to be too white and male for their taste and being an SJW/PC-warrior is very, very important.

I disagree. For a forum filled with politically-inclined young people, we have remarkably few SJW-type members. Moreover, those members fitting that description who come to mind are mostly Sanders supporters. The crowd of vehemently anti-Sanders Democrats tend to have more in common with what we would have referred to a few years ago as the Very Serious People, and they deploy the Bernie Bro caricature more for the sake of browbeating their opposition than out of any real concern about patriarchy, white supremacy, or anything like that.

With all due respect, this is some goddamn nonsense. Thanks for erasing me.

To clarify: if you really believe that I'm lying about my motivations when I say that things like harassment and implicit bias are Real Problems... that would be good to know going forward.  In particular I'd appreciate a clarification as to whether you agree that they are problems and you think people who complain about Bernie Bros are all just lying shills, or if you just systematically don't think people are allowed to point those behaviors out from any side.

What a fatuous comment. I wish that I had seen it earlier.

First of all, I do not group you among the "vehemently anti-Sanders" crowd. I can understand why you would assume that you are a member, as you do have a knack for latching on to their critiques in a particularly fervent, me-too-ish kind of way. And, somehow, it seems not to bother you much that many of the most vocal posters in this category are also among the forum's most notorious bullies, which, in terms of character judgments, ought to matter a lot more anyone's failure to repudiate off-site Bernie Bros with sufficient vigor or frequency.* But I was not referring to you.

To be clear, online harassment is vile and stupid. Sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton or any other woman in either public or private life are vile and stupid. Implicit bias, particularly toward women in positions of power, is real. I do my best to be conscious of this, I criticize this behavior when I recognize it, and I mostly ignore those who refuse to listen to my appeals. Moreover, I find it obnoxious that you would ask me to "clarify" whether I really believe that any of this is meaningful or important. If my behavior around here has left the answer to this question in any doubt, what good does even the most unequivocal response do? If I doubted anyone else's credibility on the subject on the basis of his or her behavior, I would probably not care how he or she responded.

* In this vein, there is a tendency, both within this community and among just about any other group with a large share of college-educated members, toward calling out the most obvious and troglodytic harassment while ignoring anyone who is eloquent and savvy enough to be nasty, prejudiced and unfair in a more sophisticated way. What is trivial to recognize in an illiterate rant is not necessarily so obvious when it is couched in the kind of language that (for instance) outwardly sensitive, left-leaning professionals with liberal arts backgrounds tend to use.

The asterisked part is something that bothers me as well. Elements of the left often fail to recognize hatred and bigotry within their own ranks when couched in the right buzzwords and linguistic style.