Over at the amazingly lively Larvatus Prodeo there has been the most almighty dust-up over the topics of rape in particular and violence against women in general.
(My friend D, she of Sunday brunch (see below), majored in Latin, so I knew that if anyone could translate their name for me, it would be she. After she had assured me that my own guess, 'Caterpillars for God', was almost certainly not right, she told me a lot of stuff about second and fourth declensions but fell at the hurdle of what 'larvatus' actually means so I had to Google it later. I can now reveal that 'Larvatus prodeo' means 'I present myself masked', which is of course practically the definition of a blog, and is something originally said by Descartes which explains why I didn't recognise it, having hated Descartes with a passion and failed Philosophy 1 on the strength of him.)
The fights over violence against women -- one of which went over 300 posts and got very heated indeed -- have resulted in the banning from the site of one blogger, one of those right-wingers who can't resist playing with the lefties. His posts were irrational, ill-informed and unfunny as well as very nasty; a truly bleeding heart would have banned him for his own good, to protect him from his own reckless self-exposure. But now there's a debate going on over whether he should have been banned at all.
What madness is this? The blog was set up and is maintained by a handful of people and it's their right to allow or disallow posts from anyone they please. It's a good example of the way a highly-thought-of forum is regarded as public property no matter who actually runs it and pays for it.
The real issue is the playground one about group identification. The banned blogger should ask himself why he wants so badly to play with this particular gang.
Of course the irony of this situation is that the RWDBs themselves wouldn't agonise for a nanosecond about whether someone ought to have been banned from their sites or not. Wouldn't enter their heads.
5 comments:
Yes well, maybe it's why we're better than them. Being a bleeding heart lefty has its disadvantages, one of which is a tendency to agonise over the necessity of taking action against disruptive heabviour.
And now we're having protest trolling! Which is the silliest thing I've ever seen.
Anyway, I'm glad you commented at LP, Pavlov's Cat, I'm enjoying your blog.
behaviour, I mean...
I like 'heabviour' -- which is clearly what Rob was indulging in last night!
By his own account, the banned person used to work as a staffer for the democrats and also the greens. I think it's been one of those conversions of direction but not intensity.
I tried, as did many others, to engage, but it really wasn't worth it. He has some reasonable things to say occasionally. But I don't miss him at LP at all.
(and you could have saved a lot of braincells by looking at the "About Larvatus Prodeo" section! But good on yer)
I did try to read About LP once ... but it was taking so long to load that even I, a patient Taurus, got bored and gave up. I want it all and I want it now!!
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