Deadly internet bullying, OR ways in which the FF is like police brutality

[Adam]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

Yes I agree, the message was delivered under different circumstances. I don't see how that changes the message.

I'm asking for more information to help me continue a discussion that you (as far as I can tell) have an interest in continuing. This is a normal part of how discussions work. I don't entirely understand your position, so I'm asking for clarification, so we we can proceed without my putting words in your mouth.

You were, at the time, asking for more information to help you continue a discussion that others had no interest in continuing. This is not a normal part of how discussions work. Ordinarily, when one person indicates that they do not wish to continue, it is considered rude for the other to keep requesting more participation.

I don't remember the people in question conceding any of the arguments, though.

Nor do I. All arguments do not end with a concession. Agreeing to disagree is a perfectly valid way to end a discussion or an argument. In fact, given that we appear to be starting from different assumptions which, naturally, lead us to different conclusions, I fully expect (or, at least, hope) that the current discussion will end in such a manner.

[mickthinks]

seebs: That doesn't make them "two ways of saying the same thing"; obviously, there are many ways to be rude to a child that are not gratuitously doing something that can be reasonably expected to make a child cry.
Adam: "Doing 70 in a school zone" and "breaking the law" are not two different ways of saying the same thing, but the former is an example of the latter.

You are quite right guys, my mistake. I avoided saying "synonymous" because that isn't what Adam was claiming, and I tried to use "saying the same thing" instead, but it is no better. What I take Adam to have been saying is that an event which can be described as "someone gratuitously doing something that can reasonably be expected to make a child cry", is an event which can also be described as "being rude to that child".

I think that is what Adam implied and I disagree and have cited a counter-example.

[Adam]

Btw, upon rereading some of my posts here, they sound really pompous and condescending. That's not intentional, it's the result of my trying (and probably failing) to strip unnecessarily idiomatic language and my usual smartassery out of what I post.

[mickthinks]

I think you have tried to cast the girl's tears as proof of Bush's rudeness to her.
No, even had she not cried, I would disapprove of an adult authority figure making a flippant response to a child in that situation, for all the reasons seebs noted.

You realise that doesn't address what I said? The question whether this particular action could reasonably be expected to make the child cry might appear to be settled by the fact that she cried and people didn't say "How weird! No one would have expected that".

[Adam]

Originally Posted by seebs

Yeah. I think the parents clearly did something dumb.

This is a tangent, but I don't think we have enough information to say that. For all we know, the girl is in her school debate club and loves speaking in front of an audience.

(Extra dumb because Bush in particular is not famed for his social graciousness towards people who ask questions he doesn't like.)

OK, maybe they're dumb for not taking that into account.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

You realise that doesn't address what I said? The question whether this particular action could reasonably be expected to make the child cry might appear to be settled by the fact that she cried and people didn't say "How weird! No one would have expected that".

Perhaps I don't understand what you meant then. I understood you to be saying that I used the girl's tears as evidence of rudeness, rather than come to that conclusion based on my own social assumptions about what sort of responses would be appropriate in that situation. Now, it looks like you are suggesting that I am using the fact that the girl cried to determine, ex post facto, that a flippant response could reasonably be expected to hurt her feelings. Is that what you're saying?

[seebs]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

You are quite right guys, my mistake. I avoided saying "synonymous" because that isn't what Adam was claiming, and I tried to use "saying the same thing" instead, but it is no better. What I take Adam to have been saying is that an event which can be described as "someone gratuitously doing something that can reasonably be expected to make a child cry", is an event which can also be described as "being rude to that child".

Thank you, that helps clarify.

I think what he's been saying is that it is usually a good example of rudeness -- the exceptions are usually things that are way worse. If you see an adult gratuitously do something that could be reasonably expected to make a child cry, the usual assumption is that it's rude. There are exceptions -- but nearly all of them are cases where the behavior is sufficiently heinous that it would not usually be called rude.

Even if it had been an adult reporter asking the question, a sarcastic or dismissive response might well be seen as rude. The social protocol for such circumstances is that you're expected to try to answer questions respectfully. However, doing that to a child tends to come across more rudely.

There are questions I can't answer about the circumstances -- for instance, at the time that Bush responded, could he clearly see the person he was responding to? He might not have realized he was talking to a child. That might be a mitigating factor.

Also, I do think that the parents were being pretty dumb.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

You realise that doesn't address what I said? The question whether this particular action could reasonably be expected to make the child cry might appear to be settled by the fact that she cried and people didn't say "How weird! No one would have expected that".

I don't think this analysis flies, for the simple reason that teenagers are famed for unpredictable emotional outbursts.

Thus, even if no one would have expected a teenager to cry under a given circumstance, they might not comment on it directly.

You raise an interesting point here. Imagine that we had only the information that:

* At some sort of event where people were asking questions of the President, a teenaged child asked the President a question.
* The president responded with a sarcastic and dismissive "yeah, thanks."

Would people generally consider that rude? I certainly would. If you take out "teenaged child" and replace it with "person", it is a little more ambiguous -- adults are usually expected to handle some amount of good-natured ribbing, and one could argue that Bush's comment was intended to be commentary on the unpleasant circumstance he was in (the question related to something that had not gone his way, and most politicians hate answering questions on that topic).

However, when dealing with a kid, you might reasonably be more careful. The authority-figure to child relationship is one which creates a much greater duty of care; children are, by default, much more likely to be impressionable, much less likely to perform more abstract or detached analysis of social rules, and so on.

This raises an interesting point, which is that there is a way in which gender is relevant here: It is quite possible to, upon hearing a thirteen-year-old girl speak, not know that you're hearing a child talking. Young boys nearly always sound very distinct from adult men, but early-teens girls can have substantially the same vocal production range as adult women.

In which case, we might argue that Bush mistakenly believed he'd been asked a question by an adult woman, whom he thought would perceive that his sarcastic remark was directed to his circumstances, not to her.

But, if he knew she was a child, then I think his behavior was rude. A child who has worked up the courage to ask a hard question of the President of the United States should not be discouraged or dismissed.

[mickthinks]

Here's answers to some of your outstanding questions, Adam

1) I disagree that my framing of the story in terms of sex is idiosyncratic.

2) I think the journalist who wrote the story emphasised those terms in order to exploit the feelings they generate.

3) I believe the story works well for the anti-Bush agenda if Bush is drawn as aggressive and the questioner as vulnerable. I think it wouldn't have played as well for them if the kid had been a strapping football player.

4) Your schema for my feminism angle is pretty close but I'm unhappy with it in a few, maybe quite trivial, ways. It's going to take me a little time to get my head around that though, so I'll come back to you.

Mick

[seebs]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

Here's answers to some of your outstanding questions, Adam

1) I disagree that my framing of the story in terms of sex is idiosyncratic.

I'm confused by this.

The question was specifically whether it was idiosyncratic among people posting here.

Who else here has framed it that way?

If you're the only person here framing it that way, how is that not idiosyncratic?

2) I think the journalist who wrote the story emphasised those terms in order to exploit the feelings they generate.

Why do you think this?

Perhaps more interestingly: Do you think that the journalist placed any emphasis on terms showing the person's age? Do you think there was more or less emphasis on age, or on gender? Why?

3) I believe the story works well for the anti-Bush agenda if Bush is drawn as aggressive and the questioner as vulnerable. I think it wouldn't have played as well for them if the kid had been a strapping football player.

Perhaps not.

But even granting that... In general, do you think that it would normally be appropriate for a public figure, upon being asked a question by a child, to respond in a dismissive or sarcastic way? Do you have examples where people did that and it was well-regarded? I can't think of any.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by seebs

Thank you, that helps clarify.

I think what he's been saying is that it is usually a good example of rudeness -- the exceptions are usually things that are way worse. If you see an adult gratuitously do something that could be reasonably expected to make a child cry, the usual assumption is that it's rude. There are exceptions -- but nearly all of them are cases where the behavior is sufficiently heinous that it would not usually be called rude.

That is a fair account of what I was saying.

I'm not hung up on the specific term "rude", by the way. If it simplifies things, and gets us beyond hair splitting over a definition, my point can also (perhaps more accurately?) be stated as "an adult who gratuitously does something that can reasonably be expected to make a child cry is failing to meet social expectations".

[Adam]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

Here's answers to some of your outstanding questions, Adam

Thank you.

1) I disagree that my framing of the story in terms of sex is idiosyncratic.

Of the set of people who have remarked on the story here, you are alone in framing it in terms of male and female. Do you have some evidence that others share that framing?

2) I think the journalist who wrote the story emphasised those terms in order to exploit the feelings they generate.

Understood, but I was asking if you thought that others shared your belief that the journalist framed it as such.

3) I believe the story works well for the anti-Bush agenda if Bush is drawn as aggressive and the questioner as vulnerable. I think it wouldn't have played as well for them if the kid had been a strapping football player.

I'm not sure I understand. It appears that you're saying that the framing of the issue as male versus female is appropriate because it furthers the anti-Bush agenda you believe to exist. Is this correct?

4) Your schema for my feminism angle is pretty close but I'm unhappy with it in a few, maybe quite trivial, ways. It's going to take me a little time to get my head around that though, so I'll come back to you.

Cool, thanks.

[seebs]

I think the argument is like this:

People who want to portray Bush as bad can do so most effectively if they can portray the issue as a strong person attacking a vulnerable person.

He interpreted the coverage of the story as framing the issue in man-hurts-woman terms.

He believes the coverage to have been written with intent to make Bush look bad.

From this, the conclusion is that the people who wrote the story in that way did so under the impression that framing it as male-vs-female would be an effective way to portray it as strong-vs-vulnerable, and that this implies that they think of women as weak or defenesless.

My disagreement with the above assessment is that I thought the story was focused much more strongly on the adult-vs-child thing, in which I think the leap to strong-vs-vulnerable is a very small and fairly well-supported leap.

I do grant that I think the term "girl" tends to have stronger connotations of emotional vulnerability than the term "boy" -- I just think both have stronger connotations of emotional vulnerability than the term "woman" would, which leads me to view the reporting primarily in terms of age rather than gender.

[Dingfod]

Dude, she was 8.



Kidding.

[erimir]

Upon rethinking it (when I saw the video, I wasn't sure if I'd call it rude...), I think Bush was inconsiderate but not intentionally rude. He obviously realized that he shouldn't have said what he did at first, because he reassured her that it was a good question. It wasn't that bad. I'm not sure how rude people are claiming that it was.

If it were an adult, it wouldn't really be a problem, I don't think, since it's obvious that it is self-deprecating in a way, and an adult wouldn't take it to be dismissive of their question, but an indication that it's not a question Bush would like to hear because it's a sore spot, rather than because it's a bad question.

Incidentally, I agree that the story wouldn't be seen as negatively had it been a 13 year old boy. 13 year old boys are at the age that they are expected to be well on their way to suppressing outbursts of such emotion, so people would be less sympathetic to a crying teenaged boy simply because of that. The boy would have to be younger for his crying to receive as sympathetic a response. Yet it would still be rude because even if a 13 year old boy did not cry, he would still quite likely be upset.

So I'd agree that there is some gender stuff going on in the story - but I think that framing it as "If this had been a boy, people wouldn't be upset, so we shouldn't be bothered by what Bush did to a girl" is the wrong way to frame it. I prefer "If this had been a boy, people wouldn't be as upset, even tho it would be just as rude."

[Crumb]

Originally Posted by seebs

Huh.

Is that good or bad?

(note to readers: "Yes" and "No" are both useful answers here. Sometimes the information that something is "good or bad" is useful even if you're not sure which...)

Well I was going for a laugh there so "convinced" was an exaggeration, but you do have me thinking it is a possibility.

I would say it is a good thing.

[mickthinks]

Adam - I think this is how I would schematise my original feminism angle:

• P1 A newspaper reported a story about the president, framed as a man making a young woman cry.
• P2 Feminism has taught us that women are not delicate creatures who need to be protected from distress by men.
• C An automatic assumption that the president ill-treated the woman, such as I thought I observed being made in the Bush's inner asshole thread, would be anti-feminist.

I'm no longer sure that the leap from "she's upset" to "he did it" was being made from an old-fashioned patriarchal viewpoint, but it seemed to me the most likely explanation at the time I entered the thread.

Mick

[mickthinks]

Originally Posted by seebs

I don't think this analysis flies, for the simple reason that teenagers are famed for unpredictable emotional outbursts.

I agree and that's why I used the word "might", seebs. So you and I wouldn't buy it, but are you confident that no one would think that way?

[seebs]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

Adam - I think this is how I would schematise my original feminism angle:

• P1 A newspaper reported a story about the president, framed as a man making a young woman cry.
• P2 Feminism has taught us that women are not delicate creatures who need to be protected from distress by men.
• C An automatic assumption that the president ill-treated the woman, such as I thought I observed being made in the Bush's inner asshole thread, would be anti-feminist.

I'm no longer sure that the leap from "she's upset" to "he did it" was being made from an old-fashioned patriarchal viewpoint, but it seemed to me the most likely explanation at the time I entered the thread.

I would not agree with P1. I do not think "woman" was a significant component of the evaluation in the article. The issue that people were responding to was that the behavior was in general not particularly appropriate, and in particular very ill-considered when dealing with a child. Basically, C follows from P1, but it doesn't follow from "P1': A newspaper reported a story about the President, framed as an authority figure making a child cry." Since most of us seem to have had P1', not P1, in mind...

[seebs]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

I agree and that's why I used the word "might", seebs. So you and I wouldn't buy it, but are you confident that no one would think that way?

No, but I don't think I have to be -- I just have to be confident that it wouldn't be a dominant or commonplace interpretation.

[mickthinks]

I much prefer the term 'woman' to 'female', but it looks as if I can't avoid recasting the schema using the latter term.

• P1 A newspaper reported a story about the president, framed as a male making a young female cry.
• P2 Feminism has taught us that females are not delicate creatures who need to be protected from distress by males.
• C An automatic assumption that the president ill-treated the female, such as I thought I observed being made in the Bush's inner asshole thread, would be anti-feminist.

I don't think you can say that a female was not a significant component in the article.

[mickthinks]

I just have to be confident that it wouldn't be a dominant or commonplace interpretation.
I don't see how you can be so confident that it wouldn't be commonplace, seebs. On what grounds?

Mick

[seebs]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

I much prefer the term 'woman' to 'female', but it looks as if I can't avoid recasting the schema using the latter term.

• P1 A newspaper reported a story about the president, framed as a male making a young female cry.
• P2 Feminism has taught us that females are not delicate creatures who need to be protected from distress by males.
• C An automatic assumption that the president ill-treated the female, such as I thought I observed being made in the Bush's inner asshole thread, would be anti-feminist.

I don't think you can say that a female was not a significant component in the article.

I can.

Here's how. Let's imagine two articles:

In one, Bush makes that remark to a young-teens or preteen boy.
In another, Bush makes that remark to a woman in her thirties.

Which article is changed more? I think absolutely the latter. I think the latter article would be a wildly different one; people would be confused and shocked by a grown woman bursting into tears over a single off-handed remark which was open to interpretation.

The former, though, is basically unchanged. It's a kid, and he asked a question that he thought was important, and he got a dismissive brush-off response.

So I don't think "female" is very significant. Does it have some impact? Sure. But not much.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

I just have to be confident that it wouldn't be a dominant or commonplace interpretation.
I don't see how you can be so confident that it wouldn't be commonplace, seebs. On what grounds?

Because normally people don't need to wait to see how other people respond to a story to know whether an action was rude or not.

[Adam]

Thanks for making your reasoning explicit.

Originally Posted by mickthinks

I much prefer the term 'woman' to 'female', but it looks as if I can't avoid recasting the schema using the latter term.

• P1 A newspaper reported a story about the president, framed as a male making a young female cry.
• P2 Feminism has taught us that females are not delicate creatures who need to be protected from distress by males.
• C An automatic assumption that the president ill-treated the female, such as I thought I observed being made in the Bush's inner asshole thread, would be anti-feminist.

I don't think you can say that a female was not a significant component in the article.

It's definitely there, don't think I'm disputing that. As for significant, I suppose it depends on exactly what you mean by "significant". It could, of course, be significant in some contexts but, for purposes of judging Bush's behavior*, and relative to other factors in evidence**, I did not find it to be so.

* Swapping the sex of the child in the story would not significantly affect my opinion that Bush's response was inconsiderate/rude/whatever.

** For the reasons I described somewhere upthread, among others***, I found the fact that the questioner was female to be less important than the fact that she was a child.

*** One of those reasons is exactly what you state in P2. I do not believe that female persons need to be protected in particular, so I did not detect "failure to protect a female" in the article. I do beleive that children should be protected, so I did detect "failure to protect a child", or something very like it.

Sorry about the *'s...as originally written, this post was a maze of parentheticals which I broke out into * notes.

Originally Posted by mickthinks

I'm no longer sure that the leap from "she's upset" to "he did it" was being made from an old-fashioned patriarchal viewpoint, but it seemed to me the most likely explanation at the time I entered the thread.

So, to clarify a bit, did you think that viewpoint was held by the author of the article, the posters in the thread, or both?

Originally Posted by seebs

I would not agree with P1. I do not think "woman" was a significant component of the evaluation in the article. The issue that people were responding to was that the behavior was in general not particularly appropriate, and in particular very ill-considered when dealing with a child. Basically, C follows from P1, but it doesn't follow from "P1': A newspaper reported a story about the President, framed as an authority figure making a child cry." Since most of us seem to have had P1', not P1, in mind...

This is why I was asking you, mick, if you agree that your viewpoint is idiosyncratic among people who have commented here. The early responses to you focused on disputing P1, because everyone else (who bothered to respond) held P1'.