Men's Group

Good guy, bad guy.. I can be a shithead, I'm certainly not perfect. The "MRA" thing is, really, a riot.. I mean, okaaay.

I don't mess with protected groups, either. It's a space for one thing, I respect that. On the rare occasions I post in HoF, it's certainly not to challenge the parameters of that.

That's why I'm talking about this here, and not there, for instance.

The threads you talk about; they didn't offend me, but their unfolding was fairly predictable. There is raising awareness about inherent societal unfairnesses and discrimination, and then there is criticizing groups of people for no other reason than to get a reaction- in fact, some of the people in the threads you mentioned, acknowledged that the fact that the threads got a reaction WAS THE point of the threads, in as many words.

I question how productive that sort of thing actually is, particularly when I believe most people on this site are here under genuine auspices, most people here are politically engaged Democrats- while we may not agree on everything (or even 90% of everything) we're all ostensibly on the same team, so who does the division help?

Still, like I said- a thread mentioning "white privilege" doesn't offend me, personally. A thread mentioning "male privilege" doesn't offend me, nor does one mentioning "white, male privilege". (Not even one mentioning "White male devastatingly handsome, and **** like a ***** privilege. ...Hey, what can I say?)

I appreciate your acknowledgement that certain behavior in the aforementioned thread, was over the top. I think that's the common thread with all the "time outs"- people; and I've done it myself, it doesn't mean they're "bad people"- who have lost their temper or otherwise crossed lines into personal insults. It's not about trying to silence a particular point of view.

And when people get 'offended' by a thread in GD, they usually end up kicking it and getting it more attention.. so that's not really silencing, either. I guess the long and short of it is, I don't feel that any viewpoint has really been "silenced" on DU, rather, admin has decided to try to do something about certain behaviors, not limited to any one group, which have been a long-running problem, using this sanction.

I think admin's posts- about alerts and hides since the new policy- bear out that in general, it is working.