Why you can't have a civil debate about politics

[orphiel]

People recently have expressed disappointment, in some kind of slightly patronising fashion, about my inability to have a civil debate about politics. This is for a given value of ‘civil’, where it seems to mean that I shouldn’t get angry or upset about people expressing opinions that have a very real effect on my life and the lives of thousands of

Comments

[littlegemma]

Would it be okay for me to tweet and Facebook a link to this? I think this desperately needs to be shared.

[orphiel]

Totes fine yeah.

[raselhague]

What Gemma said. Would you mind this being shared because I think as many people as possible should read it?

[silks_ic]

Don't try and play the martyr Meg, there's getting angry and there's a completely uncalled for outburst in which you call me a fat cunt and tell me to go and kill myself because you don't bother to understand me and just automatically assume you know what I thick. I am sorry bad things have happened to you and Stu, people who no matter what you say I do care about. And now you're basically calling me a rapist for no reason whatsoever. Go fuck yourself and stay away from me.

[orphiel]

You're right about the word fat, I apologise for that, there's no call for body shaming. Although the bits where I told you to kill yourself and called you a rapist are 100% imaginary, I have literally no idea what you are talking about there.

[fionnghuala]

Brilliant as always, Orphiel!

I think how much horrible shit you can get away with, while still appearing to be debating calmly and politely, is a great indicator of how much discrimination there is in a community / culture in general. More concretely, how rapey someone can be while other people still consider them to be a jolly nice chap.

In other words, people talking from a position of power can almost always keep things civil and debate correctly, because by definition the words and arguments to make their point are already well accepted and easy to articulate. It's marginalised positions that will sounds strange and emotive, because the people who hold those positions just don't have a voice in so many senses.

[allen_stroud]

It's actually not even academic. It's ill informed opinion, which ultimately comes across as ignorance. Academic implies that there are statistics or figures backing up a statement, I believe in the case in point, there wasn't either