Con Behavior: Clues for Free

[rm]

The following is a list of things I should never, ever have to say. As someone who attends many, many cons for professional and personal reasons, it should be noted that I, in fact, almost never have to say them.

Yet, every single one of the issues raised below transpired at this year's Lunacon (either to me directly or as reported to me by

Comments

[londo]

• It is not appropriate to imply that the way you conduct your relationship(s) is the best way and that everyone else should follow your example.
  
• It is not appropriate to insult other people's lifestyle choices.

How can you say these, and then say half the other things on this list?

[londo]

There used to be seperate drinking fountains for coloreds. Are you saying that requirement wasn't arbitrary because there were laws for it?

[filkerdave]

It's an arbitrary requirement that you wear clothes at all.

Dunno what the particular chip on your shoulder is about this, but if you don't like the law, you need to A) work to change it and B) convince the public that it should be changed.

I think your attitude is going to lead you to fail spectacularly at B.

[londo]

The law doesn't particularly bother me. If there weren't more important things to lobby legislators for, I might, but as it is, there's bigger fish to fry.

But I'm really bothered any time any person declares that the lifestyle choices they approve of are valid and therefore protected from negative comment, and that some of the lifestyle choices they don't approve of are inappropriate and grounds for them to snark at.

If the only dividing line you're using is what you (and possibly also your friends) approve of, then you're not really improving much in the long term - especially if you're speaking as though you're objectively correct.

[rm]

Using the past legal enshrinement of America's racism as a rhetorical device in the discussion of health-code laws about bare feet? No, sorry. Not okay.

[londo]

It's true that it's way easier to put on shoes than to put on white.

But they're both still "health laws" that have little if any basis in actual public health, and exist mostly because the alternative made people uncomfortable.

Just because something is legal doesn't make it moral.

[filkerdave]

Nor does it make it immoral.

(I tend to think it's morality neutral and on the same level as jacket-and-tie dress codes. If you don't want to wear a jacket (and I generally don't), don't eat at Restaurant Trop Cher (and I don't). Going barefoot isn't a civil right enshrined in law.)

[agrumer]

Yeah, but it's the Trop Cher's job to tell you that. It's not something that should go in a general guide to eating at all restaurants.

[holzman]

Good thing no one put it into a general guide to eating at all restaurants. Wearing shoes, on the other hand, is a sufficiently universal restaurant requirement that a general guide to all restaurants is a great place for it.

[londo]

Yeah, I'm pretty much with you on this. Restaurants can enforce pretty well whatever dress code they want, and I find this reasonable overall even if it's sometimes personally inconvenient.

[thirdblindmouse]

Going barefoot isn't a civil right enshrined in law.

Dude, but it should be. Around here they've started repaving sidewalks with stupid shit that burns your feet in the summer. :P

rm, nice post! I wish all the people who need to read it would read it. Of course, I think it could be summed up to "Be courteous, and yes, that includes noticing and caring about how your private conduct nevertheless affects people around you." *sigh* How is it that everyone doesn't learn that before they leave kindergarten?

[rm]

Using race laws in this discussion trivializes America's history and legacy of racism.

I am learning things in this discussion that are making me more open to your viewpoint on bare feet, but this particular tactic in the discussion is offensive to me and I'm both requesting and advising you not to use it.

There are many other ways to highlight the absurdity of some laws on the books than to, presumably inadvertently, trivialize racism.

[londo]

...I'm both requesting and advising you not to use it.So noted. I'll try to do so either more tastefully or not at all

[kremmen]

The argument appears to me to be that if the government is capable of making arbitrary laws which are morally offensive, it is therefore capable of making arbitrary laws about an issue which is less important. That argument is logical, whereas an argument concerning an issue of similar triviality would not necessarily hold. I don't see it as inherently trivialising the other issue

[schwarzbrille]

So let me get this straight - your lifestyle choice means that you are morally opposed to wearing shoes in a restaurant?

I just want to make sure that's what I'm hearing.

[londo]

It's a thing I've chosen to do that hurts no one but makes some people uncomfortable when they look at it.

We respect a lot of things in the name of personal freedom and choice. What makes this one bad, and those good? I see no clear dividing line other than "because I/we like it," and that doesn't strike me as terribly moral or a good basis to make vaguely objective decisions.