So, in my circles, the phrase "purity culture" refers to the harmful & abusive attitudes & behavior around sex & sexuality in religious communities (especially within evangelicalism).
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So, in my circles, the phrase "purity culture" refers to the harmful & abusive attitudes & behavior around sex & sexuality in religious communities (especially within evangelicalism).
I'm seeing discussion of Cory Doctorow's use of the term "purity culture" to mean something like people who are (supposedly) so obsessed with being perfectly ethical that they harass others and...I dunno...halt progress. I guess he's not the only one who uses it that way, but it's news to me.
@artemis
The way he misused it has a strong association with the MAGA movement. They mean it in a pejorative sense akin to 'virtue signaling'. It's jarring when it comes from a well-known liberal.I don't know if Doctorow is still active on the website formerly known as Twitter, but if he is, it's truly a brain-cooking, pickling vat of MAGA, manosphere, white nationalist depravity...
Maybe he picked it up there. No one is immune to bullshit. They just have to stew in it long enough.There is also a haughtiness about it. Like he knows he is doing something that merits being shamed, so he is shaming the would-be scolds before they emerge, if ever they do. I'll extend him grace unless and until he doubles down or whistles another MAGA sounding tune.
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Purity is bad regardless of who does it. It's bad because it enables sexual oppression, and literal oppression, and persecution of minorities, and homogenization of diversity. The same diversity keeping us from all simultaneously dying of the same virus. It's bad when people rely on purity to halt progress, because it goes beyond stopping people from doing bad things. It's bad when people rely on purity to further progress (you only get to argue with me if you are a Rationalist). Purity just... sucks. We want good things, not purity, and purity culture distorts reality until people are throwing away good things because they are labeled "disposable."
So please do talk about fascism, and the role Christianity (and also Mormonism) plays in forcing it on modern society. Please talk about the assholes claiming some Christ fellow said they get to murder trannies for not being pure enough. Please expose all the abuses of church authority that seem to disproportionately happen to young boys, covered up to make things look more pure.
Purity's more than that though. Telling us not to talk about software purists is like telling us we can't talk about the military, because that's something the Holocaust survivors need exclusively to communicate what the Nazis did. It's like telling us we can't talk about monocultures, because that's something reserved to the Irish since they had the potato famine. Don't be a purity purist, is what I'm saying. You can still talk about assholes using purity to trick religious nuts into voting for The Devil Himself.
CC: @artemis@dice.camp@cy @artemis @foolishowl expressions like "moralism" and "moral absolutism" are right there, and exactly fit what Doctorow was criticizing. There was no need to reach out and take a term survivors of a very specific abuse are using, farther confusing the issue.
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Purity culture created a lot of the worst aspects of my religious trauma. MY WHOLE LIFE was purity culture. Everything I did, every interaction I had before my mid 20s was shaped by it.
Would it be so bad to just let us survivors of religious trauma use a combination of words which really didn't get used much at all for anything before we coined it & started using it? Nobody was using it for much, we started using it & now apparently it's a popular term for something almost completely separate.
@artemis There could be understood lexical priority that was in turn made legible through it's associations with particular spaces. I'm all for voluntary rules about language use, especially if they are simple and obvious enough that they can be quickly explained and adopted, and that simply seeing people use them is instructive for the average person in most cases. I'm getting tired of prescriptivism about language among people of conscience. Having essential language taken away from you is bad. But also, sometimes the person "taking it away" is someone who has needed access to language they have never had, or that they themselves have previously had taken away. What happens if tomorrow, the language you want not taken away has been taken away, and the people who have taken it away memory hole that you ever had a claim to it, and they turn around and speak your own words to you about not wanting their language taken away?
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@artemis There could be understood lexical priority that was in turn made legible through it's associations with particular spaces. I'm all for voluntary rules about language use, especially if they are simple and obvious enough that they can be quickly explained and adopted, and that simply seeing people use them is instructive for the average person in most cases. I'm getting tired of prescriptivism about language among people of conscience. Having essential language taken away from you is bad. But also, sometimes the person "taking it away" is someone who has needed access to language they have never had, or that they themselves have previously had taken away. What happens if tomorrow, the language you want not taken away has been taken away, and the people who have taken it away memory hole that you ever had a claim to it, and they turn around and speak your own words to you about not wanting their language taken away?
@artemis And it's worse than this, because there can be convergent evolution in language, either simultaneously or in epistemically isolated groups, such that nobody is stealing anything, they are all just behaving and speaking rationally. Linguistic prescriptivism imposes costs on people, it's a good idea to look for alternatives.
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It's really frustrating having a term people like me use to describe the trauma that shaped us picked up & used in some vague & non-specific way for no particular reason.
If you Google the term, you'll see references to the meaning I am using. People can come up with another term for their annoyance at people who have opinions about what they should or shouldn't do.
Don't steal terms from trauma survivors. We're using those.
@artemis would activism purity test (or something similar) as a substitute be acceptable?
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@artemis And it's worse than this, because there can be convergent evolution in language, either simultaneously or in epistemically isolated groups, such that nobody is stealing anything, they are all just behaving and speaking rationally. Linguistic prescriptivism imposes costs on people, it's a good idea to look for alternatives.
@artemis Also, I don't actually like the use Doctorow is applying it to, so I don't mind yelling at him in general. But the argument then is that this is a case where it is a bad word choice even before the contested use cases for the words come into play.
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@artemis There could be understood lexical priority that was in turn made legible through it's associations with particular spaces. I'm all for voluntary rules about language use, especially if they are simple and obvious enough that they can be quickly explained and adopted, and that simply seeing people use them is instructive for the average person in most cases. I'm getting tired of prescriptivism about language among people of conscience. Having essential language taken away from you is bad. But also, sometimes the person "taking it away" is someone who has needed access to language they have never had, or that they themselves have previously had taken away. What happens if tomorrow, the language you want not taken away has been taken away, and the people who have taken it away memory hole that you ever had a claim to it, and they turn around and speak your own words to you about not wanting their language taken away?
@Alephwyr @artemis
i think i agree with what you're sayingbut, also, the phrase that describes what Cory is talking about it "purity politics" (one could use others).
it could be that something else is also described with "purity culture" but there's another term that directly refers to what he means (even though the situation isn't really about purity politics)
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@Alephwyr @artemis
i think i agree with what you're sayingbut, also, the phrase that describes what Cory is talking about it "purity politics" (one could use others).
it could be that something else is also described with "purity culture" but there's another term that directly refers to what he means (even though the situation isn't really about purity politics)
@johnbrowntypeface @artemis There are a dozen different stupid aspects of the invectives against purity politics:
1. Every past system is a result of compromises and shortcuts
2. Compromises and shortcuts snowball
3. By the time the situation is dire, it is downstream of innumerable compromises and shortcuts, and the solution proposed is then a final doubling down, pulling the last stable block from the Jenga tower of false pragmatism
4. The type of person who makes this error is generally not very perceptive
4a. Inferentially, the type of person who makes this error is then usually not proximate to any real matter constitutive of the problem
4a1. Not being proximate has both epistemic and practical consequences which are robust even outside of the specific error -
@johnbrowntypeface @artemis There are a dozen different stupid aspects of the invectives against purity politics:
1. Every past system is a result of compromises and shortcuts
2. Compromises and shortcuts snowball
3. By the time the situation is dire, it is downstream of innumerable compromises and shortcuts, and the solution proposed is then a final doubling down, pulling the last stable block from the Jenga tower of false pragmatism
4. The type of person who makes this error is generally not very perceptive
4a. Inferentially, the type of person who makes this error is then usually not proximate to any real matter constitutive of the problem
4a1. Not being proximate has both epistemic and practical consequences which are robust even outside of the specific error@johnbrowntypeface @artemis
4b. This constitutes calling out "fire" after the building has already taken irreparable damage and most saveable people are dead or can no longer be saved
4c. In the event something can be done, this type of person is not competent or capable of doing it.
5. This type of organization is therefore illusory, it provides false reassurance, diverts resources, and prevents sound action.
6. This type of organization permanently diverts attention from both the development of theories of sound long term planning and the sound epistemics and praxis of immediacy and triage, which are overwhelmingly messy, low status, and illegible. -
@johnbrowntypeface @artemis There are a dozen different stupid aspects of the invectives against purity politics:
1. Every past system is a result of compromises and shortcuts
2. Compromises and shortcuts snowball
3. By the time the situation is dire, it is downstream of innumerable compromises and shortcuts, and the solution proposed is then a final doubling down, pulling the last stable block from the Jenga tower of false pragmatism
4. The type of person who makes this error is generally not very perceptive
4a. Inferentially, the type of person who makes this error is then usually not proximate to any real matter constitutive of the problem
4a1. Not being proximate has both epistemic and practical consequences which are robust even outside of the specific error@Alephwyr @artemis
i think calling something purity politics is usually just a defense mechanism, but there are times when it seems to fitin this case with Cory he seems to be running into folks who are calling him out for having inconsistent political principles (similar to when he stopped masking).
whatever one's politics, once they deviate to a certain degree from what's stated there will be pushback
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@johnbrowntypeface @artemis
4b. This constitutes calling out "fire" after the building has already taken irreparable damage and most saveable people are dead or can no longer be saved
4c. In the event something can be done, this type of person is not competent or capable of doing it.
5. This type of organization is therefore illusory, it provides false reassurance, diverts resources, and prevents sound action.
6. This type of organization permanently diverts attention from both the development of theories of sound long term planning and the sound epistemics and praxis of immediacy and triage, which are overwhelmingly messy, low status, and illegible.@johnbrowntypeface @artemis If you actually think you are in a crisis why are you talking and not moving? If you think you understand what to do in a crisis, why are you talking with other people who are talking and not looking for the people who are moving and trying to move like them? I'm also bad at this. A lot of the time I am mapping my own problems onto other people, but I don't think that's unreasonable. I admit it's very hard to get non-noisy feedback about it.
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@Alephwyr @artemis
i think calling something purity politics is usually just a defense mechanism, but there are times when it seems to fitin this case with Cory he seems to be running into folks who are calling him out for having inconsistent political principles (similar to when he stopped masking).
whatever one's politics, once they deviate to a certain degree from what's stated there will be pushback
@johnbrowntypeface @artemis Yeah I dunno, I still broadly like Doctorow, I think attacking Doctorow is a bad use of energy. It is also maybe silly to publicly push back on these things? Just let people blow smoke. If the high context particulars of your social station require some sort of answer you need to get better at laconicism and wit so that it can be efficient and have the judo-like properties of disincentivizing aggressive rhetoric.
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@johnbrowntypeface @artemis Yeah I dunno, I still broadly like Doctorow, I think attacking Doctorow is a bad use of energy. It is also maybe silly to publicly push back on these things? Just let people blow smoke. If the high context particulars of your social station require some sort of answer you need to get better at laconicism and wit so that it can be efficient and have the judo-like properties of disincentivizing aggressive rhetoric.
different strokes, i guess
Doctorow has a lot of money and influence among 'radicals'/progressives so talking about the importance of masking (then stopping randomly) or being against Big Tech and then supporting world-ending AI has a much bigger footprint than if you or i did so
will calling him out change things? not for him, especially since he reacts defensively instead of thinking on the more respectful counters
but 'the audience' might get something outta it
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different strokes, i guess
Doctorow has a lot of money and influence among 'radicals'/progressives so talking about the importance of masking (then stopping randomly) or being against Big Tech and then supporting world-ending AI has a much bigger footprint than if you or i did so
will calling him out change things? not for him, especially since he reacts defensively instead of thinking on the more respectful counters
but 'the audience' might get something outta it
@johnbrowntypeface @artemis I admit having not paid sufficient attention. I am also anti big tech and pro world-ending AI, though I would prefer the technicality of the world ending without anyone dying.
Also, "stopped talking about masking" is much more absurd than what it sounded like. That's an expression of entitlement to labor towards a man who has already provided labor. That's a case of punishing sympathy and good faith because you think the sympathetic person can be pushed on and the unsympathetic person cannot, which is perverse. Even if it slows things down or requires going without sometimes you should not do that, liberatory politics should be treated as a climb and not a race, and you should be more interested in keeping three limbs on the rock face whenever possible than going fast.
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@johnbrowntypeface @artemis I admit having not paid sufficient attention. I am also anti big tech and pro world-ending AI, though I would prefer the technicality of the world ending without anyone dying.
Also, "stopped talking about masking" is much more absurd than what it sounded like. That's an expression of entitlement to labor towards a man who has already provided labor. That's a case of punishing sympathy and good faith because you think the sympathetic person can be pushed on and the unsympathetic person cannot, which is perverse. Even if it slows things down or requires going without sometimes you should not do that, liberatory politics should be treated as a climb and not a race, and you should be more interested in keeping three limbs on the rock face whenever possible than going fast.
i can see how it reads that way but that's not what i was saying. Cory continued to mask during the ongoing COVID pandemic, appearing at DefCon masked for example. this was two or three years into the pandemic when many believed or pretended it was over and so they no longer took precautions
somewhat recently, after becoming more popular and making more money, he abruptly stopped masking. i wasn't critiquing him speaking about masking.
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@johnbrowntypeface @artemis I admit having not paid sufficient attention. I am also anti big tech and pro world-ending AI, though I would prefer the technicality of the world ending without anyone dying.
Also, "stopped talking about masking" is much more absurd than what it sounded like. That's an expression of entitlement to labor towards a man who has already provided labor. That's a case of punishing sympathy and good faith because you think the sympathetic person can be pushed on and the unsympathetic person cannot, which is perverse. Even if it slows things down or requires going without sometimes you should not do that, liberatory politics should be treated as a climb and not a race, and you should be more interested in keeping three limbs on the rock face whenever possible than going fast.
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@johnbrowntypeface @artemis Reasonable. For my sake I've been able bodied most of my life but never gone outside anyway. However, I have also never done anything useful. Other people's priorities ought to make sense for me, but for some reason don't. I have whatever the Hikkikomori version is of the bitter immigrant persona where I can see ways people could avoid problems by living less like human beings and the failure to do so instinctively reads as unseriousness.
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It's really frustrating having a term people like me use to describe the trauma that shaped us picked up & used in some vague & non-specific way for no particular reason.
If you Google the term, you'll see references to the meaning I am using. People can come up with another term for their annoyance at people who have opinions about what they should or shouldn't do.
Don't steal terms from trauma survivors. We're using those.
@artemis they're using it deliberately to equate what they're pointing at with cultish abusive Christianity. It is not an accidental confusion or off-label usage.
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@matildalove I saw him arguing here on Mastodon that his post doesn't read as (little-l) libertarian. It's, um, not as convincing as he was going for, I'm sure.
same energy as when you call a nazi a nazi and they argue about it
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Please understand: we need the term "purity culture" in part because we need to be able to talk about the Christo-fascist takeover of our government.
We need to be able to talk about & understand the way purity culture plays into power & oppression, its relationship to white supremacy, its influence on people's thinking, & how we can counter this shit & do something different.
You may not think it's relevant to you, but it is, because Christian Nationalists have made this EVERYBODY'S PROBLEM.
Thank you for this!
Excessive virtue testing as a description for progressive infighting could have stayed that way (and to me is much more descriptive).
Labelling that as purity culture seems odd, especially since it takes an already established term away from you.
