’m still busily thesising so posting will continue at a homeopathic rate over the next 2-3 weeks. In the meantime, here is another exercise, this time taking about half an hour.
The first part is to watch this talk (which is interesting enough regardless of my post) and note your reaction about the speaker:
For myself, I noted that the talk was interesting although the whole thesis (that women and girls are disproportionately affected by poverty) was too trivially obvious for a talk. I did have a few problems with the examples used and what they supposedly show, and I did think she overstated the case for how far your donation to the average aid organisation goes. As for the speaker I quite liked her but did note that she was more formal than most TED speakers, perhaps even nervous.
The second stage in this exercise is to scroll through some of the YouTube comments. I know YouTube comments are known to be of infinite inanity, but in this case it’s instructive. Here are some of my selections:
- sexist….a freaking total waste of my time. All about girls girls girls, what about the boys in similar situations. I would not give a penny to her charity.
- i’d like this talk much more if it wasn’t sexist. There are boys growing up in the SAME CONDITIONS.
- Gender survival is an issue of genetics – some societal but predominantly genetics. Shes generalising, and implying causation from correlations
- this lady is a liar.
- Fuck the matriarchy we live in. Fuck the falsely self entitled whores we call modern women.
- And here I was, all ready to donate my $13. Ah forget it, this bitch can give it for me.
- WHAT A BS!!! Totalitarianism is STILL the biggest threat AND BY FAR the one growing more each day! No offense to the fight that certainly has to fought for gender discrimination BUT : In the 21st century WE DO NOT HAVE FREE PRESS ANYMORE, WE HAVE POLICE STATES EMERGING IN THE WESTERN WORLD, WE HAVE CRIMINALS AS POLITICIANS WITHOUT ANY REGARD FOR JUSTICE! WE ARE SCREWED AS A WHOLE, not just women!
- this women needs get laid
- All she’s got here are a few sappy stories and some feminist rhetoric. This speaker isn’t up to the TEDTalks standards…. Our century’s greatest injustice??? what a bunch of BS!
- You have inspired me to stop beating women up…
- She’s too serious to be taken seriously.
- @hollium Look, if you’re truly being objective, you’ll realize that she only speaks from her perspective – which is the female perspective. Btw, I’m not even criticizing for her gender-biased viewpoint; All I’m saying is that she thinks she actually knows all about females around the world just because she’s a female. That’s bullshit and condescending to us males (since she is trying to sell her credibility to us).
- This lady is pretty retarded, her first example was not about gender inequity, it was about poverty in an newly developed industrialized country. That is what happens you fucking moron to any person of any gender. Why go to school that cost money when you can work in the fields and at least provide a minimal living. That’s called reality, not gender inequality. I can’t watch past 3 minutes and 30 seconds of ignorance. Go get a degree in Developing Communities and learn something bitch.
The point that we always need to remember is that when you don’t like what someone is saying, you are more likely to perceive the person negatively, and think they have negative social attributes (eg. being unpleasant or condescending). Of course here this is exaggerated to a laughable degree, but it’s important to note that everyone does it — I think our brains must be super-trained in the ad hominem. As a more nuanced example, the general consensus in my university discussion group (which while being atheist don’t care much for Gnu Atheists) is that Richard Dawkins is very reptilian and almost inhuman, possibly autistic*. And because I agree with much of what Dawkins says, I don’t find this — to me he is at worst slightly stodgy in the manner of old-style British academics. But even this would not be his defining quality
.
I do however note that I have very similar feelings to William Lane Craig, probably because I disagree with him so strongly. Possibly because of all the debates I’ve heard with him reciting almost the same word-for-word speech, which makes me think of an automaton.
Are there any cases where you notice your social reaction to a person as being related to whether you agree with them or not?
*This connection between autism and being inhuman is very bigoted but that’s the implication I got from the conversation.
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