The West is like a stupid white girl who goes home with a black guy: Heartiste and his racist fans warn white "ethnomasochists" of the danger of "ebola laced black men."

My argument, as was discussed originally, was that dismissing the behavior as childish goes toward furthering the tendency on the interwebs of assuming that the perps are children, which they are not.

Well, okay. TL:DR – you’re talking at cross purposes.

The problem is that what people mean by the word “childish” isn’t actually how children behave. It’s a set descriptor for an array of behavior that MRA’s exemplify, yet attached to a group of people that for the most part act nothing like those people we are using their identity to describe.

I work with children. They can be little rascals, and they can be generous. Sometimes they throw tempter tantrums, and sometimes, they stoically sit on a porch for three hours without saying a word because you said it was important that they were patient at this time. It’s children, y’know. They’re odd.

Now! Obviously, we all know what we mean when we say something is childish. It’s a useful term to have! It’s meaningful and evocative. Puddleglum’s argument (And other’s, made before), is however, that for the most part, we all agree that children are not directly legally responsible for their own actions at all times. They’re not expected to be, because their brain are not mature yet, they’re still growing, and they pick up all that stuff we assume “Adulthood” is as they do so.

People like Heartiste is responsible for his actions, and he is choosing to act like a complete fool. There’s that bit about “never ascribe to malice what ignorance can explain”, but in this case and many others, it’s clearly malice we’re dealing with – intentional and focused. I know, deal with, talk to and work with endless examples of children, some as young as 2 or 3, that exhibit understanding, kindness and joy on a level so vastly different from the MRA-ilk that it boogles the mind.

So by refering to their antics as “childish”, it might create the idea that their behavior is just an example of some ignorant accident people will grow out off at some time, once they know better, and not actual, direct, deliberate cruelty. It’s the along the same lines of thinking that would argue calling them mentally ill is not really a smart idea, because it creates the notion that their abhorrent ideas and behavior come from the mental illness, not their atrocious decisions and desires.

Your argument is actually very different from that, Policy of Madness:

My point is that it is impossible to describe or explain what is inappropriate about a neurotypical adult sitting in a laundry basket without resorting to the context of that person’s age. In the context of a 3-year-old, there’s nothing unusual about this behavior. It’s actually cute. It’s not cute when it’s a grown-ass man, not because it is absolutely inappropriate, but because it is age-inappropriate in that context.

vs

I see the childish=misogynist as a deflection of the actual adult evil going on. At least ‘immature’ implies that the natural state should be mature. Calling them children doesn’t do that. It diminishes them, sure, because we don’t value children’s opinions, but it also deflects the very adult evil they’re advocating.

Wow, I could go on and on (children as a class are powerless, why compare them to people with power? or how children are often the victims of these people) , but sheesh, this is already longer than I’d planned.

People’s seating arrangements aren’t particularly important (I know it’s an illustrative analogy 🙂 ).

I’ve never met children who act with such obvious cruelty, malice and mendacious intentions. I don’t expect children to, and if I met any who does, I don’t call their behavior childish – I call it strange, cruel, malicious or mean.

Your argument is slightly more of a general normative thing –

What I’m saying is that if you can describe to me what is dumbass about this behavior without resorting to any reference to the person’s age, I would like to hear it. Because I am at this time not convinced that removing the ability to tell people to grow the fuck up leads to a point where we can still censure adults for acting like children. A society that can’t enforce age-appropriate social behavior is not a society that can function smoothly.

See, I don’t consider it age-appropriate behavior for any age to threaten violence, shout, cry, throw tantrums or hate everything and refuse to accept any kind of castigation for having utterly cruel views on humanity. I expect people, people of all ages that I talk to and interact with, not to do that. I’ll give them a pass for the most part because god knows, it’s always difficult to be nice at all times, but I don’t have a mental box in my head where I sort out “Abusive behavior” and allow anyone under a certain age to do stuff like that.

And that’s very, very different from seating arrangements, clothing, or loud screaming in an area where you’re otherwise expected to be quiet. There are rules for public spaces that we as a society generally agree on, and there are rules for private spaces that people tend to have. We use tables and forks, it’s all chopsticks in Canton. Sure, I expect children to have a hard time remembering all the random ins and out of human etiquette (it’s hard enough for me!) and I also expect them to make more than their fair share of faux passes, but that’s always going to be because they’re only children, holding them to as standard they are literally incapable of living up to is just not fair. And we expect people to learn the rules, whatever they are, as they grow up. That’s why we use age as a stand-in for acceptance of certain things / permission to other things.

So far, so good, we agree, right? I hope so.

The difference is in how censure is applied when the rules are breached and what we actually perceive as “the rules”. There’s actual no real reason not to use a laundry basket as a chair if one finds it comfortable. We’ve all just agreed it’s chairs or pillows, not boxes like a cat and we hope people stop using baskets when they grow up because we already have all these chairs and buying more furniture for all our dinner tables would be a hassle. There is, however, an actual and complete reason not to treat the people in your life with abuse, dishonesty, cruelty and evil intent. So when people do that anyway, we point out that’s wrong. Not because it’s age-inappropriate, but because it’s people-inappropriate.

Massively different discussion from the differentiation of permissions/eligibility that goes into age, and how we structure societies.

Interesting side-note though:

It also seems to me that never comparing adult behavior unfavorably to that of children would impossibly blur certain important social norms. I am open to being proven wrong on this, but Puddleglum doesn’t seem interested. If someone else wants to explain how this would work if implemented on a societal level, I will listen.

vs

Wow, I could go on and on (children as a class are powerless, why compare them to people with power? or how children are often the victims of these people) , but sheesh, this is already longer than I’d planned.

It’s a discussion on how you work with organizing rules and organisations and why you adopt the rules that you do. We can actually talk about the strict need for comparing adult behavior to child behavior in relation to maintaining social norms, because I’m not entirely convinced that’s always necessary or even particularly smart. I think it’s useful for maintaining social structures and adding layers of hierarchy, yet that’s not quite the same as necessary, reasonable or even particularly useful long-term.

but its not quite the same discussion as the notion that framing certain sets of behavior as childish extenuates and minimalizes the intentional malice in the activities and the intent on part of the people doing it to actually cause harm with their ideas.

As I said early in the discussion it happens frequently in the comment threads of political blogs. LG&M every single time the matter comes up, Media Matters every single time these matters of the MRAs comes up. The Washington Monthly. People do not want to believe that adults with the power to fulfill their rape and death threats are the perps. It is easier to believe it is a child who does not. It is often phrased in precisely that way. I want to think that these are teen boys who would be grounded forever if their folks found out what they are doing. In one case of Tumblr harassment it turned out to be a 50 year old d00d and everyone was so shocked because they had convinced themselves that it was some kid.

@Fibinachi

I work with children. They can be little rascals, and they can be generous. Sometimes they throw tempter tantrums, and sometimes, they stoically sit on a porch for three hours without saying a word because you said it was important that they were patient at this time. It’s children, y’know. They’re odd.

I’m glad you’ve only had experience with the kind and generous side of children. I’ve had plenty of contact with the cruel side of children. Children bully each other. They form cliques, pick targets, and mercilessly tease the targets to the point of suicide, and sometimes beyond that point and into actual suicide. They behave far differently around adults. I presume you are an adult; kids are going to put their best faces on for you.

A lot of this is a function of the child’s age. Children begin life amoral; they at first absorb and accept the morality that adults try to mold on them without comment, but as they get older they learn how to be selfish and act in their own pure and amoral interest. And so toddlers only pull the cat’s tail because they don’t understand that it causes kitty pain, whereas a 13-year-old might torture an animal because they know it causes the animal pain. So your experience with children may also depend on how old these children are.

They’re not expected to be, because their brain are not mature yet, they’re still growing, and they pick up all that stuff we assume “Adulthood” is as they do so.

Yes. And that’s why calling a guy who throws a ME-ME-ME tantrum over women having sex with men who aren’t him, despite being 30 years old, a whiny little baby is an apt comparison: this grown adult is acting like someone whose brain has not matured.

See, I don’t consider it age-appropriate behavior for any age to threaten violence, shout, cry, throw tantrums or hate everything and refuse to accept any kind of castigation for having utterly cruel views on humanity.

I think we’re using the term “appropriate” in different ways. “Age-appropriate” means “people at this age can be expected to behave in this manner.” You are using “appropriate” as a synonym for “acceptable.” That’s a valid use of the word, but not the same use I am using.

And so a screaming tantrum is age-appropriate … for infants. As soon as the child starts to gain the cognitive abilities that allow this behavior to be curbed, parents start trying to curb it. A lot of kids don’t seem to grow out of this until they are tweeners. But the fact is that this is not inappropriate behavior for human beings of a sufficiently young age; therefore it is inappropriate only in reference to the person’s attained years.

I also have to disagree with it being age appropriate to do things like threatening violence. I would not at all think it strange to see a 2-year-old swatting another child with a toy for withholding a wanted object. The fact is that we don’t like it when 2-year-olds do this, and think we need to train them out of it; in this sense, beating another kid in the head with a toy in inappropriate. But in the sense that this is a thing that 2-year-olds do and nobody is surprised to see it, it is age-appropriate. It is age-inappropriate for a 30-year-old man to do this. For the adult dude, it takes the form of anger and resentment at the fact that women are having sex but not with him. The underlying pattern is the same, and that’s why he’s a whiny baby.

There’s actual no real reason not to use a laundry basket as a chair if one finds it comfortable. … There is, however, an actual and complete reason not to treat the people in your life with abuse, dishonesty, cruelty and evil intent.

I would not disagree with that. Something can be condemnable for more than one reason. Throwing a whiny fit is wrong, independently of the content of the fit, because these guys should have grown out of that shit by now. Issuing threats and abuse is wrong, independently of the means by which the abuse is issued, because threats and abuse are intrinsically (not relatively) wrong.

But here is the thing: a whiny fit can occur without any kind of cruelty being included. A guy who writes and publishes a long, wangsty blog post about how he can’t get laid but totally deserves to get laid because he’s actually a really nice guy, for reals, is not being cruel or abusive. He’s just being a whiny little baby. And we can mock and condemn that, and maybe not even use the term “you’re being a whiny brat, grow the fuck up,” but if we dig down to the foundation of the problem, it’s that he never learned that he’s not the center of creation. And that is a social/psychological development thing; he hasn’t grown the fuck up.

We can actually talk about the strict need for comparing adult behavior to child behavior in relation to maintaining social norms, because I’m not entirely convinced that’s always necessary or even particularly smart.

As a society, we define adult behavior mostly in terms of what it isn’t: it isn’t how children behave. This is, at least partially, an arbitrary dichotomy; there is, as we agree, no intrinsic reason why a laundry basket, if comfortable, can’t be a good seating arrangement. However, it is also partially a necessary thing. It’s not unusual to see 5-year-olds start a fit in the store over being denied candy. When people in a place of employment behave the same way, the company cannot function effectively and this person becomes a personnel issue. A kid, when unsupervised, is likely to wander away from homework to play, not comprehending the value of the homework. A soldier in a war zone probably should not do that.

The main outward/presenting difference between children and adults is behavior, but children behave that way for a reason: the game is more fun than the homework. Society must be prepared to sanction adults who slack off of their responsibilities to play games, otherwise some of them absolutely would. You only have to look at what happens when the sanction disappears, because family and friends are willing to provide full support. Some people will go on being responsible, but a non-trivial percentage will turn into hermits who do nothing but play computer games all day and rarely shower.

I will only say that particular hospital in Dallas has been understaffed and underfunded for decades. It’s also the local hospital that treats most of the folks in the surrounding areas who have limited means from uninsured to those who couldn’t pay anything at all.

Skye, thanks for that info. I didn’t know that. ::sigh::

Thinking over the age-appropriate/childishness discussion, I’m pretty much in agreement with PoM.

A lot of this is a function of the child’s age. Children begin life amoral; they at first absorb and accept the morality that adults try to mold on them without comment, but as they get older they learn how to be selfish and act in their own pure and amoral interest. And so toddlers only pull the cat’s tail because they don’t understand that it causes kitty pain, whereas a 13-year-old might torture an animal because they know it causes the animal pain. So your experience with children may also depend on how old these children are.

so… referring to the activities of >30 year old men by invoking that their behavior is childish and babyish does not make it seem as if they merely do the things they do out of ignorance how, because they don’t understand the consequences of their actions how?

What?

As I said, the conversational difference between the debate on whether or whether not everyone is actually an atavistic throwback hedonist masquerading as a thinking being always looking to skirt work, amorally maximizing their own pleasure unless sanctioned by the constraints of presumed retributive violence that is our society is very, very different from Puddleglum’s point about how referring to intentional behavior by calling it childish sort of throws children under the bus and how it occasionally does make it seem as if everyone is in a position of guardianship over these people, required to nicely endure their tantrums and explain to them, again and again, that women are actually people.

I… sorry, how is:

but as they get older they learn how to be selfish and act in their own pure and amoral interest. And so toddlers only pull the cat’s tail because they don’t understand that it causes kitty pain, whereas a 13-year-old might torture an animal because they know it causes the animal pain. So your experience with children may also depend on how old these children are.

any different from

I see the childish=misogynist as a deflection of the actual adult evil going on. At least ‘immature’ implies that the natural state should be mature. Calling them children doesn’t do that. It diminishes them, sure, because we don’t value children’s opinions, but it also deflects the very adult evil they’re advocating.

?

?

Conversations about social censure as it relates to age differentiation and the economic need for people to sometimes do things they don’t like is not the same as a point about how the usage of some terminology carries unfortunate consequences in the investment of responsibility, and I don’t feel comfortable assuming those two are in any way related to each other.

That wasn’t Puddleglum’s argument, as far as I can gather.

This is actually a part of my problem with the use of ‘childish’, but no, I didn’t mention in my teel deer.

Puddleglum was saying that referring to MRAs as vicious children who never got past the playground-bully stage is giving them a pass on their behavior, because children don’t choose to be childish, and it positions onlookers as the adult babysitters. I think the opposite is true: that not calling out childish behavior as such is the same as either pretending it doesn’t exist, or pretending that this is acceptable for adults qua adults, although it might be inappropriate for other, unrelated reasons.

My criteria for judging what is and isn’t socially acceptable behaviour (among adults) isn’t based on whether or not it’s age appropriate. I totally disagree with the concept that I should judge behaviour based on whether it’s age appropriate or not. I can see now that I made a mistake in using PoM’s basket example, since using it implied that I agreed with the concept of judging behaviour by age.

Adults swing on swings, play tag, sit in laundry baskets (assuming they can fit), ride merry-go-rounds, and thousands of other things. None of it is ‘childish’ because if adults are doing it, it’s adult behaviour (clearly, YMMV!). Whether or not it’s *acceptable* adult behaviour is… kind of the point I’m trying to make. Yet going by this argument that things should be judged as age-appropriate or not, that means rolling down a grassy hill is in the same negative category as having a temper tantrum.

Shitty behaviour (temper tantrum) is shitty behaviour. I can call it shitty behaviour without using age-appropriateness as a reason; I find using age-appropriateness kind of a stupid reason to think something is shitty, actually.

Also, somehow I’m getting the impression that it’s sort of acceptable for kids to have a playground-bully stage, which I disagree with. It’s only ‘acceptable’ in the sense that we live in a bully-friendly world. The real answer is to change things so that bullying isn’t ‘normal’; getting rid of ‘bully culture’ would be a tremendous step forward.

You know, the more I read of this discussion, the less point I see in it, lol. Clearly we have a lot of different ideas of what constitutes ‘adult’ vs ‘child’, nevermind the rest of it!

When you consider the fact that all I was doing was expressing why *I* was uncomfortable using ‘childish’ in these comments… sheesh.

Why are “that’s childish, you should stop doing that” and “aw, they’re just being boys” being conflated? They’re not the same thing at all, and they’re deployed as arguments by different people for different reasons.

I didn’t intend that they should be conflated, poor wording on my part. Part of what I loathe about the ‘boys will be boys’ is the idea that the adults doing evil can be dismissed as ‘children misbehaving’ by so many in the mainstream; for the same reason, I dislike ‘that’s childish’ because it is also equating (for me! I get that I do not hold a common view on this!) adult dumbassery with ‘child-like misbehaviour’. What they are doing is not child-like misbehaviour. It’s adult-like misbehaviour. Because adults are doing it.

“Ebola laced black men.” As distinct from white PUAs riddled with everything from herpes to syphilis.

He should look on the bright side. It will head off that spree of sperm jacking.

@Puddleglum, PoM, Fibinachi, thebewilderness, sorry to gatecrash so late into the discussion, it struck a chord with me re: a few things I’ve been thinking about lately.

Particularly around our (by ‘our’ I mean societal) use of the term “childish behaviour”

A lot of this is a function of the child’s age. Children begin life amoral; they at first absorb and accept the morality that adults try to mold on them without comment, but as they get older they learn how to be selfish and act in their own pure and amoral interest. And so toddlers only pull the cat’s tail because they don’t understand that it causes kitty pain, whereas a 13-year-old might torture an animal because they know it causes the animal pain. So your experience with children may also depend on how old these children are.

This. If we assume that toddler is pulling kitty’s tail for reason X and teenager is pulling kitty’s tail for reason Y (these reasons being different due to their differing developmental stages), then a 30yrs+ individual will pull kitty’s tail for reason Z, being also at a markedly different developmental stage. Although on the surface it’s the same behaviour (that long-suffering kitty!), the intent and motivation behind said behaviour for each is very, very different. If we place the behaviour of the 30yrs+ individual or even the teenager under the lens of simply being ‘childish’, we run the risk of ascribing to them the same motivations and intent of the toddler.

In this vein, a child throwing a temper tantrum and an MRA throwing a temper tantrum may be showing the same behaviour, but the cognitive structuring/internalised thought processes (motivation, attitude, intent) bolstering the MRA’s decision to engage in said behaviour are an adult’s. In this scenario I don’t see an adult behaving like a child. I see an adult behaving like a bad adult.

Adults swing on swings, play tag, sit in laundry baskets (assuming they can fit), ride merry-go-rounds, and thousands of other things. None of it is ‘childish’ because if adults are doing it, it’s adult behaviour (clearly, YMMV!). Whether or not it’s *acceptable* adult behaviour is… kind of the point I’m trying to make. Yet going by this argument that things should be judged as age-appropriate or not, that means rolling down a grassy hill is in the same negative category as having a temper tantrum.

The term ‘childish’ I tend to think of as a bit of a blanket term for all things negative. As adults we continue to show a complex multitude of the same positive and negative behaviours as children – gift-giving for example is a behaviour very prevalent amongst children (I’ve received many pictures of my own face crafted in felt-tip and glitter), and yet when performed later by adults is not viewed as ‘childish’. We seem to operate under an almost ageist categorization system of human behaviour whereby anything healthy, constructive and ‘good’ is seen as adult, anything ‘bad’ (selfish, irresponsible, destructive) seen as child. It almost serves to neatly shift attention away from the fact that adults engage in unhealthy, destructive behaviours for bad yet very developed adult reasons, and stops us from holding them accountable within that adult lens. In addition, as others have pointed out, our knee-jerk attitude to all bad human behaviour as ‘belonging to children’ not only throws children under the bus, but also infers that adults engaging in bad behaviour have ‘simply not learned yet’ how to be adults. Sadly, bad behaviour within adults is often the outcome of very extensive learning processes which need to be tackled and dismantled, in a very different way to children. It’s not that they ‘haven’t learned’ yet how to stop being children, it’s that they’ve learned how to be improper adults.

Sorry for the waffly teal deer, trying to type this on a bus in a hurry and it’s sehr challenging.

In addition, as others have pointed out, our knee-jerk attitude to all bad human behaviour as ‘belonging to children’ not only throws children under the bus, but also infers that adults engaging in bad behaviour have ‘simply not learned yet’ how to be adults.

Interesting: I don’t think of all bad human behaviour as childish, not by a long stretch. Malice, cruelty, playing mind games, the innumerable bigotries – those aren’t the sort of things that get a “stop being childish” response from me. Those are very much appalling adult human behaviour.

It’s the temper tantrums, the WAAAAH NOT FAIR kicking heels against the wall carryings-on from MRAs over the tiniest thing not going their way, the things we do point and laugh at coming from adults, that have me using terms like manbabies, grow the fuck up, whiny-ass, and so on. It’s not just childish behaviour, or bad behaviour, it’s specifically bad childish behaviour.

Like, threatening someone with a gun because they said something you didn’t like (cross-referencing other thread) is generally considered bad behavior even by people who see gun ownership as the norm, right? But nobody would say “hey, stop threatening to shoot that person who you were arguing with, that’s so childish”.