This is a great question.

In my opinion, it’s not a question of respect for the abuser (fuck em, you owe them nothing). It’s about disrespecting other people as a side effect.

For example, if you wanted to show disrespect for someone, you could call them a slur (racial, gender, whatever). But at the same time, you’d be showing disrespect for everyone else who has that characteristic.

Maybe if you know no one else from that group will overhear, you would feel like it’s worth it to stick it to the abuser. I personally wouldn’t want to risk confirming such a prejudice for any other onlookers, nor would I want to set a precedent in my own brain that such speech or behavior is acceptable.

For me, the abuser isn’t worthy of respect, but they’re also not worthy of me potentially hurting others, or altering my standard of behavior.

The book I’m reading (Incognito by David Eagleman) mentioned exactly that.

Robinson and Yarvitz, like many others, suspected that the alcohol had loosened Gibson’s inhibitions and revealed his true self. And the nature of their suspicion has a long history: the Greek poet Alcaeus of Mytilene coined a popular phrase En oino álétheia (In wine there is the truth), which was repeated by the Roman Pliny the Elder as In vino veritas. The Babylonian Talmud contains a passage in the same spirit: “In came wine, out went a secret.” It later advises, “In three things is a man revealed: in his wine goblet, in his purse, and in his wrath.” The Roman historian Tacitus claimed that the Germanic peoples always drank alcohol while holding councils to prevent anyone from lying.

But there are many things that people have “known” for years that turned out to be untrue as our ability to understand the physical world increased. Now we’re finding that our unconscious mind accounts for more of what we think than our conscious mind can control.

My point is about how we judge people: we should judge their actions. But many of us also judge their thoughts. Many people concluded from that incident that Gibson was inherently racist and that his apology and defense of his own thoughts were meaningless. I know there have been other incidents with him, which is why I just wanted to use that one incident as an example.

Mel Gibson is not guilty for having antisemitic thoughts, but he is responsible for expressing them.

Yes, this is where I’m at. I . . . don’t know what to make of your second paragraph.

I am also in the no-free-will camp. This whole discussion was sparked for me by reading Incognito by David Eagleman, where he makes a good case for lack of free will from a neuroscience perspective. He mentions the studies where people’s unconscious biases are shown by how fast or slow they respond to positive or negative words in conjunction with human characteristics like race. We may be outright anti-racist, choosing to engage in activities that help achieve racial equity, yet still have biases that our conscious mind has no control over.

Glad to hear you’re doing better. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

This is very healthy and emotionally mature of you. We would definitely be doing better as a society if everyone who is capable of doing this would.

Yes we’re in agreement about how alcohol affects inhibitions. The question is more about our thoughts. When impaired, we don’t hold back from speaking, but are we speaking our true thoughts or just the basic garbage that’s been littered on top of our thoughts?

Also to be clear, I’m not excusing the behavior. It’s not OK to express racist thoughts regardless of whether it’s how you feel when sober or not. And if drinking causes someone to do that, they ought not drink. The purpose of this discussion is more about how we judge the person afterward: do we judge them solely on their actions? Or, as people online usually do, also judge them for their thoughts?

This is not OK. Regardless of what provokes her, her feelings don’t define you and you deserve to be safe.

An interesting counterpoint, thank you.

Now I’m planning on slicing a soft pretzel in half, and making it into a grilled cheese sandwich with pecans. I’m Thinking red cheddar, maybe some port wine cheese.

I moved to a shitty small city a few years ago. My most diverse grocery store is a fucking Food Lion.

Avengers theme ring tone. Captain America theme alarm.

Lovely!

Dr Who. People with similar tastes to me love it. I’ve seen episodes with several different iterations of the Doctor (please don’t @ me with your fave). It just doesn’t strike a chord with me.

If you’re not in the US, you may not be familiar with the specific person this comic is representing. It’s not some kind of straw argument. This is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and he is currently fucking up our Healthcare in all kind of dangerous ways. He had also been found to have a worm in his brain. The comic is accurate.

My post was deleted with zero communication to me about why. I did not say anything derogatory or or inappropriate, but now it looks like I did.

Of course not, but just because something’s not dangerous doesn’t make it appropriate for children. Commenters are informing me that there are PG drag shows, which I was unaware of. I guess I’ve never lived in an area that had them.

Removed by mod

I drank water once and now I’m dying.