![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Oct. 23rd, 2003 12:12 pmI was just about to post this on the board, but Bit seems a little overwhelmed, which would not be my intention, so I'm transferring it here, so Bit can feel overwhelmed in a much less public and much more friendly realm.
If I may add to Masq's and Maura's incisive commentaries on this argument, I'd like to say that I've seen this sort of thing said before, in response to certain posts by certain posters, and I've never been much swayed by it. Most of us are intelligent enough to recognize that an opinion is different from a fact, and are perceptive enough to recognize opinion as opinion no matter how incontrovertable are the terms in which it is cast. The fact remains that it is perfectly normal and justifiable for people to be offended by other people's opinions. There are, one may note, racists and sexists and homophobes and Cordelia-haters out there who are perfectly forthcoming that their bigotries are nothing but their opinions; I would be offended as much by the suggestion that calling an opinion an opinion removes it from the realm of argumentation as I would be by the opinion itself. Ultimately, I don't think the (purely imaginary) statement, "Fans of the Mayor mask a deep personal insecurity as well as political viewpoints tantamount to white supremacy," would be improved one whit were it recast (by either the writer or the reader) as "Fans of the Mayor mask a deep personal insecurity as well as political viewpoints tantamount to white supremacy, in my humble opinion."
We're all going to have opinions, some of which offend others, and we're all going to be offended by the opinions of others. I have no panacea for the board's problems (nor do I see that the problems are really all that serious at the moment), but I would suggest that people here make a greater effort to at least appear to be open to suasion, to at least look like they're listening. A little faked sincerity might go a long way. I would also ask that people stop generalizing from the extremes: not all Spike-fans believe that the attempted rape in "Seeing Red" is excused by Buffy's previous vacillations; nor do all Spike-haters think that Spike-fandom could be cured with the judicious application of lithium. I'll admit that the board (and its offshoots) have come to some amount of polarization; I think that's as much due to a self-segregation into groups where no one has to listen to any opposing arguments offered by anyone other than his own straw men as it is to any confusion between subjective judgment and objective fact.
And please don't get me started on Clem: in my humble opinion, he ruined the show, and, from my perspective, his fans commit the moral equivalent of genocide.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
