I like this statement because its vagueness has apparently allowed people with diametrically opposed viewpoints to both view themselves as the victim and the other as the perpetrator. I am not sure how to fix that, but it certainly seems like everyone is feeling persecuted regardless of any objective reality and that can't be good for us.

I think that basically sums up the state of America in 2018.

I guess it's both good and bad, though. Bad because it indicates growth has left the U.S. and we're all doing a little worse than we expected we'd be doing. Good because if everyone is feeling persecuted, chances are we've actually got this equality thing down pretty well.

Unless there is an /increase/ in how much people are being told something analogous/similar to that, I'm not sure how that would explain an /increase/ in the rate.

Is there a reason you would expect the harm from things of that sort to have increased as of late?

Are you kidding? Social pressure to make people feel worthless if you don't toe the line on liberal issues has absolutely skyrocketed.

I don't think one's political positions/expressions are really a fundamental and immutable part of what one is in the way described by the comment.

Unless you mean that the attempts to make people feel worthless are done on the basis of immutable things, but are done in response to "not towing the line"?

> Unless you mean that the attempts to make people feel worthless are done on the basis of immutable things

Yes, I do mean that. If you are white or a male you are told to "check your privilege", and that you "are not allowed to speak about issues". (Is a white male allowed to have an opinion about abortion? Ask yourself what you think, and ask others as well, and that will help you understand.)

Go watch some campus talks and see how bad it gets. Or just read this: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/24/politics/march-for-our-lives-...

Notice the narrative that the white students don't matter unless they deprecate themself? It's framed in an inclusive way of course ("they include others"), but the subtext is quite obvious.

And that's a CNN article, the real world is much worse.

The pendulum is swinging, and instead of making everyone important, now those who were marginalized before are gaining status by marginalizing others.

The point of my sentence you quoted was more in the part that said

> but are done in response to "not towing the line"

Like, your previous comment was about "towing the line" and I was asking about the connection between the "immutable properties" thing mentioned in the original comment I responded to, and the "towing the line" that you mentioned.

I wasn't asking "are people speaking against other people's immutable properties?" (which seems to be the question you responded to).

I was asking, "By talking about 'towing the line' when the context was 'immutable properties', did you mean that the treatment based on 'immutable properties' is targeted at those who don't 'tow the line'? If not, what is your meaning in bringing up 'towing the line' in the context of people speaking against others' 'immutable properties'?".

I am not trying to make a point about who is or is not treated badly. I'm trying to clear up what was meant to be communicated.

That's why I linked to that story. If you have an undesirable immutable property (i.e. white or male), then you have to toe the line by deprecating yourself. But if you are a minority then you are not required to do that, you are accepted simply because you are assumed to always be oppressed.

> https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/24/politics/march-for-our-lives-...

That's rather heartwarming; they clearly intuitively understand solidarity. It's not like someone is holding a gun to their heads and making them do it.

Why is it famed as a "privilege" and race issue then? They can only be inclusive if the other person is a minority?

Arithmetically, the majority has to be the group that includes the minority, surely?

More seriously, all those kids recognise that news coverage and politics applies very different bias to young white people and young nonwhite people, and they're refusing to accept that and keep pointing it out.

I think thats a distinction without a difference. Even if things like political positions, worldview, way of live, and religion aren't (completely) biological they aren't just opinions that people can change at the drop of a hat. E.g. (genuine) political beliefs aren't something someone explicitly chooses, they are based on their beliefs, experience, and background. In addition, whether a trait is immutable or not is irrelevant to whether or not its ok to hate a person for it for it.

I don't think it would be controversial to say that the amount of people saying that to/about white males has gone up recently.

Ah, I probably misinterpreted the group they were talking about.

Most of the time I hear people claim that someone else objects to someone's "existence", the person is claiming that people are objecting to the "existence" of homosexual or bisexual or transgender persons. So, with there seeming to be a correlation with red states, I thought maybe the comment was saying "That is because there are a bunch of hateful ___phobes in the red states grrr!"

However, I probably should have picked up on the part of the comment that talked about the unchangable property being treated as "violence", and realized that that likely implied that the group imagined to be saying the quote was likely, uh, the group that tends to define "violence" in weird ways to include things that they believe are bad in general.

I suppose my first interpretation of the comment also didn't fit particularly well with the increase in the rate being primarily among persons who are (considered) white.

Crybullying against $insertGroupYouDon'tLike has gained popularity over the past decade, at the very least from "not a concept" to extant.

I don't know why the downvotes. What you say is true.

I feel like I am missing context.

Basically one kid (eg, the "bully") says to another kid (eg, the "victim") that the victim's mere existence is deeply offensive to the bully. Hope that helps.

Still missing context. Are schoolyard bullies actually doing this to other kids? Or are you talking about something else? Can you speak plainly and not use analogies?

You've really never experienced being told that unless you are a minority (ideally an oppressed one) or a victim, or at the very least, you have some non-typical sexual identity, you are worthless?

You have not noticed people making up sexual identities that they don't really have? Or inventing (or inflating) victim stories about themself?

The sexual minorities have far higher suicide rates, so I don't think that would explain the numbers we're seeing here. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/preventing-suicid...

I've basically never seen the former. I do see 100X as much ranting against it though. It's hard to feel oppressed when you fit into all the majority categories.

As for people "making up" aspects of their identity ... so? Who fucking cares? It doesn't affect me at all, let alone make me more prone to committing suicide!!!

> so?

You missed the point. Correct, who cares. But why are they driven to do it? It's because otherwise they are not valued. (If you have another theory let's hear it.)

> I've basically never seen the former. I do see 100X as much ranting against it though.

You don't spend enough time on college campuses, and you especially don't spend enough time listening to liberal student yell and scream if someone conservative dares to talk.

Or maybe you spend just the right amount of time LOL. Ignoring those kind of liberals probably helps one's sanity.

25% of transgender students were physically attacked for being transgender. One in six left school because of mistreatment and one in twelve were kicked out of the house. Jumping from those facts to the conclusion that they are just doing it to feel "valued" is bizarre. You might just as well say they're in it for the money, since they are three times more likely to be unemployed and twice as likely to be in poverty. https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS...

Lots more detail at http://www.ustranssurvey.org/reports if you're actually interested.

The bully / victim could be filled in with different values.

The Bully says to gay kid, your very existence offends me.

The White Bully says to non-white kid, your very existence offends me.

The Sports Hero says to the Computer Nerd, your very existence offends me.

Make other substitutions for bully / victim as you see fit. But it's not an analogy. It really happens.

I did not make the original post. I was attempting to clarify it. I was not using an analogy at all.

I literally meant: A bully said to victim that victim's very existence is offensive to bully.

IMO, that summarizes how I interpreted the original top level post.

He's talking about underprivileged people expressing frustration and anger towards the privileged.

I think he/she is referring to white males.

So, in this analogy, white people are the victims, and minorities are the bullies?

I guess if you strip all historical context out of the racial issues, ignore current inequalities, and just focus on what people on Tumblr are saying, I guess you could come to that conclusion, but you have to intentionally avoid a lot of stuff to reach that

I don't think it's possible to deny it at this point; you'd have to be blind not to see the hatred directed towards white people. This behavior is both encouraged and protected by the culture & institutions running the western world at the moment. The opposite is cracked down upon swiftly.

I feel like this comment is coming from some parallel bizarro world. We have an openly racist president and majority party and yet somehow it's the whites who are suffering?

Those two things are not mutually exclusive. This is especially the case when you consider that, for example, government is currently controlled by conservatives but popular culture is controlled by progressives. Similar situations exist for the deep south versus the coast, churches versus software companies, gun culture versus hip hop culture, etc. Therefore, depending on their circumstances both a minority progressive and a white conservative can be suffering.

Yeah, every now and then someone makes a harmless joke online about white men. It must be really hard to deal with that kind of pressure.

Both sides complain about this. Its hard to say what the original poster is really saying.

I've got a liberal gay friend who was ostracized by his family after a failure to complete gay-conversion therapy for example. He managed to live fine once he ran away from home, got married in Canada to his now husband, and seems to be happily married for the past few years.

On the other hand, there are right-wing friends who also claim that they're being bullied online. I don't think I've heard of any horror stories that compare to the trauma of gay conversion therapy however. Still, there's a level of trolling that can be psychologically damaging, so I can understand that issue.

To be clear: I'm against bullying of any kind. But often times, its important to know the viewpoint of the complainer. I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about casual internet trolling, not without breaking the 1st Amendment anyway. But there's definitely something we can do about gay conversion therapy for example.

I would personally be for increasing penalties on "obvious" internet troll moves: Swatting, online harassment, revenge porn, etc. etc. There's relatively little legal recourse against these acts of trolling right now. And sure, its technically chipping away at 1st Amendment / free speech issues, but I do think that cleaning up the internet a bit and reducing bullying online will probably help someone.

Strawman aside, the current political climate is certainly growing more hostile and polarized as the societal pendulum swings away. It's probably not a coincidence that most who commit suicide are male and the worst of it are in predominately white states which also just so happen to have lagging economic growth.

Can you clarify the "fundamental aspect of who [people] are"?

Can you clarify this quotation? What is the source, who is speaking, to whom are they speaking?

I think it's a comment about aggressive identity politics. E.g. male oppression vs females, white vs black as an inate part of being white male, etc

Yeah strawmen suck

Says someone who must not have ever been bullied and told your very existence is offensive. You might as well not exist. Etc.

Being told that, repeatedly, by multiple people, at an impressionable age, might lead someone to commit suicide.