Striving For Diversity
And so you must be excluded:
It means they’re holding you responsible for their out-of-control feelings and they’re hoping you’re tolerant and kind enough to let them call you intolerant and unkind.
It’s a pathetic power move from life’s losers meant to turn your own morals against you.
It’s one of the…
— Porkulence (@Porkulence) June 25, 2025
Update, via the comments:
It must be quite strange to inhabit a milieu in which the normal meanings of words are either ignored or inverted. By people who aspire to be professional writers. Communicators of ideas.
Such that safety translates as a compulsory and intensely neurotic following of very narrow ideological fashion.
A social environment in which celebrating diversity means pointedly and gleefully excluding anyone we suspect of possibly have differing opinions on something or other, whether expressed or not, and doing so in ways that, to others, those less progressive, seem petty and weird.
Something along those lines.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
From the replies:
It must be quite strange to inhabit a milieu in which the normal meanings of words are either ignored or inverted. By people who aspire to be professional writers. Communicators of ideas.
Such that safety translates as a compulsory and intensely neurotic following of very narrow ideological fashion.
A social environment in which celebrating diversity means pointedly and gleefully excluding anyone we suspect of possibly have differing opinions on something or other, whether expressed or not, and doing so in ways that, to others, those less progressive, seem petty and weird.
Something along those lines.
And as someone quips in the replies,
Presumably, in this context, of a science fiction writing community, safety would translate as continual flattery.
Remember the rule. Steer clear of the brightly colored animals.
[ Post updated. ]
Progressives in a nutshell.
So many aspirations, so few accomplishments.
It’s a Cluster B manipulation.
They don’t actually feel unsafe. They just don’t want you around, so they use a term that implies you’re the aggressor and they’re the victim.
“I’m such a sensitive princess that I can feel a pea under any number of mattresses.”
They don’t feel unsafe. They’re just cowards who want to bully people.
It’s always word games.
The enthusiasm for which does not inspire great trust.
Even if the claims of feeling “unsafe” are to be taken at face value, which seems a little generous, those claims do suggest a strange and impossibly high-maintenance worldview.
I mean, pretty much every day I am surrounded by, and interact with, people whose opinions on any number of things almost certainly differ from my own, some antithetically. This unremarkable fact does not result in any discernible feelings of agitation or terror.
But hey, maybe that’s just me.
And on the other hand, people generally avoid conflict. So the Cluster Bs “win” because their targets don’t call them out on it.
I have discovered that I have a wonderous super power, one that just increases in power day-by-day: I’m getting older. Which means I have fewer and fewer fucks left to give. So I either don’t care what idiots like this think or I let them know. And feel no guilt or otherwise about doing so.
I can’t believe anyone interested in writing would be stupid enough to think they can create in this type of strait jacket.
And they like it.
I suppose the claims of feeling unsafe might at least be comprehensible, if not remotely edifying, if you translate them as something like, “I fear you may disabuse me of my cherished illusions.” Or, “I fear you may make my pretensions more noticeable and therefore difficult to sustain.”
That kind of thing.
If such a situation were only limited to a milieu…
Exactly. So who, if anyone, in such a situation is more likely to be truly the one legitimately feeling anything approaching unsafe?
If you’ll forgive a wildly OT comment…
Re: the Star Trek discussion a few threads back, I ran across this comment:
(I don’t know if it’s true or not, as I have no involvement with fans and conventions.)
There has always been a significant Ministry of Truth element in the science fiction “community”, all the way back to the 1930’s. And that includes writers and editors.
Thus: Yet another BLM activist turns out to be depraved, sadistic abuser.
Is today’s word ‘crybully’?