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Also, the word 'nonharmful' is lifting a lot of weight. Everyone will say yeah, nonharmful things are fine! yet find ways of explaining how the things they don't like are harmful, actually. e.g., anti-gay people are very concerned about the harm to the 'fabric of society.' 1/

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

Jul 12, 2021

If someone has some controversial, nonharmful preference, "how did you get that preference" shouldn't be relevant. If it is, it means we're viewing the preference as an unfortunate mistake that we only accept when we see the person as a sufficiently helpless victim.

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

Jul 12, 2021

People almost never decouple their concept of 'harm' from their concept of 'what they judge and exclude'. By definition, if you judge and exclude a thing, it's *because* you believe it's harmful. So the real question becomes, how do we evaluate our concept of harm? 2/

Aella

@Aella_Girl

Jul 12, 2021

1. if the harm is abstracted (e.g., damage to society! confusion around natural roles!) 2. if it's based on horror or disgust to others ("they're fucked up in the head!") 3. if the harm is *created by the belief it's harmful* ("if they do it they'll be outcast/lowlife")

Aella

@Aella_Girl

If your concept of harm is abstracted or driven by disgust or stigma, then there's a good chance your concept of harm isn't *really* based on harm; it's based on something else that you're subconsciously tagging as 'harm' because it's much more morally defensible.

7:29 PM · Jul 12, 2021

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I see problematic used this way a lot as well. It's more defensible to say "this is harmful" or "this is problematic" than it is to actually explicate a reason which might not be defensible on examination.

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Agree with a lot of that. Disgust abstracts away a lot of mental/cultural scaffolding, which may be overdue an update. Problem is, that's what it's recruited to do, since there are limits to the amount of complexity you can deal with in a day.