But are you?
That poster is still doing the rounds.
Well…ok but…how shall I put this…anyone can say that. It’s just saying. There’s no particular reason anyone should believe it. We can all draw up statements that start with “I am”; they won’t all necessarily be true.
Maybe the credulity here has bled over from trans ideology, where a certain kind of self-declaration from a certain kind of person is treated as both sacred and mandatory-to-believe. “People are who they say they are,” we’re told constantly – unless of course the people in question are those horrible feminist women who ask questions like “Why should I believe you?”
What if feminists started wearing that “I am a safe person” badge? Would the misogynist activists believe us? Of course not. So…why should we believe anyone who wears the badge? Why should anyone?
As the world’s last surviving reticulated snow bass on earth, I find your lack of faith in self-declaration to be astonishing, and disappointing.
The more you insist your primary concern is the generic other (as signified by the meaningless ‘anything’) the more I will be convinced your only real concern is your own ego. Do the actual work or shut up.
To be honest, I’d put one of these up (or at least a rainbow symbol) if I lived in rural Texas. Although that would likely mark me as someone who might help a woman there get an abortion. I want to be sympathetic to even the TQ+ as people who deserve to be treated with respect while not agreeing with pushing gender ideology on kids.
When I was a kid, there was a program called Block Parents. According to Wiki, it’s mostly died out now for a variety of reasons.* The basic idea was that people who signed up for this program and cleared a police background check would post the Block Parent sign in their window, and this was supposed to signal to kids that if we were in danger or trouble or something we could knock on that door.
Even as a kid it seemed kind of strange to me that, in the era of “stranger danger,” we were being reassured that no, these particular strangers are ok to trust. I don’t know that I knew about the background check part of it, but even still, that’s putting a lot of faith in someone’s current lack of a criminal record. These signs don’t even have that going for them.
Seems to me like they’re just the 2023 version of the “In this house, we believe …” signs that were so trendy a year or two ago. (I just saw one in the trash bin, and wondered if that house had stopped believing in science, etc. — ok, actually I think it was a neighbor who moved out, but still.)
*Technology has made it obsolete, police don’t want to spend resources doing the background checks, and (my own speculation) people realized how odd it is.
It’s so creepy because it’s so paranoid. Signalling that there’s a kind of diffuse, spectral force of terror out there. The world is just so, so full of evil people! But I’m not one of them! I’m safe!
The real force of terror is the idea itself — the paranoia that at any moment you could be marked as One of Them instead of One of Us, the Good People. So you must be vigilant and demonstrate your commitment to Us, against Them.
It’s the Crucible. The poster might as well say:
I am not a witch.
If you are
in any way
afraid
of being harmed by a witch
or you suspect
that someone’s a witch
let me know.
I’ll prove I’m not a witch
by joining in the witch hunt.
@Screechy Monkey:
I was just thinking they were the 2023 version of Block Parents — and deliberately so. As Artymorty says, they’re equating being misgendered with being stalked by a rapist. “I just overheard that some people don’t believe sex is assigned at birth. Can I come in and call my Mom?”
Heck if I can find the story now, but I seem to remember some kind of incident on public transit, maybe 2013, 2014, 2015, somewhere in there, when a man was harassing another passenger, a Muslim woman, and two other men intervened on her behalf, to stop the bully from harassing her. As I recall, one or both of the Good Samaritans was stabbed to death. My memory places the incident in Canada. I’m probably mistaken about some or all of the details, because I can’t find anything now that corresponds with what I think I remember.
Nevertheless, I believe some articles came out at the time about how to be a better neighbor to people that you see being bullied or harassed for race, ethnicity, religion, and so on. Be the one to sit by a Muslim woman by herself, and ask if she wants someone to talk to. Be a friend, so she isn’t alone if she doesn’t want to be, if she feels threatened by people (esp men) around her. One strategy that was discussed was wearing a safety pin, as a signal that you are a safe person to help protect against harassment.
I wore a safety pin, in that spirit, for a couple of years. As with other gestures of good will, the T lobby latched onto the “be a safe person” effort, and made it stand for, “be the safe person” (i.e., woman) who will accompany a trans woman, and conduct him safely into the women’s bathroom. When 2015 rolled around, with the Great FTB Shunning, my eyes were opened to the real meaning of “be a safe person” for TIMs. I laid my safety pin aside, and haven’t worn it since.
Funny you should mention it, because I just got off a bus (one of several in a trip to get groceries & have a brief adventure) which was not unsafe exactly but rendered horrible by the fact that the 20 or 30 or so high school kids on it have never learned any bus etiquette or even been taught to notice that other people exist. They weren’t evil but they blocked the aisle even after most of their colleagues had gotten off, and not one of them made any move to let other people sit down, or get out of the way when new people got on.. One girl turned to sit sideways and put her feet on the empty seat, so the next person to sit there will probably sit on traces of dog shit.
Sort of off topic but sort of not. Never mind all the breathless rhetoric about Safe People and whatnot; stay alert and notice other people so that you’ll be able to help if they need help. Skip the drama and pay attention to the tiny everyday stuff. Never mind being a trans laydee, do your share of the housework and childcare. That kind of thing.
@maddog1129 #7
Besides OB, were there other bloggers on FTB to get shunned?
^ Chris Clarke. He too became the target in the sights of Pharyngula’s horrible audience when he suggested they be less horrible. As I recall, PZ did nothing to quell the crowd.
@holms – if you like Chris’ writing, he still does “Letters from the Desert” on substack:
https://lettersfromthedesert.substack.com?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web&r=1hfti
Interesting comment on the subject from Chris here:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/09/01/new-commenting-rules/comment-page-2/#comment-685171
[…] a comment by Artymorty on But are […]
#11 Mike
Thanks, I am glad to see he still blogs. He has a great knack for turning little nothing much events into stories filled with nostalgia.
When I went searching for him a little while ago, I thought he had died as searches for his old address only took me to a spanish language news site. Which, for some reason, your link also takes me to when clicked, though typing lettersfromthedesert.substack.com in the address bar does not.
Apropos of nothing. Near the bottom, that color between white and pastel blue looks gray to colorblind me. I’m guessing it’s supposed to be pink.
Ophelia Benson @8:
Also college students on the bus. Crowding near the front. Moving back just barely enough, if they move at all, for people getting on. Many of them don’t move even when the driver tells them to,over the speaker. Those getting on having to push through them to get past them to space and seats behind them. They won’t let you past unless you push them out of the way, and then they give you dirty looks for it. Letting their backpacks swing around hitting seated people in the head. And if you dare to tell them to stop hitting people with the backpacks, or if you suggest they take the backpacks off the shoulders so that they take up less space on the crowded bus – oh! the horror!
Here there are posters on the bus saying WATCH YOUR DAMN BACKPACK DAMMIT. Not really, but it includes a drawing of a passenger wincing as he gets clouted in the face by one.