The man with the van plan
They ran out of time.
You see it’s like this. When a guy like India Willoughby publicly fantasizes about kidnapping Joanna Cherry, Maya Forstater, and JK Rowling, it’s social justice. When we talk about guys like India Willoughby fantasizing about kidnapping women who make him angry, it’s transphobia, and deserving of harsh punishment, like kidnapping for example. Head Willoughby wins, tails women lose.
This is a great example of the harm wrought by the awful ‘punching up’ notion.
The notion of never punching down is a good idea, with the obvious proviso that it’s not up to deluded narcissistic sociopaths to decide for everyone else which direction is ‘down’.
When police forces are being trained to believe, or at least to act as if they believe, that such blokes are society’s weakest victims (instead of its greatest villains, skilled in DARVO), it becomes dangerous to be a member of any other demographic.
tigger: I disagree. Punching down is actually important, especially in something like comedy, where it serves to reinforce boundaries and maintain victories. For example, flat Earthers are the subject of mockery, and this is a good thing. The social pressure this environment creates helps us not have to relitigate the shape of the planet. Punching down can function as preemptive self-defense. Punching down is necessarily what you do when defending a superior fortification against a would-be invader.
Not punching down is what let Genderism managed to become so strong in the first place.
Ah, but I wouldn’t consider mocking luxury beliefs to be punching down. To me, punching down is the mocking of people who can’t respond, for intrinsic conditions they can’t help; such as poverty, disability, race, or age. The kind of ‘comedy’ which was popular for centuries, until a couple of decades ago.
For example, mocking bizarre beliefs and eccentric clothing choices is fine, and in some cases necessary, but mocking a person for being disabled is not. Mock me for wearing leggings, but don’t mock me for wearing leg braces. Laugh at the way I’ve decorated my wheelchair, but don’t laugh at me for needing it. Mock an adult’s religious beliefs, but don’t mock kids for being dressed up in ‘Sunday best’ and dragged to a religious ceremony.
The reason that genderism has become untouchable in some quarters isn’t because punching down is intrinsically bad, but because the men who are its main proponents have an enormous amount of power and influence, the inclination to lie about which way is down, and the ability to punish anyone who crosses them.
While I can see what you’re getting at, there’s a problem similar to what we find in discussions of free speech: how do we know? How do we know what is the threatening, abusive, harm-intended speech? How do we know which are the intrinsic, unalterable conditions? Whether something qualifies as such is often precisely the question at issue, thus we beg the question when using that qualification to determine whether speech qualifies as free or whether something is punching up or down.
It’s not intrinsic badness of punching down that has allowed Genderism to thrive; that’s the fault of a taboo against bullying and being mean in liberal circles. This taboo manifests as an aversion to punching down; i.e., to avoid taking advantage of someone in a weaker position.
As you say, there’s an inclination to lie about which way is down, and it must therefore be possible to be wrong about which way is down. Whether a belief is a luxury belief, too, will be the subject of disagreement and debate. Not even power works as an objective metric for whether something qualifies as up or down, as there are very small groups with very little power holding very ridiculous beliefs/practices—such groups and beliefs deserve all the mockery we can heap upon them.