From: jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Basic Courtesy
Date: 27 Jul 92 21:36:06 GMT
Followup-To: rec.org.sca
Organization: SCA

Greetings to all, especially Dafydd, from Angharad.  Dafydd's recent unusually
vitriolic posting under the heading of "Basic Courtesy" seems to me to provide
good evidence for Graydon's recent cogent statement that this debate is not
about courtesy, it's about axioms.  (I think a lot of the axioms at stake are 
axioms _about_ courtesy -- but many are not.)  

Perhaps I should contextualize this for the rest of the Rialto by saying that
Dafydd and I know each other well, I count him as my friend, and I am _not_ 
looking for a fight with him -- nor, I believe, is he looking for one with me.  
He has responded with an expression of outrage that is, I believe, completely 
heartfelt -- but that is oddly and atypically ill-aimed, not on some kind of 
general principle, but in specific terms having to do with the actual content 
of its claims.

Dafydd attributes the following view to Stephen:

>     It seems to me that the phrase quoted (which was, as I recall,
>Stephen's only comment to the posted filk) would seem to say that "This
>filk is *so* bad that everyone, even those who like filk, will be able to
>see my point about not liking filk." 

Stephen did not say that filk was bad.  He did not say that filk has no 
place.  He said that filk has no place _in the SCA_.  I took this to mean, 
at official SCA gatherings, i.e. at events.  Even restricting the claim to
"in the SCA, officially or otherwise", your reading simply does not follow.

The reason that particular filk was a good instance of that particular
point is that unlike many others, it made no direct reference to widely 
known SCA figures, to SCA events, or to other "medievalish" stuff.  It 
was about an automobile (Yaakov's van, but even Yaakov is not really
present in the song; it's about the van).  As a filk about a van, it was 
fine.  It was dandy.  I actually remember it -- which distinguishes it 
strongly from most filks.  It was rather screamingly funny.  It had lots 
of good points, _as a filk_, but remained a good instance of _Stephen's_ 
point -- that the mundane filks are out of place in the SCA -- because 
unless you know the van in question and some context that was not present 
in the song, it had nothing to do with the SCA. 

In fact, a bad filk would not have been anywhere near so good an example
of Stephen's point that filks don't belong in the SCA.  Bad filks are just
bad filks.  A _good_ filk with no medieval or SCA content points out where 
the inappropriateness lies.

I don't _think_ Christian would dispute that this filk has little to no
_explicit_ SCA content, and _no_ medieval content.  It's entirely the extra-
lyrical context that provides the SCA tie-in, and that is purely to the most
mundane aspects of the SCA.

Why do you _insert_ a general value judgement, when the only judgement
made was appropriateness to a specific venue?  If I say that blue jeans 
have absolutely no place in the SCA, am I claiming that there is nothing 
good about them?

I don't think Stephen is responsible for the negative reading you have
described.  I don't think any of us are responsible for all the negative
things someone might read in to what we say.  We are responsible for what
we say, and for the _obvious_ implications.  The implications you cite
are _not_ obvious -- not if you read Stephen's posting, and pay attention 
to the specific contextualization he provided.  It wasn't all that long a
post, so that shouldn't be all that much to ask.

One of the problems with cultural insensitivity is that it leads people
from indirect cultures to read all utterances as if they were indirect.
If you take an utterance from someone in a culture that lays it all right
on the line, and start trying to read _between_ the lines, you can come
up will all sorts of bizarre stuff that would never occur to the speaker
-- but if it did, he'd probably say it right out, and you wouldn't have
to go digging.

>                                      That's certainly what I got from
>it. 

Then I suspect it's what you carried in.

>     It really doesn't reply to the subject of whether or not filk is
>a bad thing (I don't believe it is) - it replies directly to the poem
>posted, relating its merits to the merits of filk in general.

Again, no: not its merits, but its appropriateness to the SCA.  Many
things have huge merit without belonging at events.  Appropriateness to 
the SCA is not a measure of value.

>                                                               Had I been
>the one to post something that was commented on in such a rude and
>authoritative manner, I would be at least very hurt, and at worst
>thoroughly insulted.  I feel very sorry for Christian.

One reason not to judge either people or the courtesy of their statements 
on the basis of presumptions of intent is that it will often lead one to 
go through life needlessly hurt and offended.

Before responding so strongly to perceived intent -- which is in the
eye of the beholder -- it would behove you to check with the speaker and
find out what his intent was.  I don't know -- I haven't asked Stephen
-- but I notice that nobody who is making pernicious attributions of
intent has checked either.  His text supports a _far_ less pernicious
reading than you are giving it.  I believe that accusations of pernicious
intent, like all other damaging accusations, should be made carefully,
with full burden of proof on the accuser.  This has nothing to do with
courtesy, and everything to do with justice.

>PS  It also seems to me that those who are trying to defend Stephen's
>'bluntness' (which is this case is a synonym for rudeness) are going out
              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I believe I can provide at least equal justification for the charge that 
this claim is itself a case of cultural imperialism.  There is at least 
this to be said for bluntness: it provides a clear target for response.  
If you feel that filks have a place in the SCA, then you can argue for 
that claim directly, and thus answer Stephen without resort to personal
judgements  -- which no one here has yet done.  

By contrast, how is someone to respond to the dictum that "'bluntness' 
... i[n] this case is a synonym for rudeness"?  What about the case 
makes it so?  Or are you saying that it always is?  What actually are 
you saying, that anyone could argue with -- i.e. that could be 
demonstrably either true or false, as opposed to normative and enforcing?

You continue by charging that those who defend Stephen

>                                                           are going out
>of their way to ignore both context, and referents.  

I am one of those who have defended Stephen's action, to the extent of
saying that whatever problems it suffered from, it was not rude.  So
far as I can tell, that puts me in the target set for this shot.  At least 
in the order of posting on my system, I was the _first_  to acknowledge
context, saying clearly that the Rialto is not a particularly bad venue
for filks.  I _also_ said then (and others have since) that posting on 
the Rialto invites others to perform in less acceptable venues (and 
nothing was done in this case to mitigate that invitation).  

How is this ignoring context?  (And incidentially, do you believe that 
the argument is false, and if so, why?)  

What are the referents that are being ignored?  And how is anyone "going 
out of their way" to ignore anything?  This charge is at least as insulting 
as anything Stephen said.  So far as I can see, it is also objectively 
false.

>                                                     How many times have
>you heard something like, "That's a perfect example of why <x> shouldn't
>be allowed?"  It doesn't relate to the good attributes of the thing

There is a difference between the claim that something should not be done
_simpliciter_, and the claim that it should not be done in a given venue.
Sex is great stuff, for instance, but I personally think that copulation 
is out of place in the classroom.  _You_ are ignoring context and referents.

>              It doesn't relate to the good attributes of the thing
>being used as an example - it relates to everything *bad* about it, and
>applies those bad things directly to the category being abused.

This charge loses all force if the claim is that something is inappropriate
to a setting, and not that it is in itself wrong -- which is all that 
Stephen (or anyone else) ever said.  However, it has a further, worse
problem: the term "abused" is inappropriately loaded.  It presupposes that 
the original claim of inappropriateness is not only false, but deliberately
pernicious.  You are asking when we quit beating our spouses, and I don't 
appreciate that.

>                                                                 Stop
>fooling yourselves, folks.
 
What's sauce for the goose....  Dafydd, you are not normally this insensitive.

>PPS  The existence of a thing on the Rialto doesn't imply its existence
>at an SCA event. 

You are correct about this -- as I pointed out before.  But posting a filk
to the Rialto does seem pointless unless one wants to circulate it to a
specifically SCAdian audience, and it is hard to imagine what the point of
circulating a song to a SCAdian audience is unless you anticipate it being
sung by SCAdians when they get together, which happens most often at events.
This is why I say that deliberately or not, the posting was an invitation to
perform in inappropriate venues.

As I have pointed out in other postings, I don't object to filks on the
Rialto, and if I did, I would have phrased my objection differently -- not
out of courtesy, but for reasons of strategy.  However, I do see a principled 
reason why someone else might object to such postings, have seen it stated
pretty clearly on the Rialto since, and don't see why it is being 
persistently ignored by those who seem to thing that the objector acted
out of pure personal spite or unaccountable prejudice.

>                  If it is Stephen's (or *ANYONE'S*) allegation that
>someone creating filk (for the entertainment of people, for their own
>personal gratification, for completely non-SCA purposes) is wrong, then
>I think that they should go shove it up their mule.  

The objection was not to the creation.  It was to using a communication
channel (newsgroup) dedicated to discussion of the SCA and related topics
and inhabited in the overwhelming majority by SCAdians to spread it to 
others, thus contextualizing it to the SCA and encouraging a common practice 
to become yet more widespread at events.  This is _not_ a "completely 
non-SCA purpose".  So far as I can see, no one has made the allegation
to which you refer, and your suggestion is without a target group.

>                                                      If that person
>displays the results in an inappropriate place, then you have a valid
>argument with that person.  

What about encouraging others so to do?

>             Get off your high horses, please.  Thank you.

You're not exactly on a Shetland yourself. 

Why all this unaccustomed heat?  I don't think I've ever heard you say 
anything that contained so many unjustified allegations, or so little 
attention to what those you opposed had actually said.  This is very 
atypical; what button did we push?  I don't believe that all this is 
because of a single sentence objecting to filks, or even because several 
people have argued since (in some cases) that the objection was justified 
or (in others) that whatever its faults, the problem was not rudeness.

I don't think any of this is about filks, and I don't think it's about
courtesy.  It's about enforcing a particular cultural view of courtesy,
which is _not_ the only current modern standard of courtesy, is _not_ 
shared in all the places this net posts to, and is _not_ the only
principled view one can have on the matter, as if it were the only morally 
defensible one.  Insofar as that is true, this is profoundly intolerant
cultural imperialism dressed up as tolerance, and I'm agin it.

I'm also agin selective sensitivity, that has infinite consideration for
Christian's hurts and none for Stephen's -- or Tadhg's, or my lord's, or 
mine.

In Service to the Society,

-- Angharad/Terry