Discrimination

Everyone loves discrimination. Unless they're politically correct, of course. Or brainwashed.

I was reading an interview done by Nick Yee of a guy named 'Talon' who is the leader of a Guild in a game called Everquest. Nick Yee's website is called the Daedalus project, and is attempting to decipher the psychology of pro gamers, specifically those who play MMORPGs. During this interview, Talon made a few comments most would consider sexist. He doesn't really allow females into the Guild, you see. Allow me to quote the interview:

[begin Quotation]
Early on in our email exchange, I sensed that Talon did not favor female members. At first, I felt that this was perhaps due to the clash between the militaristic demands of the guild and the more relationship-oriented play-style of female gamers. When I asked Talon about this, he had an interesting explanation.
Coming from a VERY equal society and a family with a really strong mother in it, I found the whole situation with women strange. Well, women seem to like attachment more in the online environment and for all intents and purposes, an uber guild resembles military more than anything else.
Now there’s a reason why military doesn’t like relationships in it. The same reason applies to militaristic uberguilds - the suspicions of favouritism etc., not to mention women practically always aim for the top. This is not a critique as such. I mean it’s quite understandable. In a healthy guild, the most charismatic, outgoing and smart people are leaders. I sure as hell would prefer them.
So the reason why Talon is hesitant on recruiting female members is because it inevitably leads to romantic tension in the guild.
They start wanting “protection” from whoever they’re with. So typical of me to get tells like “she thinks you’re being mean, and I agree with her (yeah sure you do)”. Just made me sigh every time. Frankly, I prefer people who don’t do that. Male students are the best.
[End Quotation]

Naturally, this interview caused quite a few comments. You can find them here:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001334.php?page=7

Page 7 is the last page of the article, just look for the links on the page and you should be able to find page 1 to read the whole thing.

So the comments run along these lines, "What he says is sexist!" "He is discriminating against women!"

I have to agree. Of course he's being sexist. What's wrong with that? Oh, I forgot, all the brainwashed Politically Correct people think that sexism is bad. Why is it bad? Because it's Discrimination! And discrimination is bad! Why is discrimination bad? It's not. Only indiscriminate discrimination is bad. Yeah that's right, the only time discrimination becomes bad is when you don't discriminate against your own discrimination properly. It's one of those beautiful things that is self regulating when you have enough of it.

From my point of view, his discrimination is valid. He knows 85% of gamers are male and that 15% are female (rough average). He wants to avoid X situation, which requires males and females to be together. His solution: keep them seperate! It's simpler for him to rule out the 15% female than the 85% male. He's not RANDOMLY discriminating against people. He's not discriminating without just cause. He's doing it for a purpose. He's not doing because he doesn't like women, in fact, I really doubt he's gay.

Now, if he was just doing because he was gay and he didn't want women in his guild because he doesn't like them, then he wouldn't be discriminating against his discrimination thoroughly enough. We all need to discriminate against that sort of discrimination. Hitler just didn't like jews, so he tried to kill them all. He wasn't doing it for any good purpose, except his own hatred. Talon isn't discriminating because he hates, but because he wants his guild to be a cohesive unit. He's doing his best to protect other people, in an odd sort of way.

So what do we do with people who deny discrimination any place in our society? We ask them to stop discriminating. Yeah, that's right. They're guilty of the worst, most extreme sort of discriminating. They see discrimination being abused in a percentage of contexts, and want to get rid of the whole concept. But you can't, it's fundamental. It's part of human decision making. Those people are hypocrites, because they're discriminating to an extreme, telling people NOT to do exactly what they're doing by saying it in the first place.

Why can't people be reasonable and level headed? Getting offended is often a choice.

I guess this wouldn't be complete without a mention of racism. I figure if I'm stirring the pot I may as well throw some pepper in.

The different 'races' of humans are all one species. The word race in regards to people can really only functionally mean categorized by similarities. For example, it is ridiculous (although many do it) to try to say that all people are the same. They're not. I'm unique, just like everyone else. (You can quote me on that) However, it is plain to children (less brainwashing) the differences between the categories of people. I suppose Negro is politically correct? I don't really follow all that rubbish. Okay, so you have people with dark brown or black skin. Then you have people with pink or cream coloured skin. That's pretty obvious, right? I mean, if you were given a room of 50 people, 25 with each colouring, you'd be able to divide them? There's nothing wrong with that. Anyone who says they don't see colour had better be colourblind. If you can't seperate them, you're not functioning correctly.

Apparently some people don't like the use of the word 'Oriental' to describe people from 'The Orient'. I don't really get it, so I'll use it anyway and assume they're getting offended on purpose. (Anything to keep 'em happy) So if you compare Oriental people with Black people, there's some obvious differences. Oriental people tend to be shorter, and Black people tend to be taller. I'm 6'3" and I've never met a black person I consider short. On the other hand, at my height most oriental people seem short. Am I being racist? Nah, just making simple scientific ovservations on a set of data. I'm allowed to make observations, and to share those with others.

The fact of the matter is, a good anthropologist (or archaeologist) can look at a skull and tell you what race the person was, what gender the person was, how old they were when they died, and a slew of other things. Is s/he being discriminatory? No. Racist? No. Stop worrying about the bloody grammar and go back to reading War and Peace. Use words that make sense, not crap that sounds inoffensive because no one can figure out what the fuck it means.