- The coalition that opposes Donald Trump needs to get better at persuading fellow citizens and winning converts, rather than leaning so heavily on stigmatizing those who disagree with them. Chief among the problems with stigma as a political weapon?
It doesn’t work.
The stigmatization is, in my eyes, mostly a way to signal inclusion to a group. It's another form of tribalism. I think the vast majority of the people who stigmatize on social media need to go outside more.
How do you make a pro-lifer, pro-choice? You're not likely to change their mind about when human life starts. The only time I've successfully changed someone's mind about the legality of abortion, I made an argument based on data that shows that if abortions are illegal, more women die than if abortions are legal, usually in horrible ways. If you really want to reduce the amount of abortions that occur, you have to reduce the amount of accidental conceptions. And the only proven ways we have of doing that are typically found unpalatable by the pro-life crowd. They don't want to give teenagers condoms, they want them to be celibate, and in fact find the idea of promoting healthy, non-procreative sexuality abhorrent. And that's on an issue that I think is pretty cut and dry as far as public health/well being is concerned.
Are you saying that the only route to changing minds in some domains is to shame or otherwise stigmatize? I wouldn't disagree. It's just that when I survey my social media, I see a huge overreliance. I think shame has a very powerful social effect. But we're used to experiencing its effects in the real world, from real person to person interactions, and think that doing something similar online will translate.
No. I'm saying that with regard to almost any given issue, there will be incompatibilities in what each side considers a 'solution' because of fundamentally different beliefs about the universe and morality. Abortion is an easy one because there's no argument against comprehensive, fact based sex education and easy access to prophylactics that isn't based in a moral stance against people having sex in the first place.Are you saying that the only route to changing minds in some domains is to shame or otherwise stigmatize?
A pro-lifer is entrenched in the idea that abortion is the killing of babies, and that those who are okay with abortion are also okay with the killing of those they consider people. That isn't a light issue, and that's not something you can "negotiate' on. What you have to do is create the moral and ethical statement that killing people is not okay. This can only be done by: Stating that a fetus is not a baby. Creating a double-think scernario where the banning of abortion is overall worse than the acceptance of it, even from the baby-as-fetus standpoint that these people hold. The first has been attempted for years now, and isn't working. The second will show far more effective, and looks somewhat like this: "Abortion is a horrible and evil thing that must be stopped. However, the banning of abortion causes people to encounter situations where they die by result of their actions, and the death of adults is horrible as well. Our plan is to do our best to prevent abortion, and the death of mothers. We will allow mothers to seek abortions when they feel they have no other choice, however we will also put a very strong fight against teenage pregnancy, we will put up a very strong fight for child-raising education in our high schools so that mothers (and fathers?) will be well prepared and less likely to get an abortion. Essentially, make the conversation about ending abortion while acknowledging that it is horrible and that what we are doing is entirely an attempt to save lives rather than "for the rights of womens bodies" or whatever else the arguments currently are. Right now people hear the pro-choice side as pro-abortion, and the moral and ethical stance of being for abortions isn't something these people will EVER be for.How do you make a pro-lifer, pro-choice?