“That’s what postmodernism is, that’s been an attitude that’s a boon to cultural anthropology because it dispenses with the eurocentric, imperialist attitude that led to all those studies on the “primitive savages”. Let us tell you our truth is an important phrase to me and mine.”

I don’t think postmodernism has been terribly beneficial – it’s replaced solid objective analysis with the idea that there are just different texts and opinions, all of which are equally valid. That means the existence f various forms of injustice can be reduced to just ‘texts’ or ‘interpretations’ and making objective assessments becomes impossible.

I get so damn tired of trying to figure out what they “really” meant to say…Oops, I guess I sound angry…

It *used* to mean what you said– people getting nasty, blowing things out of proportion, and trying to get others to feel sorry for them.

We have an essay written somewhere about why we don’t like to be involved in activism groups qua groups (as opposed to activism through our own works, on our own terms). The last time we got into an activism group, it ended up producing nothing but badly-worded messages about tolerance, because the people running it could not seem to tell the difference between (or did not believe there was a significant difference between) debating and discussing various aspects of group policy, and flaming/attacking others. Everyone had to agree on every point; no one could express dissent from the ‘party line’ in public places, or endorse ideas and theories that hadn’t been pre-approved by the whole group. If you didn’t ‘understand’ why your POV was wrong and theirs was right, they’d sit you down and subject you to long lectures on why all of their theories applied to you and why you were merely ‘fighting us over technicalities’ or dissenting because you ‘wanted to believe you were too special for any model to fit you.’ (There did get to be kind of a cultlike ambience to it after a while.)

And if you tried to bring up anything as a point of debate, especially in meetings, you were always accused of ‘fighting’ and ‘disagreeing just for the sake of disagreeing.’ For some reason it was never assumed that any disagreement you had could possibly be for a valid reason– no, it was always because you wanted to be negative. If you raised too many questions, you were blasted for being too negative and told that you shouldn’t try to contribute to the group unless you could say something positive. There was also a rule against ‘fighting in public,’ which in practice worked out to mean debating or questioning any aspect of the group policy, or even questioning others’ non-group-related opinions too much, in any place ‘where other people can see it’ (including Livejournal).

Meanwhile, the webpage essays and ‘official group statements’ got reworked over and over to remove the remotest traces of controversy or language or position statements that didn’t ’emphasize equality’ enough, until they became practically unreadable, and someone outside the group thought that whoever had written them was ‘probably schizophrenic.’

The irony is that if this entire strategy was meant to be in aid of not hurting anyone’s feelings, it didn’t work. We lost a few friendships over this incident, as well as our trust in some of the other people involved. There would have been a great deal fewer hurt feelings if people had been allowed to simply express their opinions without having the worst assumed for them merely for disagreeing.

In fact, in the community I run, when someone posts a legitimate question about how do other people handle this or that problem, they will often apologize for “creating a drama”.

So, anything that might be negative or possibly make someone feel badly is “drama”; any indication that everything in your life isn’t tickety-boo is “drama”.

So people start self-censoring to avoid the accusation, and there goes the dialectic again.

After I type to the end of a line, the words disappear.

* We have a lively discussion going on with people giving all their different views, and all of a sudden someone puts the brakes on and starts calling the discussion a flamewar.

* We’ve had a couple of policy discussions, people asking that a certain policy be changed, other people write in saying “I don’t think that’s necessary,” or asking her why she thinks it is, original poster deletes her post and all responses citing “attacking and flaming” — when there wasn’t any.

* On another community (I didn’t see this personally), they were just getting started. A member stated her opinion about the way they should handle something routine… archive the posts or something. She was attacked and flamed — for having an opinion. Matter of fact, when she apologized for having an opinion, the woman running that community thanked her for her apology.

* There is something postmodernist about this, as well as, as you say, psychologized. My spouse reports that in school, especially high school, she was repeatedly scolded for expressing opinions or having preferences. She stopped communicating or making choices altogether where others could see it, because she had been scolded or mocked for her choices by the teachers. She couldn’t turn in, say, a book report, because anything she said about the book would be marked “wrong”. She was told that she was incapable of forming opinions due to her age and limited experience.

She and her brother are both autistic. As the identified patient in the family, he was sent to a “special” school for so-called emotionally disturbed children and reports that he was treated the same way — opinions were forbidden because you cannot know what another person’s experience is.

That’s what postmodernism is, that’s been an attitude that’s a boon to cultural anthropology because it dispenses with the eurocentric, imperialist attitude that led to all those studies on the “primitive savages”. Let us tell you our truth is an important phrase to me and mine. But when it’s used against children like this, you end up losing the dialectic. How can people resolve differences and come to common ground if they can’t reason together?