Litmus test

[thesummerqueen]

I am against abuse.

great

I see abuse as being binary, in that if someone intends their actions or comments to cause harm for which the recipient can receive no benefit, that action or comment is unnecessary. Therefore, an action is either abusive or it is not, based on the person's awareness of the possible outcomes and their intent with respect to that information. Abuse spans a wide spectrum, from spiteful words to murder, but the scale of the harm is orthogonal to whether or not harm was intended. I've had people attempt to abuse me and it was as water to a duck's back, but that doesn't mean that they weren't being abusive assholes.

Unfortunately for you, abuse isn't defined solely by intent. It's also defined by perception. The world isn't binary.

The problem I have with people failing to treat abuse as binary is that they often try to make their own arbitrary point along the scale of harm and defend it as not being abusive because doing X would be so much worse. This thinking offers anyone except the worst person in all history examples they can turn to in order to show that their own actions are not abusive.

All things in perspective. Calling someone a twat doesn't warrant the same amount of punishment as killing someone. That's why we have different levels of punishment based on different levels of harm. However, just because people know there are worse forms of abuse or harm doesn't mean they will justify everything they do based upon those worse levels. Some will base it entirely individually. Some don't care. Some won't insult or harm others no matter what.

Because many atheists have not thought through what constitutes abuse thoroughly, they make abusive remarks on forums such as this that religious person X should be tortured for having done Y, or that David Mabus deserves to get raped in prison, when that style of vengeance thinking is ethically unsupportable. To decry the abuses of religions while promoting abuse in turn is hypocritical and destroys any ethical footing you might also be trying to use to defend your own rights on other fronts.

No one said atheists were all the brightest crayons in the box. Some of us know that the world shouldn't be eye for an eye. Some of us haven't progressed. This is a personal thing though, not an atheist or theist thing.

This is not to say that the ideas of the religious should be treated with kid gloves. Attack those ideas with vigour, but you don't need to attack the person at the same time. Tell them to fuck off and leave you alone (my main goal in my activism) but don't tell them they deserve to be fucked and burned and eaten by fire ants. That would be the rhetoric of an asshole, and if you want to call for equal treatment, that's a precedent you probably don't want made equal.

There comes a point when some people need to be insulted to be told unequivocally what they're doing and how they're acting. You can agree or disagree with this. My patience only lasts so long, and then I refuse to be stepped all over. My personal code demands I wait until someone acts like a cunt before I pronounce them a cunt, and unfortunately you may or may not agree with where that becomes deserved or not. That's my look out, as it's going to be saved for posterity under my name, not yours. A nice warning, but also a subjective one.

Theists can fuck off and leave me alone.

Oh, I didn't realize their opinions about abuse meant less as human on this planet that you interact with. That's part of what made me label you as arrogant. I guess the people who actually get abused by us have no say?

To bring up a point I made earlier, as a submissive I always have a say in how I'm being treated, as I'm consenting to controlled forms of abuse. I think it's only fair if I give fair shakes to any group I'm particularly insulting.

I get that, and see nothing wrong with applying appropriate taxonomy. Calling someone a liar because they are lying to you is apt. Calling someone bad at argument because they can't form a syllogism because their feet are in their mouth is similarly accurate. If someone lacks the courage to do the right thing, they are a coward.
Arbitrary labels, liking fucking retard cum bucket, have no place in such discourse because their arbitrary nature makes them indefensible. I can defend calling LiorIRC a coward because I have evidence of his cowardice.

Anger is not inherently bad and has wound up the clockwork of some amazing humitarian people and causes. Don't let anyone tell you anger is a failing, but don't allow anger to make you an asshole.

Asshole is a subjective title. I ask again, where's the line?

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You don't have to be nice to anyone, you just have to avoid being an asshole.
You do have to be ethical if you want to claim the rights you want respected. Ethical isn't nice or nasty, it's neutral, because at a basal level being ethical is a zero sum game. You don't oppress anyone, no-one oppresses you.
It creates a level playing field from which situations that aren't zero sum can arise, and from which a society can begin to thrive.

All of this is also subjective. What are your goal posts?