1 To be absolutely fair, we cannot fully judge the context of this without knowing what the “preacher” was doing and saying. Was he stopping people in the street? Was he telling the members of the “gayborhood” that they were sinners, and needed to repent? Was he engaging in “fighting words” or threatening to spark violence? Was he loud and disrupting the enjoyment of those who lived there? These kinds of videos are often traps and designed to make an adversary look irrational or intolerant.
2. Assuming that none of the above is true—and again, that’s impossible to know—what the woman was essentially telling the man was that “we don’t want your kind here.” That’s bigotry. That’s un-American.
3. If the woman would say she supports “diversity, equity and inclusion,” then she’s hypocrite and a liar.
4. The screaming is unethical. It isn’t fair, respectful or civil. If she doesn’t want to hear what the guys has to say, then she should just walk away.
5. Is this woman an archetype of current progressives or at least a substantial proportion of them? She is not interested in hearing any views that she disagrees with. If she has a logical, substantive reason why the man should leave, she never expresses it, at least on the video.
6. What is the ethical method of dealing with someone who behaves like this? Is there an ethical way?
Ethics Alarms 
“What is the ethical method of dealing with someone who behaves like this? Is there an ethical way?”
First, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who isn’t acting like a lunatic and talking like a 1950s KKK member.
In my community, her (presumptive of me, I know) behavior would get her arrested for Disorderly Conduct for making “unreasonable noise that prevents others from carrying on lawful activities.” The video would be all the evidence needed. We have no timid law enforcement agencies or weak-kneed prosecutors here.
Assuming that this man is preaching peacefully on a street corner, even if he is stating things this woman disagrees with, and she came up and accosted him (perhaps not fair assumptions), her screaming like this seems to me to be res ipsa loquitor on the matter.
As for how we can engage people like that, well, I think what we need to do is treat them the way I treat my four year old when she engages in such behavior. However, I do not believe the law allows me to ask a person over the age of eighteen (I refuse to call this woman an adult) to stand in a corner, be grounded, scrub baseboards, or be spanked. If my eldest, still in single digits, acted like this, I’d never have to clean my house again.
This gives a perplexing spin on how to deal with those over the legal age of majority that act like preschoolers. EC’s rules of dialogue are useless with people who act like this. This afternoon, my preschooler stole ice cream, flooded my bathroom, and soaked the bedroom carpet to the floorboards. I took away family movie night and all electronics of any sort (such as her favorite cartoons) for a week. She started acting somewhat like this. I tried speaking with her, calmly, and she behaved much as the overgrown child in the video did. There is no talking at this point. If someone starts down this path, you must wait until they calm down to dialogue. At four, my child calms down comparatively quickly. I don’t know about this person.
Perhaps the only hope is that adults, when shown their behavior in a mirror, can be so ashamed of how it looks that they would actually have a moment of revulsion, where they are so disgusted by their own behavior that they would voluntarily seek to change. However, I fear that this behavior has become so applauded in certain circles that there is no ability to feel any shame, and that it is possible that they have a sense of pride that they can act in such an infantile manner and force people to give up just to quiet them.
This does sort of rank right up there with the scene in the movie “Dumb and Dumber,” in which Jim Carrey’s character asks if the passenger in the vehicle wants to hear the most annoying sound in the world, and screams “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” in a loud nasal tone.
Gotta love the scream. Weren’t people encouraged to loose primal screams in response to Trump winning and Hillary losing? Hilarious.
As it happens, I do have some tools that can help with a situation like this. For starters, both of these people are foolish, but probably not as cripplingly so as it may seem from this incident.
Relevant concepts:
Habits:
Street preacher believes gender/sexual/romantic nonconforming people are hurting themselves.
Person in the neighborhood is stressed when someone shows up in their neighborhood and tells people they need to conform, and thinks others will feel the same way.
Trust:
People in the neighborhood don’t trust people from the street preacher’s religion to respect other people’s choices that aren’t harming others.
Connection mindset, motivations of relaxation and insulation: It took me a while to understand the concept of a safe space, but people do need spaces where other people understand their perspectives with minimal effort and don’t force them to account for themselves all the time. It’s a place with reduced social stress, where people can share and process ideas without feeling the need to defend their identity all the time. Safe spaces can have a variety of purposes; some are where people can challenge themselves to see things differently. Others are for people to recover from stress or trauma. It’s important to draw distinctions between spaces based on their purpose, and not spend all one’s time in a relaxing and insulating space. People definitely shouldn’t try to expand such a space to overwrite the rules of public spaces, if the public spaces are already decently respectful and the changes would make it difficult for people to go about their business.
Application:
The human in the video feels threatened and harassed by the presence of someone who represents an influential culture that seeks to create a world with no place for people like them to live constructive, fulfilling lives with whomever they choose. Because this human’s parents and the education system have failed to impart important lessons about communication, this person doesn’t know how to explain why they value having a neighborhood space that doesn’t have people from hostile cultures in it, so they resort to primitive defense mechanisms. I suspect they may have been having a bad day, and the human taking the video, though soft-spoken, may have evoked less respectful members of that religion. Taking out frustration about other religious people on this particular street preacher is probably quite cathartic, but not ethical, dignified, mature, or wise.
As for the human street preacher taking the video, I would recommend they learn more about the people they’re trying to reach, through research and by visiting the neighborhood as a regular person. They can get to know people without saying a word about their religion, and then reflect on how they feel about the situation and what they want the outcome to be. I’m fairly certain they haven’t done any of that, because if they did they would be doing something useful with their life instead of standing on street corners preaching the dogma of some cult. This person’s idea of Jesus of Nazareth is a half-baked solution looking for a problem, which leads to the ridiculous cliché “you need Jesus.” The translation of the phrase is, “Everyone’s going to suffer unless they choose to be brainwashed!” I’ll cut it off here so I don’t go into a rant about exactly how misguided this person is.
For the street preacher, my recommended thought process is, “This person is afraid. Project non-threatening impressions. What are they afraid of? How do I alleviate those fears? Then, how can I negotiate a way to accomplish my goals that doesn’t encroach on those fears?”
For the person in the video, my recommended thought process is, “Who is willing to distract this person so they don’t bother me or anyone else, and maybe deconstruct some of that dogma and broaden their perspective in the process?”
As someone who was once very antagonistic, I had to learn basic empathy skills from first principles, and I just kept applying them to situations where other people gave up. Having already crossed what I thought were impassible gulfs between myself and other people, I barely noticed the gulfs other people saw between each other. The next step is getting paid to do this.
The US government, using my tax dollars, has invaded Muslim countries and definitely caused “mischief in the land”. Causing “mischief in the land” is punishable by death in Islam (or by amputation of opposite hand and foot, or exile from earth). Am I guaranteed a ‘safe space’ without Muslims under such thinking? This is a much more real danger than the ‘danger’ of Christians disapproving of someone’s behavior.
I also find it amusing that people whose views are supported by K-12 government schools, all academia, the entertainment industry, almost all of the online companies, the entire mainstream press, and the millions of government bureaucrats that rule the country feel that they are ‘the resistance’ and oppressed groups.
“Am I guaranteed a ‘safe space’ without Muslims under such thinking?”
No, but if someone stands on a street corner talking about how infidels should be put to death, I’m inclined to forgive someone who yells at them, even if it’s not an effective way to handle the situation. That’s my point, here.
The reason people are told they are oppressed is that it is lucrative to keep people afraid and pretend to protect them rather than teaching them to confidently live their lives, building their capabilities, and deal with things with aplomb. I intend to break this revenue model.
No, if I were to scream at such a person, I would be arrested. You can see this play out in any number of protests over the last few decades. There is a legal double standard based on your political and social views.
I didn’t make any statements about who should be arrested for screaming at whom. I don’t approve of double standards. I don’t think screaming at people is ethical behavior in general, whether or not it’s legal.
What I’m saying is that understanding why someone feels like screaming at someone else is very easy with the right tools, and is the first step towards getting it to stop happening. Otherwise we end up in a world where some immature people scream, get arrested or not, and learn nothing either way. I think we can do better than that.
“The human in the video feels threatened and harassed by the presence of someone who represents an influential culture that seeks to create a world with no place for people like them to live constructive, fulfilling lives”
If you don’t believe that white society is an oppressor, has privilege others do not, and seeks to dominate the marginalized then you too feel as above. I can also state unequivocally that is the feeling of harassment by Israelis.
EC, You begin with the several (possibly erroneous) assumptions:
1. The human feels threatened by the preacher and is demanding he leave. When threatened, animals will fight or flee and will choose to flee unless cornered. That was not the case. Instead, knowing the gayborhood would support her she chose to launch into an attack.
2. The suggestion that the preacher should first venture into the community to establish trust first. This statement- “As for the human street preacher taking the video, I would recommend they learn more about the people they’re trying to reach, through research and by visiting the neighborhood as a regular person. They can get to know people without saying a word about their religion, and then reflect on how they feel about the situation and what they want the outcome to be. I’m fairly certain they haven’t done any of that, because if they did they would be doing something useful with their life instead of standing on street corners preaching the dogma of some cult.”
The last line is indicative of some animus toward religion. I don’t care if someone is selling me on Jesus or new replacement windows I can walk away and politely say no thank you. Proselytizing is not a new concept and street corner preachers are no different than those who have defined congregations.
You said “For the street preacher, my recommended thought process is, “This person is afraid. Project non-threatening impressions. What are they afraid of? How do I alleviate those fears? Then, how can I negotiate a way to accomplish my goals that doesn’t encroach on those fears?”
What more could he have done? His voice never raised, and when he asked her why he should leave she just screamed. She is the aggressor here.
Here you again expose your dislike of religion. “For the person in the video, my recommended thought process is, “Who is willing to distract this person so they don’t bother me or anyone else, and maybe deconstruct some of that dogma and broaden their perspective in the process?” The better question is why the preacher needs to be distracted when she could easily move along down the sidewalk. Who is she to decide for others what might be bothersome?
For the record, I am not religious is the traditional sense, but I respect the rights, and intellect of those who do find comfort in traditional religious “dogma” as you put it. There is no doubt that some use religion to assert power over others, but that power is limited in this country and only those who choose to put themselves under the power of the church, synagogue, or mosque can be forced to accept those rules.
Religion is the foundation of civilization because it sets universal standards of civilized behavior. Without it we would be a bunch of warring tribal units. From the video we can see how this person behaves when an interloper enters her space. Imagine if we did not have biblically based laws preventing her from doing more than screaming.
It took me a bit to parse your first paragraph after the one you quoted. You mean to say that people are trying to create a world no place for people like me? I always knew that. I represent the willingness to question everything, with the confidence that what we learn cannot hurt us, cannot force us to despair or compromise our ethics. People fear me because their ways of life, their identities, are based on assumptions that they fear to question. I’m currently implementing my plan for a world where people are supported in doing good, responsible work and making things better.
For the record, I’m not endorsing the behavior of either human here. I’m offering a path to resolving the situation by understanding people’s perspectives.
“When threatened, animals will fight or flee and will choose to flee unless cornered.” It’s called territoriality. Some animals defend their territory because they want the biggest territory possible. Some defend their territory because to run would force them to find and adapt to a new territory, which is costly. Some defend their territory because if they don’t, their neighbors might grow bolder and push them out. If someone invades the United States, would you advise everyone to run away?
“I can walk away and politely say no thank you.”
That would be the healthy approach, yes. Some people are not healthy, and they should challenge themselves to work their way up to the point where they can just walk away. There is also the issue of trusting that whatever culture the street preacher came from won’t try to stage some sort of unethical (but legal!) events to annoy people in the neighborhood. Primitive humans think that being sufficiently hostile is enough to discourage that.
“What more could he have done? His voice never raised, and when he asked her why he should leave she just screamed. She is the aggressor here.”
He could have acknowledged that his behavior is stressing people out, said that he didn’t mean to do that, and maybe even apologized for it, which does not imply any wrongdoing on his part. (Since the street preacher is imposing himself and is remaining calm, I’m ascribing him more responsibility for learning how to navigate the situation. I understand he thinks he’s doing something good.) Is this approach not something you learned about how to deal with upset humans?
“The better question is why the preacher needs to be distracted when she could easily move along down the sidewalk. Who is she to decide for others what might be bothersome?”
I infer you’re used to ignoring people on the street, so it takes no effort for you to walk past someone on the way to your destination, or even cross the entire street to avoid them. In that case, how do you feel about anti-panhandling laws? Why do you think they exist?
“…only those who choose to put themselves under the power of the church, synagogue, or mosque can be forced to accept those rules.”
And those who are born to religious parents. And those who live in communities with large religious populations who don’t all believe “thou shalt not kill” applies to people they don’t like. And those who live under laws which are not based on religion, but based on ideas of what is “obviously” right and just, which people only have because their religion told them so.
“Religion is the foundation of civilization because it sets universal standards of civilized behavior. … Imagine if we did not have biblically based laws preventing her from doing more than screaming.”
I’m sure my fellow atheists are looking at the situation in the Middle East, thinking, “Gee, I’m glad the local religions are there to make sure everyone behaves in a civilized manner.” Besides, I’m pretty sure all human societies have laws against violence under most circumstances, because most people prefer not to have violence done to them, and violence reduces the ability of the community to deal with other problems. There’s no need to justify that with a religion. That’s just basic ethics.
Instead of using religion, we could just set up universal standards of civilized behavior based on the principles I’m describing. Guaranteed 100% less genocide.
Seriously?
I’m honestly thinking that the whole thing was staged.
The woman seems like a pure caricature to me.
That’s always a possibility. I HOPE it was.
This seems like the perfectly reasonable result of college campus culture from the last 30 years now demanding that society become a college campus. How many videos can you find of conservative speakers being shouted down by the dominant culture (the ‘tolerant people’) on college campuses? In how many cases was this tolerated by the administration, the police, the government?
After being trained by ‘higher education’ for decades that the way to deal with opinions that differ from the official orthodoxy is to shout them down, use bullhorns, and scream at them, why would you expect this not to happen?
This isn’t the only video of a woman doing this, it seems fairly common.
Here is how I see liberals dealing with heretical ideas in today’s society.
(1) Call the police on them. You can see people call police on people expressing opposing ideas at a rally, or on a college campus.
(2) Take their property (signs, etc) and destroy them. How many anti-abortion groups have had their posters, signs, etc stolen and destroyed. How many Trump signs were stolen during an election versus Hillary or Biden signs?
(3) If confronted with inconvenient facts, say “You will need to show me that and give me time to research it”, while they expect their ‘facts’ such as “they are killing people”, “Trump is a racist”, “this will result in children killing themselves” are expected to be taken as gospel truth.
(4) Shout them down an scream at them. Claim the ideas are making them ‘unsafe’.
(5) Physically attack them and then call police if the people try to defend themselves.
How do you deal with people like that? You can’t, they are unreasonable. They cannot be reasoned with.
I share your concern about people who are allergic to different points of view. They have always infuriated me. That’s why I put so much effort into developing a method to cure them of their intellectual intolerance, and why I am sharing that method with people here. I thought you might appreciate it, since it’s simple, easy, and effective.
If you are concerned that the approach allows people to believe that they are justified in their immature behavior, I can assure you that it is designed specifically to disabuse them of their misconceptions, after guiding them to a state where they are able to absorb and process that change in perspective. How does that sound?
Judo is effective for a reason: sometimes the best way to prevent someone from punching you in the face isn’t to punch them in the face first.
Jack, although the tweet was recent, the event is from 2020.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/woman-repeatedly-screams-bloody-murder-drops-f-bombs-on-anti-abortion-street-preacher-in-seattle-gayborhood
Thanks. It doesn’t change the issue, but it’s good to know.
It makes even less sense if the street preacher is preaching against abortion in a ‘gayborhood.’ In 2020, we had not yet fully bought in to the pregnant man farce.
I think they’ve been screamers for a while now. Remember Big Red, and Trigglypuff? Conservative speakers being shouted out of venues has been happening about 10 years now, too, I think. They prefer to fight with decibel volume rather than reasoned intellect. It’s easier! They can shut up everyone at once! What’s not to like? Acting like 5-year-olds, they should be ashamed.