Beautiful essay. I share mixed-but-mostly-positive recollections of my time as a social-justice-sympathizer reading the Culture War threads (although I only commented a handful of times, being a lurker by temperament).
So it was a nice surprise to click the link halfway through and see that you're /u/gemmaem! I don't remember many usernames from those days, but I definitely remember yours. I don't think we ever interacted, but it feels like seeing an old (strangely parasocial) friend.
Very interesting. I used to read and post on TheMotte until Reddit’s bans of various hate subreddits brought a lot more witches onto the scene. I genuinely loved the idea of the whole place but the imbalance of perspectives just ruined it for me.
I’m not a progressive but I wish there had been dozens of progressives like you on there. Then you wouldn’t have felt the environment to be so hostile and the space wouldn’t have drifted into whatever it is today.
I used to lurk on that thread, and subreddit, and even once or twice on themotte.org. I even (very) occasionally posted, under a different username. I was a disaffected liberal, unhappy and confused about the unkind places I saw more progressive lefties going, and wondering if the even unkinder righties had a point for once. And of course, as you say, carrying my own personal wounds.
I always thought you were one of the better sort there, and I always kept reading if I saw your name above a reply. I appreciated your contributions enough that when I saw your substack author name, I wanted to see if it was the same person.
You may not have been writing for an audience, but you did have one. And for whatever it's worth, I think you conducted yourself admirably.
A good post. Not uniquely insightful to me, but I've had years to read your various posts and comments which have hinted towards your feelings on the topic.
Your point about having to suppress your emotional responses to the sort of comments you've linked as examples is one that I can relate to, though not in the same way. Because I've never forced myself to remain on a platform where I am fundamentally treated as suspect. The closest might be on themotte itself, with one fool insisting to me in private DMs that I was obviously one of "them", one of the progressives who was part of the person's outgroup.
Really, though, I don't think I've ever seen red. I know what that feels like, but when I look at the people who I interact with on themotte nowadays, I just...laugh and scoff. I confess that I can't name exactly what kept me from going fully into an anti-progressive stance, but what I distinctly recall is how much I could find the same exact biases playing out in the rhetoric on both sides. As self-aggrandizing as it is, I never lost the ability to notice the biases and uncharitability given to left-wing posters. It's adorable, in a sense, looking at these people who could probably spill pages on a subject without ever going back and combing over their words with an eye for where they may have inserted a bias.
Or maybe I'm just wrong and they have tremendous evidence ready to cite at a moment's notice. But I don't think that's really the case.
I know you've been slowly warming to religion in the last few years and I've wondered if someone somewhere ever issued a divine law that said "DO NOT PSYCHOANALYZE OTHERS". Because it's when people try to do precisely that, read some grand or powerful explanation into how others think or feel and why they think/feel those things, that you get some of the most rage-inducing words a person can imagine. That comment about women and sentience is precisely the kind of thing I'm talking about, where someone imagines themselves a scientist using a scalpel on a corpse, but is actually a torturer wielding a butcher's knife on a live person.
I would call it dehumanizing, but that's not really accurate, is it? Because humans *aren't* rational. They aren't naturally good. They aren't principled by default. As Ian Morrison puts it, humans are fundamentally fearful, lazy, and cowardly. It's why people nod along when someone claims "the powerful are trying to hurt us!", that tendency has played out so many times in history that everyone has a story about it.
Better, then, to say that psychoanalysis is humanizing. When we look at ourselves and our ingroup, we cannot help but think that we were created in God's image, some small replica of a moral, good, and just being which, in the same vein as the Declaration of Independence, endowed us with the same inalienable features.
There is perhaps no higher conceit than to drag one of God's children under a microscope and poke and prod at it until it quails and shivers any time you approach, declare how this particular collection of atoms and molecules is explainable purely in terms of the most base of interactions and external stimuli, and toss it aside with nary a second glance.
You raise a good point. Rationalist detachment can serve as a cover for callousness if you're not careful. It's one thing to try not to allow your emotions to overwhelm your ability to see clearly, and quite another to assert that caring for others is an "emotional" reaction that should be avoided.
I'm reaching for a classic and well-studied type of horribleness with this example, but I think a really instructive case here is the statistician and eugenicist Karl Pearson, in his 1900 address on "National Life from the Standpoint of Science":
>I venture to assert, then, that the struggle for existence between white and red man, painful and even terrible as it was in its details, has given us a good far outbalancing its immediate evil. In place of the red man, contributing practically nothing to the work and thought of the world, we have a great nation, mistress of many arts, and able, with its youthful imagination and fresh, untrammelled impulses, to contribute much to the common stock of civilized man. Against that we have only to put the romantic sympathy for the Red Indian generated by the novels of Cooper and the poems of Longfellow, and then see how little it weighs in the balance!
See that? Caring about the destruction of whole societies is "romantic sympathy." We, as scientists, must surely agree that from the proper dispassionate viewpoint, et cetera, et cetera...
It's a fascinating failure mode, and one still that recurs in smaller and less blatant ways, from time to time.
This stung a little bit, but I'm not sure it was unjustified. As a former moderator (who eventually moved on for complicated reasons as well), All I can say is we did our best. I hope that resulted in things being easier for you than they could have been.
Honestly, when I compare the difficulty of the task to the overall performance of the moderators, I can only be impressed with how well you all did. I remember many moderators fondly, you included. Cheers!
I found this by chance from a link someone posted in Scott Alexander’s most recent “Open Thread” and I wanted to note just how fantastic this article was. I know you are left wondering about the net value of your engagement with the Motte community, but at least to this (male, left-leaning) member of the invisible audience who was never totally satisfied with the left-wing post-mortems from disgruntled posters, this post was insightful, clarifying, and perspective-shifting in helping me solidly understand the failure modes of rationalist discourse. You also put into words my ill-formed thoughts on the weaponization of the Motte-Bailey, and that virtue always matters.
Perhaps ironically, if this post (and the one you linked from the subreddit) is any indication of your quality of thought in general, the average rationalist poster could stand to learn a bit about rationalism, intellectual humility, and insight from you.
I was on the opposite side of the divide. I discovered ssc through Scott Aaronson's blog and the first post i read was Untitled. It had a dramatic effect on me, for the first time I felt someone could understand and eloquently explain the guilt and shame around gender and sexuality that I experienced in early adulthood. I got hooked on ssc. As a new immigrant in an English-speaking country I longed for a person or a community that would match my way of thinking about the world and find the right words in a language and civilization that were new for me. Reading the blog affected my life choices: I started donating to the Against Malaria Foundation, stopped eating meat, and now even getting involved in AI safety research. It feels embarrassing now that it all started with an anti-feminist rant. My own kids will enter the waters of adolescence in a few years and I have much stronger emotions about that than my own teenage years which feel distant now. But maybe reading that post was what helped me process the guilt and shame; and what was most therapeutic was reading responses from feminists like you who genuinely tried to understand Scott and people like me rather than vilify us.
> Then one day, Scott Alexander posted what I considered to be an absurd straw man argument against the concept of structural racism. It was written to look like some sort of exhaustive rational search for what the anti-racists of 2017 were really getting at, but it didn’t actually bother dealing with any real examples — it just made up lots of simplistic positions as if sufficiently many made-up people could substitute for a real opponent.
This is off topic, but I'd be curious to know what parts of that essay you found strawpersonlike. What are the more defensible views on racism that he didn't cover?
At the time, my biggest complaint was that the essay borrows ideas from structural and institutional racism (such as disparate impact, which is closely related to a "definition by consequences") but fails to consider what happens when those ideas are actually used in the context in which they are originally developed -- namely, as ways to evaluate social structures and institutions! Scott says calls his "definition by consequences" a "sophisticated" notion that "scholars in the area are most likely to unite around." Since the concepts of structural and institutional racism are indeed quite popular in the academy, it is reasonable to think that this is indeed what he is trying to describe (although he never invokes the "sophisticated" terminology that "scholars" would actually use, which is a bit of a red flag in itself).
Scott describes his "definition by consequences" as saying that racism is when a specific act has consequences that would harm minorities. By contrast, institutional/structural racism is when a specific institution/social structure acts in ways that disproportionately harm minorities. The point is not to evaluate single acts one at a time, but to assess the broad effect of specific large instituitions and social structures, considering all of their effects as a whole. This is actually potentially much easier than evaluating all of the effects of a single action.
The post has other problems that I didn't notice at the time. For example, a one point someone remarked on the Motte about a discord server for which a condition of entry was uploading a video of yourself saying "I hate n****rs." In response to some harrumphing from a moderator about me suggesting that this is racism, I clarified:
> I have to admit, from my perspective, it's a little hard to see why there needs to be an argument as to why it's racist to define in-group status on the basis of being hypothetically okay with saying "I hate n*****rs."
>
> There are, certainly, people who would be hypothetically okay with performing said task in order to attain said in-group status, and who nevertheless would not mean the actual statement, if they said it. I do not think that this makes them not racist. I will concede that it probably makes them less racist than someone who would actually mean it. I feel obliged to stress, however, that "I am less racist than someone who would say 'I hate n****rs' and mean it" is not the sort of statement that ought to reassure anybody.
This attracted the attention of an "Against Murderism" fan, who explained to me that if your motive in saying "I hate n****rs" is not an express wish to hurt black people, then it's not racist. This poster was convinced the only way for it to be possible for it to be racist for someone to say "I hate n****rs" as a fun rule-breaking exercise would be if we were using "definition by consequences." However, definition by consequences is stupid, therefore, we have to use definition by motive, therefore, it's not racist.
I will admit to being somewhat flummoxed by this. I genuinely had not realised how thoroughly "Against Murderism" fails in describing personal racism because I was so distracted at the time by the structural racism thing. After some reflection, I drew on my trusty virtue ethical resources and came up with the following definition, which does not match any of the definitions Scott considers:
> One possible virtue ethicist view of racism is that racism is an anti-virtue, a vice, if you will; a pattern of thinking that fails to accord proper respect to the wellbeing of people who differ from you by race. One need not have an overtly racist motivation in order to fail in this way, so this isn't "racism by motive." One need not actually succeed in producing bad consequences in order to fail in this way, so this isn't "racism by consequence."
> Callousness towards the pain caused by racial slurs will fall more heavily on people whose race is the target of particularly painful slurs. A pattern of callousness that falls more heavily on such people is racist callousness, even if none of those people are (yet) aware of your lack of concern for their feelings, and even if your motivation for developing said callousness was not racist in itself.
As ever, excellent post. I've considered trying to keep our conversations to Reddit but it's this comment that I want to prod just a little-
>Since the concepts of structural and institutional racism are indeed quite popular in the academy, it is reasonable to think that this is indeed what he is trying to describe (although he never invokes the "sophisticated" terminology that "scholars" would actually use, which is a bit of a red flag in itself).
The average *advocate* doesn't use the scholarly terminology in its intended meaning, either. Some of those strawmen became smashing bestsellers between Against Murderism and that thread a couple years later.
As well, there's an audience effect and how certain words get heard. If he had used the proper scholarly language, would the audience know what he meant? Would those terms be more distracting than informative? Much of racism terminology functions as shibboleth or anti-shibboleth, as much as it conveys meaning.
>a discord server for which a condition of entry was uploading a video of yourself...
I agree that it's racist, what interests me now is the unusual function. It does demonstrate a lack of concern for racism, it demonstrates just how much social power there is in declaring (some) statements racist, but the function there was as shibboleth. Since it's an uploaded video- it would be the Very Online equivalent of getting a gang sign tattooed on your forehead. Incredible blackmail material in this social climate; people have been fired and had college applications retracted for singing along to the wrong song lyrics, much less for saying it deliberately and clearly.
In addition to racist (by callousness-vice definition and a few others), it's gross, disturbing, sad, and yet... a social technology.
>A pattern of callousness that falls more heavily on such people is racist callousness, even if none of those people are (yet) aware of your lack of concern for their feelings, and even if your motivation for developing said callousness was not racist in itself.
What a definition! I'm reminded of discussions I've had with you and Doc Manhattan about indifference, and the way it can be insidious. I wish I had remembered this "callous vice definition of racism" in those times, it would fit those conversations well. With a slight modification: "a pattern of thinking that fails to accord proper respect to the wellbeing of people because of their race."
If Scott was going to say the view he was describing was in fact popular among scholars, then he had a duty to faithfully represent whatever scholarly idea he was thinking of. Also, note that an argument like "Here is the scholarly view, here is the simplistic online version, here is a debunking of the latter" would not actually have sufficed for his purposes. This is because his argument actually does proceed via process of elimination: I have eliminated all the other possible definitions, therefore this is the one we must accept. In order for that argument to be valid, one must consider the best version of each possible definition! Otherwise, it's always possible that some better version of a dismissed definition might be more plausible than the version you eventually settled on.
Note, also, that if Scott had actually used terminology like "structural racism" or "institutional racism," even just to remark in a quick note or footnote that people sometimes use these terms, then his unfairness towards the "definition by consequences" would have immediately become apparent. In particular, it would have been obvious that there were no "institutions" or "structures" being referenced, here, and thus that Scott's presentation of this viewpoint must not be entirely complete.
> it would be the Very Online equivalent of getting a gang sign tattooed on your forehead
Good analogy! Yeah, that's definitely what was happening.
> With a slight modification: "a pattern of thinking that fails to accord proper respect to the wellbeing of people because of their race."
Upon reflection, I approve your adjustment. People can indeed be racist towards their own racial categories.
>Upon reflection, I approve your adjustment. People can indeed be racist towards their own racial categories.
Thank you! You know me well and while that was a large part of my intent, it wasn't all of it. I found it worthwhile to adjust not just because of the indifference that one can apply to their own race, but because racism may not be from the *difference* in race, exactly, but other biases regarding another race.
At least the way I'm framing it in my head right now, I'd draw a slight distinction between "they're [not my race], I'll fail to accord proper respect" and "they're [that race], I'll fail to accord proper respect," but I still think it would be fair to call both racism (in addition to the "they are [my race], so I can comfortably ignore" variety).
I suppose I have to get around to making a Substack account now. I hope the new name isnt confusing. Since I havent found any posting guidelines, Ill do the same as on the sub, hope thats fine.
I think this post is a great illustration of what makes even not-particularly-aggressive feminism offputting to ousiders.
>Partly, it was hard just to keep engaging as an outsider without falling afoul of community norms. I quickly gave up on ever understanding the contested boundaries of the rule set.
Well, that certainly is a good start if you want to be given a fair hearing. It might be good to know though that *very* few long term commenters got through without being modded occasionally.
I read that exchange and it seemed quite different from your description to me. Lets go through your comment there:
>I think I can stay calm for more than a few sentences, now.
This by itself almost ensures you wont get voted high. It comes across very arrogant. See, you choose to tell us that youre angry. So you think that this is relevant information for us. What precisely are we supposed to do with it? Well, the social purpose of expressing anger is to sanction. So presumably, we should stop what makes you angry. In a forum for people of all beliefs arguing about what makes them angry at each other, this obviously cant be done without favouritism.
As a side note, a man would know not to say this, because for them its also treated as a joke if they do it in real life. A little demonstration of those "female powers of evincing sympathy" that you doubt further down.
>Unfortunately, the true nature of the discussion is less fun. The #metoo conversation is not a negotiation between men wanting pleasure and women wanting pleasure. It's between men wanting pleasure and women wanting to avoid pain.
Im sure you will find mens pain at stake as well if you think a bit, especially relevant to the next point:
>You've outlined two conflicting priorities here: you want there to be social constraints on the type and intensity of negative reactions that women are allowed to show, but you also don't understand why a woman would restrain the type and intensity of her negative reactions to something that her date does to her.
Reading the two passages above that, we see that his hypothetical dude asks the girl for various assurances that she wont sick the X on him. He also advises the woman to just leave the date. Even going along with the social contraints thinking, that seems like a pretty wide gap to hit. Really though, I think the idea behind "she shoudve just left" is that leaving isnt a signal in need of interpretation by the guy. It is unilaterally ending the interaction, and your misinterpretation certainly supports the idea that "women dont realise they can do that". And how is calling your friends at Jezebel a signal to him to stop? As forceful as it is, it cant be a signal if he wont know before the evening is over.
In summary, the apprent contradiction between their comments seems to come from you applying a really badly fitting frame. Ill also note that when I curated Quality Contributions, i did not care if the poster was hypocritical about their thesis elsewhere, though Im not sure it ever came up. Curation is in the interest of the reader first. So much for that subtopic.
>This excuse for not engaging with a more defensible position that you hate was so popular, on the Thread, that some of its denizens developed new versions of it.
A long time ago, a wrote a [post](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/c30htp/meta_miasma_and_eternal_september/) about moderation policy, and the only adopted suggestion was a rule "When responding to the perceived positions of someone else, make sure to also adress what was literally said". TBH I dont think anything came off this, I had forgotten about it, but I present it as proof that this happened to the other side as well. I mean of course the lefties shot back with the distributed-motte-and-bailey accusation - its not exactly hard to do.
In conclusion, you have high expectations for how you want to be treated, in part reasonable ideals of niceness and in part excessive opinion of yourself, and youre very quick to conclude that a failure to meet them is about you, your sex, your ideology.
So this was reading mostly past the point of the post, but thats necessary for the argument. I also have a bit of an ordinary response:
>Mind you, I thought I wasn’t claiming anything of the sort. I took it as axiomatic that “being privileged doesn’t mean you’ve never suffered” and I thought that caveat was enough. It wasn’t.
If your beliefs imply something, then the practices based on them can often be in accordance with it, even if you dont know or deny the implication. (Should there be a word for this? I propose "committment".) The difficulty in detecting this is that theres nothing thats using the implied thing, that you could find when combing through you thoughts - you have to realise that the implication does in fact follow and how, and then you can check if it applies to what youre doing. This is why I tend to treat positions as more formalistic than they might be intended.
Edit: How do I do links properly? Google isnt helpful.
Welcome to substack! Sorry for forcing you to make an account; unfortunately, this is one piece I can’t discuss on r/theschism. I don’t actually have a comment policy here. So far, nobody has said anything to make me need one. But everything you’re saying here would be well within bounds, if I did have one.
There are a few misunderstandings here. I hope I can clarify some of them.
The reason I gave up on understanding the boundaries of the rule set actually isn’t because I was being moderated, myself. In my time on the Thread I caught precisely two moderator notes. Just two. The first was totally justified. My home town had just had an active shooter incident and I wasn’t my best self when discussing it, so I deserved the warning. The second is actually linked in a comment above: I called it racist to have a discord where you have to record yourself saying “I hate n****rs” as a condition of entry.
That’s it, those are the two times. Neither of them influenced my belief that the rules were hard to understand.
The reason I was able to get by without moderator notes for so long, despite not understanding the boundaries of the rules, is that I tried to look for what the underlying spirit of the rules was, and follow that to the extent that I could see good in it. I could never understand why one bit of snark was just funny and should be allowed, while another was uncharitable and deserved moderation, but by avoiding snark entirely I could pass without moderator attention, for example.
> See, you choose to tell us that youre angry. So you think that this is relevant information for us.
It’s in reference to an earlier comment that was rather tight and brief. I actually wasn’t providing any additional information by saying that I was angry.
Your reading of me as arrogant completely ignores the implication of my “May I try again?” I knew perfectly well that I wasn’t coming from a position of strength; it’s true that I was doing the thing where you ask for permission and then take it, but the point of asking for such permission is to acknowledge that you are mildly outside of social norms (mostly, we don’t comment twice on a single post) and to ask for some grace. If you read arrogance into that then I think that’s on you.
Also, even though I wasn’t arrogant, I’m pretty sure that arrogance in an anti-feminist position would have been absolutely loved by the upvoters. I’m just saying.
> Im sure you will find mens pain at stake as well if you think a bit
A commenter said something similar at the time. It’s a fair point, except that it still matters that this “avoidance of pain” by either sex wasn’t acknowledged in the post I was responding to. That aspect of the situation is deeply important, and the effect of leaving it out needed to be addressed, even if I should not have implied that *only* women want to avoid pain.
> Really though, I think the idea behind "she shoudve just left" is that leaving isnt a signal in need of interpretation by the guy.
Hahaha I *wish*. As someone who once had an ex who wouldn’t leave me alone, I really, really wish that were true.
No, all signals require interpretation to some extent. And I’m fine with saying that communication is a two-way street in which the hearer is just as responsible as the listener for making a good faith effort. If you have to leave because directly telling someone “no, thanks” doesn’t stop them, then that good faith effort by the listener is not being made.
> Reading the two passages above that, we see that his hypothetical dude asks the girl for various assurances that she wont sick the X on him.
If that were the only thing being asked for, you’d have more of a point. But this is not the only thing being asked for. There is definitely a broader suggestion about social norms more generally. “Don’t tell anyone who works for Jezebel” is different to “don’t get angry in any way that’s not cute.” The latter is a big problem, because we have seen that this is someone who believes that “cute” anger might not be real and could be permissible to ignore.
> If your beliefs imply something, then the practices based on them can often be in accordance with it, even if you dont know or deny the implication.
To be sure! I’m very glad to have gained a better understanding of those implications, and very grateful to the people who helped me find it.
> Edit: How do I do links properly? Google isnt helpful.
To the best of my knowledge, you can’t format comments. It’s mildly annoying. Sorry about that.
>The reason I gave up on understanding the boundaries of the rule set actually isn’t because I was being moderated
I say this because you sure seem to play up moderation being unfair to you/leftists.
>It’s in reference to an earlier comment that was rather tight and brief.
I looked for other comments from you upthread, didnt see it was a double reply. I will still mostly stick to my reading though, leaving out the sentence about staying calm wouldnt impede any of the things you say youre doing. And it doesnt need to be new information - informing and "reminding" work mostly the same.
>I’m pretty sure that arrogance in an anti-feminist position would have been absolutely loved by the upvoters
The know-it-all sort of arrogance? Propably. The How Dare You sort, directed at another member personally? Nah.
>except that it still matters that this “avoidance of pain” by either sex wasn’t acknowledged in the post I was responding to
Thats because the pain is inflicted for tactical reasons. In a negotiation setting, where you try to build the interaction from scratch, it makes sense to ignore that.
>Hahaha I *wish*.
If you think it doesnt work, thats a relevant point to make. It doesnt make him a hypocrite however.
>The latter is a big problem, because we have seen that this is someone who believes that “cute” anger might not be real and could be permissible to ignore.
That latter part is also not about signals, its about women accepting* being groped, straight up, no "opps you missed this". Where the claim is that this could be a result of the sexes negotiating how to run relationships.
(*accepting in the sense of not trying to do things that actually prevent it, acceptance may be conditional on previously achieved flirt level, terms and conditions apply)
The point is that the comment you link directly doesnt really say anything about signals, its about behavior, and the previous one sees leaving as contrasted with signalling. Your hypocrisy-analysis is "You want women to send strong signals but also not", and I see him being somewhat sympathetic to strong (really, escalating) signals in the old comment and never conflicting that.
>To the best of my knowledge, you can’t format comments.
Ah yes, the newer and shittier solution that survives thanks to matchmakers monopoly. While Im at it, is there a place I can see all my comments, like the reddit user page?
> leaving out the sentence about staying calm wouldnt impede any of the things you say youre doing
It would have impeded my implicit apology for breaking convention if I had not offered an explanation for why I wished to do so.
> The How Dare You sort, directed at another member personally? Nah.
We will have to agree to disagree on that. I saw popular How Dare You arrogance at times.
Although, note that I myself was not intending any sort of How Dare You in this instance, at least not in that first paragraph. I was one hundred percent aware that community norms placed no weight on my anger and that managing my feelings — as best I could — was my own responsibility.
> Thats because the pain is inflicted for tactical reasons. In a negotiation setting, where you try to build the interaction from scratch, it makes sense to ignore that.
I disagree. In a good faith negotiation, you should acknowledge when certain conditions are liable to cause pain and make allowances accordingly. The level of hostility implicit in not doing so is inappropriate to a topic like sex where the main goal is mutual understanding and enjoyment.
> That latter part is also not about signals, its about women accepting* being groped, straight up, no "opps you missed this".
Yes, and then that acceptance will be taken to imply further acceptance of yet stronger interactions, which will then be taken to imply further acceptance of yet stronger interactions, all of which will offer no opportunity to refuse. I trust the problem is obvious. The best way to avoid it is to disallow forced acceptance of sexual interactions.
> While Im at it, is there a place I can see all my comments, like the reddit user page?
I guess I see it now. I maintain that my original reading is how many people would have interpreted you comment, and somewhat reasonably so.
>I disagree. In a good faith negotiation, you should acknowledge when certain conditions are liable to cause pain and make allowances accordingly.
Im talking about a specific context of pain here. Like if youre trying to replace resolving cattle disputes with blood feuds with something more reasonable, the content of that negotiation would be over how people want to handle their cattle, not how much it sucks to have your 3rd cousin twice removed murdered.
>Yes, and then that acceptance will be taken to imply further acceptance
It seems rather strange to imagine that the further proceedings would not be addressed by the negotiation. This seems to me like you consider it very implausible that such an acceptance would be agreed to, and counterfacting on unlikely things can often lead to whacky conclusions.
> Like if youre trying to replace resolving cattle disputes with blood feuds with something more reasonable, the content of that negotiation would be over how people want to handle their cattle, not how much it sucks to have your 3rd cousin twice removed murdered.
… yes, but in this analogy the relevant comparison would be if the negotiation was opened by saying “Hey, sometimes we just really want to steal your cattle. I know you really want to complain about that just for the fun of it, but let’s accept that you won’t really miss a few cattle.”
> This seems to me like you consider it very implausible that such an acceptance would be agreed to
It is indeed very implausible that such an acceptance would be agreed to! Groping someone when you know they don’t want it is sexual assault. Saying that women should be forced, by social convention, to accept being groped when they don’t want to be is equivalent to saying that women should have to accept sexual assault. I see no reason why women in a negotiation of this type would agree to give up their legal rights in this way.
>It is indeed very implausible that such an acceptance would be agreed to!
Thats a reasonable thing for you to think, the problem is that it seems to impede your understanding of his position, like:
>I see no reason why women in a negotiation of this type would agree to give up their legal rights in this way.
Their current legal rights are irrlevant because the negotiation is upstream of that. If you want to keep everything you have currently, nothing can come off the negotiation.
>but in this analogy the relevant comparison
I think this disagreement is basically the same as you considering the concessions implausible.
Beautiful essay. I share mixed-but-mostly-positive recollections of my time as a social-justice-sympathizer reading the Culture War threads (although I only commented a handful of times, being a lurker by temperament).
So it was a nice surprise to click the link halfway through and see that you're /u/gemmaem! I don't remember many usernames from those days, but I definitely remember yours. I don't think we ever interacted, but it feels like seeing an old (strangely parasocial) friend.
Very interesting. I used to read and post on TheMotte until Reddit’s bans of various hate subreddits brought a lot more witches onto the scene. I genuinely loved the idea of the whole place but the imbalance of perspectives just ruined it for me.
I’m not a progressive but I wish there had been dozens of progressives like you on there. Then you wouldn’t have felt the environment to be so hostile and the space wouldn’t have drifted into whatever it is today.
I used to lurk on that thread, and subreddit, and even once or twice on themotte.org. I even (very) occasionally posted, under a different username. I was a disaffected liberal, unhappy and confused about the unkind places I saw more progressive lefties going, and wondering if the even unkinder righties had a point for once. And of course, as you say, carrying my own personal wounds.
I always thought you were one of the better sort there, and I always kept reading if I saw your name above a reply. I appreciated your contributions enough that when I saw your substack author name, I wanted to see if it was the same person.
You may not have been writing for an audience, but you did have one. And for whatever it's worth, I think you conducted yourself admirably.
A good post. Not uniquely insightful to me, but I've had years to read your various posts and comments which have hinted towards your feelings on the topic.
Your point about having to suppress your emotional responses to the sort of comments you've linked as examples is one that I can relate to, though not in the same way. Because I've never forced myself to remain on a platform where I am fundamentally treated as suspect. The closest might be on themotte itself, with one fool insisting to me in private DMs that I was obviously one of "them", one of the progressives who was part of the person's outgroup.
Really, though, I don't think I've ever seen red. I know what that feels like, but when I look at the people who I interact with on themotte nowadays, I just...laugh and scoff. I confess that I can't name exactly what kept me from going fully into an anti-progressive stance, but what I distinctly recall is how much I could find the same exact biases playing out in the rhetoric on both sides. As self-aggrandizing as it is, I never lost the ability to notice the biases and uncharitability given to left-wing posters. It's adorable, in a sense, looking at these people who could probably spill pages on a subject without ever going back and combing over their words with an eye for where they may have inserted a bias.
Or maybe I'm just wrong and they have tremendous evidence ready to cite at a moment's notice. But I don't think that's really the case.
I know you've been slowly warming to religion in the last few years and I've wondered if someone somewhere ever issued a divine law that said "DO NOT PSYCHOANALYZE OTHERS". Because it's when people try to do precisely that, read some grand or powerful explanation into how others think or feel and why they think/feel those things, that you get some of the most rage-inducing words a person can imagine. That comment about women and sentience is precisely the kind of thing I'm talking about, where someone imagines themselves a scientist using a scalpel on a corpse, but is actually a torturer wielding a butcher's knife on a live person.
I would call it dehumanizing, but that's not really accurate, is it? Because humans *aren't* rational. They aren't naturally good. They aren't principled by default. As Ian Morrison puts it, humans are fundamentally fearful, lazy, and cowardly. It's why people nod along when someone claims "the powerful are trying to hurt us!", that tendency has played out so many times in history that everyone has a story about it.
Better, then, to say that psychoanalysis is humanizing. When we look at ourselves and our ingroup, we cannot help but think that we were created in God's image, some small replica of a moral, good, and just being which, in the same vein as the Declaration of Independence, endowed us with the same inalienable features.
There is perhaps no higher conceit than to drag one of God's children under a microscope and poke and prod at it until it quails and shivers any time you approach, declare how this particular collection of atoms and molecules is explainable purely in terms of the most base of interactions and external stimuli, and toss it aside with nary a second glance.
You raise a good point. Rationalist detachment can serve as a cover for callousness if you're not careful. It's one thing to try not to allow your emotions to overwhelm your ability to see clearly, and quite another to assert that caring for others is an "emotional" reaction that should be avoided.
I'm reaching for a classic and well-studied type of horribleness with this example, but I think a really instructive case here is the statistician and eugenicist Karl Pearson, in his 1900 address on "National Life from the Standpoint of Science":
>I venture to assert, then, that the struggle for existence between white and red man, painful and even terrible as it was in its details, has given us a good far outbalancing its immediate evil. In place of the red man, contributing practically nothing to the work and thought of the world, we have a great nation, mistress of many arts, and able, with its youthful imagination and fresh, untrammelled impulses, to contribute much to the common stock of civilized man. Against that we have only to put the romantic sympathy for the Red Indian generated by the novels of Cooper and the poems of Longfellow, and then see how little it weighs in the balance!
See that? Caring about the destruction of whole societies is "romantic sympathy." We, as scientists, must surely agree that from the proper dispassionate viewpoint, et cetera, et cetera...
It's a fascinating failure mode, and one still that recurs in smaller and less blatant ways, from time to time.
(Whoops, forgot to include a link for that quote, here you are: http://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/Primary%20Source%2013.1%20-%20Pearson.pdf )
This stung a little bit, but I'm not sure it was unjustified. As a former moderator (who eventually moved on for complicated reasons as well), All I can say is we did our best. I hope that resulted in things being easier for you than they could have been.
You were always my favorite commentor.
Honestly, when I compare the difficulty of the task to the overall performance of the moderators, I can only be impressed with how well you all did. I remember many moderators fondly, you included. Cheers!
I found this by chance from a link someone posted in Scott Alexander’s most recent “Open Thread” and I wanted to note just how fantastic this article was. I know you are left wondering about the net value of your engagement with the Motte community, but at least to this (male, left-leaning) member of the invisible audience who was never totally satisfied with the left-wing post-mortems from disgruntled posters, this post was insightful, clarifying, and perspective-shifting in helping me solidly understand the failure modes of rationalist discourse. You also put into words my ill-formed thoughts on the weaponization of the Motte-Bailey, and that virtue always matters.
Perhaps ironically, if this post (and the one you linked from the subreddit) is any indication of your quality of thought in general, the average rationalist poster could stand to learn a bit about rationalism, intellectual humility, and insight from you.
seconded!
I was on the opposite side of the divide. I discovered ssc through Scott Aaronson's blog and the first post i read was Untitled. It had a dramatic effect on me, for the first time I felt someone could understand and eloquently explain the guilt and shame around gender and sexuality that I experienced in early adulthood. I got hooked on ssc. As a new immigrant in an English-speaking country I longed for a person or a community that would match my way of thinking about the world and find the right words in a language and civilization that were new for me. Reading the blog affected my life choices: I started donating to the Against Malaria Foundation, stopped eating meat, and now even getting involved in AI safety research. It feels embarrassing now that it all started with an anti-feminist rant. My own kids will enter the waters of adolescence in a few years and I have much stronger emotions about that than my own teenage years which feel distant now. But maybe reading that post was what helped me process the guilt and shame; and what was most therapeutic was reading responses from feminists like you who genuinely tried to understand Scott and people like me rather than vilify us.
> Then one day, Scott Alexander posted what I considered to be an absurd straw man argument against the concept of structural racism. It was written to look like some sort of exhaustive rational search for what the anti-racists of 2017 were really getting at, but it didn’t actually bother dealing with any real examples — it just made up lots of simplistic positions as if sufficiently many made-up people could substitute for a real opponent.
This is off topic, but I'd be curious to know what parts of that essay you found strawpersonlike. What are the more defensible views on racism that he didn't cover?
At the time, my biggest complaint was that the essay borrows ideas from structural and institutional racism (such as disparate impact, which is closely related to a "definition by consequences") but fails to consider what happens when those ideas are actually used in the context in which they are originally developed -- namely, as ways to evaluate social structures and institutions! Scott says calls his "definition by consequences" a "sophisticated" notion that "scholars in the area are most likely to unite around." Since the concepts of structural and institutional racism are indeed quite popular in the academy, it is reasonable to think that this is indeed what he is trying to describe (although he never invokes the "sophisticated" terminology that "scholars" would actually use, which is a bit of a red flag in itself).
Scott describes his "definition by consequences" as saying that racism is when a specific act has consequences that would harm minorities. By contrast, institutional/structural racism is when a specific institution/social structure acts in ways that disproportionately harm minorities. The point is not to evaluate single acts one at a time, but to assess the broad effect of specific large instituitions and social structures, considering all of their effects as a whole. This is actually potentially much easier than evaluating all of the effects of a single action.
The post has other problems that I didn't notice at the time. For example, a one point someone remarked on the Motte about a discord server for which a condition of entry was uploading a video of yourself saying "I hate n****rs." In response to some harrumphing from a moderator about me suggesting that this is racism, I clarified:
> I have to admit, from my perspective, it's a little hard to see why there needs to be an argument as to why it's racist to define in-group status on the basis of being hypothetically okay with saying "I hate n*****rs."
>
> There are, certainly, people who would be hypothetically okay with performing said task in order to attain said in-group status, and who nevertheless would not mean the actual statement, if they said it. I do not think that this makes them not racist. I will concede that it probably makes them less racist than someone who would actually mean it. I feel obliged to stress, however, that "I am less racist than someone who would say 'I hate n****rs' and mean it" is not the sort of statement that ought to reassure anybody.
This attracted the attention of an "Against Murderism" fan, who explained to me that if your motive in saying "I hate n****rs" is not an express wish to hurt black people, then it's not racist. This poster was convinced the only way for it to be possible for it to be racist for someone to say "I hate n****rs" as a fun rule-breaking exercise would be if we were using "definition by consequences." However, definition by consequences is stupid, therefore, we have to use definition by motive, therefore, it's not racist.
I will admit to being somewhat flummoxed by this. I genuinely had not realised how thoroughly "Against Murderism" fails in describing personal racism because I was so distracted at the time by the structural racism thing. After some reflection, I drew on my trusty virtue ethical resources and came up with the following definition, which does not match any of the definitions Scott considers:
> One possible virtue ethicist view of racism is that racism is an anti-virtue, a vice, if you will; a pattern of thinking that fails to accord proper respect to the wellbeing of people who differ from you by race. One need not have an overtly racist motivation in order to fail in this way, so this isn't "racism by motive." One need not actually succeed in producing bad consequences in order to fail in this way, so this isn't "racism by consequence."
> Callousness towards the pain caused by racial slurs will fall more heavily on people whose race is the target of particularly painful slurs. A pattern of callousness that falls more heavily on such people is racist callousness, even if none of those people are (yet) aware of your lack of concern for their feelings, and even if your motivation for developing said callousness was not racist in itself.
You can view the whole (long, rather silly) thread here, if you wish: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/lzljp2/comment/gqf02r7/
As ever, excellent post. I've considered trying to keep our conversations to Reddit but it's this comment that I want to prod just a little-
>Since the concepts of structural and institutional racism are indeed quite popular in the academy, it is reasonable to think that this is indeed what he is trying to describe (although he never invokes the "sophisticated" terminology that "scholars" would actually use, which is a bit of a red flag in itself).
The average *advocate* doesn't use the scholarly terminology in its intended meaning, either. Some of those strawmen became smashing bestsellers between Against Murderism and that thread a couple years later.
As well, there's an audience effect and how certain words get heard. If he had used the proper scholarly language, would the audience know what he meant? Would those terms be more distracting than informative? Much of racism terminology functions as shibboleth or anti-shibboleth, as much as it conveys meaning.
>a discord server for which a condition of entry was uploading a video of yourself...
I agree that it's racist, what interests me now is the unusual function. It does demonstrate a lack of concern for racism, it demonstrates just how much social power there is in declaring (some) statements racist, but the function there was as shibboleth. Since it's an uploaded video- it would be the Very Online equivalent of getting a gang sign tattooed on your forehead. Incredible blackmail material in this social climate; people have been fired and had college applications retracted for singing along to the wrong song lyrics, much less for saying it deliberately and clearly.
In addition to racist (by callousness-vice definition and a few others), it's gross, disturbing, sad, and yet... a social technology.
>A pattern of callousness that falls more heavily on such people is racist callousness, even if none of those people are (yet) aware of your lack of concern for their feelings, and even if your motivation for developing said callousness was not racist in itself.
What a definition! I'm reminded of discussions I've had with you and Doc Manhattan about indifference, and the way it can be insidious. I wish I had remembered this "callous vice definition of racism" in those times, it would fit those conversations well. With a slight modification: "a pattern of thinking that fails to accord proper respect to the wellbeing of people because of their race."
Wise to depart quietly and not flame out.
If Scott was going to say the view he was describing was in fact popular among scholars, then he had a duty to faithfully represent whatever scholarly idea he was thinking of. Also, note that an argument like "Here is the scholarly view, here is the simplistic online version, here is a debunking of the latter" would not actually have sufficed for his purposes. This is because his argument actually does proceed via process of elimination: I have eliminated all the other possible definitions, therefore this is the one we must accept. In order for that argument to be valid, one must consider the best version of each possible definition! Otherwise, it's always possible that some better version of a dismissed definition might be more plausible than the version you eventually settled on.
Note, also, that if Scott had actually used terminology like "structural racism" or "institutional racism," even just to remark in a quick note or footnote that people sometimes use these terms, then his unfairness towards the "definition by consequences" would have immediately become apparent. In particular, it would have been obvious that there were no "institutions" or "structures" being referenced, here, and thus that Scott's presentation of this viewpoint must not be entirely complete.
> it would be the Very Online equivalent of getting a gang sign tattooed on your forehead
Good analogy! Yeah, that's definitely what was happening.
> With a slight modification: "a pattern of thinking that fails to accord proper respect to the wellbeing of people because of their race."
Upon reflection, I approve your adjustment. People can indeed be racist towards their own racial categories.
>Upon reflection, I approve your adjustment. People can indeed be racist towards their own racial categories.
Thank you! You know me well and while that was a large part of my intent, it wasn't all of it. I found it worthwhile to adjust not just because of the indifference that one can apply to their own race, but because racism may not be from the *difference* in race, exactly, but other biases regarding another race.
At least the way I'm framing it in my head right now, I'd draw a slight distinction between "they're [not my race], I'll fail to accord proper respect" and "they're [that race], I'll fail to accord proper respect," but I still think it would be fair to call both racism (in addition to the "they are [my race], so I can comfortably ignore" variety).
great post
This was interesting: thank you!
I suppose I have to get around to making a Substack account now. I hope the new name isnt confusing. Since I havent found any posting guidelines, Ill do the same as on the sub, hope thats fine.
I think this post is a great illustration of what makes even not-particularly-aggressive feminism offputting to ousiders.
>Partly, it was hard just to keep engaging as an outsider without falling afoul of community norms. I quickly gave up on ever understanding the contested boundaries of the rule set.
Well, that certainly is a good start if you want to be given a fair hearing. It might be good to know though that *very* few long term commenters got through without being modded occasionally.
>To this day, if you wish, you can click through and see his [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7qk2bq/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_january_15/dsyi6os/), with 65 upvotes, and my response, which sits on 13 upvotes. And, uh, that is what it was like to be a feminist on the Culture War Thread.
I read that exchange and it seemed quite different from your description to me. Lets go through your comment there:
>I think I can stay calm for more than a few sentences, now.
This by itself almost ensures you wont get voted high. It comes across very arrogant. See, you choose to tell us that youre angry. So you think that this is relevant information for us. What precisely are we supposed to do with it? Well, the social purpose of expressing anger is to sanction. So presumably, we should stop what makes you angry. In a forum for people of all beliefs arguing about what makes them angry at each other, this obviously cant be done without favouritism.
As a side note, a man would know not to say this, because for them its also treated as a joke if they do it in real life. A little demonstration of those "female powers of evincing sympathy" that you doubt further down.
>Unfortunately, the true nature of the discussion is less fun. The #metoo conversation is not a negotiation between men wanting pleasure and women wanting pleasure. It's between men wanting pleasure and women wanting to avoid pain.
Im sure you will find mens pain at stake as well if you think a bit, especially relevant to the next point:
>You've outlined two conflicting priorities here: you want there to be social constraints on the type and intensity of negative reactions that women are allowed to show, but you also don't understand why a woman would restrain the type and intensity of her negative reactions to something that her date does to her.
Reading the two passages above that, we see that his hypothetical dude asks the girl for various assurances that she wont sick the X on him. He also advises the woman to just leave the date. Even going along with the social contraints thinking, that seems like a pretty wide gap to hit. Really though, I think the idea behind "she shoudve just left" is that leaving isnt a signal in need of interpretation by the guy. It is unilaterally ending the interaction, and your misinterpretation certainly supports the idea that "women dont realise they can do that". And how is calling your friends at Jezebel a signal to him to stop? As forceful as it is, it cant be a signal if he wont know before the evening is over.
In summary, the apprent contradiction between their comments seems to come from you applying a really badly fitting frame. Ill also note that when I curated Quality Contributions, i did not care if the poster was hypocritical about their thesis elsewhere, though Im not sure it ever came up. Curation is in the interest of the reader first. So much for that subtopic.
>This excuse for not engaging with a more defensible position that you hate was so popular, on the Thread, that some of its denizens developed new versions of it.
A long time ago, a wrote a [post](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/c30htp/meta_miasma_and_eternal_september/) about moderation policy, and the only adopted suggestion was a rule "When responding to the perceived positions of someone else, make sure to also adress what was literally said". TBH I dont think anything came off this, I had forgotten about it, but I present it as proof that this happened to the other side as well. I mean of course the lefties shot back with the distributed-motte-and-bailey accusation - its not exactly hard to do.
In conclusion, you have high expectations for how you want to be treated, in part reasonable ideals of niceness and in part excessive opinion of yourself, and youre very quick to conclude that a failure to meet them is about you, your sex, your ideology.
So this was reading mostly past the point of the post, but thats necessary for the argument. I also have a bit of an ordinary response:
>Mind you, I thought I wasn’t claiming anything of the sort. I took it as axiomatic that “being privileged doesn’t mean you’ve never suffered” and I thought that caveat was enough. It wasn’t.
If your beliefs imply something, then the practices based on them can often be in accordance with it, even if you dont know or deny the implication. (Should there be a word for this? I propose "committment".) The difficulty in detecting this is that theres nothing thats using the implied thing, that you could find when combing through you thoughts - you have to realise that the implication does in fact follow and how, and then you can check if it applies to what youre doing. This is why I tend to treat positions as more formalistic than they might be intended.
Edit: How do I do links properly? Google isnt helpful.
Welcome to substack! Sorry for forcing you to make an account; unfortunately, this is one piece I can’t discuss on r/theschism. I don’t actually have a comment policy here. So far, nobody has said anything to make me need one. But everything you’re saying here would be well within bounds, if I did have one.
There are a few misunderstandings here. I hope I can clarify some of them.
The reason I gave up on understanding the boundaries of the rule set actually isn’t because I was being moderated, myself. In my time on the Thread I caught precisely two moderator notes. Just two. The first was totally justified. My home town had just had an active shooter incident and I wasn’t my best self when discussing it, so I deserved the warning. The second is actually linked in a comment above: I called it racist to have a discord where you have to record yourself saying “I hate n****rs” as a condition of entry.
That’s it, those are the two times. Neither of them influenced my belief that the rules were hard to understand.
The reason I was able to get by without moderator notes for so long, despite not understanding the boundaries of the rules, is that I tried to look for what the underlying spirit of the rules was, and follow that to the extent that I could see good in it. I could never understand why one bit of snark was just funny and should be allowed, while another was uncharitable and deserved moderation, but by avoiding snark entirely I could pass without moderator attention, for example.
> See, you choose to tell us that youre angry. So you think that this is relevant information for us.
It’s in reference to an earlier comment that was rather tight and brief. I actually wasn’t providing any additional information by saying that I was angry.
Your reading of me as arrogant completely ignores the implication of my “May I try again?” I knew perfectly well that I wasn’t coming from a position of strength; it’s true that I was doing the thing where you ask for permission and then take it, but the point of asking for such permission is to acknowledge that you are mildly outside of social norms (mostly, we don’t comment twice on a single post) and to ask for some grace. If you read arrogance into that then I think that’s on you.
Also, even though I wasn’t arrogant, I’m pretty sure that arrogance in an anti-feminist position would have been absolutely loved by the upvoters. I’m just saying.
> Im sure you will find mens pain at stake as well if you think a bit
A commenter said something similar at the time. It’s a fair point, except that it still matters that this “avoidance of pain” by either sex wasn’t acknowledged in the post I was responding to. That aspect of the situation is deeply important, and the effect of leaving it out needed to be addressed, even if I should not have implied that *only* women want to avoid pain.
> Really though, I think the idea behind "she shoudve just left" is that leaving isnt a signal in need of interpretation by the guy.
Hahaha I *wish*. As someone who once had an ex who wouldn’t leave me alone, I really, really wish that were true.
No, all signals require interpretation to some extent. And I’m fine with saying that communication is a two-way street in which the hearer is just as responsible as the listener for making a good faith effort. If you have to leave because directly telling someone “no, thanks” doesn’t stop them, then that good faith effort by the listener is not being made.
> Reading the two passages above that, we see that his hypothetical dude asks the girl for various assurances that she wont sick the X on him.
If that were the only thing being asked for, you’d have more of a point. But this is not the only thing being asked for. There is definitely a broader suggestion about social norms more generally. “Don’t tell anyone who works for Jezebel” is different to “don’t get angry in any way that’s not cute.” The latter is a big problem, because we have seen that this is someone who believes that “cute” anger might not be real and could be permissible to ignore.
> If your beliefs imply something, then the practices based on them can often be in accordance with it, even if you dont know or deny the implication.
To be sure! I’m very glad to have gained a better understanding of those implications, and very grateful to the people who helped me find it.
> Edit: How do I do links properly? Google isnt helpful.
To the best of my knowledge, you can’t format comments. It’s mildly annoying. Sorry about that.
>The reason I gave up on understanding the boundaries of the rule set actually isn’t because I was being moderated
I say this because you sure seem to play up moderation being unfair to you/leftists.
>It’s in reference to an earlier comment that was rather tight and brief.
I looked for other comments from you upthread, didnt see it was a double reply. I will still mostly stick to my reading though, leaving out the sentence about staying calm wouldnt impede any of the things you say youre doing. And it doesnt need to be new information - informing and "reminding" work mostly the same.
>I’m pretty sure that arrogance in an anti-feminist position would have been absolutely loved by the upvoters
The know-it-all sort of arrogance? Propably. The How Dare You sort, directed at another member personally? Nah.
>except that it still matters that this “avoidance of pain” by either sex wasn’t acknowledged in the post I was responding to
Thats because the pain is inflicted for tactical reasons. In a negotiation setting, where you try to build the interaction from scratch, it makes sense to ignore that.
>Hahaha I *wish*.
If you think it doesnt work, thats a relevant point to make. It doesnt make him a hypocrite however.
>The latter is a big problem, because we have seen that this is someone who believes that “cute” anger might not be real and could be permissible to ignore.
That latter part is also not about signals, its about women accepting* being groped, straight up, no "opps you missed this". Where the claim is that this could be a result of the sexes negotiating how to run relationships.
(*accepting in the sense of not trying to do things that actually prevent it, acceptance may be conditional on previously achieved flirt level, terms and conditions apply)
The point is that the comment you link directly doesnt really say anything about signals, its about behavior, and the previous one sees leaving as contrasted with signalling. Your hypocrisy-analysis is "You want women to send strong signals but also not", and I see him being somewhat sympathetic to strong (really, escalating) signals in the old comment and never conflicting that.
>To the best of my knowledge, you can’t format comments.
Ah yes, the newer and shittier solution that survives thanks to matchmakers monopoly. While Im at it, is there a place I can see all my comments, like the reddit user page?
> leaving out the sentence about staying calm wouldnt impede any of the things you say youre doing
It would have impeded my implicit apology for breaking convention if I had not offered an explanation for why I wished to do so.
> The How Dare You sort, directed at another member personally? Nah.
We will have to agree to disagree on that. I saw popular How Dare You arrogance at times.
Although, note that I myself was not intending any sort of How Dare You in this instance, at least not in that first paragraph. I was one hundred percent aware that community norms placed no weight on my anger and that managing my feelings — as best I could — was my own responsibility.
> Thats because the pain is inflicted for tactical reasons. In a negotiation setting, where you try to build the interaction from scratch, it makes sense to ignore that.
I disagree. In a good faith negotiation, you should acknowledge when certain conditions are liable to cause pain and make allowances accordingly. The level of hostility implicit in not doing so is inappropriate to a topic like sex where the main goal is mutual understanding and enjoyment.
> That latter part is also not about signals, its about women accepting* being groped, straight up, no "opps you missed this".
Yes, and then that acceptance will be taken to imply further acceptance of yet stronger interactions, which will then be taken to imply further acceptance of yet stronger interactions, all of which will offer no opportunity to refuse. I trust the problem is obvious. The best way to avoid it is to disallow forced acceptance of sexual interactions.
> While Im at it, is there a place I can see all my comments, like the reddit user page?
Alas, no!
>It would have impeded my implicit apology
I guess I see it now. I maintain that my original reading is how many people would have interpreted you comment, and somewhat reasonably so.
>I disagree. In a good faith negotiation, you should acknowledge when certain conditions are liable to cause pain and make allowances accordingly.
Im talking about a specific context of pain here. Like if youre trying to replace resolving cattle disputes with blood feuds with something more reasonable, the content of that negotiation would be over how people want to handle their cattle, not how much it sucks to have your 3rd cousin twice removed murdered.
>Yes, and then that acceptance will be taken to imply further acceptance
It seems rather strange to imagine that the further proceedings would not be addressed by the negotiation. This seems to me like you consider it very implausible that such an acceptance would be agreed to, and counterfacting on unlikely things can often lead to whacky conclusions.
> Like if youre trying to replace resolving cattle disputes with blood feuds with something more reasonable, the content of that negotiation would be over how people want to handle their cattle, not how much it sucks to have your 3rd cousin twice removed murdered.
… yes, but in this analogy the relevant comparison would be if the negotiation was opened by saying “Hey, sometimes we just really want to steal your cattle. I know you really want to complain about that just for the fun of it, but let’s accept that you won’t really miss a few cattle.”
> This seems to me like you consider it very implausible that such an acceptance would be agreed to
It is indeed very implausible that such an acceptance would be agreed to! Groping someone when you know they don’t want it is sexual assault. Saying that women should be forced, by social convention, to accept being groped when they don’t want to be is equivalent to saying that women should have to accept sexual assault. I see no reason why women in a negotiation of this type would agree to give up their legal rights in this way.
>It is indeed very implausible that such an acceptance would be agreed to!
Thats a reasonable thing for you to think, the problem is that it seems to impede your understanding of his position, like:
>I see no reason why women in a negotiation of this type would agree to give up their legal rights in this way.
Their current legal rights are irrlevant because the negotiation is upstream of that. If you want to keep everything you have currently, nothing can come off the negotiation.
>but in this analogy the relevant comparison
I think this disagreement is basically the same as you considering the concessions implausible.