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Jack comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong
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I will now attempt to clarify:
Males developing social skills is great. Social skills are wonderful, rewarding things to have, and I think anybody who would like to learn to interact with other people politely and pleasantly should.
"Social skills as possessed by men (who are attracted to women)" is a much broader category than "the ability to get into sexual or romantic relationships with women (who are attracted to men)". You can use social skills to interact with family members, platonic friends, co-workers, neighbors, classmates, teachers, strangers, students, clients, employees, bosses, fellow members of any club or other social or hobby organization, and any other class of person you will ever interact with. Potential mates are only one of these categories, although of course there is overlap.
Social skills as used by men to get into sexual or romantic relationships with women do not consist entirely of things I would describe with "negative feminist language". Many of these skills are, at least potentially, honest, respectful, and non-threatening.
The attitude that the "target market" of the "product" of the man attempting to pitch himself as a potential mate owes him something is the attitude that I condemn. If nobody has this attitude around here - which is what I must think you're getting at by saying I argue against a straw man - that's great! My heebie-jeebies are for naught! I can walk the streets of Lesswrongburgh safe in the knowledge that no one thinks they are entitled to my attention, affection, personal charms, or set of body parts.
If someone in the studio audience does think that the men who have or want to learn these social skills are owed something by the women in whom they show interest, then I contend that this thought is dangerous because it can lead to evil behaviors, up to and including rape. Among the excuses trotted out by rapists, right up there with "she had on X article of clothing and was asking for it", are variations on "she owed me". So when there starts to be talk about women owing anything to sexually interested men, this starts to make me feel like an Israeli hearing chitchat about how the land my house sits on is owed to Palestine. People who think they are owed something might try to take it.
I think this is an irrational fear, if I may say so.
While I'm not an expert on violent crime, I am fairly sure that most of it is committed by people acting on impulse, not people who have intellectually convinced themselves they are owed something. I may for instance believe and argue I am owed more money by society, but that doesn't mean I'm about to rob a bank.
People should likewise be free to express the opinion that they are owed more sex, without that being interpreted as a threat of violence.
Unless I missed it, this is a claim no one has made. There is a very clear distinction between spreading memes that increase the likelihood of violence and making a threat. Obviously claims of desert don't necessarily entail a threatening violence to take the deserts- but that doesn't mean popularizing some memes doesn't have bad consequences. This is fairly basic memetics and how we account for a great deal of behavior. There might also be some positive consequence to spreading such memes but so far no one has argued that claiming loveless men are owed more sex will actually lead to any kind of beneficial change.
This is a very good clarification. Something can be dangerous without actually being a threat, and in fact the response here has been what I'd expect for an indirect danger - I don't know about anyone else, but I don't usually stick around to try to educate someone who's actually threatening me, or causing me to be in immediate danger.
Think of it as the difference between teaching people to hotwire cars, and actually stealing them - the former might not actually harm the car owners in question, but they're unlikely to think kindly of someone who does it.
Let me again quote from Alicorn's comment:
The comment clearly expresses the fear that someone who says or thinks they are owed more sex from women -- and, keep in mind, that could be something along the lines of "I don't think that women are doing their part in alleviating the suffering I feel as a result of not having access to sex" -- may be led to "evil behaviors, up to and including rape". I think that -- at least in the context of this site -- that fear is unfounded, perhaps even slightly on the paranoid side. (Of course I hesitate to say a thing like that, as an anxiety sufferer, throwing stones from my glass house!) In any case I feel reasonably confident in asserting that neither Alicorn nor anyone else stands more than an infinitesimally small chance of being raped by a lonely Less Wrong participant holding the above misguided opinion. Indeed (and to answer some other commenters), I suspect that the proportion of potential rapists among the people who hold that opinion is probably so small that even if all rapes were attributable to the holding of that opinion by the perpetrator, that still wouldn't justify censoring the opinion itself (and thereby failing to even consider the question of whether lack of access to sex is a legitimate ethical problem worth solving).
This is also a larger debate (about whether and how to stop the spread of memes which may have harmful effects) which transcends the specific issues here. It applies even to memes that are definitely good in some contexts, e.g. atheism.
Robin Hanson implies this -- or at least raises the question -- quite regularly. See here for the most recent example.