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ShardPhoenix comments on Open Thread: November 2009 - Less Wrong
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The discussion here helped me reanalyze my own attitude towards this kind of issue.
I don't think I ever had a serious intention to back up my arguments or win a debate when I posted on the issue of why men hate feminism. I am not sure what to do when faced the extreme anti feminism that I commonly find on the internet. I have a number of readers on my blog who will make totalizing comments about all women or all feminists. Ex, one commenter said that women have no ability to sustain interest in topics that don't pertain to relationships between individuals. Other commenters say that feminsm will lead to the downfall of civilization for reasons including that it lets women pursue their fleeting sexual impulses, which are destructive.
i suppose I do not really know how to handle this attitude. Ordinarily, I ignore them since I operate under the assumption that people that expouse such viewpoints are not prone to being swayed by any argument. They are attached to their bias, in a sense. I am not sure if it is possible for a feminist to have a reasonable discussion with a person that is anti feminist and that hates nearly all aspects of feminism in the western world.
Personally I'd say you shouldn't "be a feminist" at all. Have goals (whether relating to women's rights or anything else) and try to find the best ways to reach them. Don't put a political label on yourself that will constrain your thinking and/or be socially and emotionally costly to change. Though given that you seem to have invested a lot of your identity in feminism it's probably already hard to change.
Shouldn't? According to which utility function? There are plenty of advantages to taking a label.
Yes, there are obvious advantages to overtly identifying with some established group, but if you identify too strongly and become a capital-F Feminist (or a capital D-Democrat, or even a capital-R Rationalist) there's a real danger that conforming to the label will get in the way of actually achieving your original goals.
It's analogous to the idea that you shouldn't use dark side methods in the service of rationality - ie that you shouldn't place too much trust in your own ability to be virtuously hypocritical.
Advantages to outwardly signalling group loyalty, perhaps, but to internal self-identification?
As mentioned above, this particular person does seem unusually good at not being so constrained.