Saying that you don't consider someone a bad person is no good if you talk in a way that assumes they are a bad person.

Here, Nancy asks komponisto:

How many hours a week of mercy fucks would you say that women owe to the world?

Yet komponisto has never argued that women should give men "mercy fucks." After he clarified his comment, it's clear that he doesn't want women to have sex with guys they aren't into (i.e. "mercy fucks"), he wants to evaluate the basis by which women decide what they are into in the first place.

Asking him this question implies that he is a bad person.

Here, Nancy says:

Too conservative for who? Who gains under the new system? He frames it as women "granting sexual favors", not, for example, as women having more fun or a larger selection of potential mates or anything else they might want. I think that's where the entitlement issues showed up.

Similarly, Alicorn said the following (though it was before komponisto's clarification, so it makes more sense):

People are not entitled to get things for free from people who don't want to give them, even if you think their reasons for not wanting to give are dumb.

The conceptualization of sexuality as women "granting sexual favors" is problematic, but it's not the same thing as feeling that men have some sort of "entitlement" to sex.

The idea that men are entitled to sex is something a bad person believes.

Similarly, datadataeverywhere says:

Since you failed to mention any specific benefit to the women so altered, it sounds like coercion and is extremely offensive.

Except that komponisto clearly talked about women "granting" sexual favors. "Grant" implies agency. komponisto saying "Obviously, given that someone already doesn't want to give something, then their giving it would be bad, all else being equal" is not consistent with the notion of coercion.

Entitlement, coercion, and "mercy fucks" are simply not implications of komponisto's full views. They are associations with particular sentences of what he wrote. If anyone disagrees, tell me why you think I'm wrong.

Yes, some people who think women should have sex with a wider range of men believe this because they think men are entitled to sexual attention from women who are ambivalent about them. But the relationship of these views is correlation, not implication.

I can understand getting offended over a problematic view that komponisto raised, but I don't understand getting offended at his comment for an idea that he didn't say, which is correlated with his view. Personally, I would like to have seen the problematic correlations of komponisto's statements to be raised to him. But I would have preferred to see it done in a way that didn't suggest that what he said actually entailed or assumed these problematic correlations. Instead, these problematic correlations (that only a bad person would believe) of komponisto's statements were treated as assumed or implied by him, which resulted in treating him like a bad guy, despite any explicit assurances otherwise.

Several women brought up the point that komponisto didn't originally mention potential female benefits in less sexually selective with men. But just because he doesn't mention it, doesn't meant that there aren't potential female benefits, or that he doesn't believe that they exist! We could have always asked him to clarify. (Unless he is a bad person, who doesn't deserve charity in interpretation of his arguments.)

Just as many people (not just women) reading this thread called up problematic correlations with some of komponisto's statements, other people have heard similar points made by people who do consider women's interests important. See my response to Vladimir_M here.

In my view, the more appropriate response would have been something like "You may not be aware that lots of people who criticize women's preferences seem to consider themselves, or men in general, entitled to female sexual attention, and they show insufficient regard for women's body sovereignty and self-determination. If you want to evaluate women's preferences, could you explain how we can do this in a way that respects women's autonomy? What kind of benefits might women accrue from attempting to change their preferences, and if not, they why should they attempt to do so merely to satisfy men's preferences?" I liked pjeby's response a lot, and he also offered the charity of seeking an alternative interpretation of komponisto's comment.

I feel uncomfortable about making this post. Just like some women here have expressed apprehension at being pattern-matched with the stereotype of the irrational, complaining woman, I'm uncomfortable being pattern-matched with the stodgy guy who doesn't get women's feelings and is unfairly telling women to stop being so hysterical and listen to reason.

For the most part, I find the critical comments towards certain parts of komponisto's posts to make a lot of sense, and I think some excellent points were raised in response, like this one by Alicorn:

To the extent that sex is like a gift, you have to be in a relationship with someone that warrants the exchange of such gifts. I don't expect birthday presents from people who aren't in a birthday-present-exchanging relationship with me. To the extent that sex is like a commodity, guess what - it's for sale! No, you can't buy it from every person who might have it to offer, but not everybody who bakes cupcakes sells them either - you have to go to a cupcake store. If you want homemade cupcakes, you'll have to make friends with somebody who bakes.

You ask:

Besides saying this upfront before each criticism, can you think of some other ways that we might minimize the real or perceived implication that harsh judgment on someone's ideas implies harsh judgment on his/her character?

Distinguish between someone's actual ideas, and problematic ideas of other people that are correlated by those ideas. Avoid criticizing that person's ideas in ways indicating that they believe things that only bad people would believe, unless you can actually show why such a belief is entailed by what they actually wrote.

Besides saying this upfront before each criticism, can you think of some other ways that we might minimize the real or perceived implication that harsh judgment on someone's ideas implies harsh judgment on his/her character?

When arguing against an idea, avoid conveying indignation that the idea was suggested.