I think the problem is that you don't understand how you made a mistake. Therefore, you're unable to apologize.

The problem isn't that your intentions are wrong. Intentions aren't obvious things, and people are not authorities on their own intentions, especially when it comes to sex. A man will pursue a woman without realizing it; or they realize it "in the moment" but afterwords confabulate an alternative explanation.

But none of us are entirely in control of our desires, and nor should it be expected that, given certain desires, that we wouldn't try to satisfy them. But sexuality is full of ulterior motives, and this is what makes relations between the sexes so difficult. I upvoted Eliezer's post because the substance of what he said is correct, and if you said only the first paragraph I wouldn't have so much of a problem with it. Maybe it could have been said better, but it's only a blog comment.

But in the context of "making women more comfortable in online communities" I think we have to deal with the scenario where women have to adopt the heuristic of "guilty until proven innocent" whenever discussion seems to be the least bit sexually charged. This is the heuristic I think we all should adopt.

This may seem to be too complicated and error prone, or even unfair. But they say that our gesture of waving to each other came from when knights on horseback would wave their hand to signal that they didn't possess a weapon. The knight couldn't just object "But I don't have any weapons, why should I have to wave?" It has to be proven, because his intentions aren't clear.

So I think it is useful to find some sort of anti-erotic wave, a way of signaling to women, or others, that they don't possess any sexual intent. I think, when the subject of sex is touched, this is done by speaking in a way that isn't liable to produce a mental image. Just as when the knight waves, he proves he isn't carrying a weapon; by signaling an anti-erotic wave, you prove that you aren't carrying any erotic intent. And you do this by producing discussion which is erotically inert.

I understand completely why your discussion made sense to you, there's no indication that you were directing your post to any of the women here, and your first paragraph seems particularly on-topic in an enthymematic way. I don't think you did anything immoral; just next time, be sure to signal your anti-erotic wave.

This is also my attempt at a rational justification for this principle, so critique is welcome.

I worry a little that you might dismiss some of the reaction as motivated by a problem with the fetish itself, so I wanted to say that, speaking as someone who has similar fetishes, who has acted on them many times, and who is out and proud about it: you should listen to what people are saying here about why what you've said here was inappropriate.

unless you start cybering with me or something

This suggests - yes, very indirectly - that that's a thing that could plausibly happen. Also, the wink suggests 'there is subtext here'. Taken together, they imply things that I assume you weren't intending to imply - along the lines of 'I am talking with you about sex in part because we have a relationship where that kind of discussion happens, rather than purely for instrumental reasons'.

I see that you want to make an honest apology. Here is a suggestion for an honest apology that hopefully won't sound like a faux apology:

"Sorry. I did not intend to make you upset. I acknowledge that it was my post that made you upset (I take your word for it. I don't completely understand how, but that's my own problem). I regret that I was not able to make my point without upsetting anyone."

An apology requires accepting responsibility for what you are apologizing for. It would be better to include a concession towards avoiding similar problems in the future ("I shouldn't have ...", "I'll ... next time" ), but I don't know which such statements you can honestly make.

I haven't tried anything like the suggestion myself so I can't guarantee results. It should work here, but I'm doubtful about other contexts. You probably shouldn't include the part in parentheses if the other person doesn't know you have Asperger's.

Hrm... Fair enough then. (Actually, to what extent are there stats on that sort of thing available? ie, do we actually know that in that case the the ratio is that bad?)

That occurred to me, but I see a problem with that outcome like so: From the perspective of members of group 2, being traded around/used like that would be enjoyably status lowering...

However, from the perspective of members of group 1, if you have a small subgroup of them sharing a member of group 2, then if they perceived that at all as part of the sexual interaction, then they might have a problem with the fact that each of them are failing to lower the status of the majority of others in the interaction. (ie, members of group 1 interacting with other members of group 1, having to do so on an equal basis only getting to dominate/degrade the (fewer) members of group 2.)

(Or did I misunderstand a key aspect of this sort of thing?)

We need a mathematical theory to analyze optimal arrangements for these sorts of relationships given various input demographics! :) (Why yes, I am in a rather silly mood at the moment. ;))

I believe so, but I'm not totally sure how to formulate and communicate the reasons for my disagreement. I'm pretty sure though that the proper way to characterize the alternatives here is not "setting things up so that people are happy" vs "making them do the ideologically correct thing".

If you want to engage on this, I suppose I would start with a question: is there something special about sexual fantasies that makes them deserving of being indulged - something that would not apply to other fantasies that people would prefer not to see carried out in fact? For example, if I enjoy fantasizing about brutalizing and terrorizing people while wearing a white robe and hood, is that something I should indulge as fantasies, so long as I don't act on them? Does it matter whether these fantasies are classified as sexual fantasies?