Okay. I'm not sure my friends or circles have the same default assumptions about the violence level of the kind of punch someone promises to give a friend if said friend does something stupid.
It may also be worth noting, and omitting this may have been a mistake on my part, that I'm referring especially to intentional subtext (which is the only definition I was using "subtext" for). Things like "This guy probably had trouble with people misinterpreting his intentions due to bad phrasing before" are true, are easily inferred from the grandparent's words, and aren't part of the communication - they are inferences based on the evidence presented (the fact that I pinpoint that to talk about in the first place instead of any of the million other things I could talk about).
Some seem to be counting this "inference based on what the other said" as direct subtext in all cases. Is there permanently the subtext "I am a human and I will not catch on fire in the next [0..inf] seconds and I will not eat a train and I will not eat a bear and I will not [...]" in every single sentence I say, just because of the way I say it and it is true that these things can be inferred (trivially) from the conversation?
So the inclusion of every little unintentional, collateral, inferable (?) detail as "subtext" kind of baffles me.
The technique in the grandparent successfully, in all cases I've tried, prevents all the instances and sorts of misunderstandings generally attributable to someone reading from "subtext" some sort of "reason", "motive" or "intention" in my words or behavior that was not there, in fact and in hindsight.
So no, I don't want them to pretend not to notice subtexts. I want them to stop assuming that there is a subtext!Motive/HiddenIntent. Of course if they entirely mistrusts the words in the grandparent, this will not work. That's why I don't even try on people who don't trust me.
In order to distinguish intentional subtext from subtext, the listener has to make a very fine judgement about your intent. That is a very noisy thing to communicate.
Standard Intro
The following section will be at the top of all posts in the LW Women series.
Several months ago, I put out a call for anonymous submissions by the women on LW, with the idea that I would compile them into some kind of post. There is a LOT of material, so I am breaking them down into more manageable-sized themed posts.
Seven women replied, totaling about 18 pages.
Standard Disclaimer- Women have many different viewpoints, and just because I am acting as an intermediary to allow for anonymous communication does NOT mean that I agree with everything that will be posted in this series. (It would be rather impossible to, since there are some posts arguing opposite sides!)
To the submitters- If you would like to respond anonymously to a comment (for example if there is a comment questioning something in your post, and you want to clarify), you can PM your message and I will post it for you. If this happens a lot, I might create a LW_Women sockpuppet account for the submitters to share.
Please do NOT break anonymity, because it lowers the anonymity of the rest of the submitters.
Notes from Daenerys:
1. I'm not on this site very much anymore, so I'm going to try to remember to post these about once a week to get them off my to-do list. So the next couple weeks might have a lot of gender discussion, but I only have 2 left, so it will be done soon.
2. This post ended up being less anonymous. Please do NOT link to any identifying information.
3. There were some questions recently about the purpose of this series, which makes sense because the purpose was discussed 8 months ago, which is a pretty long time, by LW standard. Shortly, by virtue of the gender ratio here (90% male), the men's voices tend to drown out the women's voices, and many women may just not post on certain issues due to the feeling of swimming upstream, so this was a way to compile a bunch of LW women's opinions and thoughts. Note that, going by the latest LW survey there are less than 100 women on here, so each submitter is over 1% of the total female readership of LW. Here is the original call for responses, and the original discussion of the LW Women series idea.
Submitter C
I wasn't going to write, but something happened at today's meetup that really irked me.
A man turned to a young woman near him and asked, "So, do you actually read Less Wrong, or did someone drag you here?" I asked, "Are you saying that because she's wearing heels and lipstick?" "No, no," he answered, flustered. "It's not because of how she's dressed. It's just that most of the women who come here are dragged by someone else." I asked, "Do you think that any woman, no matter why she came here, would feel welcomed by being asked that question?" At that point he began apologizing, and the other woman assured him she wasn't offended.
It really bothered me, though. It seemed like a basic failure to think about the consequences of his words. Apparently his hypothesis was "Most female meetup attenders do not read Less Wrong." It's fine to have that hypothesis (although I think it's incorrect), but it's different to test it in a way that's likely to offend. If you really want to find out if she reads the site, ask how long she's been reading Less wrong or what her favorite posts are. Don't start by saying, essentially, "I assume you are an outsider." (For the record, he was wrong - she's an avid LW reader.)
If someone doesn't fit the usual Less Wrong demographic, they're probably far more aware of that than you are. If you notice someone doesn't fit your mental model of a Less Wronger, please don't demand that they explain their presence. There are probably other ways to satisfy your curiosity, and if not, your curiosity does not justify making someone else feel they don't belong.
UPDATE from Submitter C
This happened last year, and since that time we've talked about it more. I think it was a genuine mistake/misunderstanding and not a deliberate attempt to alienate anyone. I don't know how the other woman took the whole situation. I know it pushed my you-don't-belong-here button, and I responded based on that. The whole thing would have gone better if I had responded more charitably.