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Kindly comments on LW Women Submissions: On Misogyny - Less Wrong
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What should I understand from the instant negative karma response? That I shouldn't have asked the question, I suppose. If I shouldn't have asked the question, then... I'm supposed to see a new thread in Discussion getting 300 replies in 3 days, remember the same thing happened with the previous threads in the series, and go, "Oh... nothing unusual at all, no special reaction to this topic.". Or, I'm expected to know the answer just like everybody else does, and therefore by asking the question I'm actually expressing an opinion on everybody who commented and I'm not actually looking for an answer.
But I am. Getting worked up about this topic could mean a number of things with respect to your attitude towards gender issues, and I don't know the bunch of you well enough to say which is the prevailing explanation. Hence the question. And I suppose now there's an additional question about why it is so taboo to ask this, which I'm also genuinely interested in.
You seemed to object in another comment to a response which "could've been an explanation, but in the end it turned out to be declaring sides." Well, your question reads like a straightforward declaration of sides. Hence the downvoting. NancyLebovitz is also correct.
That was... unexpected. It never crossed my mind that people could infer anything about my position on gender issues from that question -- and if you asked me now, I couldn't say which is the side that it supposedly belongs on. (Just to hazard a guess, the answer might be "the enemy side", whichever side you're on, but I can't arrive to that answer without assuming bias on the part of downvoters, and I very much hope that LW isn't the crowd to do that to; besides, it would be uncharitable of me. So, I'll wait for the others to inform me.)
I didn't downvote you.
However, if you've read some of the previous discussions on the subject-- the background is the idea that LW defaults to being a sufficiently uncomfortable place for women that women don't stay, and this is a problem.
As a result, asking why are people getting so worked up about the subject looks like saying that the default style at LW is satisfactory, and if women don't like it, that's not important enough to be worth dealing with.
LW Women: LW Online
LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance
Oh. Thanks for the explanation! Of course, needless to say, it wasn't the reason for my bemusement -- for one, it's pretty obvious to everyone who reads the comments that people's concern for how LW is viewed by women isn't the reason why the thread has garnered so many responses. Given what people are saying, the number of comments isn't evidence of their desire to get more women involved in the community, but rather of getting very eager at the opportunity to discuss something as controversial as this.
And that's what surprised me -- at least to my noob's eye, LWers didn't come across as the kinds of people who feel strongly about controversial topics; a more detached, analytical stance was more characteristic of the image I had about this site. I suppose I kind of generalized this impression into thinking that, on average, this was also how LWers thought of themselves and of each other. (Projection?) So, ordinarily you don't see people spontaneously bringing up gender issues in normal conversation on this discussion board, but when someone makes it their personal initiative to see what's up with the overwhelming maleness of this forum -- holy mama! 300+ comments. It looked to me like bottling up one's own interest in the matter, like people cared more than they were willing to admit. So I was like, "what the hell, I thought you guys were the dispassionate scientists looking at things objectively, why are you reacting to this like -- like ordinary people?"
Your perception is a product of topic selection. Certain topics are perceived as destabilizing of the community, and thus are downvoted viciously unless they are of unusual quality.
Since writing at that level of quality is hard, certain topics get discussed less. What does get discussed is the stuff where most of us are able to take a "more detached, analytical stance."