You are positing that folks who are affected by some issues would not participate in frank, dispassionate discussion of these same issues... why exactly? To preserve their ego? It seems like a dubious assumption.
Anecdote time:
I'm currently dispassionate about racial issues, and can (and have) openly discussed topics such as the possibility that racial discrimination is not a real thing, the possibility that genetically mediated behavioral differences between races exist, and other conservative-to-reactionary viewpoints. Some of those discussions have been on lesswrong, under this account and under an alt, some have been on other sites, and some have been in "real life".
Prior to the age of ~19, I would have been unable to be dispassionate about issues of ...
A long blog post explains why the author, a feminist, is not comfortable with the rationalist community despite thinking it is "super cool and interesting". It's directed specifically at Yvain, but it's probably general enough to be of some interest here.
http://apophemi.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/why-im-not-on-the-rationalist-masterlist/
I'm not sure if I can summarize this fairly but the main thrust seems to be that we are overly willing to entertain offensive/taboo/hurtful ideas and this drives off many types of people. Here's a quote:
The author perceives a link between LW type open discourse and danger to minority groups. I'm not sure whether that's true or not. Take race. Many LWers are willing to entertain ideas about the existence and possible importance of average group differences in psychological traits. So, maybe LWers are racists. But they're racists who continually obsess over optimizing their philanthropic contributions to African charities. So, maybe not racists in a dangerous way?
An overly rosy view, perhaps, and I don't want to deny the reality of the blogger's experience. Clearly, the person is intelligent and attracted to some aspects of LW discourse while turned off by other aspects.