However, I can think of instances where physical danger was on the table of options (the KKK in minnesota is a good example.)
My point was: experience of a male white atheist, egoist, libertarian is very different from the experience of a female (of any persuasion). The former does not experience a constant physical danger (and the associated stress of being aware of said danger) whenever he leaves the house.
You need to be a very special person to be able to have a calm detached discussion about things that threaten you every day of your life. Not in a specific place in Minnesota, but everywhere.
The former does not experience a constant physical danger (and the associated stress of being aware of said danger) whenever he leaves the house.
The statistics I've seen show that men in the US face more risk of violent crime than women.
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.