Feminism points out, though, that the social mainstream is also a strong political identity which systematically distorts people's maps.
This sounds awfully like "if you're not with me, you're my enemy." Any advice how to untangle myself from this web that seems inescapable? I already don't vote or read the news from any particular source, nor do I actively try to change political opinions.
People with agendas seem to want to make everything about politics and me as their pawn as a consequence. When they try to take my passiveness IRL as a sign of opposition to their political agenda, I usually proceed to explain how much more of a political enemy I could be just to demonstrate my point if I cared to.
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.