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CharlieSheen comments on LW Women: LW Online - Less Wrong Discussion

29 [deleted] 15 February 2013 01:43AM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 15 February 2013 02:34:54PM *  23 points [-]

From the complaints (and not just here and now) it seems obvious that there is a problem we really should solve.

This said, it seems to me that people are complaining about multiple things. I think they should be analyzed separately. Maybe not all of them are a problem, or maybe the same solution would not work for all of them. Even if they have similar patern "reading A makes person X unhappy", it is still not the same situation. (For a trivial example, some people are unhappy when they read about atheism. While we should not offend religious people unnecessarily, there is only so far we can go, and even then some people will remain offended.) Specifically, from the article and also this linked comment, women complain when men do the following:

  • talk about "getting" "attractive women";
  • make remarks about attractive/unattractive women;
  • speak of women as symbols of male success or accessories for a successful male;
  • talk about difficulty to deal with women;
  • make claims about men and women having different innate abilities, especially without saying "on average";
  • uncritically downvote anything feminist sounding, and upvote armchair ev-psych;
  • are much more likely to point out one's flaws than to appreciate what one said;
  • create an environment where warmth is scarce;
  • focus on negative reinforcement;
  • argue with one's self-description.

I see at least three different topics here (maybe more could be found in other articles and discussions) -- speaking of women as objects; unsupported or incorrect theories about differences between men and women; unfriendly environment -- and I believe each of them deserves to be discussed separately.

Comment author: CharlieSheen 17 February 2013 03:19:56PM *  6 points [-]

uncritically downvote anything feminist sounding, and upvote armchair ev-psych;

This is frustrating to read since complaints of other groups that amount to the same thing are ignored, but then again this is to be expected.