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army1987 comments on LW Women Submissions: On Misogyny - Less Wrong Discussion

27 [deleted] 10 April 2013 07:54PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 12 April 2013 06:32:39PM *  2 points [-]

To make this discussion shorter, let's ignore the part that also women can be violent, only let's only focus on what "normal male" means in this context.

I also have objections due to the ambiguity of that word (and its antonym) in a different dimension: is that supposed to mean ‘typical’ or ‘functional’? I think that most people would agree that it's common for men to be abusive, but wouldn't agree that it's desirable for men to be abusive. (In this particular post, it clearly means the former, but it's so common for that word to be used to sneak in connotations in order to induce the reader to commit the naturalistic fallacy that I'd rather less ambiguous words were used instead even in these cases.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 April 2013 08:48:36PM 7 points [-]

You might think my ex was a sociopath, but no -- he's a normal male, working as a university professor.

My best take on what "normal" means in that sentence is "not obviously weird or dangerous, and not an especially rare type". However, it's ambiguous-- it could mean "a very high proportion of men who appear normal are that abusive".

I don't think the poster has a clear idea of what sociopath means, since one of the things many of them are good at is passing for normal.