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intrepidadventurer comments on Open thread for December 9 - 16, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: NancyLebovitz 09 December 2013 04:35PM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 09 December 2013 09:18:29PM 18 points [-]

There are no official community norms on the topic.

For my own part, I observe a small but significant number of people who seem to believe that LessWrong ought to be a community where it's acceptable to differentially characterize women negatively as long as we do so in the proper linguistic register (e.g, adopting an academic and objective-sounding tone, avoiding personal characterizations, staying cool and detached).

The people who believe this ought to be unacceptable are either less common or less visible about it. The majority is generally silent on such matter, though will generally join in condemning blatant register-violations.

The usual result is something closer to wheaton's law at the surface level, but closer to "say what you think is true" at the structural level. (Which is not quite free speech, but a close enough cousin in context.) That is, it's often considered OK to say things, as long as they are properly hedged and constructed, that if said more vulgarly or directly would be condemned for violating wheaton's law, and which in other communities would be condemned for a variety of reasons.

I think there's a general awareness that this pattern-matches to sexism, though I expect that many folks here consider that to be mistaken pattern-matching (the "I'm not sexist; I can't help it if you feminists choose to interpret my words and actions that way" stance).

So my guess is that if you attempt to make people who engage in sexism (and related defenses) feel unwelcome you will most likely trigger net-negative reactions unless you're very careful with your framing.

Does that answer your question?

Comment author: intrepidadventurer 10 December 2013 06:01:16AM 6 points [-]

It does answer my question. Also thanks for suggestion to focus on the behaviour rather than the person. I didn't even realize I was thinking like that till you two pointed it out.