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chaosmage comments on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 24 November 2014 08:56AM

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Comment author: chaosmage 25 November 2014 08:12:59PM 1 point [-]

in our culture it is taboo to express empathy towards men and boys.

Really? I do that all the time and literally nobody has ever tried to stop me or punish me for it. Do your actual personal experiences differ?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 25 November 2014 10:17:20PM -2 points [-]

FWIW, there are contexts in which I've seen this criticized.

Usually, the context is that someone has started a discussion about some situation in which men or boys have caused suffering or otherwise behaved badly, and someone else has responded by expressing empathy towards the men or boys in question, and the person who started the discussion has criticized the attempt to switch the conversation focus from empathy towards the objects of the behavior, to empathy for the agents of it. (The jargon term for this is "derailing" in many contexts.)

Of course, this is only a subset of the general category of expressing empathy towards men and boys, but it's one that gets a lot of attention.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 25 November 2014 11:44:15PM *  -2 points [-]

This is hardly unique to situations involving gender.

For instance, sometimes this sort of thing happens —

  • Person A makes a decision or takes an action that hurts Person B — perhaps accidentally; perhaps out of negligence or bias.
  • Person B makes a demand — such as restitution for the harm done; or that the situation be corrected so that people like A won't hurt people any more.
  • A or A's supporters ignore or deflect B's demand, saying things such as that A's decision-making role is difficult; that A's guilt over hurting B is unpleasant to A; or that continuing to discuss A's mistake (and not "moving on") is a sign of malice, unfairness, or mental imbalance on B's part.

That's derailing: Person A changing the subject from "A hurt B, and B wants it fixed" to "A's life is so hard and people are being so harsh to A" in order to avoid talking about fixing the situation for B, the injured party.

Comment author: bogus 26 November 2014 12:15:07AM *  1 point [-]

That's derailing: Person A changing the subject from "A hurt B, and B wants it fixed" to "A's life is so hard and people are being so harsh to A" in order to avoid talking about fixing the situation for B, the injured party.

Let's pick an example to make things more concrete. Person B owns a field, and Person A runs trains on a nearby railroad that throw dangerous sparks onto the field. Person B demands that Person A either stop the trains from passing near his property, or else fit them with a mechanism that will prevent sparks. Now Person A complains that the trains are used by low-income commuters who will be forced to pay unreasonably high prices in order to cover these additional costs. Is Person A "derailing the conversation", or is this a valid point? Extra credit: What might influence your answer to this question?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 26 November 2014 01:11:35AM -1 points [-]

Yes, I agree that it's not unique to situations involving gender.

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