we are taking a stroll through a mindkill minefield, so a modicum of care is advised

I do agree. I am not sure I agree about which of us is being sloppier :-).

You countered the statement that "rants are not aggression but free speech" by pointing out that the Venn intersection of aggression and free speech is not null. That is true, but not a counterargument.

I think you misunderstood my point, but maybe what happened is that I misunderstood yours and so my comments weren't such as to make sense to you. So let me be slower and more explicit and see if that helps.

Of course rants are (in the relevant sense) speech, and if we value free speech then we should want not to forbid rants. However, that doesn't stop them being aggression too; you offered no grounds other than rants' being speech for thinking they shouldn't be classified as aggression, and my best guess -- perhaps wrong? -- was that you were suggesting that if they are free speech then they can't also be aggression. Hence the counterexamples.

Perhaps in fact you hold that something else stops rants from being aggression. If so, what and how? (It seems clear to me that some of the comments VoiceOfRa has made are aggression, but maybe we have different criteria for aggression or something.)

you countered by saying that SJWs do not thrive on LW. Again, true, but not a counterargument.

Again, I think you misunderstood my point. I think the fault is mine; I wasn't as clear and explicit as I could have been. So, again, let me try again more slowly and clearly and see if that helps.

First of all, the context is relevant. I'd taken your statement that "the left is the aggressor" (for what I think were good reasons but apparently wrongly given your other comments since) to be describing LW as well as your other social circles. So it went like this: "The left is the aggressor." "For sure there's aggressive leftism out there, but here on LW there's basically none of that but there is aggressive rightism." "Nah, there are hardly any neoreactionaries on LW these days." To which I replied by comparing how near LW gets to SJ and NRx and what the reactions tend to be.

So (1) I wasn't only saying that SJWs don't thrive on LW, I was comparing SJ and NRx; and (2) that wasn't meant to be a response to your "hardly any neoreactionaries any more" statement in isolation, but in the context of what I thought was a discussion of whether "the left is the aggressor" on LW.

(Which, again, may in fact not have been the discussion you thought we were having, but I hope that on reflection it's obvious how I came to take it that way.)

The other position I never heard anyone express on LW (are you sure you not confusing means and variances, by any chance?)

Elsewhere in this thread I posted a link to one recent discussion in which the topic came up. Someone else made much the same mean-versus-variance comment, but the discussion in question was about a specific role that isn't very tail-y and for which I'm pretty sure a difference in variance alone clearly couldn't have the required effect.

the somewhat fashionable approach that the exposition of views you don't agree with constitutes aggression

Is anyone here saying or implying that? I certainly don't intend anything of the kind, and I gravely doubt that anyone seriously thinks what you say they do. I think some people do think that (1) the exposition of the opinion that such-and-such a group's members are inferior, evil, crazy, etc., constitutes aggression, and (2) exposition of such opinions using needlessly pejorative terms constitutes aggression. Of these, I'm ambivalent about #1 and agree with #2.

So, e.g., when VoiceOfRa characterizes transgender people as suffering "delusions or hallucinations", that's certainly #1 and probably #2. It seems pretty aggressive to me. When he suggests that it's unreasonable to treat those "delusions or hallucinations" any more generously than those of someone who thinks he's simultaneously Jesus and John Lennon, that seems pretty aggressive to me. When he calls them "trannies" (er, actually "trannys" but never mind) that's certainly #2 rather than #1 and it's hard to see how it's not being deliberately rude; again, in my book that's aggression. Etc.

Of course this is all much milder aggression than, say, beating the people in question up with a baseball bat. But it's pretty aggressive, and it seems to me much more aggressive than anything I've seen from "the left" on LW lately, and I think all those comments are currently sitting with positive karma. Which is one reason why I think that LW currently leans right (to which I don't object, for the avoidance of doubt, even though that happens not to be my own leaning) and that here it's much nearer the truth to say "the right is the aggressor" than "the left is the aggressor".

(Note 1: Again, I do appreciate that you've indicated that your comment about leftist aggression wasn't in fact intended to apply to LW. I'm just explaining where my comments were coming from. Note 2: I am not claiming that LW's participants lean right; past surveys have suggested not, and I would guess not. But if we weight by actual participation in politically loaded discussions, I think that's the way it goes. I have the impression that one or more right-leaning LWers have a very deliberate policy of trying to make things unpleasant for left-leaning LWers; if so, that may be a partial explanation.)

I disagree that LW has a "conservative" tilt, I think it has an "against the stupid" tilt

I think it has both. As someone who has been heavily downvoted (I think by exactly two people, one much more than the other) in recent politically-fraught discussions, I am curious: Do you think my comments in this thread are stupid? Do you think they are stupider than comments with a different sociopolitical leaning that have been upvoted?

(I take it you have sufficient brain to distinguish "stupid" from "in disagreement with my politics", but I will explicitly remind you of your own caution about mindkill minefields.)