You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

helldalgo comments on Open thread, Feb. 01 - Feb. 07, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: MrMind 01 February 2016 08:24AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (177)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Viliam 06 February 2016 11:46:32PM *  3 points [-]

More than rude, it's a social taboo to criticize feminism.

The social taboo against criticizing feminism is built on the taboo against male violence against women. Note how readily some people label criticism or disagreement as "harrassment" and "violence", or how women who disagree with feminism are erased from the debate -- this is how the former gets labeled as the latter.

If we succeed to reframe the situation -- if we see a man verbally disagreeing with a feminist, but our emotions correspond to "a strong man is beating a weak woman" -- then the instinct to protect the woman gets activated.

At least it is my experience that in eyes of most observers I would lose any debate with a sufficiently skilled female feminist, because she could twist even the most polite verbal disagreement as "attacking her" simply by starting to cry. People pattern-match all the time. They see a man opposing a crying woman; their brains may try to analyze what happened, but their hearts already gave a clear verdict.

Comment author: helldalgo 07 February 2016 12:27:15AM 2 points [-]

Yeah. I don't know how to fix it, either, and it frustrates me (I also don't know how to keep from perpetuating it, because I tend to cry during confrontations by default).