Which is why the anti-politics rule exists, I think. Because most people can't disengage enough. The downvotes are perfectly fair, otherwise any authentic-enough political crying fit would be a heckler's veto on the anti-politics rule, which would just become politics by another name as people tried to decide what qualified as authentic.

But people should view stuff like this as... exercises in recognizing and overcoming their biases. Not excuses to attack wrongthought.

I'm not really sure what you're hoping to accomplish here. The fable isn't framed in a way that accurately represents reality. The sympathetic arguments you're making could be made without euphemism. The story falsely equivocates refusing sex as maliciously refusing to save someone's life.

Given that the author has, in other comments, mentioned suicidal tendencies... I'd suggest the equivalence might be real to them.

Shrug I dunno. I find this poorly written, and poorly thought out, and fails to touch much at all in me; granted, my moments of compassion are few and far between.

But the hostile response is disproportionate to what was actually written, to the point where I must conclude that this piece has successfully made its readers feel deeply uncomfortable, and the hostility is a rationalization to cover that discomfort.

It's one thing to argue that non-consensual celibacy is painful; that's a fact that's often neglected when talking about sexual dynamics. It's another to frame the issue as a situation entirely perpetuated by women who are resisting for trivial reasons. That casts women as malicious, when that's not a universal or common case.

Like NancyLebowitz said, why is it acceptable to leave out the costs that women face in this dynamic?

If your point is that some sexual assaults are the product of desperation and tragedy, I agree. That doesn't make them acceptable, and you seem like you're implying that.

I'm not really sure what you're hoping to accomplish here. The fable isn't framed in a way that accurately represents reality. The sympathetic arguments you're making could be made without euphemism. The story falsely equivocates refusing sex as maliciously refusing to save someone's life.

If you're hurting, I'm sorry. I have sympathy for people who are unable to be sexually active and have few or no solutions. This, however, is bad framing at best, and harmful at worst.

Do you dance? The friends in my "dancing" group seem particularly responsive to flirting and dating behaviors through Facebook, provided that they're not constant or aggressive.

As having danced a lot of Salsa myself in the case of dancing I think facebook is seldom the first contact. It's a useful medium for communicating and other regulars generally accept friend requests from other dancers but I would be doubtful about it's value for a first cold contact.

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.

Hey LW. I found this site about an hour ago while browsing Quora (I know, I know) and the concept is really appealing to me. Currently I'm studying for my undergrad degree in Neuroscience, not sure exactly what direction I want to take it in afterwards. Artificial neural networks and AI in general are intriguing to me. Being able to actually explain/understand concepts like consciousness and perception of reality in a material sense is sort of my (possibly idealistic) goal. Empiricism is very dear to me, but I think in order to fully explore any idea you can't pit it against rationalism--if that's even a thing that people still do. It's likely that I'll do more lurking than anything else on here, but I'm looking forward to it anyways!

I think we may mean different things by "effort".

I referred as effort to the invisible things you do behind the scenes to maximize your odds, like spending hours reading profiles, crafting strong messages and analyzing your matches. I broadly agree that when you get to the visible part, i.e. going on the actual date, you probably shouldn't treat it as intense labor and relax into who you actually are - more on that in Part 2.

It looks like a conversation with a person I haven't talked to in something that isn't either long enough for them to forget about me or someone close I haven't talked to in some time.

But let's be pedantic and you'll probably like this or the autism stereotypes aren't true, here's a few scenarios:

1. Girl I know to a good degree, will probably recall me if I say hi
2. Girl I barely interacted with but might recall me
3. Girl I only saw at school breaks, might not remember me

Your example will probably work on category 1. Category 2 MIGHT go along, although a simple hi is rather generic and therefore is more of a lottery bet than a sure bet. I can't tell how category 3 will respond, but probably not better than category 2.

Consider how you'd feel about the introductory messages if you were from each of those scenarios.

We could also dive into sub-scenarios, tailored to specific optimisations or lack of them. Such as my fashion choices, how I live, people I hang out with, etc. Although it's dubious how much they matter since all of this is my unresearched model in my head about online messaging.

Facebook friends are a non-think button press or in other words, pretty much nothing (unless you keep in contact, and in that case they're just friends)

My idea for the next incidentgate is (and seems kinda silly when typing it) "Hi I remember you from HS and always thought you were kinda cute but I was too shy to talk, would you like to meet up sometime?"

PEDANT EDIT: There's also a few girls from middle school before I moved, (Same city, different school)

Facebook friends are a non-think button press or in other words, pretty much nothing (unless you keep in contact, and in that case they're just friends)

My idea for the next incidentgate is (and seems kinda silly when typing it) "Hi I remember you from HS and always thought you were kinda cute but I was too shy to talk, would you like to meet up sometime?"

PEDANT EDIT: There's also a few girls from middle school before I moved, (Same city, different school)