If you'd like ways to avoid offending feminists? I'd start with the header image on this blog. Oh noes, the harpies/feminists are coming to get us, and actually listening to them drives men mad! I assume this is your default header, but that doesn't actually improve the subtext much. If this were a blog about classical history or analyzing the Odyssey, I wouldn't be bothered; but in the context of a discussion about gender differences, man does it hit the wrong note.

Additionally, if you'd seriously like to talk to feminists here, then you need to understand that a lot of feminist thinking revolves around the concepts of privilege and power. That Mr. Hanson doesn't feel like a privileged individual and didn't intend to come across that way doesn't defeat the perception that he is speaking from a position of privilege--the privilege conveyed by a culture and institutional structure that situates women as Other and as Lesser. In fact it serves male privilege if women don't have to be considered as individuals, but as a faceless and undifferentiated group, irrational and weak.

That many men as individuals don't believe this of women doesn't negate the fact that western society as a whole privileges men's voices and men's perceptions over women, and posits that women are, at best, imperfect and flawed versions of men. And Mr. Hanson's good intentions don't counterbalance the fact that many of these arguments and conversations online end up treading the same ground, with men rejecting the possibility that they have privilege and insisting they should be treated as individuals--while continuing to treat women as a monolith.

If y'all seriously want to understand why feminists would be reacting so strongly to some of the statements here, do check out Feminism 101, which was design for facilitating just such interactions.

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