Use “I support talking this way because I’m a rude person”, not “I support talking this way because I am male”. Leave the rest of us out of it.
Actually, I said I support being tolerant of people who express their thoughts as they think them, even if they happen to sound offensive at first.
A guy who makes a statement about “getting” women is no more insensitive than a woman who speaks of “getting” a man; they’re simply using the language that is natural to them and at an appropriate level of specificity given their goals. We should applaud their truthfulness, not encourage them to be indirect, since if we don’t like their goals, then knowing about them is a good thing! (It’s also good if we DO like their goals, but that of course should be obvious.)
This has zero to do with my own opinions or lack thereof on the language itself—something I have scrupulously avoided endorsing or condemning. This is not a forum for sharing opinions, it’s a forum for advancing rationality… and one where the importance of Truth (with a capital-T) is bandied about regularly. It should be pretty fucking basic rationality to observe that people telling you true things you don’t like is useful information, if only because it’s a minimally basic sanity check on your own untrustworthy brain!
If I didn’t think people telling me things I don’t like is useful, I’d have been gone from this place in days! (For that matter, I wouldn’t have spent the tens of thousands of dollars on training from marketing gurus, some of whom absolutely infuriate me at times.) The fact that I encounter information that offends me or pisses me off is a helpful signal: it means I’m learning something new.
In particular, it means I have the opportunity to expand my range of useful choices, by dropping whatever mental rules are triggering me to be offended or pissed off, instead of paying attention to whether there’s anything useful in the information I’ve been offered, whether or not I think it’s “True” with a capital T.
So all in all, I think perhaps you’re having a different conversation than I am. I’m not arguing that people should be intentionally rude or offensive—I’m arguing that trying to cleanse the world of things that offend you is an irrational dead end, not only because it’s a fool’s errand, but because it will actively HURT you, by depriving you of learning opportunities and locking you into an affective spiral of your own making.
Actually, I said I support being tolerant of people who express their thoughts as they think them, even if they happen to sound offensive at first.
Actually, you said: (emphasis added)
That women would generally use different words to describe the same thing does not mean that the man was in error to use those words. Those are the most correct and concise words in male language for what was said.… Many things that are said by men in few words must be said in many words for a woman to understand them, just as the reverse is true for things that women can say briefly to each other but require a lengthier explanation for a man to understand. This is normal and expected, since each gender has different common reference experiences, and therefore different shorthand....What doesn’t make any bloody sense is to insist that men (OR women) translate their every utterance into the other gender’s language in advance of any question
I’m saying that the person speaking offensively was not doing so merely because he was a male, and the people taking offense were not only females. Gender does not seem to factor heavily into the problem. I don’t see how appeal to ‘gendered language’ helps, and I take offense to you implicitly associating me with such people.
I’m saying that the person speaking offensively was not doing so merely because he was a male, and the people taking offense were not only females.
Did I ever say that all women only ever speak or comprehend female-specific language, or that men only ever speak or comprehend male-specific language? If language is based on reference experiences, then not all men and all women will share precisely the same language, even if there are general tendencies by gender (whether cultural or genetic).
That is, not all men share the same reference experiences—and geeky guys in particular are more likely to share certain classes of reference experience with women. Hell, I used to find the same sort of talk offensive, myself.
I take offense to you implicitly associating me with such people.
If you take offense to implicit associations every time somebody omits to adequately delineate their generalizations, you’re going to be offended a LOT around here. ;-)
(Personally, I just didn’t feel the need to disclaim each and every instance of a gendered term with “sombunall” or “BOCTAOE”—it’s more than a little tedious, especially since ANY gender-based generalization should be considered to have sombunalls and BOCTAOE’s liberally sprinkled throughout.)
Actually, I said I support being tolerant of people who express their thoughts as they think them, even if they happen to sound offensive at first.
A guy who makes a statement about “getting” women is no more insensitive than a woman who speaks of “getting” a man; they’re simply using the language that is natural to them and at an appropriate level of specificity given their goals. We should applaud their truthfulness, not encourage them to be indirect, since if we don’t like their goals, then knowing about them is a good thing! (It’s also good if we DO like their goals, but that of course should be obvious.)
This has zero to do with my own opinions or lack thereof on the language itself—something I have scrupulously avoided endorsing or condemning. This is not a forum for sharing opinions, it’s a forum for advancing rationality… and one where the importance of Truth (with a capital-T) is bandied about regularly. It should be pretty fucking basic rationality to observe that people telling you true things you don’t like is useful information, if only because it’s a minimally basic sanity check on your own untrustworthy brain!
If I didn’t think people telling me things I don’t like is useful, I’d have been gone from this place in days! (For that matter, I wouldn’t have spent the tens of thousands of dollars on training from marketing gurus, some of whom absolutely infuriate me at times.) The fact that I encounter information that offends me or pisses me off is a helpful signal: it means I’m learning something new.
In particular, it means I have the opportunity to expand my range of useful choices, by dropping whatever mental rules are triggering me to be offended or pissed off, instead of paying attention to whether there’s anything useful in the information I’ve been offered, whether or not I think it’s “True” with a capital T.
So all in all, I think perhaps you’re having a different conversation than I am. I’m not arguing that people should be intentionally rude or offensive—I’m arguing that trying to cleanse the world of things that offend you is an irrational dead end, not only because it’s a fool’s errand, but because it will actively HURT you, by depriving you of learning opportunities and locking you into an affective spiral of your own making.
Actually, you said: (emphasis added)
I’m saying that the person speaking offensively was not doing so merely because he was a male, and the people taking offense were not only females. Gender does not seem to factor heavily into the problem. I don’t see how appeal to ‘gendered language’ helps, and I take offense to you implicitly associating me with such people.
Did I ever say that all women only ever speak or comprehend female-specific language, or that men only ever speak or comprehend male-specific language? If language is based on reference experiences, then not all men and all women will share precisely the same language, even if there are general tendencies by gender (whether cultural or genetic).
That is, not all men share the same reference experiences—and geeky guys in particular are more likely to share certain classes of reference experience with women. Hell, I used to find the same sort of talk offensive, myself.
If you take offense to implicit associations every time somebody omits to adequately delineate their generalizations, you’re going to be offended a LOT around here. ;-)
(Personally, I just didn’t feel the need to disclaim each and every instance of a gendered term with “sombunall” or “BOCTAOE”—it’s more than a little tedious, especially since ANY gender-based generalization should be considered to have sombunalls and BOCTAOE’s liberally sprinkled throughout.)