One thing that I’d like to know before considering Rob Bensinger’s suggestions is how strongly feminist he is (this doesn’t count as an ad hominem, as that only applies when someone has given reasons and you ignore them in favour of who they are, not when they’ve stated an opinion with no reasons). Because a lot of those articles are rather highly critical of feminism and it wouldn’t make much sense, for example, to ask a Christian whether you should read certain articles about atheism.
That said, maybe he just feels that these articles would turn people off—in which case—I probably should have done a better job of labelling than with my current system.
(For reasons of disclosure, my views on feminism are pretty close to Scott. I can appreciate that feminism has done lots of good in the past and that they make some good points, but I also don’t like what the movement has become).
I’m much more interested in the articles that he would have included, then the ones that he excluded because I’m taking a completionist approach—the idea is that if you read through the list, you shouldn’t miss anything important.
The other thing I did when compiling this list, which I wish I hadn’t, was to include articles for a single strong section, without actually noting that this was the case. In particular, the useful concepts section contains many articles where I only want you to get a single concept out of the article. If someone already knows the concept, I guess you could skip them.
Actually, I definitely want to produce a revised version of the list that does a better job of breaking into sections based on why the articles were included so that people can decide for themselves which articles they want to read or not. It’ll probably take me several months to get round to it, but I think that it could be valuable.
My list has a lot of added posts; I’ll try to get a draft to link to in the next few weeks. I’d say there are different sets of introductory articles I’d recommend to people who I know to be feminists and people who I know to be anti-feminists, and the list I’m currently working on is one I’d feel comfortable giving to either group.
That means posts that take for granted at the outset that the reader thinks feminism is obviously terrible (e.g., Radicalizing the Romanceless, which quips that people who talk about Nice Guys are “blurring the already rather thin line between ‘feminism’ and ‘literally Voldemort’”) are less-likely-than-baseline to make my list, whereas ones that make a persuasive and sympathetic case against common ideas in feminism (e.g., Weak Men Are Superweapons) are more-likely-than-baseline to make my list.
I’ll let you know! I’ll also want feedback on what you and others think I should add/remove, since I don’t expect the list to be perfect even at achieving my own Scott-promoting goals.
Off topic, but… since you are allegedly a strong feminist, maybe you can recommend specific feminist writing that you think is good reading as a counterpoint to SSC’s stuff? I’ve read a fair amount of feminist writing but I haven’t managed to find much that is as well-argued/thoughtful/reasonable as the SSC stuff. Ideally it would be feminist writing that attempts to respond to SSC directly.
“As well-argued/thoughtful/reasonable as the SSC stuff” is a pretty hard target to hit on most topics. Could you be more specific than “feminist writing”, e.g., talk about a certain claim SSC makes that you’d like to see assessed by others?
Popehat’s Shirts and Shirtiness strikes me as an especially high-quality post that’s SSC-ish while coming out in favor of some ideas you see in feminism. Agenty Duck’s Hasty Genderalizations gives a broader argument for worrying about gender bias. Ben Kuhn’s On Inclusivity in Less Wrong is an example of a good feminism-relevant response to a specific SSC argument (though I don’t necessarily agree 100% with Ben’s arguments, and some of them may be dated at this point).
I’m not sure which of these is closest to what you’re looking for. I find blogs like Thing of Things, Gruntled and Hinged, and The Unit of Caring useful both for clearly articulating ideas in the feminist memespace and for providing independent confirmation for some SSC views.
One thing that I’d like to know before considering Rob Bensinger’s suggestions is how strongly feminist he is (this doesn’t count as an ad hominem, as that only applies when someone has given reasons and you ignore them in favour of who they are, not when they’ve stated an opinion with no reasons). Because a lot of those articles are rather highly critical of feminism and it wouldn’t make much sense, for example, to ask a Christian whether you should read certain articles about atheism.
That said, maybe he just feels that these articles would turn people off—in which case—I probably should have done a better job of labelling than with my current system.
(For reasons of disclosure, my views on feminism are pretty close to Scott. I can appreciate that feminism has done lots of good in the past and that they make some good points, but I also don’t like what the movement has become).
I’m much more interested in the articles that he would have included, then the ones that he excluded because I’m taking a completionist approach—the idea is that if you read through the list, you shouldn’t miss anything important.
The other thing I did when compiling this list, which I wish I hadn’t, was to include articles for a single strong section, without actually noting that this was the case. In particular, the useful concepts section contains many articles where I only want you to get a single concept out of the article. If someone already knows the concept, I guess you could skip them.
Actually, I definitely want to produce a revised version of the list that does a better job of breaking into sections based on why the articles were included so that people can decide for themselves which articles they want to read or not. It’ll probably take me several months to get round to it, but I think that it could be valuable.
My list has a lot of added posts; I’ll try to get a draft to link to in the next few weeks. I’d say there are different sets of introductory articles I’d recommend to people who I know to be feminists and people who I know to be anti-feminists, and the list I’m currently working on is one I’d feel comfortable giving to either group.
That means posts that take for granted at the outset that the reader thinks feminism is obviously terrible (e.g., Radicalizing the Romanceless, which quips that people who talk about Nice Guys are “blurring the already rather thin line between ‘feminism’ and ‘literally Voldemort’”) are less-likely-than-baseline to make my list, whereas ones that make a persuasive and sympathetic case against common ideas in feminism (e.g., Weak Men Are Superweapons) are more-likely-than-baseline to make my list.
Looking forward to seeing the list when it is done.
And here’s my list!
I’ll let you know! I’ll also want feedback on what you and others think I should add/remove, since I don’t expect the list to be perfect even at achieving my own Scott-promoting goals.
Off topic, but… since you are allegedly a strong feminist, maybe you can recommend specific feminist writing that you think is good reading as a counterpoint to SSC’s stuff? I’ve read a fair amount of feminist writing but I haven’t managed to find much that is as well-argued/thoughtful/reasonable as the SSC stuff. Ideally it would be feminist writing that attempts to respond to SSC directly.
“As well-argued/thoughtful/reasonable as the SSC stuff” is a pretty hard target to hit on most topics. Could you be more specific than “feminist writing”, e.g., talk about a certain claim SSC makes that you’d like to see assessed by others?
Popehat’s Shirts and Shirtiness strikes me as an especially high-quality post that’s SSC-ish while coming out in favor of some ideas you see in feminism. Agenty Duck’s Hasty Genderalizations gives a broader argument for worrying about gender bias. Ben Kuhn’s On Inclusivity in Less Wrong is an example of a good feminism-relevant response to a specific SSC argument (though I don’t necessarily agree 100% with Ben’s arguments, and some of them may be dated at this point).
I’m not sure which of these is closest to what you’re looking for. I find blogs like Thing of Things, Gruntled and Hinged, and The Unit of Caring useful both for clearly articulating ideas in the feminist memespace and for providing independent confirmation for some SSC views.