Yeah, I could almost hear the simultaneous clicking of the “back” button in all the web browsers of female readers who are now forever disenchanted with this site because of misogyny oozing out of this story.
Seriously, is there always a hidden meaning in subtleties like these? I remember a feminist one time (not Alicorn) criticizing Robin_Hanson on overcomingbias.com and being utterly confused by her points. She would spend long, boring paragraphs dwelling on such minor things as:
-the inclusion of Oxford’s emblem on the site
-Robin_Hanson’s failure to carefully distinguish sex (biological?) from gender (cultural?), which most women supposedly reflect deeply upon and are careful to distinguish.
-the supposed misogyny in the picture at the header of OB (Odysseus lashing himself to the mast to resist the sirens’ call) because it somehow implies that all women are evil temptresses. … Even though the sirens actually look male to me, or at least like very unusual females.
(Digression: I’ve seen numerous pictures of men doing mean things on pictures on web sites, but never felt that it was trying to say e.g. “All men are murderers” unless that was also found in the body of the website”. And in any case, other men would roll their eyes at me and my strangeness if I made such a criticism.)
But of course, after spending all that time on those issues, she never got to the actual substance of Robin_Hanson’s posts and what made them so anti-women. It seemed to be all about cherry-picking incidental background things such that Robin_Hanson could write almost anything and be classified as a woman hater. So what’s the point of trying?
To bring this back to your comment, Alicorn: You could very well be offended by these gender choices. Your entire social group could be offended. But that still wouldn’t justify adherence to the standards you seem to expect.
If people are expected to filter their writing through such a fine-meshed screen that they have to justify the gender of each and every character, and the presence of any artwork, or heuristic about women that is invoked, people may as well stop writing. Because they will never be able to make enough sense of the rules to accurately adhere to them. Instead, they’ll just throw a blanket self-prohibition on anything remotely close to violating the spirit of the rules, and end up either spouting vague pleasantries, or in perpetual editorial review, or just not writing at all.
And the behavior of women, including their admiration of those who flout these rules, will continue unabated.
Yeah, I could almost hear the simultaneous clicking of the “back” button in all the web browsers of female readers who are now forever disenchanted with this site because of misogyny oozing out of this story.
Seriously, is there always a hidden meaning in subtleties like these? I remember a feminist one time (not Alicorn) criticizing Robin_Hanson on overcomingbias.com and being utterly confused by her points. She would spend long, boring paragraphs dwelling on such minor things as:
-the inclusion of Oxford’s emblem on the site
-Robin_Hanson’s failure to carefully distinguish sex (biological?) from gender (cultural?), which most women supposedly reflect deeply upon and are careful to distinguish.
-the supposed misogyny in the picture at the header of OB (Odysseus lashing himself to the mast to resist the sirens’ call) because it somehow implies that all women are evil temptresses. … Even though the sirens actually look male to me, or at least like very unusual females.
(Digression: I’ve seen numerous pictures of men doing mean things on pictures on web sites, but never felt that it was trying to say e.g. “All men are murderers” unless that was also found in the body of the website”. And in any case, other men would roll their eyes at me and my strangeness if I made such a criticism.)
But of course, after spending all that time on those issues, she never got to the actual substance of Robin_Hanson’s posts and what made them so anti-women. It seemed to be all about cherry-picking incidental background things such that Robin_Hanson could write almost anything and be classified as a woman hater. So what’s the point of trying?
To bring this back to your comment, Alicorn: You could very well be offended by these gender choices. Your entire social group could be offended. But that still wouldn’t justify adherence to the standards you seem to expect.
If people are expected to filter their writing through such a fine-meshed screen that they have to justify the gender of each and every character, and the presence of any artwork, or heuristic about women that is invoked, people may as well stop writing. Because they will never be able to make enough sense of the rules to accurately adhere to them. Instead, they’ll just throw a blanket self-prohibition on anything remotely close to violating the spirit of the rules, and end up either spouting vague pleasantries, or in perpetual editorial review, or just not writing at all.
And the behavior of women, including their admiration of those who flout these rules, will continue unabated.