Alright, a different angle then. If we did find some academic feminists or gender studies researchers who were willing to engage in good faith, serious discussion without trying to be activist or throwing around accusations of -isms or -phobics, would you object to their presence in the community? The hostility you’ve shown towards an entire field is something I find deeply concerning.
Perhaps you and I just have fundamentally different approaches towards outgroups since I honestly cannot think of a single group I would treat the way you’ve been treating feminists in this discussion.
New age pagans, reactionaries, anarchists, neoliberals, small-c-conservatives, and even the alt-right; I consider these to be among my outgroups and I could make major criticisms of their core philosophies as well as how they generally conduct themselves in discourse. But if a member of any one of them actually wanted to engage me in a real discussion in good faith I would take them up on it (time permitting, of course) and if they brought up evidence I had overlooked or perspectives I hadn’t considered then I would gladly update my views in response.
It’s very simple: if you are a real academic you spend your time savaging your own ideas until you cannot assail them further, and then you put them out there for your peers to do exactly the same in ways you hadn’t considered.
This is pretty close to my entire ethos; it’s the reason I became a rationalist in the first place and the reason I think the rationalist community has a chance to help the world where so many ‘grand vision’ movements have failed. But we have to be willing, no, eager, to engage our ideological opponents and take from them what value we can.
When I see you repeating antifeminist talking points and taking a dramatically uncharitable view of a huge academic field and political movement (and yes, I am bothered by the extent to which those two overlap) which seems to be informed by their most vitriolic and toxic members (and yes, the more moderate members seem to do frustratingly little to reign in their extremist counterparts) what I keep thinking is: we’re supposed to be better than this.
good luck getting them to sit down to talk with people that don’t believe exactly the same thing they do.
I’ve decided to interpret this as genuine. Throughout this whole conversation I’ve been annoyed at you for not engaging with what gender studies scholars actually believe, but my exposure to their ideas has basically been Wikipedia, some mild googling, and popular media. We’ve been going back and forth about whether feminists can argue coherently and in good faith and whether the field of gender studies is suitably rigorous but I’m only just now realizing the best way to resolve the question is to read some of their stuff critically and form my own opinions.
I’ve got a hypothesis that feminist social theory could be a helpful addition to the ever-growing rationalist canon and a way to test that just by doing a little reading. I’ll let you know if it turns out you were right all along.
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Alright, a different angle then. If we did find some academic feminists or gender studies researchers who were willing to engage in good faith, serious discussion without trying to be activist or throwing around accusations of -isms or -phobics, would you object to their presence in the community? The hostility you’ve shown towards an entire field is something I find deeply concerning.
Perhaps you and I just have fundamentally different approaches towards outgroups since I honestly cannot think of a single group I would treat the way you’ve been treating feminists in this discussion.
New age pagans, reactionaries, anarchists, neoliberals, small-c-conservatives, and even the alt-right; I consider these to be among my outgroups and I could make major criticisms of their core philosophies as well as how they generally conduct themselves in discourse. But if a member of any one of them actually wanted to engage me in a real discussion in good faith I would take them up on it (time permitting, of course) and if they brought up evidence I had overlooked or perspectives I hadn’t considered then I would gladly update my views in response.
This is pretty close to my entire ethos; it’s the reason I became a rationalist in the first place and the reason I think the rationalist community has a chance to help the world where so many ‘grand vision’ movements have failed. But we have to be willing, no, eager, to engage our ideological opponents and take from them what value we can.
When I see you repeating antifeminist talking points and taking a dramatically uncharitable view of a huge academic field and political movement (and yes, I am bothered by the extent to which those two overlap) which seems to be informed by their most vitriolic and toxic members (and yes, the more moderate members seem to do frustratingly little to reign in their extremist counterparts) what I keep thinking is: we’re supposed to be better than this.
I’ve decided to interpret this as genuine. Throughout this whole conversation I’ve been annoyed at you for not engaging with what gender studies scholars actually believe, but my exposure to their ideas has basically been Wikipedia, some mild googling, and popular media. We’ve been going back and forth about whether feminists can argue coherently and in good faith and whether the field of gender studies is suitably rigorous but I’m only just now realizing the best way to resolve the question is to read some of their stuff critically and form my own opinions.
I’ve got a hypothesis that feminist social theory could be a helpful addition to the ever-growing rationalist canon and a way to test that just by doing a little reading. I’ll let you know if it turns out you were right all along.