I don’t want to make this an issue, at least until I’m more familiar with it. But I recall at least one comment in another thread questioning the concept of “privilege.” Can someone link to a good, rational article that argues against the concept of privilege?
(Please don’t debate the issue here yet. I think it’s relevant but I want to gather information before I decide if it’s worth bringing up in more detail. If you do want to talk about it PM me).
Well, I’ll go ahead and say that I find the terminology suboptimal. If I understand correctly, privelege is what results from not being marked. Therefore while the terminology may accurately reflect the phenomenologically, it misdescribes the supposed mechanism. And ideally the language we use should indeed reflect the mechanisms, to make reasoning about it more intuitive. Instead of the privelege of the unmarked we should (if we think this account is accurate) speak of the dispriveleged of the marked.
I will say that use of the term “privelege” is useful in pointing out just what you gain from not being marked, because naturally that’s not something the unmarked thing of very often. But I’m not sure it’s the most helpful outside that rhetorical function.
I will say that use of the term “privelege” is useful in pointing out just what you gain from not being marked, because naturally that’s not something the unmarked thing of very often. But I’m not sure it’s the most helpful outside that rhetorical function.
I don’t think the function is merely rhetorical. Getting people to understand the advantages they have is an important subgoal of feminism. Ultimately we want to make it so that women have all the privileges that men have. But doing so requires not just the efforts of women but the understanding and efforts of men.
I think the problem is not privilege in particular (whether you focus on “privilege” of white men or the disprivilege of others is splitting hairs IMO), but the way sexism and racism have become demonized in general. The most obvious forms of prejudice have been driven underground. This is a good thing. But there are still numerous ways in which women are subtly discriminated against. Such as, say, having the entire english language set up in a way that establishes them as “other.”
The goal of the privilege discussion is to get men to notice and care about these things. It’s possible that focusing on ways women are disprivileged will be more effective that how men are privileged. Dunno. But that effectives is the metric by which I measure the value of the word “privilege.”
As I said, I agree it’s effective at that. But if that’s the whole goal, then surely more accurate/precise terminology should be switched to when actually discussing what’s going on rather than getting people to notice?
I really don’t think there’s anything inaccurate about the language. Privilege vs disprivilege are flipsides of the same coin. Compared to the myriad conflicting definitions of, say, Rationality, the lack of precision with the word “privilege” seems pretty minor to me.
The cost of getting an entire community to change its definition is probably not worth the small improvement that would be gained by clarity to those just learning about it.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think “privilege” really is the right word, and that yes, it needs to place the emphasis on men. There are multiple goals to the privilege discussion, but I think the most important is to fight against the notion that men are “normal” and women are “other.”
The article that lukeprog linked had an important point: perfect equality is percieved as biased towards women. A woman who chooses to keep her maiden name is perceived as “owning the relationship,” simply because it deviates from the “normal.” It’s “emasculating.” In many circles, a group with 50% female population is perceived as “overwhelmingly female.”
Being other is inherently status lowering. Framing the discussion in terms of men having “normal” privileges and women having “abnormal” disadvantages is completely counterproductive. The privilege discussion is not about how to fix the problem (where I’d agree that precise language is important to make sure that everyone understands the solution) so much as establishing that the problem exists. And it makes perfect sense for feminists to do so in a way that raises women’s status rather than continuing to lower it.
I must object to the idea that the talk a phenomenon should be compartmentalized into different “discussions” with different “objectives” rather than attempting to obtain a sensible unified description that can be specialized as needed. It’s true in general very different models may be needed for different aspects of a problem if the problem is hard enough, but that doesn’t seem to actually help your case here.
Furthermore:
The privilege discussion is not about how to fix the problem
Er, isn’t that the whole goal of feminism?
In any case, it seems like we’re talking somewhat at cross purposes. I’m demanding language be accurate so we can discuss problems precisely and work with them, while you are suggesting we sacrifice accurate language in order that we may fight the problem through the language itself. I don’t see how we can resolve which approach is better without access to a lot of information we don’t have.
I may be wrong about this (I should probably check in on some feminist forums and get opinions from people working more seriously in the field) but I would say that the privileged discussion has a subgoal that is necessary for the supergoal of “actually fixing the problem.” The goal of the privileged discussion is there to discuss what the problem IS and get people involved with it, because you can’t actually fix the problem until a critical mass of people care. There is nothing inconsistent about that.
I’m demanding language be accurate so we can discuss problems precisely and work with them, while you are suggesting we sacrifice accurate language in order that we may fight the problem through the language itself.
I do not think there is such a thing as language without inherent impact. Demanding the kind of precise, abstract language we use here has a way of abstracting problems and removing the emotional context from them. Which is important. Sometimes. But emotional context is not meaningless. It is the emotional context that made the movement necessary in the first place. A technical dialogue that makes men normal and women abnormally is automatically contributing to lower status. It’s not neutral.
I don’t see how we can resolve which approach is better without access to a lot of information we don’t have.
Agree with this. But my current take is: if the privilege discussion (and feminist movement) were just beginning now, I’d estimate the likelihood of technical language being superior maybe 30-40%. But since there’s already a big movement with inertia that has chosen to use certain words, attempting to switch gears now would be problematic in all sorts of ways, and I think the effort of changing reduces the likelihood down to 5-10% tops.
Really though, the issue is that the rest of the world does not share Less Wrong’s rational standards. Feminism is part of the rest of the world, and yes a lot of feminists would probably benefit from being more rational. Use of the world “Privilege” is probably no more or less technically accurate than the general level of discourse throughout Feminist blogs. It’s also no less technically accurate than the general level of discourse in the Western world. (I actually think it’s several steps ABOVE the normal accuracy of discourse about women/men relations).
Feminism is not, the place for a man to show up and say “hey you guys need to be more rational!” “Women are irrational” is one of the very stereotypes they’re fighting against. Whether or not it’s accurate in this place, it will set off flags that poison the conversation rather than improve it. Whatever rationality that feminism is lacking should be addressed by fixing society in general, not feminism in particular.
And again, in Eliezer’s My Way, he notes that his (and probably Less Wrong in general’s) approach to rationality is very male. What works for the most men isn’t necessarily what works for most women. I don’t know how much men really are more technically minded than women, how much is stereotypes, and how much is culture that deserves to change. But I would not assume that the Less Wrong culture is inherently better than what a female dominated rationalist culture might come up with.
I think an anonymous person would probably be assumed to be male. Fair? Maybe not, but the set of circumstances that resulted in that situation weren’t really fair either.
In subjects like this, a lot of the discussion seems to be about:
Hey, I have this problem ….
Oh, me too! Nice to meet you.
A lot of us seem to have this problem, or something like it.
It reminds me of this other problem _____.
Hold on, it’s not like _____ for me because _____.
Is it like _____ for you? Yes, and _____ too.
Oh wow, it’s good to hear this isn’t just me being weird!
Is it similar to _____? Maybe, in these ways, but not in those ways.
What kinds of things have people done about it? Did that help?
If we _____, we’d best be sure not to _____ by mistake ….
In other words, a lot of it is about confirming that a problem exists, that people are dealing with a shared reality and not just having unrelated personal difficulties, establishing that they can trust one another to discuss what might be difficult things to talk about, and establishing a vocabulary for talking about the problem — so that individuals have a better understanding of their situation and are able to choose what to do individually on the basis of others’ situations too.
I’m demanding language be accurate so we can discuss problems precisely and work with them, while you are suggesting we sacrifice accurate language in order that we may fight the problem through the language itself.
Insisting that the problem be talked about in one particular vocabulary — that your language is “accurate” and the other person’s language “sacrifices accuracy” — doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would help solve problems of this sort.
I’m not sure where you got the idea I was proposing a solution. I’m just pointing out that I think the current terminology is not accurate in terms of mechanism, and suggesting that we use terminology that better reflects the underlying mechanism (if I’m correct that it does not). Admittedly, that is a question in itself—and in that sense I suppose I am proposing a solution to that particular subproblem—but I make no claim that better terminology will somehow solve the ultimate problems feminism fights. Rather I’m suggesting we be clear on what’s going on first (and use terminology that reflects that); that suggests far away from proposing solutions.
Insisting that the problem be talked about in one particular vocabulary — that your language is “accurate” and the other person’s language “sacrifices accuracy” — doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would help solve problems of this sort.
I’m not really sure what to make of this statement. Some terminology is better than other terminology. Either what I’m suggesting more accurately reflects the situation, or it doesn’t. Maybe I’m right or maybe I’m wrong, but that the question of which terminology is better is a question that can be discussed is something that should be uncontroversial.
I have nothing against the concept of privilege, but perhaps the name is unfortunate. Privilege is mostly the state of being able to enjoy the absence of discrimination and similar bullshit against oneself so that one never even has to think about such issues, right? The word makes it sound like it’s something bad, something you should feel guilty for, when in fact the only problem is that everyone should get that and many groups don’t.
Is there a better name you would use for it? I think it means pretty much what it says it means. Note that the article I linked begins by trying to disassociate privilege from guilt.
I think there’s a distinction. I have the right to vote. If I were black, living in particular areas or time periods, I might still have to worry about whether that right will end up mattering in the real world. I guess I’d say that “privilege” is the word for rights that are not fairly implemented in practice.
(though I don’t actually believe in ‘rights’ as something that exists in the abstract. They’re conventions we use because people collectively prefer to have them.)
I think “defaultness” is altogether too non-loaded. To be in the default (the usual term is “unmarked”) category does tend to confer advantage, but not always (for example, “rich” or “upper class” are marked). Privilege refers not only to the advantage enjoyed by certain classes of people over some minorities, but also to the blindness that privileged people tend to have toward the oppression the minorities face. It’s called “privilege”, rather than just “not-oppression”, because treating privilege as unmarked contributes to its invisibility.
I will add to this that I frequently make a point of talking about “unexamined privilege” rather than “privilege” when I want to communicate the unmarked nature of it, precisely because the increasingly popular habit of using “privilege” to indicate not only the state of having advantages but the state of being unaware of those advantages causes a lot more confusion than it’s worth (e.g., tedious discussions about whether it’s preferable to get rid of one’s privilege, which with the more confusing unpacking leads to the answer “Well, yes and no.”).
My impression was that it was enough that you could be blind towards oppression, no actual blindness required, and that you wouldn’t stop being privileged just because you became aware of oppression, i. e. that recognition of privilege didn’t automatically negate it. Is that wrong?
Er, yes, you’re right. Privilege is the advantage enjoyed by the unmarked, or (capacity for) blindness toward oppression. One or the other will suffice, you don’t need both.
I’d like to know why I was downvoted. If I was downvoted because you think privilege isn’t a useful concept, I’d appreciate it if you provided a good article (or your own words in PM) discussing why.
The problem I have with the concept of privilege, is that in practice it’s used as a way to avoid responsibility and rationalize failure. And not to infrequently guilt trip those who have achieved success, your article’s professions that invoking privilege is not about guilt notwithstanding.
Rationalist should win, not sit around whining that they lost because of bad luck/someone else’s privilege..
I do not doubt that there are plenty of people sitting around complaining about society rather than accomplishing their goals. But the discussions of privilege I’ve seen were written from a position of (at least moderate) success, and the point wasn’t to identify reasons they failed, but to identify flaws in a system and try to fix them.
The existence of people who use it to complain isn’t relevant to whether the problem exists and how to fix it if it does.
Sometimes you win via trying to influence social mores such that a previously disadvantaged group is treated more fairly. Remember, “win” refers to your entire utility function which can include the wellbeing of others.
This thread is about understanding what objectification is, in order to avoid offensive behaviors, understand why those behaviors are offensive, and better empathize with people who find them offensive.
The fact that people use it as an excuse (what would feminists be excusing?) isn’t really relevant, and dismissing the validity of those feelings (especially on the grounds that they wouldn’t be acting like rationalists to complain) seems counterproductive. On top of that, I still think that understanding how the concept of objectification works would still be important in understanding what to do about it.
This thread is about understanding what objectification is, in order to avoid offensive behaviors, understand why those behaviors are offensive, and better empathize with people who find them offensive.
I don’t think “avoiding offensive behaviors” is a worthy goal. Especially when you consider that a lot people tend to get offended by truth. Should we stop promoting atheism in the name of not offending theists?
This is not just an abstract question. There are currently people using arguments based on privilege (something like ‘western’ privilege in this case) to argue that people should avoid saying or doing anything that would offend Muslims.
There’s a difference between being offensive because someone is fundamentally opposed to something that you’re trying to do, something you are, or something you think, and being offensive simply out of your own ignorance about what people find offensive.
A lot of times people aren’t offended by the truth so much as how its told. And when someone is actually fundamentally offended by my being an atheist, then whatever, I’m not changing that.
Rationalists should win, and that involves not shooting yourself in the foot for no reason.
I don’t want to make this an issue, at least until I’m more familiar with it. But I recall at least one comment in another thread questioning the concept of “privilege.” Can someone link to a good, rational article that argues against the concept of privilege?
If you are unfamiliar with the concept, I recommend this article
(Please don’t debate the issue here yet. I think it’s relevant but I want to gather information before I decide if it’s worth bringing up in more detail. If you do want to talk about it PM me).
Well, I’ll go ahead and say that I find the terminology suboptimal. If I understand correctly, privelege is what results from not being marked. Therefore while the terminology may accurately reflect the phenomenologically, it misdescribes the supposed mechanism. And ideally the language we use should indeed reflect the mechanisms, to make reasoning about it more intuitive. Instead of the privelege of the unmarked we should (if we think this account is accurate) speak of the dispriveleged of the marked.
I will say that use of the term “privelege” is useful in pointing out just what you gain from not being marked, because naturally that’s not something the unmarked thing of very often. But I’m not sure it’s the most helpful outside that rhetorical function.
I don’t think the function is merely rhetorical. Getting people to understand the advantages they have is an important subgoal of feminism. Ultimately we want to make it so that women have all the privileges that men have. But doing so requires not just the efforts of women but the understanding and efforts of men.
I think the problem is not privilege in particular (whether you focus on “privilege” of white men or the disprivilege of others is splitting hairs IMO), but the way sexism and racism have become demonized in general. The most obvious forms of prejudice have been driven underground. This is a good thing. But there are still numerous ways in which women are subtly discriminated against. Such as, say, having the entire english language set up in a way that establishes them as “other.”
The goal of the privilege discussion is to get men to notice and care about these things. It’s possible that focusing on ways women are disprivileged will be more effective that how men are privileged. Dunno. But that effectives is the metric by which I measure the value of the word “privilege.”
As I said, I agree it’s effective at that. But if that’s the whole goal, then surely more accurate/precise terminology should be switched to when actually discussing what’s going on rather than getting people to notice?
I really don’t think there’s anything inaccurate about the language. Privilege vs disprivilege are flipsides of the same coin. Compared to the myriad conflicting definitions of, say, Rationality, the lack of precision with the word “privilege” seems pretty minor to me.
The cost of getting an entire community to change its definition is probably not worth the small improvement that would be gained by clarity to those just learning about it.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think “privilege” really is the right word, and that yes, it needs to place the emphasis on men. There are multiple goals to the privilege discussion, but I think the most important is to fight against the notion that men are “normal” and women are “other.”
The article that lukeprog linked had an important point: perfect equality is percieved as biased towards women. A woman who chooses to keep her maiden name is perceived as “owning the relationship,” simply because it deviates from the “normal.” It’s “emasculating.” In many circles, a group with 50% female population is perceived as “overwhelmingly female.”
See also Eliezer’s take on Male Rationality
Being other is inherently status lowering. Framing the discussion in terms of men having “normal” privileges and women having “abnormal” disadvantages is completely counterproductive. The privilege discussion is not about how to fix the problem (where I’d agree that precise language is important to make sure that everyone understands the solution) so much as establishing that the problem exists. And it makes perfect sense for feminists to do so in a way that raises women’s status rather than continuing to lower it.
I must object to the idea that the talk a phenomenon should be compartmentalized into different “discussions” with different “objectives” rather than attempting to obtain a sensible unified description that can be specialized as needed. It’s true in general very different models may be needed for different aspects of a problem if the problem is hard enough, but that doesn’t seem to actually help your case here.
Furthermore:
Er, isn’t that the whole goal of feminism?
In any case, it seems like we’re talking somewhat at cross purposes. I’m demanding language be accurate so we can discuss problems precisely and work with them, while you are suggesting we sacrifice accurate language in order that we may fight the problem through the language itself. I don’t see how we can resolve which approach is better without access to a lot of information we don’t have.
I may be wrong about this (I should probably check in on some feminist forums and get opinions from people working more seriously in the field) but I would say that the privileged discussion has a subgoal that is necessary for the supergoal of “actually fixing the problem.” The goal of the privileged discussion is there to discuss what the problem IS and get people involved with it, because you can’t actually fix the problem until a critical mass of people care. There is nothing inconsistent about that.
I do not think there is such a thing as language without inherent impact. Demanding the kind of precise, abstract language we use here has a way of abstracting problems and removing the emotional context from them. Which is important. Sometimes. But emotional context is not meaningless. It is the emotional context that made the movement necessary in the first place. A technical dialogue that makes men normal and women abnormally is automatically contributing to lower status. It’s not neutral.
Agree with this. But my current take is: if the privilege discussion (and feminist movement) were just beginning now, I’d estimate the likelihood of technical language being superior maybe 30-40%. But since there’s already a big movement with inertia that has chosen to use certain words, attempting to switch gears now would be problematic in all sorts of ways, and I think the effort of changing reduces the likelihood down to 5-10% tops.
Really though, the issue is that the rest of the world does not share Less Wrong’s rational standards. Feminism is part of the rest of the world, and yes a lot of feminists would probably benefit from being more rational. Use of the world “Privilege” is probably no more or less technically accurate than the general level of discourse throughout Feminist blogs. It’s also no less technically accurate than the general level of discourse in the Western world. (I actually think it’s several steps ABOVE the normal accuracy of discourse about women/men relations).
Feminism is not, the place for a man to show up and say “hey you guys need to be more rational!” “Women are irrational” is one of the very stereotypes they’re fighting against. Whether or not it’s accurate in this place, it will set off flags that poison the conversation rather than improve it. Whatever rationality that feminism is lacking should be addressed by fixing society in general, not feminism in particular.
And again, in Eliezer’s My Way, he notes that his (and probably Less Wrong in general’s) approach to rationality is very male. What works for the most men isn’t necessarily what works for most women. I don’t know how much men really are more technically minded than women, how much is stereotypes, and how much is culture that deserves to change. But I would not assume that the Less Wrong culture is inherently better than what a female dominated rationalist culture might come up with.
How about, crazy though this may sound, a woman advocating rationality?
That sounds like an excellent idea. My point was specifically targeted at guys that don’t understand the array of signals they are sending.
I wonder what gender someone anonymous would be treated as, if a woman could say this without bad signals and a male couldn’t.
I think an anonymous person would probably be assumed to be male. Fair? Maybe not, but the set of circumstances that resulted in that situation weren’t really fair either.
One would think a feminist community would strive to avoid such assumptions, though. So I’m left wondering.
Hold off on proposing solutions.
In subjects like this, a lot of the discussion seems to be about:
Hey, I have this problem ….
Oh, me too! Nice to meet you.
A lot of us seem to have this problem, or something like it.
It reminds me of this other problem _____.
Hold on, it’s not like _____ for me because _____.
Is it like _____ for you? Yes, and _____ too.
Oh wow, it’s good to hear this isn’t just me being weird!
Is it similar to _____? Maybe, in these ways, but not in those ways.
What kinds of things have people done about it? Did that help?
If we _____, we’d best be sure not to _____ by mistake ….
In other words, a lot of it is about confirming that a problem exists, that people are dealing with a shared reality and not just having unrelated personal difficulties, establishing that they can trust one another to discuss what might be difficult things to talk about, and establishing a vocabulary for talking about the problem — so that individuals have a better understanding of their situation and are able to choose what to do individually on the basis of others’ situations too.
Insisting that the problem be talked about in one particular vocabulary — that your language is “accurate” and the other person’s language “sacrifices accuracy” — doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would help solve problems of this sort.
I’m not sure where you got the idea I was proposing a solution. I’m just pointing out that I think the current terminology is not accurate in terms of mechanism, and suggesting that we use terminology that better reflects the underlying mechanism (if I’m correct that it does not). Admittedly, that is a question in itself—and in that sense I suppose I am proposing a solution to that particular subproblem—but I make no claim that better terminology will somehow solve the ultimate problems feminism fights. Rather I’m suggesting we be clear on what’s going on first (and use terminology that reflects that); that suggests far away from proposing solutions.
I’m not really sure what to make of this statement. Some terminology is better than other terminology. Either what I’m suggesting more accurately reflects the situation, or it doesn’t. Maybe I’m right or maybe I’m wrong, but that the question of which terminology is better is a question that can be discussed is something that should be uncontroversial.
I have nothing against the concept of privilege, but perhaps the name is unfortunate. Privilege is mostly the state of being able to enjoy the absence of discrimination and similar bullshit against oneself so that one never even has to think about such issues, right? The word makes it sound like it’s something bad, something you should feel guilty for, when in fact the only problem is that everyone should get that and many groups don’t.
Is there a better name you would use for it? I think it means pretty much what it says it means. Note that the article I linked begins by trying to disassociate privilege from guilt.
The conventional name for the concept FAWS described above is ‘rights’.
I think there’s a distinction. I have the right to vote. If I were black, living in particular areas or time periods, I might still have to worry about whether that right will end up mattering in the real world. I guess I’d say that “privilege” is the word for rights that are not fairly implemented in practice.
(though I don’t actually believe in ‘rights’ as something that exists in the abstract. They’re conventions we use because people collectively prefer to have them.)
I think the concept of privilege is probably important, but I’m male and wouldn’t totally know.
Maybe defaultness as an alternative word?
It seems pretty non-loaded to me.
I think “defaultness” is altogether too non-loaded. To be in the default (the usual term is “unmarked”) category does tend to confer advantage, but not always (for example, “rich” or “upper class” are marked). Privilege refers not only to the advantage enjoyed by certain classes of people over some minorities, but also to the blindness that privileged people tend to have toward the oppression the minorities face. It’s called “privilege”, rather than just “not-oppression”, because treating privilege as unmarked contributes to its invisibility.
I will add to this that I frequently make a point of talking about “unexamined privilege” rather than “privilege” when I want to communicate the unmarked nature of it, precisely because the increasingly popular habit of using “privilege” to indicate not only the state of having advantages but the state of being unaware of those advantages causes a lot more confusion than it’s worth (e.g., tedious discussions about whether it’s preferable to get rid of one’s privilege, which with the more confusing unpacking leads to the answer “Well, yes and no.”).
My impression was that it was enough that you could be blind towards oppression, no actual blindness required, and that you wouldn’t stop being privileged just because you became aware of oppression, i. e. that recognition of privilege didn’t automatically negate it. Is that wrong?
Er, yes, you’re right. Privilege is the advantage enjoyed by the unmarked, or (capacity for) blindness toward oppression. One or the other will suffice, you don’t need both.
Come to think of it, “Status Quo Bias” is pretty relevant.
I’d like to know why I was downvoted. If I was downvoted because you think privilege isn’t a useful concept, I’d appreciate it if you provided a good article (or your own words in PM) discussing why.
The problem I have with the concept of privilege, is that in practice it’s used as a way to avoid responsibility and rationalize failure. And not to infrequently guilt trip those who have achieved success, your article’s professions that invoking privilege is not about guilt notwithstanding.
Rationalist should win, not sit around whining that they lost because of bad luck/someone else’s privilege..
I do not doubt that there are plenty of people sitting around complaining about society rather than accomplishing their goals. But the discussions of privilege I’ve seen were written from a position of (at least moderate) success, and the point wasn’t to identify reasons they failed, but to identify flaws in a system and try to fix them.
The existence of people who use it to complain isn’t relevant to whether the problem exists and how to fix it if it does.
Sometimes you win via trying to influence social mores such that a previously disadvantaged group is treated more fairly. Remember, “win” refers to your entire utility function which can include the wellbeing of others.
This thread is about understanding what objectification is, in order to avoid offensive behaviors, understand why those behaviors are offensive, and better empathize with people who find them offensive.
The fact that people use it as an excuse (what would feminists be excusing?) isn’t really relevant, and dismissing the validity of those feelings (especially on the grounds that they wouldn’t be acting like rationalists to complain) seems counterproductive. On top of that, I still think that understanding how the concept of objectification works would still be important in understanding what to do about it.
I don’t think “avoiding offensive behaviors” is a worthy goal. Especially when you consider that a lot people tend to get offended by truth. Should we stop promoting atheism in the name of not offending theists?
This is not just an abstract question. There are currently people using arguments based on privilege (something like ‘western’ privilege in this case) to argue that people should avoid saying or doing anything that would offend Muslims.
I think it is a worthwhile goal.
There’s a difference between being offensive because someone is fundamentally opposed to something that you’re trying to do, something you are, or something you think, and being offensive simply out of your own ignorance about what people find offensive.
A lot of times people aren’t offended by the truth so much as how its told. And when someone is actually fundamentally offended by my being an atheist, then whatever, I’m not changing that.
Rationalists should win, and that involves not shooting yourself in the foot for no reason.
Also.