And yet the current norms of discussion are ones that leave a large proportion of the women here fighting through some measure of fear and discomfort to post—but not the men.
That’s not a realistic appraisal of the situation. Generally speaking, when it comes to sensitive topics that cannot be discussed openly and objectively without arousing ideological passions, appeasing the parties who claim to be shocked and offended can only lead to shutting down the discussion altogether, or reducing it to a pious recital of politically correct platitudes. It’s a classic Schellingian conflict situation: by yielding to this strategy today instead of drawing a firm line, you only incentivize its further use the next time around.
That said, there are of course occasional situations here where people blurt out something stupid that their interlocutor might reasonably get angry at. But the idea that the general spirit of discussion of these topics here is somehow creating a hostile environment for women is just outlandish.
This discussion has also given me a lot of insight into why the proportion of women on this site is so atypically small even for computer programming crowds.
You write as if women were some unspeakably fearful, brittle, and paranoid creatures who undergo apoplectic shocks at the slightest whisper that interferes with their delicate sensibilities. Frankly, if I were a woman, I would take offense at that. You’re basically proclaiming women congenitally incapable of rationally addressing claims they find unpleasant, instinctively reacting with a shock-and-offense emotional ploy instead.
In any case, if you believe that an online community has to bend over backwards to accommodate its womenfolk’s sensitivities lest they run away in terror, how do you explain the fact that you’ll find far more women at Roissy’s blog, whose author goes out of his way to shock and offend in ways that nobody here would ever even think of putting in writing? Just a glance at his comment sections is enough to see that women actually aren’t scared away that easily.
Ok, we’ve got three (declared) women on this thread. Alicorn and Nancy seem to be (roughly) within the world of contemporary feminism—I’m not, but then again I also don’t have experience with rape or abuse. So I feel compelled to keep driving at the centrist line here.
Yes, you can shut down a dialogue all too easily by claiming to be hurt. But I don’t want to discount the possibility that Alicorn actually is hurt—in which case why do you want to hurt her? Let’s not, please.
I read Roissy for a while. In one way it was a good experience: it taught me to seriously entertain views that I was previously disposed not to like. I consider that a strength. But in another way it was a bad experience: Roissy would insult classes of people in which I’m included, and my response to being belittled is to believe what I hear. That ain’t good. I can see the value in overcoming my fear to enter a hostile environment and cope; I can’t see the value in spending my time there indefinitely.
No, women aren’t fragile. But this is simply not a tough-love, hostile environment. It isn’t that kind of blog. It doesn’t fit with the posts—it certainly doesn’t fit with Eliezer’s writing. The norm around here seems to be that suffering and fear are real and that we ought to help people who endure such things. (Isn’t that humanism in a nutshell?) There are plenty of places on the internet where people like to shock and offend. This site does something different, something less common, and perhaps more valuable. Can we keep it that way?
But this is simply not a tough-love, hostile environment. It isn’t that kind of blog. It doesn’t fit with the posts—it certainly doesn’t fit with Eliezer’s writing. The norm around here seems to be that suffering and fear are real and that we ought to help people who endure such things. (Isn’t that humanism in a nutshell?) There are plenty of places on the internet where people like to shock and offend. This site does something different, something less common, and perhaps more valuable. Can we keep it that way?
You write as if a rational discussion must end up in conclusions that are pleasant, calming, and reassuring, and if some claims in a discussion disturb and offend, they cannot simply follow from a straightforward and open-minded inquiry into a sensitive topic, and there must be some malice involved. But this is clearly not so. Just imagine how billions of religious folks on this planet would react if you threw the anti-religious diatribes regularly written here, by Eliezer Yudkowsky as well as many others, into their faces.
Now, you can argue that in some areas of inquiry, the truth is so awful and inflammatory that it’s better to stay away from them because it keeps the website a better place to discuss other interesting things. However, if you’re going to argue that, then you must admit that some people’s idiosyncratic sensitivities and propensities for offense should be privileged over others. Mind you, I think that it is a defensible position, but it’s absolutely fallacious to advocate such limitations while denying this fact.
Yes, you can shut down a dialogue all too easily by claiming to be hurt. But I don’t want to discount the possibility that Alicorn actually is hurt—in which case why do you want to hurt her? Let’s not, please.
Could you please be more specific? Are you saying that my above comment reads like a personal attack, or that some general claim I advanced is hurtful? I honestly didn’t mean to take a jab at any particular person, not in that comment, nor anywhere else.
Vladimir, I got my mind changed about religion, in large part by LessWrong. I learned here not to be afraid of truth. That message would not have gotten across as clearly if there were not a dominant tone of warmth and compassion on this site.
Whatever is true, is true. I’m not saying we shouldn’t seek it out. I’m not saying we should fear an awful truth or hush it up.
I’m saying we go about things differently from how Roissy goes about things, and that’s helpful. You described women as being tough enough to take a much more offensive tone—I’m saying that an offensive tone isn’t helpful. There is such a thing as honesty without snark.
No, it wasn’t your comment that reads like a personal attack. Alicorn made a previous comment when she said that asking her to change her sexual preferences made her feel less safe. I don’t think we should be using this site to frighten people. You do not reason with people by arousing those emotions.
I’m saying we go about things differently from how Roissy goes about things, and that’s helpful. You described women as being tough enough to take a much more offensive tone—I’m saying that an offensive tone isn’t helpful. There is such a thing as honesty without snark.
This is where our misunderstanding probably lies. My mention of Roissy was an argumentum a fortiori, meant to disprove the hypothesis that the tone of sex-related discussions here is so insensitive that it drives great masses of women away, by pointing out that there are places whose tone is incomparably more insensitive, and yet they have comment sections with far more women participating. I wasn’t advocating the introduction of Roissyesque style as the standard of discourse here; there is indeed a time and place for everything.
That said, it should be noted that the quality of discourse can be ruined not only by people who write with an insensitive tone, but also by people who amp up their sensitivity to eleven, and as soon as certain topics are opened, frantically look for a pretext to plead insufferable shock and offense. Honestly, would you say that this phenomenon has been altogether absent from the controversies on this site you’ve seen?
(Again, please read this only as a statement about generalities, not an implicit personal attack on whoever might come to mind.)
In any case, if you believe that an online community has to bend over backwards to accommodate its womenfolk’s sensitivities lest they run away in terror
I would strengthen that claim by replacing with ‘womenfolk’ with ‘several particularly politically active members’.
You write as if women were some unspeakably fearful, brittle, and paranoid creatures who undergo apoplectic shocks at the slightest whisper that interferes with their delicate sensibilities. Frankly, if I were a woman, I would take offense at that. You’re basically proclaiming women congenitally incapable of rationally addressing claims they find unpleasant, instinctively reacting with a shock-and-offense emotional ploy instead.
I think people generally dislike and avoid spending time in environments they perceive as anywhere on the scale from unwelcoming to hostile. That’s not a trait that makes someone fearful, brittle, paranoid, or delicate, and I’m confused as to why you’d think I was implying any such thing—quite the opposite.
I think people generally dislike and avoid spending time in environments they perceive as anywhere on the scale from unwelcoming to hostile. That’s not a trait that makes someone fearful, brittle, paranoid, or delicate, and I’m confused as to why you’d think I was implying any such thing—quite the opposite.
The question is whether the usual standards of discourse practiced here are harsh and insensitive enough to qualify as “unwelcoming to hostile.” It seems quite clear to me that only extraordinarily fearful, brittle, or paranoid personalities could honestly answer yes to this. (Here I mean “honestly” as opposed to the already mentioned discourse-destroying tactic where one actively seeks flimsy pretexts for sanctimonious indignation instead of engaging the substance of the argument.)
Again, this is not meant as an attack on everyone who has ever expressed indignation about some particular statement posted here, and in the present context, I don’t want to express judgments about any such individual incident, whether in this thread or any other. Even among very smart and cultured people, occasional episodes of careless and stupid behavior are unavoidable, and in any discussion forum, people will sometimes be faced with valid reasons to feel angry and offended. However, the idea that the general standards of discussion here represent a threatening and hostile environment for women, which is supposedly the main reason why they’re few in number, seems to me completely disconnected from reality.
However, the idea that the general standards of discussion here represent a threatening and hostile environment for women, which is supposedly the main reason why they’re few in number, seems to me completely disconnected from reality.
Not the general standards of discussion, no. But the standards of discussion for some of the speculation on sex relations, especially when related to the PUA subculture, seem to create an unpleasant environment for women who are otherwise quite happy with the general standards of discussion. Therefore, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that without that specific subset of the discussion, the site as a whole would be more attractive to women.
The question is whether the usual standards of discourse practiced here are harsh and insensitive enough to qualify as “unwelcoming to hostile.” It seems quite clear to me that only extraordinarily fearful, brittle, or paranoid personalities could honestly answer yes to this.
It’s fairly hyperbolic to say that only an “extraordinarily fearful, brittle, or paranoid person” could answer yes to the question of whether this site is an unwelcoming to hostile environment at times. Forget hostile, you can’t see why the label “unwelcoming” could be used by a reasonable—or at least not extraordinarily fearful, brittle, and paranoid—person to describe some subsets of discussion here?
But the standards of discussion for some of the speculation on sex relations, especially when related to the PUA subculture, seem to create an unpleasant environment for women who are otherwise quite happy with the general standards of discussion. Therefore, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that without that specific subset of the discussion, the site as a whole would be more attractive to women.
There are two ways in which I could interpret this comment.
If you’re saying that some topics are inherently insensitive and unpleasant, in that a rational no-holds-barred inquiry into them will likely yield disturbing conclusions that are apt to inflame passions and hurt people’s feelings, and they should therefore be avoided because they poison the atmosphere on the entire forum due to the unavoidable human passions and weaknesses, I will agree with the former and disagree with the latter. (And I’ll grant that it’s overall a reasonable and defensible position.)
However, if you’re saying that the way these topics have been discussed here should, on the whole, be considered excessively insensitive, and that an ideally rational, objective, and open-minded discussion of these matters would produce arguments and conclusions that are more warm, fuzzy, and politically correct, then I disagree radically. Aside from a few rare outliers, the discussions here have, if anything, erred on the side of being too cautious, sensitive, and silent about ugly truths.
It’s fairly hyperbolic to say that only an “extraordinarily fearful, brittle, or paranoid person” could answer yes to the question of whether this site is an unwelcoming to hostile environment at times. Forget hostile, you can’t see why the label “unwelcoming” could be used by a reasonable—or at least not extraordinarily fearful, brittle, and paranoid—person to describe some subsets of discussion here?
Well, just observe all the innumerable places, both online and offline, in which the standards of discourse are far more insensitive than anything that ever happens here, and which still attract far more female participants than this website—and not some particularly tough-skinned ones either. Just from the usual human standards, I think it’s fair to conclude that people who find enough unwelcoming elements here to be driven away are ipso facto showing that they are unusually sensitive specimens of humanity.
Therefore, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that without that specific subset of the discussion, the site as a whole would be more attractive to women.
I think you may be right. Let’s make a new site where we can have these discussions without making lesswrong unattractive to women!
You write as if women were some unspeakably fearful, brittle, and paranoid creatures who undergo apoplectic shocks at the slightest whisper that interferes with their delicate sensibilities. Frankly, if I were a woman, I would take offense at that. You’re basically proclaiming women congenitally incapable of rationally addressing claims they find unpleasant, who instinctively react with a shock-and-offense emotional ploy instead.
I think he writes as though visiting this site is recreational, and maybe if it’s full of things that offend someone’s sensibilities, they won’t have fun here and will leave. I upvoted lmnop’s comment and downvoted yours.
I think he writes as though visiting this site is recreational, and maybe if it’s full of things that offend someone’s sensibilities, they won’t have fun here and will leave. I upvoted lmnop’s comment and downvoted yours.
Who, precisely, are you directing this accusation at?
I think [lmnop] writes as though visiting this site is recreational, and maybe if it’s full of things that offend someone’s sensibilities, they won’t have fun here and will leave. I upvoted lmnop’s comment and downvoted [Vladimir_M’s].
lmnop:
That’s not a realistic appraisal of the situation. Generally speaking, when it comes to sensitive topics that cannot be discussed openly and objectively without arousing ideological passions, appeasing the parties who claim to be shocked and offended can only lead to shutting down the discussion altogether, or reducing it to a pious recital of politically correct platitudes. It’s a classic Schellingian conflict situation: by yielding to this strategy today instead of drawing a firm line, you only incentivize its further use the next time around.
That said, there are of course occasional situations here where people blurt out something stupid that their interlocutor might reasonably get angry at. But the idea that the general spirit of discussion of these topics here is somehow creating a hostile environment for women is just outlandish.
You write as if women were some unspeakably fearful, brittle, and paranoid creatures who undergo apoplectic shocks at the slightest whisper that interferes with their delicate sensibilities. Frankly, if I were a woman, I would take offense at that. You’re basically proclaiming women congenitally incapable of rationally addressing claims they find unpleasant, instinctively reacting with a shock-and-offense emotional ploy instead.
In any case, if you believe that an online community has to bend over backwards to accommodate its womenfolk’s sensitivities lest they run away in terror, how do you explain the fact that you’ll find far more women at Roissy’s blog, whose author goes out of his way to shock and offend in ways that nobody here would ever even think of putting in writing? Just a glance at his comment sections is enough to see that women actually aren’t scared away that easily.
(ETA: fixed a typo.)
Ok, we’ve got three (declared) women on this thread. Alicorn and Nancy seem to be (roughly) within the world of contemporary feminism—I’m not, but then again I also don’t have experience with rape or abuse. So I feel compelled to keep driving at the centrist line here.
Yes, you can shut down a dialogue all too easily by claiming to be hurt. But I don’t want to discount the possibility that Alicorn actually is hurt—in which case why do you want to hurt her? Let’s not, please.
I read Roissy for a while. In one way it was a good experience: it taught me to seriously entertain views that I was previously disposed not to like. I consider that a strength. But in another way it was a bad experience: Roissy would insult classes of people in which I’m included, and my response to being belittled is to believe what I hear. That ain’t good. I can see the value in overcoming my fear to enter a hostile environment and cope; I can’t see the value in spending my time there indefinitely.
No, women aren’t fragile. But this is simply not a tough-love, hostile environment. It isn’t that kind of blog. It doesn’t fit with the posts—it certainly doesn’t fit with Eliezer’s writing. The norm around here seems to be that suffering and fear are real and that we ought to help people who endure such things. (Isn’t that humanism in a nutshell?) There are plenty of places on the internet where people like to shock and offend. This site does something different, something less common, and perhaps more valuable. Can we keep it that way?
SarahC:
Here I must point to another highly pertinent comment of mine:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2l8/existential_risk_and_public_relations/2g3z
You write as if a rational discussion must end up in conclusions that are pleasant, calming, and reassuring, and if some claims in a discussion disturb and offend, they cannot simply follow from a straightforward and open-minded inquiry into a sensitive topic, and there must be some malice involved. But this is clearly not so. Just imagine how billions of religious folks on this planet would react if you threw the anti-religious diatribes regularly written here, by Eliezer Yudkowsky as well as many others, into their faces.
Now, you can argue that in some areas of inquiry, the truth is so awful and inflammatory that it’s better to stay away from them because it keeps the website a better place to discuss other interesting things. However, if you’re going to argue that, then you must admit that some people’s idiosyncratic sensitivities and propensities for offense should be privileged over others. Mind you, I think that it is a defensible position, but it’s absolutely fallacious to advocate such limitations while denying this fact.
Could you please be more specific? Are you saying that my above comment reads like a personal attack, or that some general claim I advanced is hurtful? I honestly didn’t mean to take a jab at any particular person, not in that comment, nor anywhere else.
Vladimir, I got my mind changed about religion, in large part by LessWrong. I learned here not to be afraid of truth. That message would not have gotten across as clearly if there were not a dominant tone of warmth and compassion on this site.
Whatever is true, is true. I’m not saying we shouldn’t seek it out. I’m not saying we should fear an awful truth or hush it up.
I’m saying we go about things differently from how Roissy goes about things, and that’s helpful. You described women as being tough enough to take a much more offensive tone—I’m saying that an offensive tone isn’t helpful. There is such a thing as honesty without snark.
No, it wasn’t your comment that reads like a personal attack. Alicorn made a previous comment when she said that asking her to change her sexual preferences made her feel less safe. I don’t think we should be using this site to frighten people. You do not reason with people by arousing those emotions.
SarahC:
This is where our misunderstanding probably lies. My mention of Roissy was an argumentum a fortiori, meant to disprove the hypothesis that the tone of sex-related discussions here is so insensitive that it drives great masses of women away, by pointing out that there are places whose tone is incomparably more insensitive, and yet they have comment sections with far more women participating. I wasn’t advocating the introduction of Roissyesque style as the standard of discourse here; there is indeed a time and place for everything.
That said, it should be noted that the quality of discourse can be ruined not only by people who write with an insensitive tone, but also by people who amp up their sensitivity to eleven, and as soon as certain topics are opened, frantically look for a pretext to plead insufferable shock and offense. Honestly, would you say that this phenomenon has been altogether absent from the controversies on this site you’ve seen?
(Again, please read this only as a statement about generalities, not an implicit personal attack on whoever might come to mind.)
Maybe we should have a norm of just ROT13ing anything potentially offensive?
Good point, lets create a new place where we can have these conversations without Alicorn or anyone else being hurt!
I would strengthen that claim by replacing with ‘womenfolk’ with ‘several particularly politically active members’.
I think people generally dislike and avoid spending time in environments they perceive as anywhere on the scale from unwelcoming to hostile. That’s not a trait that makes someone fearful, brittle, paranoid, or delicate, and I’m confused as to why you’d think I was implying any such thing—quite the opposite.
lmnop:
The question is whether the usual standards of discourse practiced here are harsh and insensitive enough to qualify as “unwelcoming to hostile.” It seems quite clear to me that only extraordinarily fearful, brittle, or paranoid personalities could honestly answer yes to this. (Here I mean “honestly” as opposed to the already mentioned discourse-destroying tactic where one actively seeks flimsy pretexts for sanctimonious indignation instead of engaging the substance of the argument.)
Again, this is not meant as an attack on everyone who has ever expressed indignation about some particular statement posted here, and in the present context, I don’t want to express judgments about any such individual incident, whether in this thread or any other. Even among very smart and cultured people, occasional episodes of careless and stupid behavior are unavoidable, and in any discussion forum, people will sometimes be faced with valid reasons to feel angry and offended. However, the idea that the general standards of discussion here represent a threatening and hostile environment for women, which is supposedly the main reason why they’re few in number, seems to me completely disconnected from reality.
Not the general standards of discussion, no. But the standards of discussion for some of the speculation on sex relations, especially when related to the PUA subculture, seem to create an unpleasant environment for women who are otherwise quite happy with the general standards of discussion. Therefore, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that without that specific subset of the discussion, the site as a whole would be more attractive to women.
It’s fairly hyperbolic to say that only an “extraordinarily fearful, brittle, or paranoid person” could answer yes to the question of whether this site is an unwelcoming to hostile environment at times. Forget hostile, you can’t see why the label “unwelcoming” could be used by a reasonable—or at least not extraordinarily fearful, brittle, and paranoid—person to describe some subsets of discussion here?
lmnop:
There are two ways in which I could interpret this comment.
If you’re saying that some topics are inherently insensitive and unpleasant, in that a rational no-holds-barred inquiry into them will likely yield disturbing conclusions that are apt to inflame passions and hurt people’s feelings, and they should therefore be avoided because they poison the atmosphere on the entire forum due to the unavoidable human passions and weaknesses, I will agree with the former and disagree with the latter. (And I’ll grant that it’s overall a reasonable and defensible position.)
However, if you’re saying that the way these topics have been discussed here should, on the whole, be considered excessively insensitive, and that an ideally rational, objective, and open-minded discussion of these matters would produce arguments and conclusions that are more warm, fuzzy, and politically correct, then I disagree radically. Aside from a few rare outliers, the discussions here have, if anything, erred on the side of being too cautious, sensitive, and silent about ugly truths.
Well, just observe all the innumerable places, both online and offline, in which the standards of discourse are far more insensitive than anything that ever happens here, and which still attract far more female participants than this website—and not some particularly tough-skinned ones either. Just from the usual human standards, I think it’s fair to conclude that people who find enough unwelcoming elements here to be driven away are ipso facto showing that they are unusually sensitive specimens of humanity.
I think you may be right. Let’s make a new site where we can have these discussions without making lesswrong unattractive to women!
I think he writes as though visiting this site is recreational, and maybe if it’s full of things that offend someone’s sensibilities, they won’t have fun here and will leave. I upvoted lmnop’s comment and downvoted yours.
Who, precisely, are you directing this accusation at?