Is this an expression of your prior about the size of the category, or your posterior? Have you updated your prior on learning (to your surprise) that people apparently do feel excluded/get distracted by this sort of thing?
I just find it really surprising you would feel excluded by a (positive, and relatively uncontroversial!) comment about women from a male author.
I can’t claim to speak for anyone else, but to me, your focus on “positive, and relatively uncontroversial” seems to miss the point. The problem is that the original statement: (a) assumed that the relevant agents are exclusively male, and that women are merely passive objects that men are attracted to;* and that (b) it did so in a context where this implicit assumption is fairly common, which probably gets a bit frustrating after a while.
As an aside, would it surprise you if people felt excluded by your telling them that you find their concerns “really annoying”?
* While it was technically compatible with the agents being bi/homosexual females, it seems fairly fairly clear that this wasn’t really a factor in the choice of wording.
Is this an expression of your prior about the size of the category, or your posterior?
Have you updated your prior on learning (to your surprise) that people apparently do
feel excluded/get distracted by this sort of thing?
Prior. I have updated very slightly towards Emily’s position, but this is balanced by the responses from every female I have personally asked about this, all of whom fell into the a) or b) response. Of course, we all know that comparing two very small samples is far from ideal :-)
As an aside, would it surprise you if people felt excluded by your telling them that
you find their concerns “really annoying”?
No, but excluding people is certainly not the intent. Every time I write something I assume that someone, somewhere will find it really annoying.
Is this an expression of your prior about the size of the category, or your posterior? Have you updated your prior on learning (to your surprise) that people apparently do feel excluded/get distracted by this sort of thing?
I can’t claim to speak for anyone else, but to me, your focus on “positive, and relatively uncontroversial” seems to miss the point. The problem is that the original statement: (a) assumed that the relevant agents are exclusively male, and that women are merely passive objects that men are attracted to;* and that (b) it did so in a context where this implicit assumption is fairly common, which probably gets a bit frustrating after a while.
As an aside, would it surprise you if people felt excluded by your telling them that you find their concerns “really annoying”?
* While it was technically compatible with the agents being bi/homosexual females, it seems fairly fairly clear that this wasn’t really a factor in the choice of wording.
Prior. I have updated very slightly towards Emily’s position, but this is balanced by the responses from every female I have personally asked about this, all of whom fell into the a) or b) response. Of course, we all know that comparing two very small samples is far from ideal :-)
No, but excluding people is certainly not the intent. Every time I write something I assume that someone, somewhere will find it really annoying.