So the average Less Wronger is about 33% more favorably disposed towards the feminist movement than the average woman (who herself is slightly more favorably disposed than the average man).
Or the average Less Wronger knows that supporting feminism is the correct response to such a question and answers accordingly.
Saying you agree with feminism is easy. Being a feminist is incredibly hard. If a man at a LW meetup said something objectifying, misogynist, or racist, would another male LWer call them out for it? Such behavior is absolutely essential to create a space that women feel permitted to inhabit (consistent objectification is one of the main reasons programming as an industry remains a boy’s club and a great deal of feminist agitation has been leveled against this), but as we all know dissenting is hard, and while I’m sure every self-identified feminist man would feel uncomfortable in such a situation, I doubt most of them would speak up.
Even without explicit deception or implicit social desirability bias, it’s entirely possible to think oneself a feminist and still do and say things that would be entirely off-putting to the author of this piece. It’s possible to identify as a feminist but refuse to acknowledge a variety of oppressions. It’s possible to identify as a feminist but appoint yourself gatekeeper of acceptable feminist politic—imagine the irony of a “feminist” man telling a woman what feminism is! Yudkowsky himself is in this category, since he thinks himself skilled enough in feminism to entirely dismiss sex-radical feminism, lesbian separatist feminism, and virtually all radical strains of feminism (as per http://hpmor.com/a-rant-thereof/, spoilers HPMOR ch. 93). I wouldn’t attempt to discuss probability theory with any MIRI researcher without having a strong grasp over at least the key texts I can discern the relevance of, but I’m willing to predict with 95% confidence that Yudkowsky has never read a Dworkin book. (http://predictionbook.com/predictions/22850)
Feminism, feminist theory, critical race theory, and social justice in general are not something humans automatically get correct. They cannot be intuitied. They come from a space of questioning deeply held beliefs and holding those beliefs up to the highest possible ethical considerations. It is absolutely foolish to believe that it is possible to intuit these concepts, but arguments about feminism or anti-racism on Less Wrong commonly come to a feminist stating some widely-accepted notion from feminist theory or feminist psychology, and a LWer stating that the notion must be false because of some intuition.
This sort of dismissal and appeal to intuition comes from male or white privilege. It is male privilege that convinces men that the things they think are correct by default, especially the things they think about matters pertaining to gender. This is a dangerous and insidious bias that persists deep into the feminist education of men; most men who think themselves feminists have not trained themselves to realize this bias and still engage in easily identified behavior (“mainsplaining”) caused by it.
Really, this is what the author of the linked article is commenting on: the reality of the LW environment being simply uncomfortable for women to inhabit. I’ve tried to introduce LW to several of my friends, partners, and comrades, as I believe its lessons to be useful, but nearly all of the people without male privilege have been turned away by it.
For LW to be actually feminist (instead of merely claiming to support feminism), it must be an unsafe space for discussions that probabilistically trigger response modes corresponding to male privilege or the oppression of women. It must be unsafe to say objectifying or misogynist things. It must be unsafe to discuss the oppression of social groups as an abstract intellectual concept rather than as a lived reality by the majority of humans. Attempting to discuss such issues dispassionately is a sign of privilege, and insisting that they be discussed dispassionately is an act of oppression. It’s impossible to be dispassionate about a boot on your own face. It’s irrational to attempt to be calm when the hot iron approaches your face. We’re rationalists, not straw vulcans.
Attempting to discuss such issues dispassionately is a sign of privilege, and insisting that they be discussed dispassionately is an act of oppression.
Fine, then let me be passionate. You know what your atttitude reminds me most of? Those assholes in my old Greek highschool decades ago, or those assholes in the Greek media as far back as I remember, those assholes in the Greek society in general, who keep raging about how Jews/Germans/Americans/Turks/Slav Macedonians are oppressing us Greeks, those people who call it treason to have any different opinion on any “national issue”}, those people who call “toadies of foreigners” anyone who doesn’t hate Jews/Germans/Americans/Turks/Slav Macedonians (who are after all oppressing us so very much that it should be actively unsafe to defend such people.)
If one defends such oppressors, they should be dragged to the courts, or beaten up, or perhaps stabbed to death. That’s how the Greek establishment ensures the “unsafe” space for open discourse of issues that you also seem to be advocating for anyone who doesn’t toe your favoured positions.
It must be “unsafe” to have a different opinion? Fuck you and your fascism. Fuck all the ways you use to justify your oppression. Every damn oppressor in the history of the world knows how to plays the role of the poor victim.
You think it so very advanced and so very progressive to HATE, HATE, HATE the oppressor? Well, Greek schoolchildren spent years learning such, and the result is that they end up electing Neonazis to the parliament when they grow up.
A true progressive like me is that one person in a hundred who wants to improve everyone’s lives, rather than spent his time moaning about the damn privileged oppressors of another race/religion/tribe/nation/gender, and who think that by blaming other people his life will miraculously become better.
I hope you liked the passion in the above, since after all being dispassionate is supposedly a sign of privilege.
imagine the irony of a “feminist” man telling a woman what feminism is
Why? Does being born with a wrong chromozome prevent a person from understanding feminism?
A few lines sooner, you said “Being a feminist is incredibly hard.” Is it hard only for men, or also for women? If it is also hard for women, then wouldn’t a man who succeeds somewhat in being a feminist be qualified enough to tell women what feminism is?
Read the following sentence and try to think what is wrong about it:
imagine the irony of a “mathematician” woman telling a man what mathematics is
You know, there used to be people who believed it to be just as self-evident as what you said.
By the way, some feminists do disagree with other feminists, so even disagreeing with some feminists does not contradict being a feminist.
the reality of the LW environment being simply uncomfortable for women to inhabit.
So how do you explain the women who are here? I guess they must be white or otherwise inferior...
I’ve tried to introduce LW to several of my friends, partners, and comrades, as I believe its lessons to be useful, but nearly all of the people without male privilege have been turned away by it.
Nearly all of my friends, regardless of their gender, were not interested in LW. I would guess that even most of your male friends weren’t.
It must be unsafe to say objectifying or misogynist things.
Let’s add misandrist things to the list. Oops, now your comment would violate the rules...
(yeah, yeah, I get it; I didn’t read Dworkin, therefore I am using completely wrong definitions, and furthermore I am a white man which means I can’t understand anything)
At this point probably the best option would be to start a new rationalist site with the following rules:
all members are assumed to be “white male” (WM), unless personally verified by moderators;
a WM user is not allowed to see non-WM user’s username, only their comment; unless the non-WM user flagged their comment as “private”, in which case WM user sees nothing;
any non-WM user can delete any comment made by a WM user; maybe even trusted WM users can delete any comment made by a WM user.
I guess this would be enough for a version 1.0; in version 2.0 you can add intersectionality and more complex rules of evaluating privileges. There are probably many people believing that this is a good way to have discussions, so you could cooperate with them to create this necessary software.
In the same way being a rationalist is hard (i.e., it’s cognitively difficult.)
If a man at a LW meetup said something objectifying, misogynist, or racist, would another male LWer call them out for it?
My mental model says yes, and I have actually seen it happen twice.
I doubt most of them would speak up
I think this is strictly correct, but I predict better outcomes in the case where one person says to the offender “Hey, that’s out of line” than when everyone in the room castigates the offender in unison.
imagine the irony of a “feminist” man telling a woman what feminism is!
Maybe you meant “what oppression is”? (And maybe that would be a helpful distinction to make in general.)
arguments about feminism or anti-racism on Less Wrong commonly come to a feminist stating some widely-accepted notion from feminist theory or feminist psychology, and a LWer stating that the notion must be false because of some intuition.
Do you have some examples for this?
I generally agree that there are problems with how SJ issues are addressed around here, but my experience as an Actual Female On LW doesn’t correspond to the picture you are painting of it being a bunch of intellectually snobby dudebros.
Or the average Less Wronger knows that supporting feminism is the correct response to such a question and answers accordingly.
Saying you agree with feminism is easy. Being a feminist is incredibly hard. If a man at a LW meetup said something objectifying, misogynist, or racist, would another male LWer call them out for it? Such behavior is absolutely essential to create a space that women feel permitted to inhabit (consistent objectification is one of the main reasons programming as an industry remains a boy’s club and a great deal of feminist agitation has been leveled against this), but as we all know dissenting is hard, and while I’m sure every self-identified feminist man would feel uncomfortable in such a situation, I doubt most of them would speak up.
Even without explicit deception or implicit social desirability bias, it’s entirely possible to think oneself a feminist and still do and say things that would be entirely off-putting to the author of this piece. It’s possible to identify as a feminist but refuse to acknowledge a variety of oppressions. It’s possible to identify as a feminist but appoint yourself gatekeeper of acceptable feminist politic—imagine the irony of a “feminist” man telling a woman what feminism is! Yudkowsky himself is in this category, since he thinks himself skilled enough in feminism to entirely dismiss sex-radical feminism, lesbian separatist feminism, and virtually all radical strains of feminism (as per http://hpmor.com/a-rant-thereof/, spoilers HPMOR ch. 93). I wouldn’t attempt to discuss probability theory with any MIRI researcher without having a strong grasp over at least the key texts I can discern the relevance of, but I’m willing to predict with 95% confidence that Yudkowsky has never read a Dworkin book. (http://predictionbook.com/predictions/22850)
Feminism, feminist theory, critical race theory, and social justice in general are not something humans automatically get correct. They cannot be intuitied. They come from a space of questioning deeply held beliefs and holding those beliefs up to the highest possible ethical considerations. It is absolutely foolish to believe that it is possible to intuit these concepts, but arguments about feminism or anti-racism on Less Wrong commonly come to a feminist stating some widely-accepted notion from feminist theory or feminist psychology, and a LWer stating that the notion must be false because of some intuition.
This sort of dismissal and appeal to intuition comes from male or white privilege. It is male privilege that convinces men that the things they think are correct by default, especially the things they think about matters pertaining to gender. This is a dangerous and insidious bias that persists deep into the feminist education of men; most men who think themselves feminists have not trained themselves to realize this bias and still engage in easily identified behavior (“mainsplaining”) caused by it.
Really, this is what the author of the linked article is commenting on: the reality of the LW environment being simply uncomfortable for women to inhabit. I’ve tried to introduce LW to several of my friends, partners, and comrades, as I believe its lessons to be useful, but nearly all of the people without male privilege have been turned away by it.
For LW to be actually feminist (instead of merely claiming to support feminism), it must be an unsafe space for discussions that probabilistically trigger response modes corresponding to male privilege or the oppression of women. It must be unsafe to say objectifying or misogynist things. It must be unsafe to discuss the oppression of social groups as an abstract intellectual concept rather than as a lived reality by the majority of humans. Attempting to discuss such issues dispassionately is a sign of privilege, and insisting that they be discussed dispassionately is an act of oppression. It’s impossible to be dispassionate about a boot on your own face. It’s irrational to attempt to be calm when the hot iron approaches your face. We’re rationalists, not straw vulcans.
Fine, then let me be passionate. You know what your atttitude reminds me most of? Those assholes in my old Greek highschool decades ago, or those assholes in the Greek media as far back as I remember, those assholes in the Greek society in general, who keep raging about how Jews/Germans/Americans/Turks/Slav Macedonians are oppressing us Greeks, those people who call it treason to have any different opinion on any “national issue”}, those people who call “toadies of foreigners” anyone who doesn’t hate Jews/Germans/Americans/Turks/Slav Macedonians (who are after all oppressing us so very much that it should be actively unsafe to defend such people.)
If one defends such oppressors, they should be dragged to the courts, or beaten up, or perhaps stabbed to death. That’s how the Greek establishment ensures the “unsafe” space for open discourse of issues that you also seem to be advocating for anyone who doesn’t toe your favoured positions.
It must be “unsafe” to have a different opinion? Fuck you and your fascism. Fuck all the ways you use to justify your oppression. Every damn oppressor in the history of the world knows how to plays the role of the poor victim.
You think it so very advanced and so very progressive to HATE, HATE, HATE the oppressor? Well, Greek schoolchildren spent years learning such, and the result is that they end up electing Neonazis to the parliament when they grow up.
A true progressive like me is that one person in a hundred who wants to improve everyone’s lives, rather than spent his time moaning about the damn privileged oppressors of another race/religion/tribe/nation/gender, and who think that by blaming other people his life will miraculously become better.
I hope you liked the passion in the above, since after all being dispassionate is supposedly a sign of privilege.
Why? Does being born with a wrong chromozome prevent a person from understanding feminism?
A few lines sooner, you said “Being a feminist is incredibly hard.” Is it hard only for men, or also for women? If it is also hard for women, then wouldn’t a man who succeeds somewhat in being a feminist be qualified enough to tell women what feminism is?
Read the following sentence and try to think what is wrong about it:
You know, there used to be people who believed it to be just as self-evident as what you said.
By the way, some feminists do disagree with other feminists, so even disagreeing with some feminists does not contradict being a feminist.
So how do you explain the women who are here? I guess they must be white or otherwise inferior...
Nearly all of my friends, regardless of their gender, were not interested in LW. I would guess that even most of your male friends weren’t.
Let’s add misandrist things to the list. Oops, now your comment would violate the rules...
(yeah, yeah, I get it; I didn’t read Dworkin, therefore I am using completely wrong definitions, and furthermore I am a white man which means I can’t understand anything)
At this point probably the best option would be to start a new rationalist site with the following rules:
all members are assumed to be “white male” (WM), unless personally verified by moderators;
a WM user is not allowed to see non-WM user’s username, only their comment; unless the non-WM user flagged their comment as “private”, in which case WM user sees nothing;
any non-WM user can delete any comment made by a WM user; maybe even trusted WM users can delete any comment made by a WM user.
I guess this would be enough for a version 1.0; in version 2.0 you can add intersectionality and more complex rules of evaluating privileges. There are probably many people believing that this is a good way to have discussions, so you could cooperate with them to create this necessary software.
In the same way being a rationalist is hard (i.e., it’s cognitively difficult.)
My mental model says yes, and I have actually seen it happen twice.
I think this is strictly correct, but I predict better outcomes in the case where one person says to the offender “Hey, that’s out of line” than when everyone in the room castigates the offender in unison.
Maybe you meant “what oppression is”? (And maybe that would be a helpful distinction to make in general.)
Do you have some examples for this?
I generally agree that there are problems with how SJ issues are addressed around here, but my experience as an Actual Female On LW doesn’t correspond to the picture you are painting of it being a bunch of intellectually snobby dudebros.