I was going to respond to the whole thing, but I got to the end and I think you missed my whole point because of this bit:
"Sorry folks, no one owes you a living, let alone a lay."
I mean, I explicitly say nobody owes anybody anything dozens of times. I get it; nobody is advocating for sex slavery here. It's weird that I can't even avoid a…
I was going to respond to the whole thing, but I got to the end and I think you missed my whole point because of this bit:
"Sorry folks, no one owes you a living, let alone a lay."
I mean, I explicitly say nobody owes anybody anything dozens of times. I get it; nobody is advocating for sex slavery here. It's weird that I can't even avoid a strawman by explicitly mentioning the incoming strawman and explaining that's not what I mean. At no point did I blame women for all this, right?
In terms of the rest of it, very briefly: I do have sympathy for you about the things you went through, both those caused by specific people and just because of how the world is built. That sympathy costs me nothing - I just have to genuinely care about some level of the pain you feel or felt and agree I wish it didn't happen. Sympathy for other groups would cost you a similar amount, but here you had to do a lot of work to not give it. I'm not sure I can approve of that - not just because of the bad outcomes I think it causes, but also because "I refuse to acknowledge things are bad if they are happening to a group I hate" doesn't seem like a good thing to encourage.
I acknowledge and validate the OPs experiences while also agreeing with you that she isn't really addressing the substance of what you wrote. I also really appreciate your approach to the topic - I think empathy is a major factor that is the key to bridging the gap
with many uncomfortable and contentious realities.
I however disagree with your implication that sympathy/empathy essentially costs everyone nothing. For those that have experienced trauma and are dealing with responses such as CPTSD, depending on where they are in their healing process, engaging with certain topics/hypotheticals can actually re-traumatize and use up what little emotional bandwidth they have available. It's a non-zero amount of energy for a rape survivor for example to learn to empathize with misogynist perspectives.
I still agree that ultimately it is the approach we should all strive to engage in, but I think it's important to keep in mind that the ease at which each person can do so at any one time can vary widely depending on their own lived experience and circumstance.
I'm sure there are some people with severe trauma of some sort that would find it hard to sympathize with certain groups or at all - mental illness being a pretty wide range of things, it has to happen somewhere.
With that said, I didn't imply that for everyone, everywhere this would be costless. I said that it would have cost Dinonerd nothing or nearly nothing; it's possible I'm wrong there, but I was judging off of the fact that she wrote a ten chapter book to basically say "men, particularly young men, are trash as a class and deserve what they get". If somebody does that, I'm going to take them at their word that they are in fighting shape, usually.
Honestly, even if I thought Dinonerd was traumatized to a huge degree I would have still contradicted her in much the same way here, because her thesis is that it's OK to hate certain kinds of people in a way that I think is harmful, that pain is good so long as it's aimed at a group she thinks is inherently inferior and without worth. She came here of her own accord to say it.
So I can be gentle with her, but I'm not going to not point out she's participating in behavior I think is negative in the comments section of the article where I'm positing her behavior is negative. Understand this is of a different kind of thing that breaking down doors in women's shelters and demanding they forgive all men - I understand there's limits to what I can reasonably demand of people in special circumstances.
I think there's some misunderstanding of my position here which is probably worth clarifying. There seems to be an implication here that you believe I want people to support the incel movement (such as it is) or that I don't think a lot of what they say/do isn't bad gross. I don't want them supported in terms of their goals (to the extent the internet stereotype is accurate and it's basically legalized rape) or think that calling all women sluts or whatever is good.
What I'm saying (or trying to say) is that you can, while still thinking they suck/are dangerous/have behavior that should be discouraged, acknowledge that there's an actual problem here; something that doesn't justify being an asshole or misogynism but that exists. That's why I brought up my Grandpa - he didn't have to let a lifetime of pain and abuse based on his disability turn him into an asshole. It did turn him into an asshole; that was wrong. But it doesn't erase the pain.
This isn't about rationalsphere, as much as I keep getting dismissed that way. I'm not saying you should feel happy about this or think it's less of a threat - I'm saying you should be able to separate out bad behavior and bad things that happened to people who behave badly and at least acknowledge the bad things that happened to them were bad.
What I worry about here is that if the pattern we are seeing holds and we eventually have, say, 40-60% of young men as perpetually and sorrowfully single, that leaves a lot of really unhappy kids running around. And I think it's pretty likely that if they find out that the average person won't acknowledge anything happened to them and gets mad at them for even bringing it up, they are going to go "Well, fuck those people" and find somebody that does.
The super-short summary of all this is I'm not and haven't discounted that these guys behave badly, or even that they might be a threat to you. I'm not saying that there isn't a group who wouldn't have you in chains. I'm saying that by ignoring the effect they are (some in the worst possible way) complaining about refusing to sympathize with anybody that has it, you are optimizing for them finding sympathy in the first group that seems to give it and giving them over to that group for indoctrination. Right now, that's the incels.
I wanted to throw something else out there: you seem to think there's some vile stuff in the comments here. If you want, email me at residentcontrarian@substack.com; I'd be glad to take a look at it. Some stuff I haven't commented on because it was already opposed, and some stuff I haven't seen, but the comments are pretty substantially deep now and I've probably missed some stuff I should have replied to.
I was going to respond to the whole thing, but I got to the end and I think you missed my whole point because of this bit:
"Sorry folks, no one owes you a living, let alone a lay."
I mean, I explicitly say nobody owes anybody anything dozens of times. I get it; nobody is advocating for sex slavery here. It's weird that I can't even avoid a strawman by explicitly mentioning the incoming strawman and explaining that's not what I mean. At no point did I blame women for all this, right?
In terms of the rest of it, very briefly: I do have sympathy for you about the things you went through, both those caused by specific people and just because of how the world is built. That sympathy costs me nothing - I just have to genuinely care about some level of the pain you feel or felt and agree I wish it didn't happen. Sympathy for other groups would cost you a similar amount, but here you had to do a lot of work to not give it. I'm not sure I can approve of that - not just because of the bad outcomes I think it causes, but also because "I refuse to acknowledge things are bad if they are happening to a group I hate" doesn't seem like a good thing to encourage.
I acknowledge and validate the OPs experiences while also agreeing with you that she isn't really addressing the substance of what you wrote. I also really appreciate your approach to the topic - I think empathy is a major factor that is the key to bridging the gap
with many uncomfortable and contentious realities.
I however disagree with your implication that sympathy/empathy essentially costs everyone nothing. For those that have experienced trauma and are dealing with responses such as CPTSD, depending on where they are in their healing process, engaging with certain topics/hypotheticals can actually re-traumatize and use up what little emotional bandwidth they have available. It's a non-zero amount of energy for a rape survivor for example to learn to empathize with misogynist perspectives.
I still agree that ultimately it is the approach we should all strive to engage in, but I think it's important to keep in mind that the ease at which each person can do so at any one time can vary widely depending on their own lived experience and circumstance.
I'm sure there are some people with severe trauma of some sort that would find it hard to sympathize with certain groups or at all - mental illness being a pretty wide range of things, it has to happen somewhere.
With that said, I didn't imply that for everyone, everywhere this would be costless. I said that it would have cost Dinonerd nothing or nearly nothing; it's possible I'm wrong there, but I was judging off of the fact that she wrote a ten chapter book to basically say "men, particularly young men, are trash as a class and deserve what they get". If somebody does that, I'm going to take them at their word that they are in fighting shape, usually.
Honestly, even if I thought Dinonerd was traumatized to a huge degree I would have still contradicted her in much the same way here, because her thesis is that it's OK to hate certain kinds of people in a way that I think is harmful, that pain is good so long as it's aimed at a group she thinks is inherently inferior and without worth. She came here of her own accord to say it.
So I can be gentle with her, but I'm not going to not point out she's participating in behavior I think is negative in the comments section of the article where I'm positing her behavior is negative. Understand this is of a different kind of thing that breaking down doors in women's shelters and demanding they forgive all men - I understand there's limits to what I can reasonably demand of people in special circumstances.
I think there's some misunderstanding of my position here which is probably worth clarifying. There seems to be an implication here that you believe I want people to support the incel movement (such as it is) or that I don't think a lot of what they say/do isn't bad gross. I don't want them supported in terms of their goals (to the extent the internet stereotype is accurate and it's basically legalized rape) or think that calling all women sluts or whatever is good.
What I'm saying (or trying to say) is that you can, while still thinking they suck/are dangerous/have behavior that should be discouraged, acknowledge that there's an actual problem here; something that doesn't justify being an asshole or misogynism but that exists. That's why I brought up my Grandpa - he didn't have to let a lifetime of pain and abuse based on his disability turn him into an asshole. It did turn him into an asshole; that was wrong. But it doesn't erase the pain.
This isn't about rationalsphere, as much as I keep getting dismissed that way. I'm not saying you should feel happy about this or think it's less of a threat - I'm saying you should be able to separate out bad behavior and bad things that happened to people who behave badly and at least acknowledge the bad things that happened to them were bad.
What I worry about here is that if the pattern we are seeing holds and we eventually have, say, 40-60% of young men as perpetually and sorrowfully single, that leaves a lot of really unhappy kids running around. And I think it's pretty likely that if they find out that the average person won't acknowledge anything happened to them and gets mad at them for even bringing it up, they are going to go "Well, fuck those people" and find somebody that does.
The super-short summary of all this is I'm not and haven't discounted that these guys behave badly, or even that they might be a threat to you. I'm not saying that there isn't a group who wouldn't have you in chains. I'm saying that by ignoring the effect they are (some in the worst possible way) complaining about refusing to sympathize with anybody that has it, you are optimizing for them finding sympathy in the first group that seems to give it and giving them over to that group for indoctrination. Right now, that's the incels.
I wanted to throw something else out there: you seem to think there's some vile stuff in the comments here. If you want, email me at residentcontrarian@substack.com; I'd be glad to take a look at it. Some stuff I haven't commented on because it was already opposed, and some stuff I haven't seen, but the comments are pretty substantially deep now and I've probably missed some stuff I should have replied to.