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 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 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.