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I know what you're saying but it isn't true. Let's look at 2 examples, the LGBT community and Feminism. LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone.

I know what you're saying but it isn't true. Let's look at 2 examples, the LGBT community and Feminism. LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant. Feminism bullies, ridicules, excludes, creates us/them divides and is continually hypocritical. You could not have 2 more different different approaches. You don't need to be a bully. You don't need to threaten or ridicule or divide. A few (repeated examples) to highlight my point. Matt Taylor bullied by large numbers of feminists for wearing a shirt designed by a woman, showing women wearing bikinis. Do women wear bikinis? Yes. Yet, he was mercilessly attacked by at least 10,000 radicals. Domestic violence. It's repeatedly reported as a man thing (note: someone close to me was stabbed by his wife while she was high on drugs - but it wasn't domestic violence.. As the media says, that's only a man thing). Also note the absence of mental abuse that goes almost ignored. Code.org who didn't bother to put a link to encourage boys, but explicitly put one to encourage girls on their main page. This was no accident - they have a quota to meet, apparently at any cost. Mind you, this could equally be attributed to political correctness. I greatly respect how the LGBT community has embraced most people to support their cause without alienating anyone or demanding ridiculous quotas. I am totally gay friendly. Yet, I strongly oppose feminism. I believe in equality, but not equality for one gender or skin colour or sexual orientation. I respect movements that embrace differences rather than reject them. Bullying is not required.

venomsnake 11y ago
I have a gay friend activist that claims that there are no bisexual people and that gay republicans are in perpetual state of self hatred. LGBT has ita hardline factions too.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  I have a gay friend activist who held such beliefs when we were both in college. At the time, groups of gay men were going around and yelling at bisexuals and calling them "fence sitters." I even received a bit of attention like this. Angry young 20-somethings, projecting half-baked ideas onto you and yelling at you about extremely significant and intimate details of your inner emotional life -- always So Very Helpful!
agilebyte 11y ago
Isn't chalking LGBT as "tolerant" and feminism as "intolerant" (whatever these labels mean) yet another example of the us/them duality?
- tankenmate 11y ago
  Noting a difference does not imply intolerance. You can be inclusive and still call a spade a spade; the issue is whether you respect others regardless of their race, gender, sexual preferences, religion, et cetera, and offer them the same opportunities. Talking about the way things are with respect is not an issue, and should not be an issue.
7952 11y ago
Both womens rights and LGBT right sit at a strange point in history. The bad behaviour has largely become socially unacceptable, but a lot of the people who committed crimes are still extant in society. We have collectively decided to forgive and forget without any kind of process. Why should we expect the anger to just disapear?
- option_greek 11y ago
  I understand that crimes have been committed against the LGBT community (including prosecution of Turing). But crimes based on women's right ? Do we base them on the same scale ? (genuinely curious)
  - 7952 11y ago
    >Do we base them on the same scale ? I am not sure why we need to assign a badness rating to this kind of thing. And people should not need to equivocate based on some sliding scale of injustice. Anger does have a role to play in changing society. It just gets tricky when people base their whole world view and identify on a single issue. Feminist views are interesting and elucidating but need to be read with a critical eye. Of course a lot of the victims will have no choice in how profound these issues are to them so it is best to be forgiving.
  - maldusiecle 11y ago
    This kind of argument kind of baffles me. Surely you're aware that women have suffered violence as a result of their lack of rights, aren't you? For large parts of history, domestic violence against women has been ignored or joked about, or in some places explicitly made legal. Until relatively recently, spousal rape wasn't even considered a crime. I guess there's this notion that, pre-feminism, women had fewer rights but were otherwise left alone and unharmed, in peaceful domestic spaces. But that's really the wrong way of looking at it. Prisoners in solitary confinement are left and alone and not physically harmed, but no one would say they aren't suffering. The way women have historically been denied access to the public sphere and convinced of their inferiority is itself a kind of imprisonment, and it's a massive crime.
throwaway7767 11y ago
Now you're elevating a vocal subset of "feminists" to represent the entire group. There are plenty of old-school feminists, from when feminism was about equal rights. They just don't create as much internet drama as the other kind, so you hear about them less.
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  Ironic, too, because the worst part of $hypothetical_feminist_subgroup is that if you disagree with the policy prescription de jure (say, spending $3 trillion annually on pre-K education) then they will hit you back with an accusation that you are a terrible misogynist who doesn't acknowledge the fundamental dignity of women as human beings. Don't aid and abet this rhetorical crime.
  - breischl 11y ago
    Nitpick: I think you actually meant to say "policy prescription du jour", meaning the current policy prescription. I normally would not nitpick that, but "de jure" has a different meaning, "According to law; by right", that would be applicable in this context.
- belorn 11y ago
  Its hard to disregard that subset here in Sweden when there a government that self-identify itself as feminist. Several years ago there was a initiative to create equality in education. Any student that was a minority in their class received a minor bonus as an incentive. The initiative was however deemed a failure when it was realized that the majority of student fulfilling the requirement was men and not women. Afterward it was sent to the courts which promptly declared the initiative as discriminative against students who weren't minorities. Now only a short time ago a new initiative was suggested by a government study, with the primary difference from the old one being that it will now only apply in studies where men are the majority. So excuse me for having a hard time finding those old-school feminists that talks about equal rights. The only time I saw one was in a opinion piece a year ago where equal rights was described as the "old" feminism movement, and I saw a lot of hatred directed at her rather than support in the comments.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
You're actually sort-of proving the point of the essay. Just like Scott contrasts well-known and hated PETA to decent but almost completely invisible Vegan Outreach, you're contrasting toxic Social Justice Warriors to friendly neighborhood LGBT people who just want to feel safe and accepted by society as equals. The second group is not the one known from the media, or the one directing the public discourse.
werber 11y ago
Reducing feminism to extremists who co-opt the term feminism is the same as holding up "Islamist" terror groups as a representation of all Muslims. Initiatives to bring up a group that has is underrepresented have to be explicit about welcoming people outside the current reigning majority, that's not discrimination, it's an attempt for equality.
dragonwriter 11y ago
Actually, in addition to the sibling comments notes about plenty of non-bullying feminists that just perhaps aren't as visible, there are plenty (and highly visible) LGBT activists who will be just as bullying as you claim feminists, distinct from LGBT activists, are. The same is true of.pretty much any movement that has a political, or more generally "how people should act", aspect.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
kaonashi 11y ago
The topic is about violence. Feminists aren't violent; in fact they're a reaction against gender-based violence. > Yet, I strongly oppose feminism. I believe in equality, but not equality for one gender or skin colour or sexual orientation. That means you're a feminist. I'm sorry you're not able to get your definitions straight. > Bullying is not required. Calling people out on their bullshit isn't bullying.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  Calling people out on their bullshit isn't bullying. When the effect is merely to pressure, and not to convince, then in that particular context, people who may have been legitimately oppressed have (temporarily) become the oppressors. The difference between calling people out on their bullshit versus bullying is this: In "calling people out" -- people are shown their self-contradiction in such a way that they are given a chance to better live up to their moral system. It becomes bullying when people are only vilified, placed in an irredeemable category, then effectively punished in some way.
  - kaonashi 11y ago
    > When the effect is merely to pressure, and not to convince, then in that particular context, people who may have been legitimately oppressed have (temporarily) become the oppressors. Putting pressure on someone to behave themselves isn't oppression. You can't possibly have gone through life without seeing actual oppression. > It becomes bullying when people are only vilified, placed in an irredeemable category, then effectively punished in some way. Nobody is irredeemable; but some people don't want redemption. When people refuse to behave themselves, they get shunned. This is a normal human defense mechanism.
    - mring33621 11y ago
      You do realize that "behave themselves" is subjective?
      - 11y ago
thorwayyy 11y ago
Brendan Eich was forced to resign as CEO of Mozilla by the LGBT movement because he supported this: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant. While I find them more tolerant on average, this is not true of the entire group and they do not welcome everyone. >Domestic violence. It's repeatedly reported as a man thing Haven't recently studies found that lesbian couples are the most violent and among heterosexual couples the violence is far more equal than public perception?
danans 11y ago
Isn't that an apples to oranges comparison? The LGBT community isn't a sociopolitical belief-based community, it's a community defined by its members' inborn state. You can't bully someone in and out of being what they are. Feminism, on the other hand, is a sociopolitical movement, based on a particular understanding of history and what the future should look like. Sociopolitical movements (for example, the various anti-LGBT movements out there), can bully because they are trying to change society's beliefs.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  Sociopolitical movements (for example, the various anti-LGBT movements out there), can bully because they are trying to change society's beliefs. But it's not bullying that changes a society's beliefs. It's commerce, coexistence, and exposure which does this. If anything, bullying can produce the opposite of the intended effect. Pseudo-activism can be recognized by the primacy of outrage in its actions. Pseudo-activism actually thrives on the generation of outrage among the "enemies." This in turn generates more outrage on "their" side in a (literally) vicious cycle. When observing activists, ask yourself -- What has primacy: a moral message, or the generation of outrage? Hateivism lives through outrage, and it optimizes the maintenance and generation of more outrage.

venomsnake 11y ago

I have a gay friend activist that claims that there are no bisexual people and that gay republicans are in perpetual state of self hatred. LGBT has ita hardline factions too.

stcredzero 11y ago
I have a gay friend activist who held such beliefs when we were both in college. At the time, groups of gay men were going around and yelling at bisexuals and calling them "fence sitters." I even received a bit of attention like this. Angry young 20-somethings, projecting half-baked ideas onto you and yelling at you about extremely significant and intimate details of your inner emotional life -- always So Very Helpful!

agilebyte 11y ago

Isn't chalking LGBT as "tolerant" and feminism as "intolerant" (whatever these labels mean) yet another example of the us/them duality?

tankenmate 11y ago
Noting a difference does not imply intolerance. You can be inclusive and still call a spade a spade; the issue is whether you respect others regardless of their race, gender, sexual preferences, religion, et cetera, and offer them the same opportunities. Talking about the way things are with respect is not an issue, and should not be an issue.

7952 11y ago

Both womens rights and LGBT right sit at a strange point in history. The bad behaviour has largely become socially unacceptable, but a lot of the people who committed crimes are still extant in society. We have collectively decided to forgive and forget without any kind of process. Why should we expect the anger to just disapear?

option_greek 11y ago
I understand that crimes have been committed against the LGBT community (including prosecution of Turing). But crimes based on women's right ? Do we base them on the same scale ? (genuinely curious)
- 7952 11y ago
  >Do we base them on the same scale ? I am not sure why we need to assign a badness rating to this kind of thing. And people should not need to equivocate based on some sliding scale of injustice. Anger does have a role to play in changing society. It just gets tricky when people base their whole world view and identify on a single issue. Feminist views are interesting and elucidating but need to be read with a critical eye. Of course a lot of the victims will have no choice in how profound these issues are to them so it is best to be forgiving.
- maldusiecle 11y ago
  This kind of argument kind of baffles me. Surely you're aware that women have suffered violence as a result of their lack of rights, aren't you? For large parts of history, domestic violence against women has been ignored or joked about, or in some places explicitly made legal. Until relatively recently, spousal rape wasn't even considered a crime. I guess there's this notion that, pre-feminism, women had fewer rights but were otherwise left alone and unharmed, in peaceful domestic spaces. But that's really the wrong way of looking at it. Prisoners in solitary confinement are left and alone and not physically harmed, but no one would say they aren't suffering. The way women have historically been denied access to the public sphere and convinced of their inferiority is itself a kind of imprisonment, and it's a massive crime.

throwaway7767 11y ago

Now you're elevating a vocal subset of "feminists" to represent the entire group. There are plenty of old-school feminists, from when feminism was about equal rights. They just don't create as much internet drama as the other kind, so you hear about them less.

fennecfoxen 11y ago
Ironic, too, because the worst part of $hypothetical_feminist_subgroup is that if you disagree with the policy prescription de jure (say, spending $3 trillion annually on pre-K education) then they will hit you back with an accusation that you are a terrible misogynist who doesn't acknowledge the fundamental dignity of women as human beings. Don't aid and abet this rhetorical crime.
- breischl 11y ago
  Nitpick: I think you actually meant to say "policy prescription du jour", meaning the current policy prescription. I normally would not nitpick that, but "de jure" has a different meaning, "According to law; by right", that would be applicable in this context.
belorn 11y ago
Its hard to disregard that subset here in Sweden when there a government that self-identify itself as feminist. Several years ago there was a initiative to create equality in education. Any student that was a minority in their class received a minor bonus as an incentive. The initiative was however deemed a failure when it was realized that the majority of student fulfilling the requirement was men and not women. Afterward it was sent to the courts which promptly declared the initiative as discriminative against students who weren't minorities. Now only a short time ago a new initiative was suggested by a government study, with the primary difference from the old one being that it will now only apply in studies where men are the majority. So excuse me for having a hard time finding those old-school feminists that talks about equal rights. The only time I saw one was in a opinion piece a year ago where equal rights was described as the "old" feminism movement, and I saw a lot of hatred directed at her rather than support in the comments.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

You're actually sort-of proving the point of the essay. Just like Scott contrasts well-known and hated PETA to decent but almost completely invisible Vegan Outreach, you're contrasting toxic Social Justice Warriors to friendly neighborhood LGBT people who just want to feel safe and accepted by society as equals. The second group is not the one known from the media, or the one directing the public discourse.

werber 11y ago

Reducing feminism to extremists who co-opt the term feminism is the same as holding up "Islamist" terror groups as a representation of all Muslims. Initiatives to bring up a group that has is underrepresented have to be explicit about welcoming people outside the current reigning majority, that's not discrimination, it's an attempt for equality.

dragonwriter 11y ago

Actually, in addition to the sibling comments notes about plenty of non-bullying feminists that just perhaps aren't as visible, there are plenty (and highly visible) LGBT activists who will be just as bullying as you claim feminists, distinct from LGBT activists, are. The same is true of.pretty much any movement that has a political, or more generally "how people should act", aspect.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

kaonashi 11y ago

The topic is about violence. Feminists aren't violent; in fact they're a reaction against gender-based violence. > Yet, I strongly oppose feminism. I believe in equality, but not equality for one gender or skin colour or sexual orientation. That means you're a feminist. I'm sorry you're not able to get your definitions straight. > Bullying is not required. Calling people out on their bullshit isn't bullying.

stcredzero 11y ago
Calling people out on their bullshit isn't bullying. When the effect is merely to pressure, and not to convince, then in that particular context, people who may have been legitimately oppressed have (temporarily) become the oppressors. The difference between calling people out on their bullshit versus bullying is this: In "calling people out" -- people are shown their self-contradiction in such a way that they are given a chance to better live up to their moral system. It becomes bullying when people are only vilified, placed in an irredeemable category, then effectively punished in some way.
- kaonashi 11y ago
  > When the effect is merely to pressure, and not to convince, then in that particular context, people who may have been legitimately oppressed have (temporarily) become the oppressors. Putting pressure on someone to behave themselves isn't oppression. You can't possibly have gone through life without seeing actual oppression. > It becomes bullying when people are only vilified, placed in an irredeemable category, then effectively punished in some way. Nobody is irredeemable; but some people don't want redemption. When people refuse to behave themselves, they get shunned. This is a normal human defense mechanism.
  - mring33621 11y ago
    You do realize that "behave themselves" is subjective?
    - 11y ago

thorwayyy 11y ago

Brendan Eich was forced to resign as CEO of Mozilla by the LGBT movement because he supported this: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant. While I find them more tolerant on average, this is not true of the entire group and they do not welcome everyone. >Domestic violence. It's repeatedly reported as a man thing Haven't recently studies found that lesbian couples are the most violent and among heterosexual couples the violence is far more equal than public perception?

danans 11y ago

Isn't that an apples to oranges comparison? The LGBT community isn't a sociopolitical belief-based community, it's a community defined by its members' inborn state. You can't bully someone in and out of being what they are. Feminism, on the other hand, is a sociopolitical movement, based on a particular understanding of history and what the future should look like. Sociopolitical movements (for example, the various anti-LGBT movements out there), can bully because they are trying to change society's beliefs.

stcredzero 11y ago
Sociopolitical movements (for example, the various anti-LGBT movements out there), can bully because they are trying to change society's beliefs. But it's not bullying that changes a society's beliefs. It's commerce, coexistence, and exposure which does this. If anything, bullying can produce the opposite of the intended effect. Pseudo-activism can be recognized by the primacy of outrage in its actions. Pseudo-activism actually thrives on the generation of outrage among the "enemies." This in turn generates more outrage on "their" side in a (literally) vicious cycle. When observing activists, ask yourself -- What has primacy: a moral message, or the generation of outrage? Hateivism lives through outrage, and it optimizes the maintenance and generation of more outrage.