At its best, certainly. I’ve encountered many bloggers who do a great job of those things and offer solid, compelling, charitable yet incisive arguments. Often, though, I think bloggers and even authors simply go too far in their analyses.

I think that it’s hard to be rigorous or produce evidence for claims about subtle cultural issues

Oh, yes, certainly. I myself am extremely lazy about this sort of thing.

If the entirety of current feminist / alt sex culture restricted itself from discussing problems that it couldn’t produce evidence about, I wonder if it would dramatically impoverish its commentary.

To clarify, I’m not really talking so much about hard, scientific evidence, but rather about Bayesian evidence—anything that you can validly use to update posterior probability. When I complain about lack of evidence, I think mainly it’s that the evidence they’re presenting is not quite valid for the purpose they’re using it for—usually, they don’t give people enough benefit of the doubt. And I certainly understand why. (Benefit of the doubt often does serve to protect privilege and excuse misogyny.) But again, I just think they take it too far.

And that’s about all I have to say. I pretty much agree with your other points.

@Michael — Responded at your original post.

@Chris — I was actually surprised when I read the comments and found out that you had already edited your post to be more “feminist-friendly” — because it had already rather set my teeth on edge. That said, yes, I think most of the culture clash was kindasorta described in the comments. And let me just reiterate that I really like the substance of your post; it reminds me of things I’ve been tempted to write, and it also reminds me of qualities that I myself need to work on. (Looking back, I’m not happy with my comment on the LW post, either. But, well … the original poster’s approach really annoyed me.)

You write, “I’m perfectly aware that those tendencies are endemic to your subculture, but it’s not the type of thing one gives credit for if one doesn’t approve of those tendencies.” By “give credit”, I meant “cut some slack”, and I also meant “assume that people have reasons for acting the way they do, step back, and think about what those reasons are.” If you’re coming upon an unfamiliar or even disturbing cultural perspective, then the first question you should ask yourself is: “What does that buy them?”

I think that current feminist / alt sex culture is pretty good at certain things, including but not limited to: acknowledging and examining privilege; examining emotional reactions; picking up on cultural biases. In fact, I think members of the subculture tend to be better at those things than members of other subcultures.

I think that it’s hard to be rigorous or produce evidence for claims about subtle cultural issues, although it’s obviously possible, and I myself try to do it when I can — if only to make my arguments airtight (for instance, I think that my post “Evidence that the BDSM Community Does Not Enable Abuse” is superior to many of my posts because I did a lot of research before writing it, and it provides scans, links and citations of BDSM community anti-abuse initiatives). I also think that it’s hard to be rigorous or produce evidence when you’re not making the rules about what’s worth studying (for instance, there is very limited research on BDSM out there).

Of course, it seems obvious that the point of the most aggressive, passionate rhetoric is to get people excited and provide a rallying cry rather than any convincing argument. I’m more interested in discussing the potential argumentative advantages of the overall approach. What is it buying us in that regard — if anything? If the entirety of current feminist / alt sex culture restricted itself from discussing problems that it couldn’t produce evidence about, I wonder if it would dramatically impoverish its commentary. I also wonder if some of these advantages — for instance, being awesome at examining emotional reactions — are interlinked with passionate aggression, which inspires emotional reactions.

I’d like to think that it’s possible for feminist culture to shift away from being aggressive / accusatory / etc. while still retaining the advantages purchased by that style, but I’m not sure.

1. That a more in-your-face emotional style is a reaction to the fact that people often ignore the substantive content which threatens their worldview.
2. That this style succeeds in engaging or convincing people who would not be engaged or convinced by a more detached style.

The first claim is interesting, and worth discussing, but I’m going to skip to the second, because while it may be true in some cases, my intuition is that more often than not it is false.

What are the goals we are trying to achieve in settling on guidelines for debates?
I would nominate enjoyment of the debate, willingness to enter and continue the debate, and honest agreement. (Am I missing anything?)

How could we study the effect of debate guidelines on these outcomes? I think it would be hard to trust observational data, because the people that select into these debates are probably very different. But it wouldn’t be that hard to do genuine experiments.

In brief, we would randomly assign people to groups and the groups would be given different instructions. Some would be taught how to debate “charitably,” some, how to use an in-your-face style, and some given no instructions (alternatively, subjects could be primed with examples rather than given any instruction). Then the groups would be given a topic to debate. Surveys given out before and after the debate would allow us to measure changes in beliefs, opinions of other debaters, enjoyment of the debate, and anything else we might be interested in.

Other experimental conditions we might vary include face-to-face vs. blog, number of debaters, and debate topics. This experiment wouldn’t answer all our questions about guidelines for debates, but I think they would do a tremendous amount to inform the discussion.

I’m not completely sure about the nature of your confusion.

do you really want to argue that being correct always excuses being rude?

Not at all. I only argue that my criticism would have been moderated a lot if they were consistently correct. For instance, I don’t criticize Sadly, No! for their extreme rhetoric/snark, because I happen to agree with them most of the time. (Neither do I expect anyone on the right to engage them in the least.)

To me, your last two sentences sound accusatory, violating another one of your guidelines.

Which one? I just skimmed over my essay again and didn’t see anything about being accusatory (or using profanity, for that matter). Note that the first sentence doesn’t directly accuse Clarisse, and the second is in the subjunctive.

I read Clarisse’s response at the LW thread about masochism she linked, and her approach really annoyed me, so I didn’t feel like being quite as polite as I might have otherwise been. But did I say something uncharitable?

I thought my position is closer to yours than Clarisse’s, but reading your last comment raises some questions for me.

I read you as arguing that debates are more productive when people do not to use highly-charged emotional language. This seems the natural result of focusing on understanding your opponent’s position first and slowly walking through your refutation to see where the disagreement really lies.

Therefore, I was left confused when you said “(You can be 100% correct and as rude as you want. I wouldn’t criticize them like I have if I thought they were correct.”

I prefer rude correct people to rude incorrect people, but do you really want to argue that being correct always excuses being rude?

To me, your last two sentences sound accusatory, violating another one of your guidelines. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting you, or perhaps you’ve changed your philosophy. Either way, I’d love to hear from you.

rationalist sites (largely populated by, let’s face it, white upper-middle-class men)

I’m not sure about the “upper” part, but ok.

you do not seem inclined to give us credit for the fact that our particular tendencies are endemic to our subculture or (more importantly) to consider why that cultural perspective is useful for us

Do you mean to say “endemic”? I’m perfectly aware that those tendencies are endemic to your subculture, but it’s not the type of thing one gives credit for if one doesn’t approve of those tendencies. Anyway, I’m willing to grant that aggressiveness is a natural, justified emotional reaction to marginalization and defensive/willful ignorance and whatnot, and even that it’s possibly useful to further the subculture’s aims. Further, I have no problem at all with emotional writing.

Perhaps my position has changed a bit since I wrote the above comments. My objection to the feminist bloggers I mention is much more about an abysmal lack of rigor, extravagant claims given with no good evidence, and just plain being wrong, than it is about style or snark or lack of charity. (You can be 100% correct and as rude as you want. I wouldn’t criticize them like I have if I thought they were correct.) And I think you might be using “emotional” as a cover for that—others certainly do. Which would be pure bullshit.