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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   1931 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 29, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Well, if by “visceral response” you mean “heuristic.”

I don't. By "visceral response," I mean a sort of automatic, subconscious, emotional response. A heuristic is something else, which you outline below:

Hearing someone choose the word “females” usually says a lot about their worldview.

But... it doesn't. Referring to women as "females" is just accurate, mainstream, correct use of that word. Claiming that only people with a certain type of worldview tend to use this word that way, and as such, forms a meaningful heuristic with respect to how to react to such usage, is, again, something that appears as motivated reasoning. I've yet to encounter a shred of evidence that usage of the word that way has any correlation with the speaker's worldview, or evidence that anyone has even attempted to collect such evidence.

This is in contrast to terms like "male fantasy" or "male privilege," which are well-known terms from a certain specific well-known ideology or cluster of ideologies. It's certainly possible for people to use those phrases in a way that doesn't invoke those ideologies, but the very concept of characterizing individuals as having "privilege" based on their group identity with respect to sex is something that relates to those ideologies.

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