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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Here is the problem.

I hate my outgroup. You know I hate my outgroup. I know you know I hate my outgroup. The circle is complete. There is no more charity to be had. The rules here are clear, you are not allowed to nakedly hate your outgroup.

So to comply with the rules, I have to hide my power level. In my above post, I'm trying to be as narrow, as evidence based, and as charitable as I can. I'm talking about the narrow category of the prompt "Why are there sex pest in feminism?" It should be understood from the prompt I am discussing the subset of feminist that are sex pest. Likewise, when I'm talking about the abuse victims (funny how you omitted that in summarizing my thought as "hollowed out p-zombies"), I'm talking not talking about all feminist, I'm talking about how abuse damages victims.

But... you know. You know I hate feminist more than the plain read of my comment would indicate. You know my feelings towards them extend well beyond the scope of what I actually said. Does it really matter if I say or not, if we both know I think it?

I mean, according to rules, if the rules matter, it does. But increasingly the attitude from the mods that enforce the rules is that it doesn't. All I hear repeatedly is "Stop it, you know what you are doing". And all I can figure that means anymore, is that I continue to struggle to participate, despite feeling deep in my heart a hate I'm not allowed to express, but which everybody knows I have. It needs not be expressed anymore, it's just assumed, and so everything I say is a rules violation.

It might not even be wrong.

It's been stated before that the amount of evidence you provide should be proportionate to how inflammatory your claim is.

One sentence post that says "I hate feminists" = low effort and inflammatory = not ok.

Thorough, thoughtful post that offers "I hate feminists" as a thesis statement and goes into the history of how you developed this attitude, how you contextualize it in broader culture war discussions, what you think this means for the possibility of future dialogue etc. - maybe ok?

Hate is a part of life, it's a natural emotion, and I would hope that TheMotte's rules recognize the possibility of discussing hate in a constructive and civil manner. But I don't know if all the mods agree and maybe some of them would just think that the word "hate" was a violation of the rules on tone no matter what.

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