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I don't think this is true as stated. It's more of a place where we can discuss ideas and share perspectives. People do stake out opposing positions, but don't really battle as much as they do elaborate and try to convince. I understand why this feels right, the analogy fits. But this place is, if anything, one of the least "battle"-based "political debate" spaces on the internet. Does anyone, for instance, mentally keep track of who's winning the most arguments? I certainly don't - I do have a sense of who's writing well or poorly, but that's almost never based in winning, it's just based on how informative or enjoyable I find reading individual posts. George_E_Hale would be up there if I had to make a status ranked list, even though he just posts little life stories totally unconnected to anything else. Whereas, in say, a community for a small online game, there's a strong competitive spirit and desire to win, people carefully watch who's beating who and try to copy their skills, and form teams based on winrates and stats. Or even in other political debate spaces, there are formalized 'debates' and people discuss after the fact who won the 'debates', who had better arguments, etc. In both of these, while it's not normative, people regularly get very mad when they lose repeatedly, which I don't really see here. So IMO themotte is significantly more feminine in the respect you describe than the kind of 'fair fights' you see in sports - and that's a good thing.
And, indeed, themotte has significantly more women than most other high-intelligence online spaces I participate in, and women are if anything overrepresented among posters I enjoy reading the most versus average posters. (although it's still obviously very male skewed)
Also, iirc most of the major innovators in critical theory, postmodern philosophy, and other in-large-part-BS academic fields (I think there are some good parts in critical theory and postmodernism, but it's undeniable something went wrong) were male. I don't think women have much to do with why Derrida, Freire, or Lacan are like that.
Eh. There are a ton of extremely 'masculine' (in terms of discourse style) vegan advocates, even though you're right that vegan activists are disproportionately female (iirc), so I don't think this is actually an issue at all. Random examples - avi bitterman, vegan gains (both of whom are also very "masculine" in the physical sense), also Effective Altruists (less so in the physical sense)! One of the much more aggressive and combat-oriented debate communities I was referencing above is significantly composed of vegans.
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