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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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I am not willing to extend that description to every single feminist who suspects that domestic abuse is rampant and primarily male-on-female, and who therefore resists efforts to change family law in men's favor.

Given the history of domestic violence research (see particularly the section on the harassment of researchers who found evidence of gender symmetry), I do not consider such ignorance to be a very good defense.

My personal understanding of the matter is that this body of evidence and theory is hopelessly biased by the Women Are Wonderful effect, plus all the other cognitive biases that lead us to assign infinite agency to men and none to women

I think it is less biases of agency that are the problem in this case and more biases in the acceptance of harm.

that sufficiently advanced wrongness is indistinguishable from malice. Willful evil, if you will.

I don't think all or possibly even most willfully evil behavior is based in malice. Gross negligence is I think an example of such, and one I think better describes my characterization of feminists in this case. They mostly don't necessarily want to hurt men, they just don't care if men get hurt.

I think a fairer characterization is "stupid and wrong." That seems like the appropriate level of charity to me.

I think that characterization is horribly infantilizing of feminists and is far less charitable than recognizing that they are being willfully evil for two primary reasons. First, doing so is in my mind just another way society doesn't take women seriously. Regardless of my disagreements with them, I don't believe they are stupid. I'd expect the average intelligence of feminists to be above the population average, as it is largely a movement of the well-educated.

Second, I think that this puts "evil" behavior on too high a pedestal, which I don't think is wise. Willfully evil behavior is normal human behavior, not something restricted to evil people. Importantly, how can I expect to recognize and not shy away from acknowledging when I'm being willfully evil to others if I close my eyes to the much easier-to-recognize case of others being willfully evil toward (people like) me? This is perhaps a bastardization of the Catholic teachings I was raised with and turned away from, but I think this ties directly in to the plea in the Lord's prayer to "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us"--there can be no forgiveness without acknowledgement.

EDIT: Grammar.