Thrilled to announce fox in henhouse
Odd choice.
Helen. above all, just wants people to value evidence-based epistemology and the free exchange of ideas.
Tip Jar
Odd choice.
Helen. above all, just wants people to value evidence-based epistemology and the free exchange of ideas.
Oh, no, women don’t face abuse and marginalization because they’re women. It’s because they’re too shrill. Or too quiet. Or too pushy. Or too demure. Or too sexy. Or too frumpy. Or too strong. Or too weak.
It has nothing at all with them being women.
A response to James Lindsay calling women bitches over the AGP perhaps?
“Rational middle ground”, my ass. There is no “middle ground” between truth and a lie, and I’m sick of apologists who claim otherwise.
You know what? I can play this game too…
Seriously, I am more concerned about women who really are a marginalized group who face a lot of abuse, prejudice & discrimination just for being women while I don’t believe people claiming to be something they’re objectively not to be marginalized or face much abuse, prejudice or unwarranted discrimination for being deluded liars.
*wipes hands* Problem solved, all good, y’all can go home now.
As I wrote in my review of Cynical Theories, I do have some issues with Pluckrose and Lindsay’s take on specific topics, and yet I do recommend it to anyone interested in understanding the wider intellectual trends from which gender ideology is derived. Even if Pluckrose isn’t gender critical herself*, and even if Cynical Theories doesn’t explicitly make the connection to gender ideology, it is trivially easy to apply the authors’s criticism of applied postmodernism in general to gender ideology in particular. Gender ideology without applied postmodernism is a bit like a donut after after you remove everything but the hole. There’s really not that much left.
So, not to downplay or trivialize the issues I also have with Helen Pluckrose (not to mention James Lidsay!), one of the many lessons I take away from the last 12 years or so is that there are no good guys (including me!), and if you are going to going to get your information from anywhere at all, you have no choice but to rely on flawed, and sometimes obnoxious, sources. There is simply no one else out there to do the job. Many commenters on this site have written favorably about Yascha Mounk’s The Identity Trap, and I agree. But Mounk doesn’t strike me as any less timid and wishy-washy on the topic of gender than Pluckrose and Lindsay. It still doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from both their analyses. On the same note, Abigail Shrier really does appear to be in/close to MAGA territory. It doesn’t make her wrong about the harmful impact of gender ideology on young girls.
* While she has stated that she doesn’t share the views of JK Rowling, at the very least she has been perfectly clear that they’re the kind of views a person is entitled to hold and express and still be worthy of respect.