[pron]

The thing that really annoys me about a comment like this is that it completely ignores decades of research about why women choose what they choose. It also completely ignores decades of research about how anyone chooses anything.

It, like, lacks all hint of intellectual curiosity. It's like saying, "well, an electron behaves this way and a photon behaves that way because that's the way things are, and I'm done. Why is it behaving that way? I don't know and I don't care." And then I say, "but, you know, some smart people have actually studied this and have some interesting findings", and you say like, "meh, that's probably bad science because I've heard those stories about scientists fabricating data, so I'm not even going to look at this". Now, all of this would have been fine if people with no curiosity and no knowledge wouldn't have an opinion on the matter, but like I said, we have two sides where one has spent decades studying the subject in lots of disciplines, and the other is like "la la la, I don't want to hear, you're wrong".

The saddest part is that we even know why the other side behaves like this (it's the superposition of a bunch of well-known psychological phenomena), but are not allowed to say because that just makes them angrier.

[leereeves]

The thing that really annoys me about a comment like yours is that it implies the choices people currently make are wrong. You’re suggesting that social scientists know better than the people themselves what they should choose.

And then you attempt to demonize anyone who disagrees with you.

[pron]

Wrong? When did I say wrong? Being right or wrong is a value judgement. Believing the choices we make are free is, on the other hand, delusional and stands in complete opposition to what we've learned about this world.

And I don't demonize those who disagree with me, I just state the simple fact that most of them have zero knowledge of the matter and zero willingness to learn, yet an endless desire to argue about these things (that, honestly, they couldn't care less about except that occasionally something inconveniences them a bit) and the lack of shame to make definitive arguments based on absolutely nothing but wishful thinking, gut feeling and exaggeration.

I have actually had similar arguments in the past with people who were at least willing to argue about data and interpretation. But this?

[leereeves]

Why did it annoy you when I said that "Women can have anything they choose, and, in aggregate, they choose different things than men”?

Do you disagree with that factually, or were you annoyed because you don't like the choices people make?

Would you, if you could, change other people’s choices by changing social pressures to fit your agenda?

[pron]

> Do you disagree with that factually, or were you annoyed because you don't like the choices people make?

I don't disagree with that factually, but I strongly disagree with the implied sentiment that this is due to some law of nature, whereas research so far indicates that all human choices, and in particular "aggregate" or statistical choices made by groups are very, very strongly influenced by social pressure.

> Would you, if you could, change other people’s choices by changing social pressures to fit your agenda?

Thing is, research shows that any choice is made under external influences, they shift constantly, and so far those influences result in a very skewed balance of power. The thing we feminists care about is this distribution of power. Our agenda is to reduce the strong social pressures that actively maintain power inequality so that they maintain it less strongly. Opposing this agenda means you're in favor of keeping the social pressures as they are, i.e. continuing the ongoing practice of actively maintaining inequality.

[leereeves]

> all human choices, and in particular "aggregate" or statistical choices made by groups are very, very strongly influenced by social pressure

Influenced, perhaps, yet recent history is full of people defying immense social pressure and even the law in order to do things they want to do. Subtle social pressure is clearly not the only, nor the strongest, influence.

> The thing we feminists care about is this distribution of power.

And so you try to influence other people, and in particular other women, to do what you want them to do.

That’s certainly common enough in both business and politics.

But it is advertising. Not science, not especially noble, nor a moral imperative.

> Opposing this agenda means you're in favor of keeping the social pressures as they are, i.e. continuing the ongoing practice of actively maintaining inequality.

No, I’m in favor of allowing, and helping, all people to do what they want to do (as long as it doesn’t harm others). I’m against controlling people to advance any agenda.

[pron]

> And so you try to influence other people, and in particular other women, to do what you want them to do.

No, we try to influence you so that you wouldn't influence women to do what you want them to do, even though you may be doing this subconsciously.

> Not science

The science part is that we've uncovered the current influences, their origin, their development and their mechanisms and they turn out to be quite onerous.

> No, I’m in favor of allowing, and helping, all people to do what they want to do (as long as it doesn’t harm others). I’m against controlling people to advance any agenda.

So are we! Except, we are interested in how the world actually works, so we've spent a very long time studying it, and it turns out that society is not allowing (and certainly not helping) people do what they want to do, partly by making them want things that they wouldn't otherwise want. So we actually want the same thing, but we know more about the world than you do, hence our course of action to achieving that goal is radically different.

At this point, however, it is clear to me that there is no difference in values between us, but what separates us is a vast knowledge gap (I spent some years in graduate school studying certain aspects of this issue). I only hope that, one day, if you are truly sincere about your professed ideology, you will care about it enough and be blessed by intellectual curiosity to stop and ask yourself, "a lot of educated people who have spent years studying human society are saying that we are actively limiting women's choices (perhaps subconsciously) in a way that reduces their power; could they possibly be right?" and then you’d Google for it, read an article or two, and realize that you have been very, very wrong.

I’ll end with this Rebecca West quote: "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."