[ObviousScience]

Hardly.

That in a community you experience something doesn't necessarily imply that it's related to the core ideology of the group being different - there often are other factors which cause the change and would independent of that core ideology. "With this, therefore because of this" is such a common fallacy, it has a name in Latin: cum hoc ergo propter hoc. [1]

Further, my experience with online communities, which dates over a decade - and the experiences of my friends managing both large and small internet communities - implies that there are two correlations: a larger group will tend to have more problematic actors, who tend to be overrepresented in the number of comments, and that a group which focuses more on the behavior of members will tend to have better behaving members (if only because they ban the others).

Without controlling for two well known internet community effects, arguing that your community is somehow special is the height of improper reasoning.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...

Ed: Terrible Latin.

[richmarr]

> my experience with online communities, > which dates over a decade

Translation: "I am over twenty"

Seriously though, I love logic too, but it doesn't always make you right. Sometimes it makes you that guy that stops everyone making progress. I've been that guy before, and I've fired that guy before.

[ObviousScience]

Translation: I don't approach very serious questions with the best tools to come to the correct answer, I just go with whatever feels good to me so I can be seen Doing Something!(tm) even if it ends up not helping, and I'll punish or censor anyone who disagrees with me!

Seriously, I don't understand this view when taken in response to serious topics: aren't sexism and the challenges women face in technology topics serious enough that they deserve us at our best, not us at our most base and animalistic? aren't serious topics the ones we should most realize we're emotional beings and strive to approach with rationality, knowing that they're complex and full of correlations caused by confounding variables, which are known to be deceptive to our instincts and intuitions? aren't serious topics the ones we should realize our own propensity to shout down dissent for less-than-good reasons, and instead strive to discuss as mature individuals our different experiences and views with each other?

Social topics are large, complex, and full of all kinds of confounding variables that make sussing out the true cause of things a complex task. That you think now is the time we should abandon the tools we invented just to do that - like questioning if a correlation is actually causal or not - is just kind of weird to me.

I'm open to being wrong, but so far, no one has taken the time to point out what they think I'm wrong about here (it would have just been a quick cite if she'd address that point!), and instead have attacked me personally for asking a methodological question about a sensitive topic.

So I'll be blunt: I don't think you actually care about women, sexism, or making things better. I think you just want to feel good about it, about Doing Something!(tm), rather than having to deal with the real work of sorting out a complex social issue.

That's all I hear from you when you say "Let's not be logical here, let's just go with what I feel is right", that you don't care enough about the topic to even be concerned if you're right or not.

[richmarr]

The only logical approach is to demand rigor in situations that demand it. For me this is not one of those situations, because the cost (to me) of the OP being mistaken in her conclusions or actions is zero, as it should be to you. So we logically we should support her because if she's right we all benefit.

For some reason something about the OP's position has made you angry and defensive, as demonstrated by the lengthy replies you've made to a number of people, in my case containing some quite personal comments. Up to you, but I'd suggest taking some time to explore why that is.

[ObviousScience]

I'm actually very supportive of the effort to make safe spaces for women in tech.

Rather, I'm unhappy the OP is going out of her way - to the point of making a separate post about it - trying to appropriate values common to other world views as being inherently feminist. I don't think that's empirically true, and I think that's pretty clear from the fact no one factually corrected me and attacked me for asking about it.

Rather, her comment classic "othering" of people you disagree with, and is not how we should conduct ourselves on sensitive topics such as sexism.

[richmarr]

> Rather, I'm unhappy the OP is going out of her way - to the point of making a separate post about it - trying to appropriate values common to other world views as being inherently feminist

So you felt "othered" and didn't like it. That's natural, and fine. I feel the same way sometimes. It's clear that others here do too.

Where you're hitting turbulence is rationalising that emotional response and building hard logic on top of that soft foundation.

It's actually fine for feminists to appropriate values. It doesn't stop anyone else using them. Sure, we can resent the implication that we don't hold those values, but the way to deal with that insecurity is by proving it to yourself. If you're human-centred, be human-centred. If you know, other people will know too.

It's hard. I suck at it too.

[ObviousScience]

I think we both know that if I had made the implication in the reverse direction, everyone here would be lecturing me in response on how I shouldn't be othering people I disagree with.

I think the response to me has shown that people weren't objecting to the question I asked and instead because I dared to call out such behavior from a feminist, instead of Approved Bad Guys(tm). Read up to where someone posted a study agreeing with me to tell me I was wrong.

I have two objections to her comment:

1. It's empirically untrue, and that does us no service if we're concerned with actually solving the problem. As the study cited to me points out, many of the problems related to sexism are actually caused by confounding factors in the community, and not necessarily just because a few problematic actors are sexist. Similarly, my point was that solutions are often about addressing these confounding factors, such as reducing the undue influence of problematic actors (eg, posting way more than most people).

2. No, I don't think it's okay for feminists to use propaganda tactics regularly used by groups to "other" people they don't like just because we agree with the goals the feminists have, and I think such poor behavior should be called out when anyone does it - including people we agree with. We may just have a difference of opinion here on what's acceptable, but you've been incredibly dismissive of me simply having a different opinion on what's appropriate conduct and attacked me personally for it. I regard this, too, as poor conduct.

I think at this point, everyone responding to me has shown two things:

1. They're not concerned if "feminism" (no one even seems to be clear what that means in this context) actually fixes the named problem of having safer spaces for women in online communities, they're supporting the claim for ideological reasons, not because it's true. All the data actually suggests that changes to the community orthogonal to the concerns of feminism have the dominant effect on the comfort level of women in the community, because they serve to amplify or diminish the role of problematic actors (of several stripes).

2. People who are supporting her comments aren't interested in actually engaging with others, and will use all kinds of fallacies, irrationalities, and outright abuse to try and shout down opinions that don't fit with with their chosen ideology.

I think we should expect better from people.

[LyndsySimon]

I believe your original post might have been taken differently had you omitted the last line:

> Classic propaganda

[ObviousScience]

I stand by that comment in light of the fact no one factually corrected me, and attacked me personally in a fit of irrationality, going so far as to cite a study that agreed with me it was confounding factors that largely influenced these kind of community behaviors as if it was correcting me.

I think this shows that people's support of the claim is not because feminist communities actually cause that (or rather, that it hasn't been shown in any clear fashion), but because they want to adhere to the ideology and claim successes for it, even when those successes may be caused by other factors.

Propaganda intended to other people who aren't in their party, start to finish. And I think we should expect better of people than that, when talking about serious and sensitive topics.