Comments Elsewhere

I am not interested in whether statements are “bigoted” or “promote hate.” I am interested in whether they are true or false, and whether the arguments given for them are good arguments or bad arguments. You may think the former is more important than the latter, but I can’t see why.

Having a serious discussion of whether the statements made by radical feminists are true or false and whether their arguments are good or bad requires putting some effort into understanding what is being said and getting a grip on whether or not it’s representative of radical feminism as a whole. But it’s only worthwhile putting any particular time into that if there is a basic level of honesty from your conversation partner about the positions of the people under criticism. Haphazardly assembling a “horror file” list of quotes from works that you have not read, by authors that you know nothing in particular about, without citations to their works, including people who never were members of the radical feminist movement and also including quotes taken from characters in novels and quotes that were demonstrably not written by the person they are attributed to, does not reach that basic level of honesty. It is spreading lies—whether through intentional dishonesty or through incredible sloppiness (as is probably the case here). It is precisely as much a waste of time trying to argue with that as it would be trying to talk about Plato’s ethics with someone who pulls a bunch of quotes from Thrasymachus in the Republic to prove that Plato thinks that justice is the interest of the stronger, and adds some quotes from Ayn Rand about Plato and claims that Plato said them. If you intend to discuss radical feminist thought then you need to do the homework to find out what it actually is, just as you would with any other sort of political theory. Unless and until folks like you or the author here bother to do that, it’s a waste of time to do anything other than document a few of the specific lies that are being repeated, in the hopes that they won’t be repeated by others.