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Also wanted to amplify something else @Upulie said: "Just because you were 'disillusioned with contemporary feminism' doesn't mean contemporary feminism isn't valid or that it doesn't contain *multiple strains of thought and debate.*"
She identifies a very important fallacy.
She identifies a very important fallacy.
@upulie Extremists intervene not on "dogma," but on wide and diverse fields of debate that exclude a few really outre ideas. Extremists then minimise and erase that diversity to make themselves appear to be the brave truthtellers adding the *only* contrary opinion.
@upulie This applies to so much, but the example of feminism is instructive because it's such an obvious one. Anyone involved *in* feminism knows it's rich with wide-ranging, intense debates.
It isn't 'groupthink,' at least no more than any other philosophy.
It isn't 'groupthink,' at least no more than any other philosophy.
@upulie Portraying it as such, however, is a useful cover for smuggling in the few ideas that feminists tend to be pretty united in resisting: i.e. that women are inferior to men.
@upulie By bleating on about dogma, groupthink, and free speech, it loads the argument in one's favour while devoting less space to defending content. It becomes about the validity of *making* the argument, rather than the argument itself.
And liberals, especially, are suckers for conceding the former. So bad faith actors tend to fixate on it. This is why you see so many wankers complain "you just want to suppress opinions you disagree with!"--it's more defensible terrain than "why can't I advocate for slavery?!"
And, yes, Nazis have realised this is a way to hack discourse because polite elites in the press and academia fall for it almost every time. It's a useful abstraction.
