I do have a track record of saying things ...

OT: can you guys check my thinking? by Laburnum on 2011-09-15 22:06:00 UTC Reply

Another sexism argument on ffrants, about a rant I posted: http://fanficrants.livejournal.com/10652939.html
Have I actually said anything offensive, as one commenter is accusing me of doing? I'm not great at telling sometimes, but I fail to see how saying that being female does not automatically make one more intelligent is offensive, since I specified that it doesn't make one less intelligent either.

Re: OT: can you guys check my thinking? by Sedri on 2011-09-16 08:59:00 UTC Reply

I don't think any of your argumentative points were the least bit invalid - I agree completely. But you do have a rather confrontational tone at times; saying "Prove to me that having a uterus has a direct positive effect on intelligence and I'll consider withdrawing this point" (and quite a bit of what follows) could reasonably be taken as offensive. It seems this person was more irritated by your tone than any point you were trying to make.

Just my 2c.

Yeah, that one was my fault, I was angry. by Laburnum on 2011-09-16 10:17:00 UTC Reply

But since she was confrontational first, I don't think that was what caused her attitude.

Seems like it's just that one person. by Calista on 2011-09-15 23:10:00 UTC Reply

I think you're dealing with somebody who doesn't like you, personally. This "Brihana", whoever s/he is, seems to think you have a track record of hating women, or trolling, or something. Who knows?

Your being annoyed at that fic is a legit complaint. Why in the world would a sex change affect your mental functioning? I guess maybe you could get side effects from the hormone treatments before your body could get used to them, but that's drug side effects, not a gender thing.

Re. male and female intelligence: You are right in that the average values are the same. However, males and females have very slightly different specialties (on the order of a percentage point or less)--which means very little for any particular man or woman, because the difference between genders totally vanishes compared to the difference between individuals.

Also, males tend to have a slightly larger standard deviation in their distribution--that is, they have more scores at the high and low extremes of the range. I think that's because men (usually) have XY chromosomes, which means that anything on their single X will express fully because there's not another X to provide another gene that can partly/fully cancel it. As a result, we end up with slightly more gifted and more cognitively disabled males than females--though not by much. But anyone who's XY will get that effect, whether they're male or female.

I betcha the person who's harassing you knows you write for the PPC. That's what happened to me a while ago on ffr, when I used my PPC LJ account to complain about OOC characters in bad slash and everybody apparently figured that made me a homophobe... somehow.

I do have a track record of saying things ... by Laburnum on 2011-09-15 23:41:00 UTC Reply

... which make sense to me but horribly offend others. Specifically, several months back I invoked a flamewar by saying I didn't see how writing a male OC was inherently offensive to women, and more recently got into an argument in which I said hitting women isn't inherently that much worse than hitting men and didn't appropriately phrase the part in which I was trying to say "because hitting ANYONE AT ALL is wrong".

Not to mention she's now screaming that I missed the much more offensive stuff later in the fic. Wow, sorry that I do not, unless I'm specifically trying to spork it, pick out every little bit to be offended by in a fic. Particularly one with formatting which made it hard to tell what was going on at all. And the character in question displays some stereotypically girly behaviour when he's a guy, so I'd have to read carefully to see which was just him being him/herself and which was meant to be due to the change.

I think she hates men. by jakraziel on 2011-09-19 00:36:00 UTC Reply

Just the impression I get.

Re: I think she hates men. by Laburnum on 2011-09-21 15:17:00 UTC Reply

I can sort of see the point, but there's a pretty thick line between standing up for womens' rights and being an ass, and IMO part of getting womens' rights to be taken seriously involves not being an ass.