Anyway thanks again for addressing this – it’s important.

Well, although, I believe there is value in laughing at people who have shown themselves beyond persuasion yet continue to make ridiculous arguments. Treating ridiculous people as ridiculous, rather than seriously, communicates socially that they are unreliable authorities and diminishes their influence. This only goes awry when it’s dishonest (treating as ridiculous, that which actually is not). You should try to take someone seriously first. But that has a limit before they spend their rope and then time’s up on that.

@Johan Ronnblom, you said: “I think we should be very careful about laughing at persons.”

I agree. When I said we should laugh at MRAs, I was being unclear. I meant something more like: laugh at them in private, and dismiss them – rather than engaging with them – in public. That’s my opinion, anyway.

That’s a succinct summary of what the other liberal author I linked to wrote a whole article about (not in our community, but the social justice community in general; but you’ll notice it’s essentially identical phenomena). Where early on in my article I say I agree with “this guy,” follow that link and read his article. It’s on point.

I think we should be very careful about laughing at persons. It is very easy to instantly classify someone as belonging to ‘them’. Maybe someone does use an MRA trope. But mocking that person is not the right strategy in my opinion.

First, people who are in some ways wrong – even very wrong – may not be completely unpersuadable. Second, consider what it looks like to an uninformed bystander. Someone asks a seemingly benign question, say. You know – or you think you know – that it was not intended honestly. But if you then start pounding the person who asked, you will look like the bad guy.

Getting engaged in flame wars against MRA’s, evangelicals or some other group is very good if you want to form a tight knit sect. It’s great for internal cohesion. But it is horrible for winning new people to your cause. From my perspective, this is pretty much what happened with Atheism+. A group of people with an initially benign agenda became more and more focused on determining who was with the group and who was the ‘enemy’. Engaging with these folks became impossible since any disagreement, no matter how slight, instantly got you on their bad persons list.

I wasn’t familiar with those sexualization-of-science posts, but they do provide a great example of what (I think) you’re getting at. I actually don’t agree with almost anything in either one of them, but I can readily concede that they are at least thoughtful and reasonable and not completely wrong. For example:

I’m glad Coyne mentioned the fact that women are judged for their appearance far more than men are, but I wish he’d pursued the unfairness of that standard instead of arguing that women who make sexy ads are setting themselves up for judgment. I mean, why not take a step back and argue that society should, well, stop objectifying women? Because we’d probably stop seeing sexy ads in that case, and this would all become moot.

And I agree with Chen that any two women in science likely have different goals and different skills, and so it doesn’t make sense to have a one-size-fits-all stance on sexy ads. But I also think the “males are sexualized based on braininess and social status” comment is a pretty big stretch. And I very much dislike the suggestion that sexy ads demonstrate that “science and femininity are not mutually exclusive” – because a woman doesn’t become more feminine the less clothes she’s wearing.

So I don’t agree with Coyne’s argument against sexy ads, and I don’t agree with Chen’s argument in favor. But to this second-wave feminist, it’s obvious that far worse arguments exist on both sides. A conservative evangelical might say that sexy ads are bad because women must remain pure and virtuous and never expose their bodies, unless they’re in a darkened bedroom with their husband. And an entitled MRA might say that all attractive women have an obligation to appear fully made-up and in pornified poses in their every public appearance, just to keep everyone’s boners happy.

If we decide to call any of these people out, it seems pretty clear that we should engage Coyne/Chen respectfully (at least at first) and just laugh at evangelical/MRA. But you’re right – that distinction appears to be lost on the left anymore. It almost makes me despair. I don’t know how the left is supposed to maintain the moral high ground when they look ridiculous.

That’s a point people too often forget: there is a reason we have decided as a species to restrict the use of violence to parties chosen by and accountable to the people (police, military, etc.); whom in result we can keep accountable and train to high levels of expertise in not just the use of violence but in controlling it and defusing it. Simply bypassing that process and declaring yourself the police, is to forget the entire reason we created that process for.

I would offer a somewhat different argument against ‘punching nazis’ and similar ideas:

If we fight fascism with vigilante violence, we are likely to lose that fight. Because fascists are simply more vicious. It is at the core of their ideology to despise compassion. You would not mow down a group of protestors, even if they were Nazis. You would not drag someone out of their home and hang them in a tree. They would. And even if you did that, they would come up with something even worse.

And if you hardened yourself to do all that and more, and you actually won.. then what would that victory be worth? You think you would then just stop the torture and murder? No. The result would be every bit as bad as if you had just let the fascists win.

Now, it is true that violence cannot be stopped with ideas only. If no one else uses violence, those who use it will win. The non-fascist solution to this is called the police. A monopoly of force that is controlled and paid for by the public. This can certainly be a tough sell given the many cases of widespread police misconduct. And so I think supporting movements for police accountability such as BLM is a crucial part of anti-fascism. But activists who know their history should note that US lynchings were ended by federal police action. Schools were desegregated under protection from federal marshals. And slavery was ultimately ended by a democratically controlled army. None of those things were ended by vigilante violence. Violence in actual immediate self-defence, such as slave uprisings, was certainly justified. But it could never bring about any lasting and substantial improvement.