I feel very bad—to the point of being sick—at having diverted the thread on a tangent in a way that upset posters, and I wish I hadn’t said anything beyond the comparison to the wide feet issue. Fortunately the thread is hidden by default
Still, even in my worst moments I never cease to be amazed at how others react.
I wish to draw your attention to two parallels you might have missed:
The non-troll you refer to only provoked a productive discussion in the first place because the non-troll’s dictates were ignored. Alicorn had previous told me (completely unjustifiably) not to reply . Had I actually followed this demand, there would be no productive discussion for you to defend in characterizing it as not trollish.
Making provocative remarks that you expect the target won’t be able to reply to … isn’t that what you were just criticizing me for?
Second, my remark and Alicorn’s are similar in that both make a ridiculous accusation of criminality—and trivialization as simply angry people—against a group simply because they criticize a practice. Yet only in one case do people see—do people want to see—why the accusation is absurd.
(By the way, how’d you find the original thread? Have help? I hope it wasn’t from someone who’s also presenting you with arguments I don’t even get to see, let alone reply to—that would be kind of petty.)
Something I noticed in going over this thread is that both you and I saw we were dumping hostility in each other’s general direction, and the other posters mostly didn’t.
In fact, what I did in ignoring the main point of your initial post was so subtle that I could hardly see it when I reread, even though I can remember how angry I was when I did it.
Weirdly, being emotionally involved in a quarrel led to more accurate perceptions rather than less.
I will note that other posters, to the extent that they noticed that I hadn’t replied to your point, made excuses for me. No one asked me what I had in mind.
It’s a embarrassing to admit what was actually in my mind, but the truth may be of some use. From my point of view, you’d just infuriated me by dismissing something I take seriously (prejudice against fat people [1]), and then seemed to expect me to take your concerns seriously. I wasn’t modeling you in any detail, I was just determined that you weren’t going to get what you wanted from me. I wasn’t thinking about how much you wanted it, or how you were likely to react.
Tentatively offered: Your angry posts here and in the discussion about women failing to give clear signals seem to me as though they’re based in a premise that there isn’t enough sympathy to go around, and therefore less of it should be given to unworthy objects.
I think high status people can make that one stick, but getting more sympathy is more likely among equals if a “sympathy is easy and good” atmosphere is promoted.
Even if this is true, making it useful would be a non-trivial task.
[1] I have some concern for prejudice against fat men, too.
You’re right: sympathy, in terms of the emotion, is not zero sum, and I should not proceed in discussions and engage others on the basis that it is.
Still, what resources we expend because of our sympathy are limited, and so I don’t think you appreciated how good fat women have it relative to other worthy targets of sympathy. Short men, for example, don’t even have the option to save up for a safe operation that tallifies them, while fat women at least have the option of liposuction. (And, while we’re at it, they probably got dating experience effectively for free sometime in their lives, if you really want to count woes and blessings.)
In bringing up wide feet, I was also (albeit rudely) hoping to provide insight onto why people might be so indifferent to the plight of fat women. If you can roll your eyes at someone who has wide feet, then I think you can better appreciate why people would roll their eyes at the complaints of fat women, because the same dynamic is at play.
Again, my bringing up the matter was woefully off topic, and I can understand now why it was hard to see my point—someone actually wanting to contribute to the discussion wouldn’t see where it fits in. I apologize and deeply regret raising the issue.
I feel very bad—to the point of being sick—at having diverted the thread on a tangent in a way that upset posters, and I wish I hadn’t said anything beyond the comparison to the wide feet issue. Fortunately the thread is hidden by default
Still, even in my worst moments I never cease to be amazed at how others react.
I wish to draw your attention to two parallels you might have missed:
The non-troll you refer to only provoked a productive discussion in the first place because the non-troll’s dictates were ignored. Alicorn had previous told me (completely unjustifiably) not to reply . Had I actually followed this demand, there would be no productive discussion for you to defend in characterizing it as not trollish.
Making provocative remarks that you expect the target won’t be able to reply to … isn’t that what you were just criticizing me for?
Second, my remark and Alicorn’s are similar in that both make a ridiculous accusation of criminality—and trivialization as simply angry people—against a group simply because they criticize a practice. Yet only in one case do people see—do people want to see—why the accusation is absurd.
(By the way, how’d you find the original thread? Have help? I hope it wasn’t from someone who’s also presenting you with arguments I don’t even get to see, let alone reply to—that would be kind of petty.)
I appreciate your offer of help on wide shoes.
Thank you for taking all this seriously.
Something I noticed in going over this thread is that both you and I saw we were dumping hostility in each other’s general direction, and the other posters mostly didn’t.
In fact, what I did in ignoring the main point of your initial post was so subtle that I could hardly see it when I reread, even though I can remember how angry I was when I did it.
Weirdly, being emotionally involved in a quarrel led to more accurate perceptions rather than less.
I will note that other posters, to the extent that they noticed that I hadn’t replied to your point, made excuses for me. No one asked me what I had in mind.
It’s a embarrassing to admit what was actually in my mind, but the truth may be of some use. From my point of view, you’d just infuriated me by dismissing something I take seriously (prejudice against fat people [1]), and then seemed to expect me to take your concerns seriously. I wasn’t modeling you in any detail, I was just determined that you weren’t going to get what you wanted from me. I wasn’t thinking about how much you wanted it, or how you were likely to react.
Tentatively offered: Your angry posts here and in the discussion about women failing to give clear signals seem to me as though they’re based in a premise that there isn’t enough sympathy to go around, and therefore less of it should be given to unworthy objects.
I think high status people can make that one stick, but getting more sympathy is more likely among equals if a “sympathy is easy and good” atmosphere is promoted.
Even if this is true, making it useful would be a non-trivial task.
[1] I have some concern for prejudice against fat men, too.
You’re right: sympathy, in terms of the emotion, is not zero sum, and I should not proceed in discussions and engage others on the basis that it is.
Still, what resources we expend because of our sympathy are limited, and so I don’t think you appreciated how good fat women have it relative to other worthy targets of sympathy. Short men, for example, don’t even have the option to save up for a safe operation that tallifies them, while fat women at least have the option of liposuction. (And, while we’re at it, they probably got dating experience effectively for free sometime in their lives, if you really want to count woes and blessings.)
In bringing up wide feet, I was also (albeit rudely) hoping to provide insight onto why people might be so indifferent to the plight of fat women. If you can roll your eyes at someone who has wide feet, then I think you can better appreciate why people would roll their eyes at the complaints of fat women, because the same dynamic is at play.
Again, my bringing up the matter was woefully off topic, and I can understand now why it was hard to see my point—someone actually wanting to contribute to the discussion wouldn’t see where it fits in. I apologize and deeply regret raising the issue.
There are leg-lengthening procedures; this study showed a 4% rate of major complications, which doesn’t seem that unsafe.