Re: CHALLENGE FOR T.R. REGULARS

Daran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> On 17 Nov 2003 19:42:15 -0800 Ellen Mercer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
> message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> 


> >> > Good, a real post for once.
> >> 
> >> And, sadly, another disparaging response (the above sentence, that is,
> >> not the entire post) from you.  This is not the only 'real post' that's
> >> been made here.  It's not even the only real post replying to you.
> > 
> > Sure, perhaps it could have been stated more positively. My gut reaction
> > was "wow". Someone actually capable of mounting an entire post largely
> > devoid of bland, unthinking disparagement...
> 
> Largely?  In what way was my earlier post not *completely* devoid of bland,
> unthinking disparagement.

It is too bad that this discussion had to go downhill with this post.
It starts with your great sensitivity here- I've just praised you
substantially for a very good post, but you're harping on a single
word, "largely"- the slightest hint of imperfection- to find
differences. Later, as I will show, you start massively
"misintrepreting" me and go on to put many new words in my mouth. Why
do people so need to do such things, after one makes such an effort to
be reasonable.

> > I'm sure that you don't need to be told this, as the author of some
> > largely responsible posts such as the one you made before the one to which
> > I am now responding.
> 
> As far as I can see, the only objections you've raised to my second post,
> are the 'troll' remarks.  I don't agree they were irresponsible or
> disparaging, and I'll rebut that characterisation in due course, however,
> even supposing, arguendo, that you were correct, they are only a very small
> part of the post, which would make the entirety 'largely responsible' and my
> first post (to which you've raise no substantive objection) 'completely
> responsible'.  Your characterisation of the first as 'largely responsible'
> and the second as something presumably less than this would appear to be
> disparagement.

This is literally picking a fight out of nothing. Yes, I think that
"troll" as you've used it is disparaging, and also that it is
impossible for someone with even just 5 years of USENET experience to
be unaware of that fact. We had no substantial difference here, but
you've magnified it way out of proportion. But wait, it gets worse...


> > Fair enough- I was indeed getting ahead of myself. To address your
> > question, I don't believe that you've couched your question in unambiguous
> > terms: what exactly are the "two scenarios" that I'm asked to distinguish?
> > I'll take a guess, though I suspect I could be wrong:
> > 
> > How do I distinguish a purely-female TRIS from a TRIS that includes men.
> > [TRIS= t.r. Inner Sanctum]? Was that it?
> 
> In essence, yes, however with reference to the characterisation given above,
> seven indents in.  Specifically can you point to posts or threads in which
> men are 'not involved' and in which the women behave substantively
> differently from those in which men are involved?  And secondly, can you
> give a reason to support your hypothesis that the women are behaving this
> way *because* the men are not involved, rather than men choosing not to
> involve themselves in threads that are uninteresting to them.

I *never* said that women are behaving a particular way "because" men
are involved. Women, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise,
will often confide things among themselves more readily than they do
among men. I know because I, for one, have done it hundreds of times
as have my female friends. I can find subthreads among the core t.r.
female regulars that go on for some time discussing personal matters
with no male input obtained or sought.  This doesn't mean that they
deliberately excluded anyone. It means that only they were interested.

> > Answer: I don't believe I can. The early data certainly support this:
> > substantial subthreads can be detected that show exceptional (for the
> > groups that I have visited) levels of personal familiarity and TRW...
> 
> Talk.rape women? 

You can't have been on USENET for 5 years, IMO*, without knowing that
"TRW" is a common convention for "the real world".

*IMO, "in my opinion".

> > knowledge of one anothers' fears, concerns, and dreams. Nothing wrong with
> > that- I'm not disparaging it although I do think it to be ever so slightly
> > self-absorbed to post such messages rather than developing private means
> > of communications...
> 
> The phrase 'self-absorbed' sounds disparaging to me.  That aside, I can't
> parse your sentence.  'It' in the last clause appears to refer the word
> 'knowledge', but I don't see how 'knowledge' can be the (grammatical)
> subject here.

It is impossible to communicate meaningfully about behavior in TRW or
USENET without using terms that will offend *someone*. I know that you
know the difference between making basic observations and attacking
people personally. "Self absorbed" was the nicest way I could imagine
to convey what I feel about people occupying large tracks of USENET
threads with purely personal banter. Of course if you have some point
to make, trying to 'prove' that your side is right and the other
wrong, all of this explanation is wasted on you.

> > ...I don't personally have enough time to read through all of the posts on
> > t.r. and would prefer to spend less time entering into the midst of
> > personal slur-fests or personal love-fests, and more time discovering
> > fascinating topics of debate. That is my preferance, YMMV.
> 
> You are free to read, or not read, engage, or refrain from engaging in
> whatever you like.

Again, I must refer to my extensive USENET experience here. More than
once I was on a ng that became competely useless because of massive
numbers of posts that appeared that were comprised of, variously,
anonymous racist rants, antisemitic spam, or vile insults of another
poster that obviously made it impossibly inconvenient for me or others
to use the ng. I ended up unsubscribing. In this case, I've stumbled
repeatedly onto threads that kept me occupied for several minutes
going through back and forth personal slurs, only to stumble onto long
tracks of personal conversation. (No, I am in no way saying this is
t.r.-specific). I just think that if you truly are interested in
conveying private data among a few people, you can indeed use email.

> > However, I notice that almost all of these subthreads involve female names
> > either exclusively or nearly so. And this is no surprise: in TRW, females
> > are vastly more likely to enter into such intense interpersonal
> > relationships with one another, with such breezy discussion of personal
> > material such as family issues, recipes and medical concerns than are men.
> > I don't think that it is a radical or offensive to notice this fact out
> > loud.
> 
> Now, at last, you've made a substantive statement of your hypothesis,
> amenable to support or rebuttal on the basis of evidence, (though I note you
> haven't actually adduced any).  Firstly I'd distinguish between 'small-talk'
> - recipes, hairdos, shopping, minor medical and family issues, etc., and
> 'large-talk' - rape, serious illness and major family problems, etc.  I
> don't think it any great surprise that men, in general aren't interested in
> the same small-talk as women, and so will tend to exclude themselves from
> the latter's, just as the women tend to drop out when we men start talking
> about computer hardware and quantum physics.  But there's no evidence that
> women are deliberately excluding men.

I think this is incredibly condescending to women. I aced physics in a
very competitivem major university that has boasted numerous Nobel
prizewinners- no man in my class was within 20 percentage points of me
in p-chem. Please, spare me your beliefs regarding male superiority in
physical sciences.

> With regard to the big issues, one way women *could* attempt to exclude men,
> would be to bury these disclosures deep in a subthread, preferably after a
> lengthy discussion about hairdos.  I've not noticed this, but then, I'm a
> man, so I probably don't read those threads.  However, even if there was no
> deliberate exclusion of men, random topic-drift could turn a subthread about
> hairdos into one about cancer.  Therefore the existence of such a pattern
> would not be dispositive.

Are you for real? I *guarantee* that I can run circles around you in
what I know about cancer. *Guarantee*. I know many women who are quite
the experts on cancer- one of my close female friends, for example,
directs a major cancer center out west. PLEASE take your condescension
elsewhere.


> You've excluded our start-outs with Sky from your evidential admission zone,
> so I don't see why yours should be included.  Certainly our (yours and mine)
> engagement started with you disparaging me.  Specifically: your
> characterisation of male t.r regulars as sycophantic.  I've been here nearly
> five years.  That's longer than anybody else currently posting apart from JJ
> and Laurie, and I'm as 'regular' and 'inside' as anyone, so your TRISS must
> include me.

This is absurd. I *never*, not even once called you a sycophant, nor
did I ever generically say that "male t.r. regulars are sycophants".
Nor did I say that you were part of the TRISS. I actually was not even
counting you- I didn't even know you existed til this weekend. Prove I
called you a sycophant or shut up about it! This is really going
downhill fast.

> If I were to apply Sky's stated position on this, I would be perfectly
> entitled to respond to any random post by you, with 'bitch', 'dyke',
> 'whore', 'goat-fucker' or any other of the various unlovely epithets he's
> come out with over the years, and this would be just 'responding to
> denigration'.  I suspect however, that you'd see it as an unprovoked abuse
> by a member of the TRISS.

I've made it very clear throughout that I don't agree with Sky's
specific approaches to fighting back. Contrary to your claims, I've
never "teamed with" Sky either. That is your imagination. What I won't
do is take abuse from someone then join in when they invite me to dump
on a third party who never attacked me.

> > ...although I've become aware of one person who felt so disparaged (and I
> > haven't tried to find that particular thread to investigate it, but I can
> > say that it is vanishingly uncommon for me to start out de novo by
> > slamming someone).
> 
> You started, de novo, by slamming me as a sycophant.  I can verify that
> we've never spoken to each other before that.

STOP LYING. Prove I called you a sycophant! Never happened.

> > ...The "sycophants" concept arose because of the immediate and openly
> > hostile way that these individuals rose to join the pack of pile-on TRIS
> > core members in slinging petty ad homs at me (and others), coupled with
> > the scant evidence that the sycophants actually gained any real acceptance
> > from the TRIS through their angry offensive in protection of the alpha
> > females.
> 
> You've identified Cele, in particular, as one of those who attacked you, yet
> all I've seen is unprovoked attacks by you upon her.  If she really is this
> nasty, why aren't I seeing it in real time?

It is not my fault that you haven't read her posts to me. I gave Cele
a quote she made when she demanded to see the evidence that she'd
disparage me. Took me about 10 seconds to find it. See my response to
her from yesterday for an exemplary quote.

> More generally, you continue to paint a picture of the group which is
> unrecognisable to me.  It's obvious that a few people have reacted with
> extreme hostility to you, but I don't recall seeing any attacks on or
> disparagement of you from Ann, Baba, Cele, Laurie, Alan, or JJ, and I'm
> certainly not attacking or disparaging you.
> 
> > Could be wrong. But that is what the data showed that led to the TRISS
> > concept. Little new data have emerged to change the formula thus far, but
> > the whole hypothesis could be trashed quickly with convincing new data.
> 
> What the data so far shows is you invariably reject any and all data we
> offer.


> Correct, and remarkably close to my own rebuttal of the 'unfalsifiable'
> argument of the creationists.  However, my claim was never that your
> hypothesis *as it exists in your mind* was unfalsifiable.  For all I know it
> could be a hard theory replete with testable predictions.  But *as expounded
> in the group* (or at least, in those posts of yours I've read), it was
> (until the post to which I am now replying) just a vague slur with nothing
> substantial to subject to test.  In this last post, you firmed it up
> somewhat, and I've been able to identify a falsifiable prediction which is
> indeed falsified.

You don't falsify things by blandly asserting that you have as fact.
In fact, you haven't falsified anything at all. You are just blowing
smoke.
> 
> 
> Not meaningless, and not a personal attack.  I agree with Sky that 'troll'
> is rather overused, and has several meanings.  The one intended here, (which
> I would have thought obvious from context) is the original.  A troll is a
> post, or serious of posts, intended to elicit predictable responses, in
> other words a deliberate provocation.  By extension, a troll is the poster
> of such.

I do post items that are of interest to people, and yes, I don't post
things that I have good reason to believe will be too uninteresting to
elicit any responses. "Troll" is just disparagement and wholly
inappropriate. You're wasting your breath- I have plenty enough self
insight to know that I'm not a "troll". Don't waste your time.

> Unlike 'sycophant', for which there are neutral alternatives (for example
> 'aspirant'), there really is no alternative to 'troll' which carries that
> meaning, so while it has negative connotations (as it should, since it's a
> negative thing to be doing), I don't agree that it's *gratuitously*
> insulting.

I regard "sycophant" as the best descriptor for what I saw. "Aspirant"
is not as precise a descriptor. If you're not a sycophant, you should
be able to mentally take yourself out of that category. If you suspect
that you *are* a sycophant, then maybe you are indeed. I hadn't for
one minute regarded you as a sycophant until you raised doubts as to
whether you might be one in this post. Now I am starting to wonder if
you are a sycophant, since you seem to be self-declaring that you are.

> But even if it was, I'm no more insulting you by using another person's
> disparaging nomenclature in a *discussion* about their theory, than I am
> insulting t.r. regulars by using yours.  I'm not calling you a troll.  I
> just want to discuss the hypothesis that you're deliberately provoking this
> entire affair.

You can think that all you want, since you haven't troubled yourself
to learn what the evidence shows. Ignorance gives you that privilege;
it is only when your mind is contaminated with actual knowledge that
you end up rejecting that conclusion. It is all up to you.
> 
> > I've mentioned the tendency of a central core of female posters to share
> > intimate personal data with one another openly on USENET.
> 
> Rebutted above.  Both Ann and Laurie (and historically Cele) have gone to
> considerable effort to alert everyone when sharing intimate personal data.

That is a total nonsequitor. And not even true at that, I have
stumbled into private conversations that went on for 10 or more posts
(possibly MUCH more, I left quickly) that were right in the midst of a
thread on another subject entirely.

> > Another tendency is to come to one anothers' spirited defense even when
> > their friend is wholly and clearly out of line...
> 
> I think Heather was clearly out of line with respect to her 'kill yourself
> post'.  I haven't seen anyone defending what she *said*.  Also shouldn't the
> sycophants be doing the same?  Yet both Neil and I both criticised her,
> nobody (other than her) has attacked or criticised me for saying what I said
> (though Laurie and Neil to a degree disagreed with it), and Neil has come to
> *my* spirited defense.

Where WAS this stuff in the thread in question? Nowhere that I looked,
and I followed it to the end. It is not as if I wouldn't have
remembered.

> > ...Another is the clear an unhesitant acceptance they show for one
> > another, a cozy and unqualified acceptance that is simply not shared with
> > TRISS or outsiders...
> 
> Can you be more specific?

Please read back to my first interactions with Heather and the pile-on
events from TRIS that followed. There are others

> > ...There, I've given you three markers...
> 
> Two of them rebutted with reference to specific events within your field of
> vision, the third too vague to respond to.

You simply can't "rebut" things by just saying they aren't so. Where
do you get the idea that you know my experiences here better than I?
Don't you think that is just a little presumptuous, kind of like
telling me that I won't understand nuclear physics or cancer like you
brilliant men?

> I think I'm a reasonable person, amenable to new ideas, but I'm sorry, I
> draw the line at hypotheses whose proponent offers no supporting evidence,
> refuses to look at conflicting data, and demands that I switch off my own
> memory of the events and circumstances in question!

You've already admitted that you have no "memory" of the events- you
never even read the relevant threads! Your argument revolves around
stuff that happened weeks later.

> 
> Cele has already posted a lengthy rebuttal.  I'll confine myself to asking
> what you mean by real-time?  Posts made in the last five minutes?  Posts
> made since you been here?  Posts which you've seen?  If the latter, then
> it's a completely subjective dataset.  Why not posts which I've seen, which
> include several personal attacks by you on Cele, and none whatsoever by her
> on you!?

I can only know about threads that I have myself read. I do not, like
you, have the ability to know the content of threads that I've never
read. That skill appears to be unique to you. Hats off.
> 
> Even if we say it's posts made since you've been here, the start point is
> still subjective.  Why not just posts since this weekend, when I've been
> able to give the group some attention?  If Cele abused you last week (which
> I doubt) and you abuse her this week, is it an unprovoked attack, as I see
> it, or responding in kind?

You "doubt" that which you don't know. That is the perogative afforded
to those who have made sure that they've retained their ignorance of
what has been happening before you joined in as a weekend warrior. It
doesn't mean that I, someone who was here and actually read the
relevant posts, must accept your judgement-based-on-ignorance.
> [...]
> 

> 
> I recognise the dynamic.  We're somewhat outnumbered here ourselves in the
> crossposts from soc.men.  In addition, it should be fairly clear that it
> takes a considerable amount of time to write a lengthy, well-argued post in
> defense of a reasoned position.  In the same time, one could toss off twenty
> or thirty two-line rebuttals, basically amounting to 'You're wrong.  I
> win.', which is typical of the discourse from many soc.men posters,
> including Sky, who came here from there.

> What I do not recognise, is that this dynamic characterises t.r insiders in
> general.  I simply don't believe the events you describe happened the way
> you describe them.  Let me tell you the way I think it happened, based upon
> the posts I've seen, in particular, the exchanges between us.

Please, you are beating the "knowledge through ignorance" thing to
death. I think you've already embarassed yourself enough.

(snip).


________________________________
"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest thing. A man who had nothing
which he cares about more than his own personal safety is a miserable
creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by
the exertions of better men than himself."

-John Stuart Mill

>