If the only constant is change, how can it be that changes remain constant? The world would have to cease chaging to avoid violalting itself, yet if it were to change would no longer be constant. It is a contrdictory aphorism.

A world of constant change depends upon a constant absence of change. Changes must stay. There must be a instance which is a constant unchanging.

Metaphysics trying to describe gender or sex by talking about something else are doomed to failure. If you are trying to find gender or sex be the fact someone has a particularly body part or behaves in certain way, it will always fail because you aren't talking about the existence of a person's gender. You're just describing the presence of another kind of fact.

The description of gender or sex you are tying to give just because an ad hoc just so story about a person-- e.g. "Well, this person a penis, so must be a man..."-- which doesn't engage with describing a fact of sex or gender itself.

You identify as heterosexual because you are heterosexual and recognise it. Plenty of people are attracted to the opposite sex and have a penis, but are not heterosexual. Those two properties don't define one as heterosexual.

One cannot be heterosexual just because they have a penis and are attracted to the opposite sex. There are many sexual orientations a person with attraction to the opposite and a penis might take. It's even possible they might have none (e.g. a person who falls outside of categorising their sexual attraction under an orientation).

There's perfectly a coherent metaphysics of sex, gender or sexual orientation. People just have to realise they aren't talking about the fact a penis exists. Or that any instance of anatomy exist. Or the fact of someone being attracted to the opposite sex. That sex, gender or sexual orientation is it's own fact about a person itself. A truth not given by properties (e.g. "I'm a man because I have a penis"), but rather one given in itself (e.g. "I am a man") which occurs alongside their properties (whatever those might be, be they a penis or a vagina, burly or scrawny, short hair or long, etc.)

I'm inclined to say that means you don't really see me.

When presented with my singular difference, you seem to want to insist you don't I exist unless I met some standard of properties, unless I'm able to tell you everything I am at the moment or how I am constrained.

You do truly know me, but you're unwilling to accept that you do, for it is not enough. Willow vanishes because you need me to be more than just Willow to qualify for existence. To just know my difference, is not enough for you. You want me to be funny. Or smart. Or insightful. Or something. For me to just be is not enough for you.

Perhaps then, that is why the paradox is so intractable to many. They want others to be something more to them than just a singular they exist with. Sometimes, this is great and necessary of course-- relationships, teachers, ideas, ethics, etc.-- but it seems to easily spill over into a demand people can only exist if they are this something more.

Ah but that is the reverse mirage formed on trying to find other in properties: we already know our singular selves in that situation. Who are you asking the question about if you don't know this?

I'm telling a falsehood and your question is asking for what you already know.

I have floated/I am out endlessly, which you have recognised is asking a question about who I am. What endlessly floats out is the opposite of unrecognisable, you already know it perfectly.

I'm not sure I've ever seen csalisbury speak proverbial English, poetic flourish has been his demeanour for as long as I can remember.

My feeling is he's going for a certain sense that would be lost in technical outlay.

The English version of what I just said might be:

Things are present on account of themselves. Until we reorganise this, we'll endlessly be rejecting the existence of things and be incapable of describing the metaphysical relation. We'll be stuck thinking everything is something else (a given "property" which supposedly make a thing).

To being this back around to the topic, this is why the wonder cannot identify the metaphysics of sex and gender. If we are describing the presence of something with a sex or gender, we are referring to a specific existing person.

So if I try to take the route of defining sex on the basis of the property of a certain kind of body, my metaphysics will fail. My movement is try to say that this person is present as they are (e.g. someone with the sex of male) on account of something which isn't them at all, just the property of having a bodily characteristic (e.g. penis, which might be found on all sorts off people). I've left the person I'm trying to describe out entirely.

We're always floating in the aether.

Whether we manage to find ourselves there or not, each of us is one floating around others. Identity is always singular and never constrained. The contradiction is to think the accidental was ever given by a property.

If you were not floating in aether, if you were the constraint of something else (not you ), you would not exist at all. There would just be a dick. Or a vagina. Or some short hair. Or a dress hanging on a body.

At least that would be the mirage. Till the question of who or what they were was asked, then they would be discovered to be floating in the aether themselves. They would be realised as accidental singulars, given by no property of constraint. Or else themselves become a mirage of the world of no dicks, vaginas, shot hair or bodies wearing dresses.

So the cycle will repeat endlessly, until one is comfortable recognising singular difference.

I have yet to hear or read an explanation by anyone that maps out the metaphysics of transgenderism.
What is a "true woman"?
What does it mean to "feel" like one?
What about you can be "in the wrong body"? — thewonder

The tricky thing is there isn't an answer to these question. Gender it always a question of the particular identity itself. It has no standard for when it appears or not.

Take the example of being "in the wrong body." There is no reason or constraint for this to amount to a transition in gender. To someone is might appear appear in purely biological terms. We might have, for example, a man who felt a body of a vagina and breast. He might have no identity or identification as a woman. Describing himself, he might say: "I am a man. I've always been a man. My body just feels like/ought to be one of breasts and a vagina."

For the instance of the "wrong body" to amount to a transition of gender, there has to be a certain kind of identity truth present itself. The body must come in tandem with a particular truth of identity itself, a fact that this particular instance of the body is a certain gender.

Using the usual concepts of gender, the metaphysics are impossible to grasp because they don't really talk about them. Everyday notions of gender just view gender as an act of following a rule. They don't give truth to gender itself.

The answer to this one is a bit complex. There a many layers. One level is a personal identity, how someone understands how they belong, similar to people understanding the belong to a gender son account of a particular trait the posses. Someone thinking they are a man because they have a penis is one example.

Another is the confusion or doubt people have about being accepted. Under social pressure of needing to be something to belong, people will play out certain behaviours. They’ll pretend, even to themselves, they need to as or have something to feel like they belong in terms of others.

Others might just knowing feel falsehoods in pubic to fit in, just to avoid the tension or drama or violence other would subject upon them for breaking their gender expectations. Even if you know a gender role is bullshit and it has no place win your identity, it’s sometimes easier or safer just to play along, to get others to recognise a gendered belonging. One may not care for long hair and dresses, but that might be one of the only way to get other people too read them as a woman.

In terms of the question you appear to be going for, it does becomes a cultural thing for some. Dressing and presenting up as “feminine” as possible. This kind of culture has the same kind of problem did does amongst cisgender roles. Cis gender roles get in trouble for insisting someone only come in the particular shapes, such roles within trans culture have the some problem of ignoring the existing of women who fall outside those standards. Just like a cis gender role claiming the absurdity that a woman with short hair and pants is not women/less of a woman, the trans version ignores woman come in al shapes and sizes.

So it foes happen, but it is not good. It is not the reason (even amongst trans women who perform those roles) a trans woman is a woman. It can never be the point because such gender roles only amount to following a rule other insist upon you. They aren’t descriptions of a gender itself. Just like cis gender roles, some may think they have to perform certain behaviours or characteristics to belong to to a gender, but it's really just a violence of a social hierarchy.

I already did in my previous post. A social state of privilege or oppression is falsifiable. We make observation of whether it exists on society or not. You could pick any such instance or claim. It's a relation of existing society. We observe in society to test whether it is present.

Remember, we aren't talking giving some kind of reason as to why a specific causal event occurs, but rather describing the existence of particular social condition. As such, we aren't asking how, for example, one group came to be disadvatged is a certain way or not, but rather making the observation that they are in the given social context. (with respect to specific causes, there are many and varied, but none of them the specfic fact we are talking about here. Just as the cause of a tree growing or not is distinct from giving a description of whether a tree is present).

I wasn't saying about physical identifying attributes. My point was that a person, in how they exist within a social context, a material state of the world. That's to say, they are present in certain relations in a given society. The material state(s?) in question here aren't a particular feature of a person we might cite as a cause of some circumstance or another, it's the fact of a person existing in a given society.

"Interpretative relevance" means nothing here. These aren't questions of merely taking the world a certain way or not, having some sort of whim about what people mean.The existing people and society from a objective relation.

Regardless of whether we think about or accept it, it is true that black communities have, for example, been subject to economic disadvantage. The underlying people we are talking about have been affected by many things, often by polices which systematically affect their communities, which form a material social relation. A relation which exists even if we want to take the step on longer using racial concepts or posing them as a reason for anything.

In other words, it's not a question of judging anyone in term of their race. The point of these descriptions is not to judge the character of anyone based on their race, it's to describe the material condition of society relation to people. White privilege is not to say any given white person is terrible. It's only a description of a material feature of society people find themselves in.

"White privilege" does often get deployed accusations of character of white people, but that's on account white people denying or ignoring issues of racism within the material condition of society. The privileged have a tendency to ignore of dismiss the concern of the oppressed-- e.g. the poor white person who insists there cannot be white privilege because of their one terrible circumstances and forms defence of white supremacist identity.

But to be born into an advantage of white (or any other kind) privilege isn't a judgement of character. People just get confused because of how privilege gets raised when they are trying to defend oppressive identities, traditions and social structures (which is why their character is judged to be poor).

We don't even have to go that far. The individual exists within an environment which affects them. From the point of an individualist, one needs to consider what effects are happening in the enviroment or collective. Individuals and their successes never occurs without it.

Indeed, we are properly speaking about individualists here. Those who align themselves against society using people in terms of race, gender, economics etc., are deeply indvidualist in they want to deny society misuse or mistreatment of a person for it's goals. The core of these movements is well-being of an individual. (contrast to collectivist accounts which these sort of exploitation is fine if it creates a social order).

The indvidual is the goal of group identifaction. We use it to form an undstanding of who someone is and how they belong. It sets up who an indivdual is to us and our society.

So it is true social catergories like race, gender, sex, economic value, family, our names, are created. We add them, use them, for our specifcally social purposes.

But this doesn't mean they don't exist or mean something. People exist as different individuals. When people encounter each other or not, they take on signifcance or not. If a child, for example, is named, then it can be tlaked abour and related to. We can form ideas about who this person is, how society relates to them or not.

To know the differance of Willow, for example, means being able to identify I am one society needs to feed. Or being able to identify me as a threat who must starve, so a food store lasts longer.

To fail to know Willow puts me outside society's grasp
If people don't have e concept or category for me, then I cannot be related to. People cannot work together to benefit my individual ( "feed Willow" ) or specifically prevent it ( "never feed that monster Willow" ).

The problem with trying to ignore race it was specifcally formed to relate ro real existing people. In the same way a name is our connection to how an indviudal is part of our society, so is race. It became our way of relating to many different people. Our society named us with races organise us as the different people who exist.

Those diffrenecs don't go away just because we wake up one day and decide never to mention race. Not only to we have the problem of people still relating in racial terms without saying so, but there is the wider issue of our society. The way it has related to existing people is still presence. Dispossession or exclusion of these different people doesn' or go away just because we eliminate a category of race from our thoughts.

After all, those effects happened or are on the underlying person and how they exist within our society. Put another way, to speak about "racial injustices" is not to talk about our thoughts or intentions, but of material conditions of someone in society, conditions which are present whether we chooe to call them racism or not.

People have been doing it from the start. That's how they identity any instance of privilege as opposed to not. From observation of society and culture, they note how people are treated, what is expected of them, how culture understands and related to them. It's how we conclude the poor man does not have wealth privilege. We observe he lacks the wealth and any opportunity or advantages that would bring.

By obsevation of the individual in social conditions, we falsify the poor man has wealth privilege.

It also not even true. Privilege is falsifiable by the social conditions. There is a existing/empirical reason some people are identified as having privilege or not, based on the observed social conditions.

Accusations of unfasifablity are failing to engage on the level of a definition. Like if we were trying to discuss trees, only for someone to insist claims about trees were unfalsfiable because nothing we observed was a tree.

Terripan is missing we have to have an understand of states we observe before we can identify what claims are falsified ( states of social relations like privilege included).

Depends, to a lot of the people you are talking about, sex is also a social construct because it is our understanding of where someone belongs in certain categories we use, rather than the presence of a biological state or body.

But that's a whole other topic you might not want to get into here. (though, it is pretty easy to relate to identity politics and it's supposed "rise"-- all politics is identity politics, it's not new. The point of a political organization is to gather around some type of representation of a social body that is unique, a sort of world presence to be recognised and handled a certain way).

We aren't talking about Marxism, but aspects of social studies which Peterson labels "neo-marxist." I don't know what you take Marxism to be here, but the problem isn't Peterson's suggestion wouldn't follow a narrative we told about society, it's that it will would mean gutting the studies in question of their description of material social states and relations.

Those are not seperate. Remove the "neomarxist" aspects of those studies and one fails to teach objective truths about the topic, society, its people and their relations. It would be like studying the weather without examaning the temperature, clouds or wind patterns

The difference at play is between giving some kind of justification, which is held to demonstrate some sort of fact over and above just and intuition, compared to be justified in a position you hold because that's how the world is.

For the latter, an intutition is enough. I can look at my watch and immediately know the given time. Any so called "proof" is not required for the sight of the clock face to generate my understanding of the present time.

We often see justified beliefs which are false in the former case. Since the justification standard is no longer based on describing what is true, but delivering some other related fact, it cannot capture when the two diverge.

By are justification standards, the sun will rise tomorrow. We have the evidence for that expectation.

It isn't necessary though. The sun might suddenly behave differently, our means of justification disconnecting from what is true in the world. Since the justification isn't description of the truth in question, we can end up being justfied under our standard, but only assert a falsehood (and fail to know the point we are interested in).

1. They can recognise why/we can teach them why. Holding there are ideas we ought not hold, or even forbidding someone from following, doesn't mean we know nothing about them. The naive 17 year old can understand why. Children learn a whole lot of stuff and why its bad before they are 17. We don't encounter and follow ideas as blank slates.

2. Most won't. People don't go following something just because it's banned or suppressed.

Do we have to consider actually being an Islamic Extremist understand why it's unethical and we want our society to avoid it?

We don't have to consider actually following an idea or holding a value to understand its not worth considering.

All the time, we recognise these instances. We teach it to people too. How is a 17 year old supposed to learn? They recognise/we teach them about fascism and how it's not worthwhile. We don't need to respect fascism and its values as a legitimate option to so this.

You misunderstand my use of "don't treat with respect"

I don't mean in the sense of people just being there opposing someone. I mean that society takes the values and ideas in question not to be worthy of consideration as a direction for society. Like how the liberal treats any opposition to "free speech." Or how we treat totalitarianism. Or how we might treat someone saying the Earth was flat, in the context of describing the shape of the world.

It's not a world in which everyone is supposedly given their worldview by some kind of edict, just the basic recognition some ideas are unethical and false, not even worth considering an account of society or as a possible course of action.

I think that's an absurd reading because those opposing Shaprio know exactly what they want in the situation: a lack of platform for Shaprio/a society which doesn't treat his accounts of society and ethics as respectful.

In the wide sense, these people aren't revolutionaries either. In the sense you are using, they are trying to work with/within the current structure of power to alter one specific aspect of culture. They are, in the usual sense of the dichotomy, just reformists.

I still have a response to your earlier in the works, but I should leave a comment on this one.

In terms of a response to the colonisation of many parts of the world, it's hardly an absurd analysis to suggest they should not of come. At least with respect to how they arrived and treated indigenous populations.

Anyone from the many destroyed groups and cultures would have good reason to suggest colonisers ought to have stayed away. In our analysis of past events, we should be able to see this too. Are we to make a habit walking into the homes of others, taking there stuff, enslaving them, etc.?

In these circumstances, it's not absurd to think someone ought to of come. We would say that of anyone who was to do these things or make an attempt in our home.

It's that supposed difference which is the problem. By the measure of the content of their postion, that conservativism is a problem. They, in many respects, reject the valuing of particular groups. One doesn't need to be a nazi, alt right or an intentionally bigoted monster to devalue and hold oneself superior monster.

To be an ordinary conservative, for example, who thinks having a penis means your a man and a vagina means your a women, constitutes a devaluing and oppression of trans people.

In a critical way, these positions are not different to the nazis, alt right or the intentional monsters people like to imagine. Like them, this value and politics form a culture we have an ethical obligation to avoid. By moral terms (that is, whether our society ought to hold them), these are equal to the monsterous forms of oppression people like to imagine.

One doesn't need to demanding slavery for or attempting to genocide a group to have a culture which devalues or oppresses them. Plenty of that happens in the values and expectations a lot of people consider "ordinary." These don't make one or their values better than the alley stalking, nazi monsters people like to imagine.

It worse that that: every single victory was won by attacking what seems to be counted as "free speech."

Each time we make a change of policy or culture, the very idea of the former is discarded. Not in the "Let's respect each other's differing opinion" either, but in the substantial "Our society ought not do this. This idea is not respectable or worth considering", such that the latter then holds dominance in culture.

The centerist assumption of the neutral postion which is settled by an exchange of respectful veiws is a myth. It gets nothing of the politcal picture correct.

The consequence is giving free reign to abhorrent politics. It's a society which is unable to take falsehood and immorality of certain politics and values as a problem.

A world in which no idea or value can be catergorised as one we ought to avoid. Where every pointed remark about how a politics, value or idea devalues someone is deflected under the guise of an alternative option worth respecting as a possible way of running society.

A world in which, for example, the liberal proclaims we force them to defend Ben Shapiro, in our suggestion Shapiro proposes false and abhorrent accounts of various people, which ought not be respected as a description of people or how we ought to run society.

The reverse is actually kind of true: his position on causality is metaphysical and has profound consequences for our accounts of how metaphysical principals relation to the world and our knowledable.

Hume account of causality more or less states our logic and ideas gave no power over the world. The world will do what it does no matter if we understand, it makes sense to us us or it breaks our beloved ideas if how the world must work.

In terms of our metaphysics this has severe consequences. Any form of essentialism is untenable. Possiblity must be taken to seperate from the actual, allowing basically anything to happen. We cannot pose any sort of eternal, omnipotent actor in tradition sense, since there might always be another who destroys them or could beat them.

I'm sure I could find a few more. In this respect, I would say Hume is absolutely a metaphysician because he's really dealing with logical relationships to our epistemology and the world.

We need to remember Hume is talking about the necessity of a cause. The problem here isn't a question of proving existence. We do that every time we encounter something. Each time we encounter a concurrence of events, we've observed/proven they existed together (as fast as that goes).

The necessity of a cause asks for more. It's not just a proof of existence, but a demonstration that a presence of one state can only lead to another.

In other words, it is not about what exists, but rather what doesn't exist . If I'm dealing with necessary causality, I'm trying to the presence of something resulted in something happening rather than not. My goal is to say every time this thing occurs, it will mean this other state MUST occur rather than not.

This is the impossibility, to have or show this necessary connection. Since any causal relationship is defined by its effect, none can be stated as necessary in terms of a cause. Any cause we might consider is caught without the existence to make it case.

Will I wake up tomorrow? The fact causes might exist doesn't tell me. It's not yet defined what those causes, if any, lead to. We cannot yet say whether my heart has caused me to live tomorrow or not. I might be alive (heart working as it is right now). Or I might be dead (heart stopped).

The nature of any cause has to wait for how I exist in the future. A necessity from cause alone is impossible.

Look at the Youtube videos featuring his "take-downs" of "the libtards". Look at the view numbers, the ratings, and the comments. It's not just his corporate-given ubiquity that makes him successful... — VagabondSpectre

All of which suggests a direct correlation to the sort of politics involved. What's inviting is a take down of these (supposedly) wrong and inaccurate ideas of the left/liberals. This would not seem to be merely "aesthetic" bringing in viewers, but be drawing on a present desire amongst viewers to see the left/liberal understanding of society and its problems taken down.-- i.e. it's part of the white supremacist positions or sympathies already present in our culture.

You missed option 4:

There is an underlying catergory error taking that a change in the world involves a change in meanings or abstracted ideas.

In this instance, the nominalist has a position which obtains: all events of time are change (moments of existence), while every meaning is its own and the same regardless of point in time ( which is, in turn, how change is coherently defined, since being a change, every moment must stand as it own unique meanging ).

While I'm complaining about the way people are engaging with these issues, another thing which really annoys me: the supposed splintering of communities upon the steadfast political positions people hold.

The form of media is almost largely responsible for that. The pool of people we can commute with is far larger because we can just shoot messages over the net, rather than talking to people who live near us and having to make do. Echo chambers are an inevitable result of a diverse media landscape, combined with our ability to self select our community. Most of us aren't going to want to spend time talking with the we find politically unpleasant, when we could just select a group of people who share our interests (including politics).

Modern broadcast media also enables this because it splits up into ideological entertainment. Not only can well select our own groups, but the media does for us too. It specifically puts us in the mode of thinking in terms of a constant beat down of political teams (see all the guff of "balanced" punditry) often a far cry from genuine engagement with political or social issues. People will move to media which argues for their views, if it is available, especially if the supposedly serious media is treating everything like a game of "debate" and "balanced" opinions.

In terms of political opposition, our ideas are no less opposed than sixties or seventies, for example. The feminists, civil rights activists, LGBT+ activists, etc., were no less definite in calling out the ideas and politics of that time as something that needed to be abandoned.The all-compassing opposition ( "going for the throat" in terms of ideas and values) of politics isn't new. People just mistake it for a new phenomena because they haven't been paying attention what the politics concerned about.

I want to reframe this discussion somewhat because you a missing a key element: its the values and ideas which are the problem. They are the threat and opposition.

Scruton trying to teach us woman are just objects for their husband, Pagila suggesting someone could only have been raped if it was reported within a certain time period, Jones, well, being Jones. In any of these cases, the problem is how they understand the world and others, such that it is devaluing them and producing a culture which will harm them.

We cannot approach or rebuke them without going for the throat. In any case, Nothing of these positions can be taken. There is nothing to agree or comprise on. These values and ideas constitute an immoral understanding of others. They tell falsehoods about people, they form to abusive cultures about people. To be sexist, etc. occurs within our ideas themselves, not just in our other actions or intentions towards others.

When we talk about oppression, devaluing, dismissal, etc. we are speaking about an objective social relation. A whole set of relations of how people understand each other and are affected within a social context. In exactly the same way that, for example, believing the Earth is flat is both a factual and ethical problem for those trying to describe the Earth, these ideas are a problem for the formation of diverse (i.e. a society in which people of different racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality, etc. groups are respected as equal) and ethical society.

Everyone is in the same position as any scientist when it comes to talking about this need. We can’t avoid telling of the particular truth in question and how positions which reject it are gravely mistaken. No-one cannot get up and say: “Well, Pagilia didn’t really do anything wrong. What she did is not really a problem because X,Y, Z…” It’s an objective fact her comments, regardless of anything else she might have said or intended, devalue rape victims and suggest the falsehood that elapsed time/not reporting to the police is a good reasons to dismiss an account of rape.

Many people trying to take a “centre” position don’t seem to understand this about the political discourses in question. They keep supposing agreement between political sides is the goal. But it was never the goal.

Indeed, the exact opposite is true: the whole problem is ideas integral to these politics violate ethics and objective description of society. We need to abandon them.


Now don’t get me wrong, none of the above means there are no issues with responses. Someone having unethical ideas or even being some kind of political threat doesn’t mean we get kill them, lock them up or even get to deny them a platform in certain ways. If we were, for example, deplatforming anyone with those ideas, there is no way the Republicatian Party in the US could put on a proper campaign. There are many ways we might take issue with our response to unethical ideas.

In a capitalist society, for example, having a job is critical to people’s lives. Should we fire someone just for having an unethical idea or falsehood? Maybe in certain contexts, such as leader, teachers of ethics, representatives of ethical organisations, when people continue to be disrespectful or abusive towards staff, customers, etc., but it’s extremely dubious just in terms of an idea.

Trouble is that opponents hardly talk ever in these terms. They don’t go, “Yes, they were sexist then, but our response shouldn’t be this because XYZ.” In almost every case, the opposition move is to deny the objective social and ethical observation made about the position— just as you did in our discussion about Scruton— rather than take issue with how people respond to it.

I see that as, at least at this stage, a false problem. Knowledgable users, most of all, want knowledable users they can have discussions with. Giving them a secluded area is meaningless without having the community they to talk with in the first place.

In many cases, we might find the secluded area isn't necessary because presence of knowledgeable users raises discussion quality enough for them to be content.

It's really the user base which matters. Any policy to assist them needs them first. I'd get that to a critical mass before thinking about whether anything was required to restrain annoying newbies.

I would speculate sometimes, I did see an interuption the other day, but it was by someone with some background in texts.

Overall, I do think the forum often has problems staying topic. I could imagine a lot of posters could get annoyed by others taking their topic off in some direction outside its interests. Most topics are pretty general though, so I figure it might be rarer than it might appear.

I think tougher moderation would be a better fix for that one than a secluded area. It would actually demand something of distracting posters. But I think that would change the tone of the forum significant, to a point where we might lose a number of members angry they cannot give their opinion because it's judged off topic or low quality. Also, it would mean much more work and stress for the mods.

I have some experience with this context. In a time in which I wasn't as busy, I was on staff of a philosophy Discord. We did have a seperate section for we people identified as knowledgable or just posted who were interested in taking philosophy seriously. Let me go through why I don't think it would work here.

The split worked very well for our Discord. Often, we would have people without knowledge, or enthusiasm which exceeded their experience, clogging up our chat. Since our interface was real time, this became a critical issue.

Discussion of the newcomer's claims or questions would dominate. We would have other newcomer's trying to engage with inadequate commentary. Or any other conversation would become lost as staff or a knowledable person tried to help the newcomer or correct their mistakes. Other discussion would get lost. Pretty difficult for the knowledge members who wanted to have a lesiurely chat about a topic they new well.

So we made a specific room for knowledgable people to chat in, without having to deal with the distraction of novice questions or errors. It worked well for handling the real time traffic.

But it wasn't all fantastic. In creating a split, we codified a hierarchical difference between those who have been granted access or not. It excentuated feelings of which posters knew more and which were laughably ignorant. Overall, I would judge it successful in our environment, but it brought disadvantages one might be wary about.

In the case of this forum, I only see the disadvantages winning out. Since this is not a real time environment, there is no need to immediately control discussion traffic to allow the users to have their conversation. Each topic has its own, slow moving, dedicated area. The major advantage of giving knowledge posters a clubhouse isn't here.

To my mind this only leaves disadvantages. Not only do you codify the hierarchy of users, but in the slower format, it may seriously harm less knowledge users. If every knowledge posters is off talking with other well read posters in their culbhouse, they won't be around to help newcomer's as much. A forum doesn't have quick conversation and switching between channels like a real time internet chat.

Lastly, at least from an academic philosophy perspective, this forum just doesn't really have the user base to support an expert section. Of the regular posters active, the numbers of people with decent grounding in philosphical texts is countable on two hands. Maybe I just haven't seen some people because their topics haven't come up, but I suspect not.

Most on the forum, it seems to me, fit more on a line between pop philosophy and beginning to read texts. In terms of academic philosophy, it looks like the clubhouse would a limited group of 5-7 people just talking amongst themselves. (which they kind of already do in their focused threads anyway). It doesn't seem like it would improve forum quality.

That's exactly why we attack their ideas.

If we just stood by, for example, congratulating Scroton on his perfectly acceptable opinion women were disgusting for being more than a button for their husbands to push, we would have a culture which accepted the position. We would be teaching it was a fine way to think about women.

Instead, we do not. We say that it's a serious problem, and sexism, if one suggests a husband should consider his wife a disgusting bitch if she dare to be more than his object. Anyone, including Scroton, has not just a reason, but an obligation to change his position. A failure to change means telling a falsehood about women and holding an immoral, sexist position on what constitutes a relationship.

It is how view points change . We describe the new correct/moral postion and the failings of the mistaken/immoral one. If Scruton has changed his position, it's is on account of his idea being attacked, either from by others and then himself (e.g. others describe the error of his position and he agrees) or from himself (e.g. he describes the issues with his position).

But that's precisely the issue: harm on the basis of sex or to someone of a sex, it is not a comparative measure.

When sexism occurs, it affects a sexed individual. Acts or situations of sexism aren't a reason or intention something happens, they are a action, relation or postion with a harmful effects upon an individual. Sexism is not a reason, it is a material condition upon an individual.

No doubt it infurates people who think it's something else, but the point is they have an inadequate view. They are too busy worrying over whether someone said to be sexist, whether they wanted to intentionally use sex to make some kind of exclusion, to recoginse sexism is a social relation which affects individuals.

Yes, for the sexist impact here is upon the the individual.

The problem isn't a comparison of men and women, it's the devaluing of the personhood of an individual. If one is finding a women (or man) disgusting for not being an an object within one's control, since that is the social relation thewomen (or man) ought to be in, one is engaged in a sexist objectification. The disgust is present at the woman (or man) being a person who is more than one's object.

I've not changed the meaning of anything. All along the problem has been that Scruton is advocating a position we ought be disgusted by women (or men, if applied to them) if they dare be more than an object under our direct control. It's precisely this viewpoint which is the problem.

Disgust with sex isn't the issue here, it's the disgust with women who are more than a body for a husband's dick or hands. The issue I'm talking about here isn't a sexual disfunction. It's one of who people are to each other, relationships and power.

I'm strictly talking about the quote women rubbing the clitoris and his account of how it is disgusting. My point here has to do with no other statement or belief.

I don't have any doubt he'll have beliefs women are not just objects. Most sexists do. They love their mothers, daughters, sisters, friends. Many even care about the personhood and control of women, many a sexist will find a back alley rapist monstrous for treating women like an object.

But that doesn't make their sexism not sexism. Nor does it change what they are advocating about women in a social context. The position Scruton argues for in the quote, and which I described in my previous post, isn't any less sexist or different based on his treatment or beliefs about women in other contexts. Sexism isn't a sum total of one's lack of sexism and sexism, it a feature of specific actions and positions.

The attack is against his views precisely because that's where the sexism is located. It's his view which is the problem.

He's put out the call to society about how disgusting the clitoris rubbing women is, not because of the act itself is disgusting, but because, supposedly, it violates some right of the husband to be the only immediate control of her body. He is projecting this is who people are and how relationships are meant to be.

There are countless reason to be disgusted with a sexual practice. The barrier for this is very low. To merely find an act was disgusting in itself, would be enough for someone to remove themselves/be justified in objecting someone doing it infront of you-- that's a large part why it's not okay just to go around masturbating in front of people-- but this isn't the problem for Scroton.

Sex is not what's cited as disgusting here. It's women. Women, if they are people who take action or have immediate control over their bodies. The disgust is a power play. She is disgusting not for the act of rubbing here clitoris, but for being a person who has certain control of her body.

Scruton is advocating we should find women disgusting if they aren't just objects for men to please. He's drumming up hate against women for not just being a button for a husband to press. He's suggesting it's disgusting to think relationships are about a connection between two people/free agents, that it is not a true connection unless we hold our wives to be an arcade machine by which we attain a pleasure high score with specifically our penis or hands.

Indeed, the effect objectification is not determined by a comparative measure of whether both men and women are objectfied, but by its impact on an individual.

The harm done by understanding one's partner is an object is not undone by them also consider you an object. It's just a doubling of the harm. Now, they just suffer like you.

In terms of preventing harm done to the women or the man, nothing is achieved.

Addressing this harm, this sexism, requires an effect on how an individual is treated/harmed, not a measure of whether the same is happening to someone else.