To be clear, I didn’t make the above point in order to say “you should feel bad because you’re white and male”. I also didn’t make it to say “you should just shut up and defer to the opinions of others here because you’re white and male”. I made it to try to explain why the choice to say “everyone just needs to suck it up and deal with their own discomfort” is not a choice with no downside; it puts the debate on an uneven footing, where people are not able to participate equally. It doesn’t seem a stretch to then say that debates where some people are at an inherent disadvantage from the start are not as self evidently optimal as a truth seeking exercise as it may first seem.
I did not think you were trying to say either of those things. Again, I’m aware of these things that people say. I was just talking about the philosophical basis for judging strategies here.
To be clear, I didn’t make the above point in order to say “you should feel bad because you’re white and male”. I also didn’t make it to say “you should just shut up and defer to the opinions of others here because you’re white and male”. I made it to try to explain why the choice to say “everyone just needs to suck it up and deal with their own discomfort” is not a choice with no downside; it puts the debate on an uneven footing, where people are not able to participate equally. It doesn’t seem a stretch to then say that debates where some people are at an inherent disadvantage from the start are not as self evidently optimal as a truth seeking exercise as it may first seem.
I did not think you were trying to say either of those things. Again, I’m aware of these things that people say. I was just talking about the philosophical basis for judging strategies here.