It did get pretty ugly in here, although I think my first responses were pretty reasonable and it's only when you were determined to keep repeating the same complaint and turn this into a referendum on men's rights, and saying lies about women that it started to get personal for me.
Everyone in this thread seems to be pretty capable of taking care of themselves so I haven't felt any need to act as a moderator, and especially since I'm the one who started the topic I'm pretty obligated to talk to people who want to talk about it. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to suddenly go "Hey, this is getting too rough, even though I initiated the conversation I'm now going to put my foot down."
Some of what you've said about women has made me really angry, and it's not fair of me to moderate the conversation while I'm emotionally invested in it. I'd rather just let people insult me and be angry back.
If I did it the other way, it would be as if I decided to use my position on the forum to end an argument that I wasn't able to handle discussing, which isn't the case.
You're doing plenty of attacking yourself, so it's not like I can tell people to lay off you. This is a hot conversation and unless it gets ridiculous or it becomes clear that there's an unwilling victim, I tend not to put a stop to that.
But as for it being about pointing out the double standard, I think you're wrong about that. I don't think anyone disagrees with you that women get more attention for the online bullying. Those of us arguing with you just think it's completely justified and appropriate for various reasons that have been mentioned.
But you also said a bunch of things that aren't accurate and used them to support your premise, and what do you expect to happen from that? People are going to argue back and say "Hey, sorry, but what you just said isn't true."
And frankly, at that point, if you were interested in having an actual discussion, you could consider the new information instead of just blowing past it in a rage to repeat your point. It's possible that new information would change your mind, like you might say "Wow, several of the specific examples that have gotten me so fired up are actually not very true. I wonder if I might be wrong about some of this."
Or if I were you, finding out that I had been lied to about whether or not women can be charged with rape would make me question how many other facts are being distorted by the people advocating this point of view to me? It would make me wonder if a lot of these things are being spun in a direction that's designed to make me angry about feminism?
But to be frank, I would never have been able to make the mistake you made about women being charged with rape - as soon as I heard that, I would do what I did when you presented it - spend 5 minutes on google finding out that it's not true. And the fact that you didn't do that is indicative of your level of interest in being right as opposed to having your opinion confirmed.
But I really think you aren't interested in learning, you're interested in having your anger fed by these men's rights guys, and you don't watch and read with a critical eye at all.
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my take on how this argument has evolved.
