I urge Jonathan Chance to reconsider his warning from the thread “[THREAD=886260]Where’s the line between advising someone to take steps to protect themselves and victim-blaming?[/THREAD]” It appears to me that puddleglum misinterpreted SmartAleq’s analogy, and then when margin pointed out how it is insulting to compare women to children, puddleglum thought that was criticism of SmartAleq’s original analogy.
Your warning accuses puddleglum of bad faith, and if you feel justified in doing so please consider modifying your warning to quote puddleglum’s initial post in the exchange, where he expanded SmartAleq’s analogy to encompass giving children advice.
I think puddleglum understood the SmartAleq analogy and also understood that margin was referring to him and not SmartAleq.
What he was saying was a valid rhetorical device, in pointing out that he was not the one who compared women to children and he was only working with the comparison that SmartAleq already made. (pg did not “expand” SA’s analogy to apply to giving advice. The entire discussion in the thread is about giving advice.) So while margin’s comments were directed at him, they should properly have been directed at SmartAleq.
It was a perfectly valid response, and of a sort which gets made on this MB routinely. But puddleglum is arguing a position which is very in-PC on this board, and anything said in support of that position is going to be interpreted and judged very harshly by the moderation.
I have been following the thread, and in context I think the focus was whether it is reasonable for men to try and identify with rapists. The point was being made that certain advice was ineffectual, born from men trying to identify with rapists and then, from the mind of the rapist, try and identify how a person could avoid being raped.
SA’s post didn’t quote anything, but began with “Yeah …” and was apparently in response to the post which immediately preceded it, from Ann Hedonia. That post addressed the Porsche vs Toyota comparison. The Porsche vs Toyota comparison was made in the thread in the context of whether women who were more attractive (the Porsche) was more likely to be raped (stolen) than women who were less attractive (the Toyota). The relevance of the likelihood comparison was about the validity of advising women that appearing less attractive would make them safer from rape to some extent.
I assume you mean post #509, which is the one you linked to.
Regardless, the reference to “car theft analogies” and Porsche vs Toyota was made in Post #480, and the context was about whether rapists/robbers are influenced by attractiveness vs opportunity.
This is never a good idea. You shouldn’t try to come up with a possible explanation for someone else. You should let them offer their own defense.
The rationale is this: if it’s the truth, they’ll say it, because the first defense is the truth. If you think you’ve been misunderstood and were punished for it, the first thing you’ll do is explain what you actually meant. If, on the other hand, they have to wait for someone else to come up with an excuse, then chances are that it wasn’t the truth. If it were, they would have come up with it first.
What’s more, this sort of thing actually hurts them. If it just turns out there was a bit of a delay before they could explain, and their explanation is what you said, then it looks like they just stole it from you, and so their explanation is less believable.
In order to get believable explanations, it is better not to volunteer a possible explanation for someone else. It’s fine to take what they say and try to explain it in different words, but don’t come up with your own possible explanation. It hurts the ability to find the truth, and hurts their believability if you turn out to be correct.
I understand the instinct, but it isn’t helpful to anyone.
Although I do appear to white knight for puddleglum, that’s not my primary motivation here. I made a post trying to tell puddleglum he misinterpreted the analogy before the warning was given.
My motivation in this thread is based on Jonathan Chance’s warning. The warning itself does not appear to make sense; if there was bad faith, it would be puddleglum purposefully misinterpreting the analogy in post #582. Post #584, which was quoted by the warning, does not appear to be out of line.
Post #584 was warned for pretending that the post it quoted was directed at SA when it was obvious that it was really directed at pg himself.
As above I think it was a legitimate rhetorical device, and in a thread in which people on the other side of the argument were seriously accusing their opponents of being sexual assaulters and hinting that it would be nice if they were assaulted themselves, it’s striking that this was singled out for a warning. But not surprising.