Factual Feminist on intersectionality

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miniboes
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by miniboes »

EquALLity wrote:
knot wrote:
RedAppleGP wrote:What exactly is intersectionality anyways?
It's where you take different systems of oppression into account. For example, white women have historically been less privileged than white men, but much more privileged than black women.
Well, of course we should care about all forms of oppression.
Only the oppression that actually exists. Also note he said systems of oppression. Many intersectionalists believe certain systems, for example the US electoral or education system, are racist, sexist or otherwise oppressive. There is much to be said about the US electoral and education systems, but they aren't inherently racist or sexist. To illustrate, there is no law that says "A female candidate receives a hundred fewer delegates" or "A black student must not be given any help by their teacher".
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by brimstoneSalad »

EquALLity wrote: Well, of course we should care about all forms of oppression.
Only assuming what is viewed as oppression is actually harmful. This comes back to the deontological use vs. abuse issue. Is "oppression" always harmful? This is not clear. It's also not clear what is even meant by "oppression".
EquALLity wrote: However, I don't think we should try to mix veganism and feminism (for example), because then we're pushing away potential vegans who aren't feminists, and it's not like the issues are really related in a meaningful way.
Right, this comes down to my third point about Parsimony. We have to be effective.

I think mixing them when you're talking to a feminist may be useful, just how mixing them if you're talking to a Christian may be -- meeting people where they are, and relating veganism to issues they care about. The trouble is, that's not what intersectionality is about; it says we have to mix them all the time, regardless of the audience, and calls anybody who fails to racist/sexist/etc. :roll:
If we mix everything at once, we end up talking about nothing. Causes are most effective when they are focused.
miniboes wrote: Only the oppression that actually exists.
Beyond just existing (which of course I don't think has been shown), I think we need to show that it's harmful.
What does oppression even mean?
Am I oppressing a child by not allowing that child to play in the street?
Would I be oppressing somebody by not letting that person torture and kill animals?
miniboes wrote: Also note he said systems of oppression. Many intersectionalists believe certain systems, for example the US electoral or education system, are racist, sexist or otherwise oppressive. There is much to be said about the US electoral and education systems, but they aren't inherently racist or sexist. To illustrate, there is no law that says "A female candidate receives a hundred fewer delegates" or "A black student must not be given any help by their teacher".
That's a great point. If intersectionality insists on the existence of systematic/institutionalized oppression, it's easy to discredit.
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by Jebus »

knot wrote:Seems like the debate about race and gender inequality will never end. Roll back the clock 40 years and it's the exact same; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_sGn6PdmIo.
Thomas Sowell is great.
How to become vegan in 4.5 hours:
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2.Watch Cowspiracy (Environment)
3. Watch Earthlings (Ethics)
Congratulations, unless you are a complete idiot you are now a vegan.
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by garrethdsouza »

brimstoneSalad wrote: You've put yourself in an echo chamber, and you need to look at arguments outside your bubble.

I notice you always respond quickly, with hostility, and without any reasoned argument or evidence to anything about intersectionality.
Well, it's time for you to put up, or shut up for good about it.

There are strong arguments made in the video, and that I have made (which are different from hers; I don't totally agree with her), and you have never responded properly to one of them.
Instead, you continue to attack the characters of the presenters, and throw around rhetoric and cartoons, all without engaging in discussion.
You should know this is inappropriate, and you should be ashamed.

https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... ?f=11&t=52
forum rules wrote:1. This is a discussion forum. Please come here willing to discuss. This isn't a place to lecture, and then refuse to address others' rational arguments or even answer others' questions. Discussion is founded upon logic, if you don't accept basic logic as valid, there's really nothing for you to do here except lecture, and this isn't the place for it. Again: This is a discussion forum.
You have done this multiple times. Broaching the subject and baiting argument, only to lecture, spew a bunch of rhetoric and post cartoons, then retreat from it instead of answering to your claims.


running off to your safe space as soon as somebody says something you don't have an easy answer for. Not by linking somewhere else where the arguments aren't answered either, but in your own words and thoughts, here.


From my perspective, you will define anybody who questions your cult of intersectionalism as anti-feminist to shut them down, saying it's not a credible source, which really just confirms her point in the video and makes it appear that you're trying to hold up an ideology as inherently immune to criticism.

YOU have done nothing but demonstrate the harms of intersectionality by YOUR rude and divisive behavior and YOUR representations of it. I have read what YOU have posted, what YOU have linked to, and taken YOUR refusal to respond to reasoned arguments as evidence that YOU and anybody YOU would consider a "True Feminist" have no real argument to make.

Maybe I'm totally misunderstanding the whole concept still, but if you never engage in discussion, there's no way to correct that now is there?

I see an irrational dogma that is harmful, and a person who otherwise aspires to be rational and moral being sucked into it. You can go back to your safe space if I've triggered you, but know that means you are forbidden from mentioning it or responding to it ever again here.

I would be glad to discuss this, and I'd be glad to have my mind changed on the topic, but you have to do your part too and not just bombard the forum with cartoons and character assassination, and links to shitty arguments filled with emotional appeals and anecdotes rather than rational arguments and evidence.
Had seen it earlier, will have to watch it again and get to it later bcoz busy ATM.
The issue as I see it is that the anti feminism rhetoric is pretty prevalent right now in online communities especially atheist ones and Idk if fem!inists have done enough to address that as many popular youtubers seem to have jumped onto the same bandwagon and there aren't as many critques of it or as many feminist atheist youtubers afai am aware of, and to an extent a lot of folks have got vaccinated against such issues which is why I had suggested that the way to understand it is to look at what both sides are saying.

Anti feminism haa been around for a long time andthe tactics have been based on misinforming individuals in advance so that they buy into what terms etc mean and then whenever they are faced with such terms the response is to the strawperson that they have been told represents those terms.

This has been used since eternity to undermine movements. For instance, in the times of suffrage [(white)women's rights for voting (blacks got theirs much later]

http://historyoffeminism.com/anti-suffr ... -cartoons/
http://mentalfloss.com/article/52207/12 ... e-cartoons

In today's terms the issues/tactics are similar and in some cases the intentional misrepresentations are the same. For instance some of them include strawpersons of

Feminism in itself (this has always been used) as anti men
Third wave feminism
Triggered
Safe spaces


Take the third wave feminist strawperson https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/imag ... o9muN7b7_V

The reality of feminism's progress to what are termed newer waves is basically similar to the way moral progress has happened in most of contemporary humanity in that we seek to expand our circle of compassion/ethics to include more. For instance how it has moved from black slaves being freed to reform to this day, and the expanding concern for non human animal rights. That's been the similar progress of feminism, the initial waves were more white woman and upper class focused and anti/much less pro anyone elses issues (queer, poc, lower class) and the newer waves have souught to rectify that. That's pretty !much it.
The movement arose partially as a response to the perceived failures of and backlash against initiatives and movements created by second-wave feminism during the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, and the perception that women are of "many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and cultural backgrounds". This wave of feminism expands the topic of feminism to include a diverse group of women with a diverse set of identities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism
Thats pretty much it. And instead in the caricature it is the first two waves that are portrayed as nice and friendly in the cartoon -
- when in fact they were the more racist queerphobic upper middle class focused ones.
- It's also easy to do since that war has already been overwhelmingly won, the moral baaselines have shifted for the majority on those issues soo it's easy for people to see what has already been achieved as fine and anyyways it'll be a lot tougher to get people to slide back.
- when in copntrast At their time they faced the exact same types of demonization and misrepresen tations from the anti feminist status quoists back then as you can see in the previous links. It's obvious that the anti fems then, did not want the status quo to change and resorted to misrepresenting them entirely when all they wanted was basic right to vote. Whole this may seem obvious now, with the amount of propaganda etc back then it wouldn't be the case to folks then who , not exposed to these issues, for whomp this would be a radicallly new thing and with the demonization of the suffragettes pretty mainstream prevalent.

Now contemporarily in the new caricature, add an aggressive face and the more contemporary issues that are being challenged and that people are unfamiliar with (people are usually resistant to change and the default position is fear/hate things they don't understand) and you've got an authentication by association done. Bad face + patriarchy rape culture means anyone who says that is the aggressive nonsense spouting peron, just like the anti suffragette comics. Poison the well beforehand and people will be vaccinated against issues, they'll start playing devil's advocate the moment you mention terms.

Tell them patriarchy is actually a mythical beast whereas what people are refering to is demonstrable problems that disproportionately affect women in many issues (and that is not to say that men don't have their own disproportionate problems needing to be addressed.)
Say issues are gender neutral - misrepresent even what the issue is. It's not that they affect only one gender that's the issue (eg rape, ofc male rape does happen) it's that it's a genderED issue in that it disproportionately affects one gender a lot more. (1 in 33 men vs 1 in 6 women)
https://rainn.org/get-information/stati ... lt-victims
And that this differs by race (17.8%whiite vs 34 native American I.e. 1 in 6 white vs 1 in 3 native Americans)

Say it's mostly middle/upper class whereas that's the opposite of what it is and what the focus is on

Then the whole safe spaces issue - as long as you have a group with some amount of rules to the exclusion of fertain behaviors, it would be a safe space. An atheist only group would be a safe space and maybe a,needes one if folks are getting constant spam/asinine vitriol from religiious fundies. Same goes for feminist one, if folks don't want asinine arguments with people who for the most part know close to nothing about feminism and the only thing they're aware of is the misconceptions of feminism by anti feminists.

With stats like 1 in 6 women being raped or whatever the numbers are, people may have actual PTSD issues since it is a very traumatic incident. For a bunch of other non rape survivors folks to use the term triggered as if it's some asinine made up nonsense while not putting themselves in the victims place is what the contemporary issue that's pretty prevalent. You have to understand what it's like to be raped by a male who is (for women) most often a lot more powerful than you, so imagine that scenario for yourself, some huge guy raping you and you lose bodily autonomy at that point.

ofc there are going to be bad apples, they exist in all movements. The other way is most often a composition fallacy which is basically that the bad apples are taken as representation of the whole bunch and this is a very easy to do as pretty much every movement has its bad apples. People who care about women's rights will come from diverse backgrounds including theists and spiritualists and not everyone is going to be making sense or be the ideal. It's unrealistic to expect otherwise, while at the same time it is important to call such stuff out. True for veganism as well. I wonder if the vegan movement will face something similar, pwople strawpersoning it and spreading such areas areas persons around or saying Everyones freelee/yourovsky/francione. Op I hope not.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

The thing about calling stuff out is that most often when people need constructive criticism that usually comes from within the group itself. Not from someone with vested interests in the movements failure or who self describes it and all the progress it has achieved as crap, who's misrepresenting things and/or showing you just the bad apples or who practocally the entire group seems to have issues with.

One of the issues that was mentioned in this thread was about in politics. Sure things may have been achieved on paper but there's still a long way off to get actual issues sorted out. For instance she's an actual scientist in the relevant field who's discussed it in some detail in a series of videos with empirical evidence https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G0-IdEk45DA
And what do folks do when there's empirical evidence for it? Downvote the fuck out of it and listen to the conspiracy theorists who aren't capable of showing anything empirically based nor following the scientific method, merely rhetoric/anecdotes with people being extra edgy (like the amazing atheist or more, completely sardonically laced and address all points in that way) and from folks who don't have any training or understanding at all of the field, haven't read a single book or article let alone in depth research in it.

If people are claiming men's issues then sure tackle/address those, on board with that. Most of the issues that I had heard were about conscription rates, custody issues, gender stereotypes, body issues.Although some questions on some of that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tt7rKNV9qqA
But irrespective those issues need to be addressed and if the movements doing that then great, except overwhelmingly these issues ar e hardly the focus and gender stereotypes are most often reinforced among some anti feminists circles who masquerade as being concerned with men's issues. If you're sensitive you're called a mangina (reinforcing the stereotype of women as being sensitive or that they should be that and that sensitivity are bad things), if you're fat you are made fun of, called lard because that's empirical right? Or are subjected to strategies that have been shown to not help in anyway but negatively affect you, or just make things worse.
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by garrethdsouza »

brimstoneSalad wrote:For your convenience, although I have posted this several times already, these are my oppositions to intersectionality:
brimstoneSalad wrote: 1. Adversarial nature
There is no true equality in asymmetrical issues. Matters like reproductive rights are inherently asymmetrical, and obtaining something that seems fair is about compromise; that means an adversarial negotiation. That doesn't mean people have to be unfriendly, but that they're advancing different and inherently opposing interests in negotiating that compromise.

2. FAIR doesn't mean GOOD
This is something many people misunderstand, because intuitively fair feels good, and unfair feels wrong. This is deontological nonsense, and you need to understand that in order to substantiate the wrongness of something you have to provide some evidence for the ultimate and global consequences being harmful.

3. Parsimony
This is as important in charity and activism as it is in science. If asking people to "go vegan" makes people less likely to actually go vegan, we should avoid it and do something more effective. If looking like morons by being obsessively politically correct makes our outreach less effective to the majority with only minor gains from minorities, we shouldn't do it. Cost and benefit analysis is essential to any situation where we have limited resources, and both human effort and compassion are in very limited supply.
From here, where originally stated: https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... =40#p15550

I'll post back in a moment summarizing what I took from the points the Factual Feminist made.
I had addresses this a bit before I think.

Idk about definition of parsimony, what is the one used here since i thought it's about stinginess? Based on what you described in that point it seems fine, that is you have to know your audience for effective activism. However also, different strategies might work for different people so it may be good to have a nice pronged approach rather than expecting all activists to address the issue similarly.

For the other two idk. I don't see why that's not deontology. I had addressed the adversarial issue that it's not necessarily adversaries. The only adversaries would be bigots vs nonbigots. For instance in lgbt rights who is the adversary? Is it straight vs queer? Rational Straight people don't have issues with people being queer, bigots do. White people don't have issues with black people getting a right to vote similarly.

I don't understand the fairness issue either. If something isn't fair or just in any possible way how is it a good thing? Merely treating people who are different as if they are on a level playing field without tqking into account the social and economic capital differences isn't fair or equal since they weren't at a level playing field in the start of their life itself, and it's about representation. https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/imag ... GgXuLU3uqg
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by brimstoneSalad »

garrethdsouza wrote: The issue as I see it is that the anti feminism rhetoric is pretty prevalent right now in online communities especially atheist ones
As well as the feminist rhetoric. Rhetoric is high on both sides, and there's very little actual argument: that is a problem.
But that isn't a problem here, where everybody is required to respond to criticism.
garrethdsouza wrote: which is why I had suggested that the way to understand it is to look at what both sides are saying.
You assumed that I do not do this, your assumption was false. And you attacked the character of a woman who is a feminist, and said she was not a feminist, only because you don't agree with what she says. That's not appropriate.
It's like people who say Unnatural Vegan isn't vegan because she doesn't always agree with the claims or behavior of other vegan youtubers. Not O.K.

If you want to come off as intellectually honest rather than making a number of fallacies --
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/no-true-scotsman
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority
-- then don't do that, and instead spend time addressing the content of the arguments rather than the people making them.

I posted HER arguments below mine for your convenience, if you want to read them.

Quite crucially, she also said this in the video:
The Factual Feminist wrote:Now there are social scientists who use a sensible non-politicized version of intersectionality to understand complex social identities: I have no quarrel with them. What concerns me is how intersectional Feminism is taught and practiced on the college campus.
If you're talking only about a legitimate usage of the term, as she mentioned, that's fine. But then you attack her for making the distinction.
Every definition I've gotten from YOU and the links you have given me has reinforced this apparent "straw man", and it seems to be the version you subscribe to.

If you're actually advocating a strawman version yourself, you can't criticize people for attacking that straw man. Maybe, like a Christian ignorant of the Bible and Christian theological thought, you need to understand more about the the theories you claim to subscribe to, because you have been representing them badly. You, along with every other person I've ever conversed with about intersectionality.

I'm not straw manning anybody, and I don't get my information about feminism from anti-feminist sources any more than I would get my information about what Christians believe from anti-Christian sources.
garrethdsouza wrote: This has been used since eternity to undermine movements. For instance, in the times of suffrage [(white)women's rights for voting (blacks got theirs much later]
This is irrelevant. The fact that people have straw manned in the past does not mean that these criticisms are employing a straw man. This is not that, and only history will tell what's really been going on unless we can strip away the rhetoric and engage in actual discussion.

Garreth, you are my primary source for information about intersectionality -- what you have said, and what you have linked to. I am against intersectionality because of your arguments and behavior specifically.
I don't watch tools like the Amazing Atheist.
garrethdsouza wrote: Feminism in itself (this has always been used) as anti men
This is another point where you've ignored, misunderstood, or straw manned my arguments.
I'll get to this later, and it has to do with the adversarial nature.
garrethdsouza wrote: Triggered
Safe spaces
Are you a professional clinical psychologist, Garreth?
Because I have linked you to quotes from actual psychologists who have experience treating these things saying that concepts like triggering and safe spaces are harmful to healing.

This is another point you consistently ignored every time I brought it up.

You said we have to trust the victims or sufferers of these conditions to tell us what THEY need.
I asked: Do we trust drug addicts when they tell us what they need? (Like, say, a hit?)

People suffering from PTSD or phobias need exposure therapy, not perpetual coddling or encouragement to be perpetual victims, which is something that is psychologically harmful.
Exposure therapy isn't fun; it's painful by nature. Of course the victims don't want to go the hard route to mental health. But they need to be encouraged to be brave and face the world, not hide from it.

If you're overweight, you basically have two choices (once you get past the diet pills and miracle cures):
1. You can face the difficult road of diet change an exercise to true health. Or:
2. You can buy into the comforting lies of the mysterious metabolic conditions that make your body violate thermodynamics so you can blame it on something else, and the "healthy at any size" pseudoscience, in order to avoid the hard work that's required to fix the real problem, going shopping for plus sized clothes and surrounding yourself with fat-positive messages instead.

Which do you think is more healthy, Garreth?

It's the same for PTSD. What you're doing is enabling a harmful mental illness.
You are hurting people. And you champion the cause of doing so as if it's something good, which is, to me, sickening.

There are reasons people are critical of these ideas, and it's not just assholes who want to be jerks. If you would step outside of your echo chamber and listen to some of the actual arguments being put forth instead of ignoring them because you've decided the source is by definition not credible if it isn't just agreeing with everything you say, maybe you would realize that.

garrethdsouza wrote: The reality of feminism's progress to what are termed newer waves is basically similar to the way moral progress has happened in most of contemporary humanity in that we seek to expand our circle of compassion/ethics to include more.[...]
Thats pretty much it. And instead in the caricature it is the first two waves that are portrayed as nice and friendly in the cartoon
The existence of cartoons that don't make sound arguments doesn't negate the existence of actual arguments. It doesn't make you right.
garrethdsouza wrote: Bad face + patriarchy rape culture means anyone who says that is the aggressive nonsense spouting peron, just like the anti suffragette comics. Poison the well beforehand and people will be vaccinated against issues, they'll start playing devil's advocate the moment you mention terms.
Let's be clear: So are you saying that anybody who disagrees with you could only be doing so because he or she has been poisoned against you by strawmen representations, and just doesn't understand your position?

That's bullshit, you should know it's a bullshit argument, and it's basically what the Factual Feminist said in the video.
And when you make those assumptions here, as you did, it's also insulting, particularly seeing as I got most of my information from YOU and people you linked to begin with, and none of it from cartoons.
garrethdsouza wrote: Say issues are gender neutral - misrepresent even what the issue is. It's not that they affect only one gender that's the issue (eg rape, ofc male rape does happen) it's that it's a genderED issue in that it disproportionately affects one gender a lot more. (1 in 33 men vs 1 in 6 women)
https://rainn.org/get-information/stati ... lt-victims
And that this differs by race (17.8%whiite vs 34 native American I.e. 1 in 6 white vs 1 in 3 native Americans)
None of this is relevant to the topic. Now you're attacking a straw man. Neither I, nor the Factual Feminist said anything about this.

This is statistics, not intersectionality, and it doesn't suggest or imply that we need an intersectional approach, OR that there's even a problem of significance that CAN be fixed. Some situations just suck, but there's nothing we can do about them from an institutional approach. It certainly doesn't suggest anything about it being institutional in origin.
garrethdsouza wrote: Tell them patriarchy is actually a mythical beast whereas what people are refering to is demonstrable problems that disproportionately affect women in many issues (and that is not to say that men don't have their own disproportionate problems needing to be addressed.)
You just negated your own point. There's no evidence for a "Patriarchy" in the first world. There are things that suck for women and men. These things are sometimes the same, sometimes different. They derive mainly from social behavior which people choose to partake in -- for example, social drinking or drug use.
But don't actually address what seems to be the real source of the problem: Invent a conspiracy theory instead.

This is like your approach to safe spaces and triggering.
Instead of looking at the actual evidence, you buy into a particular ad hoc hypothesis (the Patriarchy) of how things should be fixed that seems to make enough sense to you that you don't need to look at or consider other models or possibilities. This is profound intellectual laziness and dishonesty.
garrethdsouza wrote: Then the whole safe spaces issue - as long as you have a group with some amount of rules to the exclusion of fertain behaviors, it would be a safe space. An atheist only group would be a safe space and maybe a,needes one if folks are getting constant spam/asinine vitriol from religiious fundies. Same goes for feminist one, if folks don't want asinine arguments with people who for the most part know close to nothing about feminism and the only thing they're aware of is the misconceptions of feminism by anti feminists.
A.K.A. an echo chamber.
You realize this forum is open to all, right?

We don't have a problem with fundies busting in here and spewing vitriol. There are few rules, and discussion is encouraged regardless of tone (actually discussing is one of the only rules).
Carnists and the religious who come here are exposed to new ideas. That's how you educate, and that's how people learn. Every carnist who comes here does so with little knowledge and plenty of misconceptions, but they leave here generally with more knowledge, some nagging questions, and most of those misconceptions corrected.

Christians have a problem with creating open forums, and the reason for this is that their beliefs are false, so they can not stand up to scrutiny. Actual discussion converts Christians into atheists, so the religion evolved defense mechanisms against that by excluding difficult questions from the community.
I would anticipate the same being the case for Intersectionalists, who flee from discussion because their beliefs just don't hold water.

garrethdsouza wrote: You have to understand what it's like to be raped by a male who is (for women) most often a lot more powerful than you, so imagine that scenario for yourself, some huge guy raping you and you lose bodily autonomy at that point.
I do understand, but I don't need to be shielded from reminders of my personal experiences and traumas or use them to substantiate with anecdotes the science behind actual psychology that is distinctly lacking in the ad hoc hypothesis of the "safe space" treatment program.

As I have explained in great detail, you are an enabler of PTSD and the harm that causes to people in the long term. You are doing people harm under the banner of protection. All of your work is actually making things worse. And you continue to do it, and will continue still probably because you're delusional and unwilling to consider evidence against your faith based position that you must always trust the person suffering from the disease as to what the best way to treat that disease is.

How is Jen (of Jenjourney) doing, by the way? She decided the best way to treat her breast cancer was bullshit Gerson therapy, and now she's about to die because of it (any day now) -- when Chemotherapy would have almost certainly saved her life (five year survival is almost guaranteed).
It's assholes like you who enabled her, and are responsible for her suffering and death.

Feel good about yourself for perpetuating this culture of "the patient knows best"? You shouldn't. You should be deeply ashamed if there's any hint of critical thinking and human compassion in you.

Even if you didn't support that particular travesty, this is on your head, and those like you perpetuating this pseudoscience enabling bullshit as the appropriate response to illness.

garrethdsouza wrote: ofc there are going to be bad apples, they exist in all movements.
If that's the case, then you're one of them from my perspective. Are there any good apples out there for me to talk to? I've yet to meet one. Send one over, and I'd be glad to hear what intersectionalism is really supposed to be. You're doing a terrible job, because all I see is a deeply evil cult of social pseudoscience that begets only suffering and inhibits actual progress to real treatment of and solutions for these issues.

Show me a good apple. Or are you supposed to be one? Because if you are, based on what you've said and advocated, I can conclude right now that's all Intersectionality is: a wicked cult.
garrethdsouza wrote: The thing about calling stuff out is that most often when people need constructive criticism that usually comes from within the group itself.
That would be great, but it won't come from within a cult. And Intersectionalism is showing many of the signs of being a cult. I went into the unfalsifiable nature that Factual Feminist covered, the authoritarianism, the divisiveness.

Once something becomes a cult, it becomes incapable of self-criticism.

If it's just a few bad apples like you ruining the bunch, the group needs to do a better job of policing itself, and somebody with real knowledge of intersectionalism needs to come over here and correct the misconceptions that you're spreading.

If it's a cult, then it must be destroyed from the outside by educating people about its harmful dogma before they get drawn into it, and by isolating and deprogramming the cult members.

garrethdsouza wrote: For instance she's an actual scientist in the relevant field who's discussed it in some detail in a series of videos with empirical evidence https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G0-IdEk45DA
Calling Kristi Winters an "actual scientist" is DISHONEST. She is in the "social sciences", which is not a natural science, and not based on scientific methodology. She is not a scientist.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I will assume you didn't know that.
The social sciences have little to no credibility or reliability, and are strongly poisoned by human bias because of the lack of scientific methodology.
Remember, "Social Sciences" are not STEM.

Hopefully now you will be able to select better sources. Find an actual scientist who understands the scientific method, and the difference between correlation and causation, and I'd be glad to examine the findings.
I said in your own words, but I'll watch one video and debunk her bullshit anyway, seeing as you're watching one video:
Kristi Winters wrote:In this video I'm going to examine whether or not there are patriarchal patterns to be found in the way that men and women are distributed within political structures
She's looking for "patterns", this is not evidence. "Patterns" are what conspiracy theorists look for, and you will always find them if you try. But even if she's using credible methodology to examine statistical distribution, these only demonstrate correlation -- not causation, and not a patriarchy.

She's already failed at scientist (if she were one at all, which she isn't)
Kristi Winters wrote:If we map out the ways that political power or other forms of power can be distributed on the basis of sex we have two extreme types and then a median point so on the two extremes are 100% men occupying positions of power and influence and the other side is 100% women occupying positions of power and influence and in the middle you have an equal distribution between the sexes...
Yep, it's confirmed, she is a moron. In a first world democracy, representatives represent their constituents who hold the actual power through voting. The fact of more men in politics means nothing, since they're following their constituents. She doesn't even understand the system she's supposed to be analyzing enough to analyze it properly for meaningful correlative data.
Kristi Winters wrote:[...]assuming that an equal distribution of power and influence is sort of the natural the the null hypothesis the baseline and then predicting that the impact of patriarchy is going to be to give men additional power and influence relative to women, and if we see that men are enjoying access to more power and influence we can reject the null hypothesis that this particular thing that we're looking at is egalitarian, and if we reject the null hypothesis we must accept the alternative hypothesis which is that patriarchy is disproportionately advantaging men in that particular power relations
It doesn't work remotely like that in science, no. Come on Garreth, you aren't that ignorant of the scientific method; you've shown as much elsewhere.
Did you even critically watch this video at all? Do you actually agree with the claims she is making?

Her assumptions are false, her methodology is bad, and her conclusions do not follow. This is why people make fun of the "social sciences", this kind of nonsense sounds really fancy, but it's not rational or credible, and it doesn't resemble science in any way beyond the big words she uses now and then, which is the same kind of claim Intelligent Design has to science.

The rest of the video is even more of a train wreck. It's like a case study of a delusional ad hoc hypothesis. She thinks science is making up definitions and guessing (which is probably what she thinks a hypothesis is), and then seeing if there's a correlation in the data that maps to her arbitrary definitions.

I really hope I don't have to explain this isn't how science works. It's like a middle school science fair project in the bible belt.
creationist science fair wrote:Hypothesis: My hypothesis is that god is real and created the Earth, so if the Earth is real then god is real.
My experiment is that I'm going to test if the Earth exists, and if the Earth exists that means god created it, so then god is real.
I'm going to do that by dropping a rock, and if it stops, that means the Earth exists to stop it, and so god is real.
Experiment 1: I dropped the rock.
Observations: It stopped!
Conclusion: God is real!
She's not just a moron. I don't have words to describe how profoundly stupid she is.
Congratulations, the video you link has prompted me to use a thesaurus for an appropriate word.

Maybe addlepate. She's an addlepate.
Kristi Winters wrote:Conclusion: women's political power through voting is as ineffectual as men's.
Conclusion: Men hold and exercise a disproportionate amount of political power in the Congress and Senate compared to women's.
Conclusion: Despite bringing in more revenue than men women make up only 35% of all lobbyists.
Conclusion: Men have more political influence due to campaign contributions than women.
I'm just going to assume all of the statistics she presented are correct, rather than cherry picked, but even when I do, she's obviously a liar.

The first point is a lie: Votes do not hold zero political power. Women voting more DOES mean they have an edge here. All she did was fail to undermine the power of voting, which is the mechanism by which the careful balance of power is tipped to one side or another. Elections are always close, and the margin of actual votes is what decides it.
The more important point is that voting presents limited power due to the limited issues voters care about: many political issues are those voters are indifferent to, or have been sold on by advertisement. Choosing not to exercise power due to indifference, or agreeing with authority due to advertisement so choosing not to change policy so again not exercising power, is not the same as not having it.

The second point is irrelevant (or its relevance has not been proved by the facts presented): It's wrong to list it here as evidence in favor. The legislative branch is either pandering for votes from their constituents (which are mainly women), or being bought.

The third point is moronic: It actually supports an argument for a matriarchy. Revenue is the metric by which we can measure efficacy of lobbying (thus expression of political power from it), not mere numbers. This shows that women have more influence than men, if her numbers are true. The wage gap in lobbying is irrelevant too: Only efficacy is relevant.

The fourth point is not controlled: Women have substantial influence over spending in a household, and may be the main factor behind the political contribution from married men. Look at the woman behind the men. Women giving contributions may be more likely to be single. There are many potential confounding variables here she ignored.

Finally, she ignored a huge aspect of female influence: Social circles. In or out of church, women discuss and spread information much more than men, which is a massive amount of free advertising for the favored candidate. Women also seem to caucus more (particularly for democrats, who are in power now, less for republicans based on what I can find, but not as much less as they do more for democrats).

garrethdsouza wrote:And what do folks do when there's empirical evidence for it? Downvote the fuck out of it[...]
It should be down voted. It's a terrible piece of ignorant political propaganda.

However, the arguments should also be addressed, as I did. Despite her being an addleplate, these argument are dangerous because they sound intellectual, and they need to be rebutted.
garrethdsouza wrote:and listen to the conspiracy theorists who aren't capable of showing anything empirically based nor following the scientific method,
She isn't capable of following the scientific method, so it really doesn't matter, does it? She's not a scientist. Nothing resembling one to anybody who knows anything about science.
And, interestingly, intersectionality actually is a conspiracy theory.
I don't know where you're seeing conspiracy theorists on the other side of the issue. The intersectionalists are the ones promoting a conspiracy theory: the question is whether there is evidence for this theory, or if (as it seems to be) it's unfalsifiable nonsense because they're using circular reasoning and disregarding arguments and evidence they don't agree with.
garrethdsouza wrote:from folks who don't have any training or understanding at all of the field, haven't read a single book or article let alone in depth research in it.
Like her, when she comments on the industry, hiring practices, and wages of women in lobbying despite knowing nothing about it and making no effort to break it down into the types of lobbying activities. It's very likely that her claims are completely false once the facts are shown and controls have been provided for confounding variables (much like the wage gap in other industries), and even if they weren't, it doesn't prove the patriarchy.
garrethdsouza wrote:except overwhelmingly these issues are hardly the focus and gender stereotypes are most often reinforced among some anti feminists circles who masquerade as being concerned with men's issues.
You've made it pretty clear that you'll slap the label "anti-feminist" on anybody who disagrees with your cultish dogma of intersectionality. That doesn't make a person an anti-feminist, and most of those I've seen who actually are against modern feminism are so because of the behavior of so called feminists and the lack of intellectual honesty from its advocates -- including yourself, and everybody you've linked to.

It's a shame that modern third wave feminism, as you call it, has devolved into this, because feminism still has important work to do in the world, and this nonsense really seems to be holding it back.

I'm not against feminism, although I doubt you'll believe that since you've already probably labeled me a "concern troll" rather than considering my arguments, I'm just against intersectionality because of its intellectual dishonest nature and harmful consequences, and I want it to stay out of veganism. Intersectional feminism is not my fight (that's for real feminists to fight), but because it's in contact with veganism, it's a spreading fire that I have to put out where I find it.

Now that I've finally covered all of that useless rhetoric of yours, which was all irrelevant to the actual argument at hand, I can get to actual arguments. Of which you have very few, and are very confused on.
garrethdsouza wrote:Idk about definition of parsimony, what is the one used here since i thought it's about stinginess?
It's the unwillingness to waste resources. Resources include time and money in altruism. If we spend time addressing some trivial issues like manspreading, or even more hypothetically serious ones like the supposed wage-gap (if it exists), we innately spend less time advocating veganism. We aren't perpetual motion machines with infinite resources of time and attention.
Because I advocate veganism now, for example, I no longer advocate atheism in any significant way. Why? Because veganism is a more pressing and important issue. Animal agriculture, whether you like it or not, contributes much more suffering to the world than all of the manspreading and wage gaps combined -- even more than the suffering of women in the Islamic world (which itself dwarfs first world concerns, as I'm sure you will at least admit).

When animals are no longer suffering by the trillions, we can talk about reallocating those resources to other issues. As it stands, any complication or misdirection is harmful to animals, because they are not getting our undivided attention.

Intersectional "theory", from what I've heard from you and the articles you have linked, disagrees with this: and does so without evidence, and on a tenuous ad hoc hypothetical framework of intersectionalism: the idea that all oppressions are linked and stem from the same source (the patriarchy, or something like that) and if this source is addressed, all oppression will be relieved, rather than just addressing symptoms.

The problem is that this is no more evidence based than the Christian "theory" that all evil stems from the devil, and the only way to address that is to bring about the return of Christ by fulfilling the prophecies for the apocalypse.

Do you at all see how this is a problem?

Our activism MUST be evidence based and maximally effective, or we are failing the animals.
garrethdsouza wrote:Based on what you described in that point it seems fine, that is you have to know your audience for effective activism.
Sure, and if that was all intersectionalism was, that would be fine. I have said this repeatedly. But that's just normal activism.

We advocate Christian perspectives on veganism and talk about the bible to Christians, we advocate feminist perspective on veganism to feminisits, etc. That's fine.
The problem is when you take up intersectionality yourself and try to push other things on the vegan community.

The only time we should be advancing feminism is if we can calculate that our ROI (return on investment) is good. If we spend a certain number of hours advocating a feminist cause with a feminist group, and a certain significant percentage of that group happen to go vegan in excess of the number of people we would have been able to get to go vegan through other methods, that's a good ROI. If, as it seems to be, the collaboration was ineffective because most feminists don't care much about veganism and won't stop eating meat just because we helped them, then it's NOT a good ROI, and we shouldn't engage in that kind of collaboration since it harms the efficacy of our activism through opportunity cost, and maybe even directly through politicizing veganism (which is something that needs to stay more politically neutral to appeal to people across party lines).
garrethdsouza wrote:However also, different strategies might work for different people so it may be good to have a nice pronged approach rather than expecting all activists to address the issue similarly.
As long as those prongs have evidence or don't waste more resources or cause harm otherwise, that's fine.
I advocate that we should probably have secular and religious vegans speaking to those demographics respectively, since they may be more effective: although I wouldn't advocate an atheist to become religious in order to do so, because there's not enough evidence that's going to work better to really justify that position (it just can't hurt if they're already religious).
We may also need visible "black" vegans to appeal more to those who will respond to that message... but nobody is becoming black in order to do so, and I don't know that we should spend disproportionate resources recruiting and promoting them unless there's evidence they do a better job with those resources.

Getting the trend?

We should not say, for example, that somebody needs to be atheist or this or that in order to be a good vegan, or that this is the best way. The only methods there I'll really speak out against are bad secular philosophy and pseudoscience, because those come back to bite us HARD from the anti vegan carnists.
Aside from my problem with the lack of evidence (which is a serious one), this kind of divisive attitude is what intersectionality is fostering and for no good reason: that intersectionalists are the only real feminists/vegans/etc. and everybody else is posing or hypocritical. You demonstrated this by calling a feminist an anti feminist just because she disagrees with your dogma. That's not cool. Non-intersectional veganism is not bad philosophy either. From what I've seen, it's the intersectional version that is bad philosophy (and that will reflect badly on veganism from the mainstream).

Show me it's significantly more effective than harmful and compares well to the alternative, and I'll accept it as one of many prongs to vegan outreach.
This is a heavy burden of proof, however.

Right now, from what I can count offhand, we have:

1. Vegan celebrity/personality athleticism/bodybuilding (which is supporting the normality of veganism and busting the myths about veganism, but has limited utility -- only a few people can do this)
2. Exposing and prosecuting farm cruelty/lobbying for welfare (involves undercover investigation, making videos, and animal law -- limited participation possible, though monetary contributions help)
3. Leafleting, and online vegan campaigns/videos (we have research on what makes these effective -- this is something anybody can contribute to, and what intersectionality is competing with and taking effort away from. If you want outreach with a targeted demographic, you should show some evidence that it makes sense.)
4. Food evangelism (opening restaurants, making good new products -- this has limited participation, since it's a career)
5. Biotechnology (in vitro milk, eggs, meat, etc. this is slightly more of a gamble, since it's hard to predict outcome)

All of these work in different ways, to different degrees, and can be done by different people depending in part on their interests and skills, but they all have one thing in common: They actually work, and are based on some meaningful evidence.
A new intersectional method would be leeching from the resources going to Leafletting and online campaigns (I'm assuming people are doing this in their spare time, and not as a career for the most part)

It's not even clear how useful forums/discussion threads are to activism or outreach: probably not very. I use forums like these to influence media (#3, to make more effective arguments that are better proof against carnists, and see more people going vegan based on the broader reach of media content) and meet people to collaborate on other endeavors that are useful. Smart environments yield relationships with smart people.
If I switched to an intersectional approach online, it would do a lot more harm than good, by making all of my work basically useless, since my arguments succeed or fail based on philosophical consistency, and if I went full intersectional-tard, I'd be worse than useless because I'd be trying to take down the imaginary patriarchy and enabling mental illness rather than effectively addressing vegan issues.

I'll also examine the case for sensitivity:
The Factual Feminist wrote:I mean if intersectionality theory were merely a reminder to be sensitive to different kinds of social advantage and disadvantage that would be fine.
I partially agree with this, if your argument is that in advocating veganism we shouldn't be assholes to the disadvantaged. But only partially.
We should try to be nice when we can be nice, but only as far as that will go without sacrificing efficacy. I'm not going to alienate the mainstream to placate a small minority.

Veganism needs to be represented as NORMAL, and the ridiculous PC language that intersectionalists tend to use to avoid offending people (and fail at doing so) is anything but. Once we start using bizarre made-up pronouns and constructing convoluted sentence structures and elaborate apologies and peppering our arguments with trigger warnings (which are harmful in themselves as I explained), we have alienated the mainstream and made ourselves out to be weirdos: Instead of being somebody everybody can relate to, we end up being somebody that virtually nobody can relate to.

I will call somebody he or she as that person wills, and I would never use the word "gay" to say something is stupid, but that's about as far as I go. I need evidence that the words I'm using are harming my vegan outreach, because I do not believe the assertions of respecting sensitivity made by intersectionalists without evidence. I think it makes us look like idiots to talk that way.

garrethdsouza wrote:For the other two idk. I don't see why that's not deontology.
Do you know what deontology is? It is a bad thing. I don't see how you'd be interpreting anything I wrote as deontological, since it was clearly consequential.

I said your claim that "fair/justice = good" was deontological; it clearly is. Just like the claim that "lying = bad" is deontological. When these claims equating one act or concept as good or bad are made without evidence of consequence, they are appealing to deontological ethics, which is fundamentally broken, and based on a particular dogma that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
If you provide evidence for the claim, and make it contextually sensitive, then it becomes a claim of rule consequentialism, which is fine: but you did not do this.
garrethdsouza wrote: I don't understand the fairness issue either. If something isn't fair or just in any possible way how is it a good thing?
No, you don't understand it. I didn't say that unfair was good. It has nothing inhereently to do with good.
What you're doing is the same as the appeal to nature fallacy.
It is a fallacy to say "Natural = good"; things that are natural aren't necessarily good, nor are they necessarily bad.
It is also a fallacy to say "fair/just = good"; that's an appeal to fairness fallacy. It's not necessarily good or bad.
There are many issues with these fallacies, but they're ultimately both bald assertions, and they both depend on poorly defined or subjective concepts.

Take the case of a man who loses an eye: It may seem fair to take the eye of the man who cost him that eye, and yet this is not necessarily a good outcome (it's probably a lot worse).
Fairness and justice are both thrown around a lot, but like "natural", nobody seems to really be able to agree on what they mean, and it's usually relative to what benefits the person making the evaluation.
garrethdsouza wrote: Merely treating people who are different as if they are on a level playing field without tqking into account the social and economic capital differences isn't fair or equal since they weren't at a level playing field in the start of their life itself, and it's about representation. https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/imag ... GgXuLU3uqg
You complain about people using bad comics that make straw man arguments, then you post that racist straw man comic here. You don't see the problem with this?

If you really believe what that comic is advocating, then yes, you are a racist.
I don't believe race is real, meaningful, or morally relevant to anything here. If due to socioeconomic factors, some percentage of society will be poor, I don't care what color the skin of those people is, or what distribution it's found in -- I only care about the suffering they experience do to it, regardless of skin color. You might be happier if a comparable percentage of poor and rich had certain skin colors or belong to certain "races" -- and yes, if that's the case, then that does make you a racist.

Is it unfair to be born into poverty and have fewer opportunities because of that? Maybe, but that depends on your definition of fairness. Look at the flip side: Is it fair for a parent not to be allowed to provide the best for his or her child after working hard?
Not only are we dealing with multiple generations here and an arbitrary issue of race which is morally irrelevant, we're also dealing with extremely subjective definitions of fairness.

The only clear and objective definition is fairness before the law, and we have that.
garrethdsouza wrote:I had addressed the adversarial issue that it's not necessarily adversaries.
The right of a black man not to be a slave takes away the white man's right to own slaves.
The right of a woman not to be raped by men takes away the man's right to rape her.

These are older adversarial positions, but clearly so: Any right one group gains comes from a right another group loses.
YOU may think those are rights the other group should not have, but you have to prove that, you can't just assert it blindly or appeal to "justice" or "fairness".

You may have a relatively easy time explaining why those are good. This one is harder:

The right of a woman to be hired for a job for equal pay takes away the right of an employer to decide who to hire and how much to offer to pay that person (freedom of contract).
The right of a woman to raise her child however she wants takes away the right of the father to do so.
The right of a woman to be believed in cases of rape accusation takes away the right of the man to be believed when accused.

garrethdsouza wrote:The only adversaries would be bigots vs nonbigots.
I know in your sexist, racist, bigoted world view that may be the case: where you see everything in black and white, and think anybody who disagrees with you is just scum.
But this isn't the case in reality.

There are issues of true asymmetry where we can't establish anything that looks "fair" to all parties, or like "justice".
Abortion is an example I gave that you ignored.
From the man's perspective, he has a right to protect his unborn child which he may love, and have a say in things.
From a woman's perspective, it's happening in her body, and she has the right to terminate it.
From a man's perspective, he has the right to demand an abortion: It's his DNA being used, and if he doesn't want a child, it shouldn't be forced on him.
From a woman's perspective, again, it's in her body, and she has the right not to have an abortion.

Biology seems to be giving the entire decision to the woman if we assume she must have the right to control her body: This isn't fair for the man, this isn't just.

There is no way to solve this dilemma that's perfect for all parties. The only way is to have both sides reach some kind of compromise.

It's ridiculous the suggest that the same person who is advocating for the woman should also advocate for the man given this conflict.
It's like saying the prosecution should also act as the defense and present those arguments.
Might as well just make him judge, jury, and executioner too, because any bias (and all humans have bias) is going to completely destroy any hope of what we try to do in terms of justice.

We need the prosecution, AND we need the defense: it is the adversarial nature before the jury that ultimately resolves conflicts in as just as way as we are currently capable of.
The same goes for Feminism; it's only one side of the conflict, and it's irrational to suppose that feminist should also be expected to argue for men's issues: surely they'll dole out to men what's fair, they won't be biased or anything.
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by Red »

Was the lack of punctuation when you were quoting Winters deliberate?
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by EquALLity »

miniboes wrote:
EquALLity wrote:
knot wrote:
It's where you take different systems of oppression into account. For example, white women have historically been less privileged than white men, but much more privileged than black women.
Well, of course we should care about all forms of oppression.
Only the oppression that actually exists. Also note he said systems of oppression. Many intersectionalists believe certain systems, for example the US electoral or education system, are racist, sexist or otherwise oppressive. There is much to be said about the US electoral and education systems, but they aren't inherently racist or sexist. To illustrate, there is no law that says "A female candidate receives a hundred fewer delegates" or "A black student must not be given any help by their teacher".
I think there is an argument to be made that voter suppression of minorities by the republican party is inherently racist, though I haven't looked into it much.

I wouldn't be surprised, since there have been instances recently where they have clearly tried to suppress voters, and because of their history with the Southern Strategy.
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

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brimstoneSalad wrote:Only assuming what is viewed as oppression is actually harmful. This comes back to the deontological use vs. abuse issue. Is "oppression" always harmful? This is not clear. It's also not clear what is even meant by "oppression".
I was generalizing, because oppression (cruel treatment) is pretty much always harmful.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Right, this comes down to my third point about Parsimony. We have to be effective.

I think mixing them when you're talking to a feminist may be useful, just how mixing them if you're talking to a Christian may be -- meeting people where they are, and relating veganism to issues they care about. The trouble is, that's not what intersectionality is about; it says we have to mix them all the time, regardless of the audience, and calls anybody who fails to racist/sexist/etc. :roll:
If we mix everything at once, we end up talking about nothing. Causes are most effective when they are focused.
Maybe, but it could cause those vegan converts to tie in their veganism with that issue when trying to persuade other people, which could be an issue.

I agree that causes should be focused. I care a lot about veganism, atheism, and liberalism, but mixing them together pushes away the majority of people, so I don't think it's effective activism.
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Re: Factual Feminist on intersectionality

Post by brimstoneSalad »

EquALLity wrote: I was generalizing, because oppression (cruel treatment) is pretty much always harmful.
That's not necessarily what oppression means, though.
prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control.
the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control.
(definition provided by Google)

I certainly disagree with 'cruel treatment', but not 'unjust treatment' (it says or), and I certainly don't disagree with 'unjust control' (which is very subjective -- a bigot may believe he or she is being unjustly controlled if prohibited from acting on that bigotry, for example).
The second definition doesn't even mention cruelty at all.
EquALLity wrote: Maybe, but it could cause those vegan converts to tie in their veganism with that issue when trying to persuade other people, which could be an issue.
That's a good point, and I think that applies most of all to intersectional veganism/feminism, when we're talking about the pseudoscientitic hypothesis/conspiracy theory that supposedly joins all forms of oppression -- it would be nearly impossible for them to untie their vegan activism from that.
Kind of like getting the Nazis or flat Earthers to go vegan by appealing to Hitler (going by the propaganda) or encouraging them to believe meat is some kind of conspiracy, it may come back to bite us by having long term negative consequences to the credibility of the movement.

I think this is much safer with Christian veganism, because that's more transparently one particular approach, it's more acceptable in the mainstream, and people aren't likely to assume it's a religious thing for everybody.
This is an assumption on my part, though: a survey would help us determine better how it was interpreted by non-Christians and if it reduced the credibility of other vegan arguments for them.
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