I feel inordinately ashamed that I only get this reference because I play far too much Fallen London.

I would not (especially now, the better part of two decades later) argue that it should be the sole responsibility of women or any marginalized group, to educate or steer individuals who are not yet actively oppressive but are members of the oppressor group onto the Proper Course.

However, I would argue that someone has to do it in order to fix this cultural thing on a broad scale, and if no one does and the only responses these people get are the cathartically hostile responses that understandably come from people under the burdens you describe - well, then, the results are predictably going to be as the article describes.

This is, conveniently enough, why I'm such a vocal fan of our host: he's someone that's in a position, and with a mindset, to bridge that gap before it's too late for any particular individual innocent.

Though I do see your points in response to my comment upthread (Scott poses an intuitively appealing thesis on some levels, particularly to someone like me who tends to take a more diplomatic tone in debates and consequently stays out of most online social-justice discourse, but there are places where it falls apart), I think the reason the article resonated with me is simply that its central argument didn't read to me quite the same way you are characterising it. Possibly because I have less experience with being the target of so many other such complaints that DO read that way and are intended that way.

My read wasn't "nice guys, (regardless of capital letters), are entitled to reward for said niceness from Women As Gestalt Entity" so much as "nice guys, having internalized/been taught that being nice is at least a necessary (though usually not sufficient) condition for a woman to be attracted to someone, find this not to be the case, and are vocally sad and confused about it, get mistaken for guys from Example 1 and attacked/shamed for that line of questioning, and eventually spiral into The Dark Side as a defensive reaction or in hopes of finding some operative way of improving their lot.". And it resonated with me because when I was a shy, strange-looking (I prefer the term "exotic" these days) and horny teenage boy I took a couple of steps down that road but left the "vocally" off of my sadness and confusion, thereby eventually managed to learn something like a decent dating approach, and escape into a less shy adulthood with only a propensity to say things that will be dismissed as tone arguments rather than a seething hatred of, or even a perception of, Women As Gestalt Entity.

Which loops back again to the point that Doc made in the article and that I come back to in comments: we, in general (but some of us in particular and ESPECIALLY nerds), are put under the mistaken impression that attraction is fair and responds to rational criteria like, well, like a game would. Learning to deal with the fact that it isn't and likely never will be, then making the best of it in a way that doesn't cause harm, is a key part of growing up as a Non-Awful Human Being.

I went and read the link here and now I'm kind of curious what you find wrong with his argument: though I'll admit that given my personal history I might be something close to its target audience. The fact that his examples are mostly composites is unhelpful but it seems to be a pretty decent summation of how someone can come to the Nice Guy view without necessarily being an entitled misogynist (and then how someone can potentially go from Nice Guy to entitled misogynist through Internet radicalization).

Really, I think the foundation of all of this Sturm und Drang to is the mistaken assumption that life, and love in particular, is going to be fair. It isn't. It won't be, and it will never be. The founding myth of our society is "all men are created equal" and "equal treatment under the law", and that's all fair and good, but love and lust are not law, and the playing field there is always going to be tilted.

The maddening thing is that he's almost on the edge of getting the article's point: the boundaries are DIFFERENT when the approachee is attracted to the approacher, (that may not be fair but this game is not fair) but the boundaries still exist and ignoring that gets you nowhere. Sure, maybe Ed's boundaries would be a lot looser if the woman hitting on him was really attractive to him - hell, maybe they would be so loose as to barely exist and he'd let her get away with things he'd be creeped out with Generic Lady X trying - but the key here is that _he would let her_, and that some other guy might not, so even attractive people (by whatever standard) need to pay attention to boundaries.

I think 1) is probably a more important question. I don't know the FOIA very well, but I know that under the Canadian equivalent (the ATIA) an email that contained no relevant record wouldn't even be included in a response, let alone marked with a "deliberative process" exemption.

So if there actually is something relevant to the internal decision-making process in there, then a) that's really goddamned weird, and b) since this is in the context of the FOIA rather than a standard civil discovery, spousal privilege might not apply unless there's a statutory exemption to that in the FOIA, which there might well not be (how the hell would the drafters have anticipated that?).

TL;DR: the Republicans might actually have a point and DEAR FUCKING LORD it hurts me to say that.

Eh, you're right it won't happen. Any such figures who dare speak against this bullshit are just tagged White Knights who've been Corrupted By The Fempire and should be shunned. (cf. Tim Schafer's place on this list: http://mrdappersden.tumblr.com/image/95942292047)

"Bringing on Delic was undoubtedly part of the CIC's effort to rebuild its reputation, but it's the group people react to - not the individual. "

And this is precisely the problem that needs to be addressed. It's absurd to tar Zelic with the opinions of a predecessor that he disagrees with and was apparently brought on specifically to refute, just like it's more broadly absurd to tar any group based on the actions of its loudest and most extreme elements. Zelic is not responsible for Elmasry, moderate Christians or Muslims aren't responsible for abortion-clinic bombers/antisemites/Al-Qaeda terrorists, liberal posters on this blog aren't responsible for Emily, conservative ones aren't responsible for Cats.

If Muslims in Canada constantly have to make up and apologise for crimes they had no part in, what do you expect this to do? Are we actually _trying_ to justify an us-against-the-world mindset on their part?

At the risk of actually engaging Andrew's argument rather than trying and failing to be a smart-aleck...

We can't ignore comparative advantage and specialisation of labour, no. There is an increased cost to allowing the Ontario car factories to compete with the Saskatchewan car fields or the Alberta car sands. But I don't agree that paying this cost has no benefits worth considering - rather, it's an investment in the diversity of our economy and the flexibility of our work force. It's an effort to cultivate a potential future comparative advantage, to provide employment for people beyond hewers of wood and drawers of water.

This is not to say that full-scale protectionism is the right answer either, only that the case is not as clear cut as Friedman's admittedly elegant analogy makes it seem.

I don't think that being "right-wing" is the primary descriptor of these movements (and "left wing" and "right wing" are useless as descriptors anyway these days.)

What matters to foreign observers, and what makes the article liken them to neo-Nazis,, is a nativism verging on xenophobia and (where possible) an aggressively nationalist foreign policy. These are not strictly the domain of the "right wing", but they're common traits to all of these movements, they appeal to the worst instincts of any human populace, and they make these movements extremely dangerous.