There’s probably a better community for asking this, but I haven’t been able to find that one either.
What I’m looking for is a place to discuss ideas that encourages good-faith conversation, staying on topic, and being decent to one another - while actively discouraging mean-spirited, facetious, or bad-faith responses that focus on criticizing the person asking the question rather than engaging with the substance of it. And by “discouraging,” I mean active moderation with very low tolerance for that kind of commentary.
I not only block political communities here, but I also filter out every post containing terms related to current political events or specific political figures. While I might touch on topics that are political by nature - like the Israel-Palestine conflict - I rarely engage directly with politics in a broad sense.
For example, yesterday I tried making a post about the concept of “sigma males,” where I even preemptively acknowledged my doubts about its scientific validity and criticized how it tends to frame even negative traits in a positive light. Yet all the responses I received were ridicule, personal attacks, and accusations. Apparently, I overlooked the fact that the term “sigma male” acts like a lightning rod for a certain kind of person - people who completely disregard the actual question and just start spewing hatred and negativity.
I’d really just like a place where I can indulge in my cold and analytical, autistic topics of interest with other like-minded people. I don’t even mind disagreement - on the contrary, I enjoy it, as long as it’s done in good faith.
Have you entertained the notion that the term “sigma male” is also a lightning rod for people who have specific ideas about masculinity and, by extension, its relationship to women?
What I am getting from your incredibly vague post is that the topics you are interested in have connotations that would imply to others that your interest isn’t entirely academic, and so they become wary of your motives/beliefs.
Let me frame it more hyperbolically: having an autistic special interest in Nazi memorabilia raises a lot of questions to other people about whether you are interested in more than just the memorabilia.
What I want to talk about isn’t the point of this thread - it’s about how I want to talk about it. Basic decency toward one another shouldn’t be an unreasonable thing to ask. I’m more than happy to discuss my underlying motives, but I want to do so in a civilized manner. These mental acrobatics - where, because I’ve said some “magic word,” I must now, with high probability, be a certain type of person - are absolutely ridiculous.
Well, the reason people are being weird to you about this is because you’re being vague on purpose and they don’t want to be someone who helped foster a community that discusses how pedophilia and CP should be legal and black people are subhuman.
Basically every debate forum will turn into that if you don’t monitor things and make sure there are clear ground rules enforced by competent moderators. If you are being genuine, you will have to be prepared for bad faith actors, actual pedophiles, abuse apologists, racists and ethnonationalists, and the resulting mixed opinions of the community and not get upset like you are doing all over this thread.
If the community that you want doesn’t exist, then to solve that problem you’d either have to make one and mod it properly, or find people IRL.
I don’t understand your reasoning here. You seem to be implying that if we allow people to have open, honest debates, they’d somehow end up on the logical conclusion that sexual violence is good or justified. I’m sorry, but I just can’t see how that would happen. I’ve never in my life heard an intellectually honest, rational thinker make that kind of argument - though I have heard them argue the exact opposite.
I also don’t know why you seem to assume that ideas like these wouldn’t face any pushback. I’m not suggesting we create a space free of criticism - I’m suggesting we discuss ideas like civilized people, rather than shouting over one another and calling names just because we don’t like the tone of the sounds someone is making.
The only ones who need to fear open debate and discussion are authoritarian governments, because they don’t want people discovering the truth. And I seriously doubt that the moral rightness of sexual violence is some hidden truth the government is secretly trying to suppress.
Would you mind walking me through the steps of how a space like this becomes a breeding ground for fascists and sexual abuse? I genuinely don’t understand how you imagine that would happen - or why there wouldn’t be anyone pushing back. For that to be true, it would almost imply that fascists and rapists are the only ones capable of having good-faith discussions with each other, while everyone else with a functioning moral compass would’ve already been banned for incivility.