Comment by mkdir

> "If I claim I'm a victim in a way that you're not, it becomes literally impossible for you to prove me wrong."

> This is a very ungenerous reading. (Ungenerous readings are very common in 'discussions' like this, on both sides.)

I think you're misunderstanding me, because you the rest of your post precisely describes what I'm talking about (up until the final paragraph, which I'll get to later).

If I claim that I'm a victim in a way that you're not, it means that there must (in some way) be quantifiable categorical differences between us. Otherwise, of course, we'd both be victims.

For example, we could have different different cities of birth, different ages, different ethnicities, different religions, different specific houses of worship, different visual appearances, different heights, different friends, different incomes, different hobbies, different offices, different voice pitches, different teachers, different childhood fears, different parents, etc. We could be different people with different brain chemistries and different life experiences. So even if we are at the same table together at the same restaurant, you could not tell me how I experienced the waiter speaking to us.

And you could not judge how I experience being told, "You are not allowed to reason with a woman when she claims victimhood on the basis of her sex. You are not allowed to point out any problematic aspects of her claims. You are not allowed to say that you as a man are equally affected by the phenomenon she is describing. She knows that you are wrong. Somehow."?

> But isn't it even more patronizing for men to come in and say that she has no basis to make that claim?

No, it's not patronizing at all disagree with a woman and explain why.

> And that sounds uncomfortably like we're saying to women: you can't disagree. You can't do anything other than supplicate.

Saying to women "we are allowed to disagree and reason with you" is completely different from saying to women "you aren't allowed to disagree and reason with us".