I agree, and I think you could criticize Tolkien on those grounds- I would. But all I’m saying is that it’s not necessarily contradictory or hypocritical for him to have hobbits conversing amongst each other, but not women. Which doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have tried, just that I would find it sort of sensationalist to say that Tolkien “relates” more to mythical creatures than to women.

The article still makes a valid point, of course. I’m just saying.

That does start down the road to psych denialism. Once we use “OCD” to mean “having a strong (but not pathological) preference for things to be a certain way,” it becomes easier to conclude that OCD isn’t a real disorder and people who claim to be impaired by it are just making an excuse.

JRR Tolkien once said that he would never write a scene with women conversing amongst themselves, which means his work very consciously does not pass the Bechdel test. He justified this by noting that (as a man) he had never been present to witness women sans men, and so he didn’t feel confident in his ability to portray that dynamic accurately.

Well, ok. But at what point can we say that the reason a writer doesn’t understand a dynamic is because they’ve made no effort to? If Tolkein really want to have women talking to each other in his books, it wouldn’t have been so hard to discuss the matter with women and get their opinion on his work. Just giviing up because women are so (apparently) uttlerly Other does not seem defendible.

Similarly I don’t think anyone is demanding that a white person should be able to 100% portray the experience of being non-white. But to simply not even have any non-white characters? Just write a non-white character the same way you would a white character, if you need to.

I guess in summary I’m saying that ignorance isn’t an excuse.

One way might be names – I recall a book I once read where characters had names from different cultural groups put together, suggesting someone might be both Chinese and Hispanic, for example. Not sure that’s a perfect solution, but it can work.

Understood.

Can we just make a habit here of not commenting on articles we haven’t read? If you don’t want to read it, don’t read it. And don’t attempt to discuss it.

No, that’s not the case. I read most of the other linked articles, but it seems to me that when the quoted sample is completely unappealing (to me), it’s probably unlikely that I would find the article worth the time it would take to read it, and my time is valuable.

This

Men, we are told, shouldn’t hurt women, not because of any intrinsic rights women may have, but because other men might do it to THEIR women, and that would be awful.

is a strawman, because the only people who push this sort of framework are those who are invested in a very weird and particular strain of conservative pseudofeminism, the cousin of Palin’s “mama grizzly” shit.

A strawman is when someone misrepresents an argument by offering a fake version. Would you mind explaining what you mean? In this context it makes no sense.

The issue, whether you agree or not, will not be seen without reading the piece so like the framework of course you won’t see it without looking at the authors case. These are not rational reasons for not reading and it seems you were determined not to read it anyway.

Common to all these messages is that men CAN rape, hurt, buy women, catcall or what-have-you, but they SHOULDN’T. Men, we are told, shouldn’t hurt women, not because of any intrinsic rights women may have, but because other men might do it to THEIR women, and that would be awful.

Uh, what? Of course men can commit rape, pretty much whenever they want. It’s really not that hard. A lot of people do it! I’m not really seeing the point of a framework that denies this reality.

The second sentence in that paragraph doesn’t follow from the first, and is a strawman.

The wonderful, complex, and multi-faceted language of generations of queer, trans, intersectionalist and sex-positive feminism and human-rights dialogues is thrown aside completely in favor of a request that straight, cis-gendered men join the rest of the world at the big-kids table.

Well, but if you’re talking to straight, cisgendered men, I don’t see the issue with that. Also, I find the pointless condescending bullshit annoying.

Not a good start. I don’t think I’ll be following the link.

Labels are important and those of us with cognitive disorders need them so that we can have a social and linguistic tool to point out very important differences between us and others that are important for us to talk about in social, employment, and other encounters. I don’t mind “regular folks” having words to refer to cognitive issues that fall into the same category as those defined in extreme form by medically defined conditions (so one a level this very annoying phenomena is part of the linguistic and observational brilliance of people in general). But there needs to be a social/linguistic way to distinguish average manifestations of these problems from the ones that people like me have.