sexist: women use guns less in suicide because they're worried their corpse won't be attractive
not sexist: women avoiding guns in suicide is further evidence of how pervasive and mighty the grip of social pressures on women's appearances.
(cont...)
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Replying to
Basically: There's an interesting measure here of what is socially acceptable to say if you add on "bad society pressure" to remove the blame directly from the group you're discussing. And to clarify, I think "bad society pressure" is often a legit reason and I'm not arguing we-
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shouldn't use it, I'm just noticing that there's pressure to add it as a caveat when discussing 'negative' things about a group.
I'm also curious about when there *isn't* pressure to add it as a caveat. Sometimes "bad society pressure" is missing from discussions.
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This seems like a really good way to see who's in a culture's shithouse: Drop your "bad society pressure" from an observation about a group and see if anybody notices.
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Racist: "Black people do more crime"
Not racist: "Black people do more crime because poverty causes crime, and black people have been historically disenfranchised which resulted in severe poverty."
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Racist: "Native americans get drunk and beat each other"
"Not racist: "Yeah, because they were literally wiped out/kinda genocided, and restricted to tiny reservations which resulted in intense poverty, no shit they have high alcohol rates and low mental health support"
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Sexist: "Men oppress women"
Not sexist: "Because society has reinforced that - men who don't show their strength sufficiently are mocked instead of given social support"
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Replying to
Tbh, suicide would probably be the only occasion when I _wouldn't_ care how I looked
On a serious note, the 'social pressure' type of narrative seems almost insulting because it's like -- has no one actually considered that women like to look a certain way just for themselves?🤦
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I've considered it but find it extremely implausible. Like, if you just delete society from a human's brain you get something unrecognizeable, not a woman who likes wearing blue lipstick 'just for herself.' Everything we signal about ourselves is tied to 'being viewed.'
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Show replies
Replying to
’s new book, Talking to Strangers, actually discusses your first tweet in this thread - women and guns with data to back it up.
Replying to
This is why I try to gentle push back with these political correct conversations, that if a statement would miraculously become not offensive with a standard disclaimer, why not start by assuming the person you are talking to is using it implicitly.
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