Just finished reading the “another list in trouble” thread. It ended a bit abruptly. After Jamie made a good-natured and rational appeal to Rachel about the dangers of allowing emotion to interfere with the rationality of arguments. Rachel replied that that could be used as an excuse to dismiss women’s subjective feelings about how they are ignored or treated by men in debates. She then mentioned that she was in a relationship with Jimmy and therefore felt the need to stand by him. This explains Jimmy’s vehement attacks on Tim and others — he was standing up for his partner. This in laudable, but it would have been helpful if this were made known earlier in the discussion. It might have cleared up a few things. After her reply to Jamie, she left the group.
I applaud Jamie for his attempt to reason with Rachel, but sometimes reasoning doesn’t work when the people you are attempting to reason with advocate emotion as being of higher importance.
Anyway, I won’t talk more about this, seeing as it is a controversial thread. I just wanted to point out how important reason and being rational in arguments is, something we should all value here.
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