I wondered, if I had played it straight, would I have earned their respect? No. I would have been dubbed “humorless”.

Oftentimes, when anti-feminists accuse you of being “mean”, that translates into “A joking feminist! But feminists have no sense of humor! I’m trying to project this perfectly good image of a feminist boogeyman and she’s ruining it! THIS IS SO UNFAIR!!!” Then their reptilian hindbrain resorts to stereotype B to cope.

Of course, this hypothesis hinges on whether I’m actually funny or not.

Anyway: I’ll amend it to 90% non-violent movement.

Lisa KS: I never could stand the original series. Honestly, Kirk annoyed more than any other starship captain. And the point wasn’t that the humans ignored the Vulcans expression of superiority: it was the point that the Vulcans expressed it. Feminists can generally ignore dismissals that we are simply “too angry” but they still express it.

Amanda: Self-defense isn’t a sign of violence. Honestly, more than anything it’s a confidence builder.

Okay fine, crazy people probably can’t be used as representatives of movements they claim to be a part of.

1. Re feminism being a nonviolent movement–in the main, yes, but a vivid historical example of an exception to that general rule are the early 20th century British suffragettes.

2. Trekkie!! But ya know, I really got a much different impression of Vulcans throughout my Trek-viewing years. Maybe it’s because I started off with the original series as a small child…there were at *least* three episodes with Spock lettin’ his hair down in the original series, and he was always being mocked for his emotional reserve. In the second original series movie, Kirk paid the obvious absolute highest compliment to Spock at Spock’s funeral, saying that his soul was the most “human.” Vulcans never seemed to be claiming that they *had* no emotion or even *suppressed* all emotion–only a few did the later, via the rites of Kolinahr. I always thought the awesomeness of human “emotion” and “intuition” was always being shoved in Vulcans’ faces and saw a multitude of episodes where the “human” style of emotion saved the day!! and cold, Vulcan “logic” just wasn’t good enough–note that in The Next Generation, they don’t have a Vulcan; they have an android, who fulfills the exact same Pinocchio-slash-walking-computer role that Vulcans do. Vulcan assertions that their way is the best is always treated with indulgent contempt by every human around, far as I’ve always been able to tell…

3. In terms of feminist “anger,” I’ve always considered it a belittling tactic. Black activists are always called “angry” too. Not “productively” angry, of course–that’s reserved for white guys. Feminists are *hysterically* angry and blacks are *mindlessly* angry, fill in the blank with the appropriate stereotype…of course there’s nothing wrong with being angry at injustice; in fact, we are supposed to be. The point of emphasizing feminist anger is to underline that it is not a just anger, but a child’s anger, angry because it can’t have what it percieves it wants right at that moment, but as we all know, children lack the emotional maturity to tell the difference between important and non-important issues and the ability to tell what is *really* good for it–parents must ignore or indulgently chastise a child for its tantrums, for its own good really. That would be one reason that I’ve always found a wicked wit to be the very best way to express my feminist anger. Hard to condescend to someone who’s already made you look like a fool in a way that amply demostrates she can also think about five times as fast as you, ain’t it? heh.

About the violent feminists bit:

I don’t think that a few violent representatives of any movement constitute the actions of that movement. Crazy nutjobs are everywhere, in every movement. So, my problems with, say, Christianity isn’t that there are occasional nutjobs who do horrible things in the name of their religion - it’s that large elements of the religion are quite comfortable with all manner of violence and I feel the “moderate” faction of Christianity does little to prevent their more violent co-religionists from killing in the name of Christ.

There’s a big difference between the no true Scotsman fallacy and a logical fallacy that presents the most extreme members of a large and diverse movement as typical of that movement. I know there’s a fancy name for this kind of fallacy but I can’t bring it to mind.