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Comment by apeace | Hacker News Reader

Don't you think the "Am I The Asshole" subreddit is going to have a bit of a selection bias towards describing men who are assholes?

You seem to be using AITA as evidence that some huge percentage of women want to date/marry asshole/abusive men. It does not provide evidence of that.

You and the article you linked are suggesting a correlation between being an abusive/asshole man and having a large number of women want to have sex with you. But there is no such correlation. It's false.

I just want you and anyone else who ever comes across this part of the thread to not believe in such garbage.

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For sure. It's true that men in abusive relationships are definitionally in relationships. But the reason for that isn't, "women like abuse". Many people of all genders have abusive bosses, but nobody uses that to conclude that people like having abusive bosses. The way it works is that successful abusers are good at fooling people to get them into contexts where they can abuse. The ones not good enough at that end up alone, of course.

For anybody who wants to actually understand the dynamic, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" is a great resource. Recently discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34497066

Again, the question isn't whether people like having an abusive partner. The question is, is being an abusive (or just bad) partner positively or inversely correlated with sexual opportunity? Your linked post doesn't engage with that question at all. It does explore why people perpetrate abuse, which is an interesting discussion in its own right, but not relevant to this OP.

Is that the question? I'm not sure why you're asking it or what you'd do with that answer.

And you conclude that this is incorrect and garbage on the grounds of what, exactly? I'm more inclined to believe the licensed psychiatrist over a random internet commenter.

That guy is not just some random licensed psychiatrist, and I have a hard time taking seriously anybody who tries to pretend he is.

To spare the HN community from this whole discussion, feel free to find my contact info in my profile. We can have a respectful debate over email if you want.

I will just end by saying, you are the one making claims which require evidence to back them up. Especially on a site like HN, it is a good idea to provide evidence for broad, sweeping claims. Or else dial those claims back.

I shared a source making this claim. You don't think it's a good source, which is a totally valid position, but you've not shared any evidence for this assertion. It'd be good to follow your own advice and back up your own claims with evidence, or dial back your claims about the blog. I'm really baffled why someone who called a piece of writing "horrible guided and confused" with nothing to back that claim up is in any position to lecture someone else about substantiating claims with evidence

As I said, I'd be happy to continue a respectful debate over email. Please engage me in that way, so that we can help each other and understand each other. This web site is not the right venue to continue this debate ad nauseam. I would like to respond to many of the things that you have said, but it doesn't make sense for us to do it on HN. If you really feel strongly about keeping the discourse public, you can always make a new HN submission showing our emails.

Again, my contact is in my profile. Whether or not we continue to talk, I wish you all the best.

Or we can skip this and just post the messages straight to HN - if you're fine with the submitting emails to HN then this is just and efficiency gain by skipping one layer of indirection.

So back to where we left off: I shared a blob post by a psychiatrist, which you disagreed with and called "horribly misguided and confused" yet neglected to explain any particular explanation why. Furthermore, you insisted that I post additional sources to back up the article I shared, yet you've shared none to support your criticisms. Do you think this is an effective way to argue your point?

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