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Comment by aestetix | Hacker News Reader

> The world's peoples were particularly less likely to agree on the ethics of homosexuality, euthanasia, divorce, prostitution, and abortion. Residents of wealthy countries grew more comfortable with all those topics, while residents of poorer countries were less so. Why did the trend towards tolerance and self-expression stall in poorer nations?

Extreme bias on the part of the author. Also, the statement is objectively untrue. It appears that the author has opinions on hot-button issues, calls his opinions "tolerant," and proceeds to wonder why poor countries disagree with him.

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What other people do with their bodies is not a hot-button issue. You either accept it and are tolerant, or you don’t and you are intolerant.

So yes, being uncomfortable with others’ freedom of sexuality, etc. is by definition intolerant.

You can be a heterosexual Christian conservative married for life 3 children housewife while still being tolerant of those that are not.

>> Extreme bias on the part of the author. Also, the statement is objectively untrue. It appears that the author has opinions on hot-button issues, calls his opinions "tolerant," and proceeds to wonder why poor countries disagree with him.

I think the bias is equating "tolerant" with good and "intolerant" with bad, which I think you're doing too.

In my experience, that implicit bias is pretty common in the language of Americans, especially liberals, but even conservatives (who would understand being called "intolerant" is a reproach).

> What other people do with their bodies is not a hot-button issue. You either accept it and are tolerant, or you don’t and you are intolerant.

I don't think it's that simple. Are you "tolerant"? Are you tolerant of people shitting on the sidewalk? I doubt it, but it's still falls under the rubric of "something other people do with their bodies." In actual practice "being tolerant" is actually defined as subscribing to a very particular set of social positions. It's one of those language tricks liberals seem particularly prone to use for manipulation.

Perhaps you could then ahem enlighten American lawmakers who passed FOSTA/SESTA in the US, which effectively criminalizes prostitution and has lead to many sex workers losing their livelihoods.

That's your response?

A nice garden with a few weeds is still overall a nice garden. To point at those few weeds and equivocate it to the overgrown vacant lot is either naive, dishonest, or just plain unintelligent.

This ignores the fact that societal norms affect your ability to live your life.

As an extreme example, imagine trying to find a stable husband and raise a family in a world in which every other woman treated sex as being valueless and beautiful women wandered the streets naked and giving it up to passers by.

It might be intolerant to prefer a society that isn't like that, but that doesn't automatically make it bad.

edit: Most of the responses here are missing the point because they're trying to take a side (in a deliberately fake, over the top scenario) rather than engaging with the concept. The behaviour of other people affects you and it's perfectly normal both to want to surround yourself with others who share your values, and to exert pressure to push wider society in that direction.

Let’s all take a moment to appreciate the attempt of this post to draw empathy for women in a world where their utility as a sex object is diminished. How oh how will they ever find a partner without the primary source of their value???

> As an extreme example, imagine trying to find a stable husband and raise a family in a world in which every other woman treated sex as being valueless and beautiful women wandered the streets naked and giving it up to passers by.

Sounds easy enough as long as you consider men may have some motivation other than to have as much sex as possible.

And in this discussion thread nobody labeled either these positions good or bad. However, if one believes being intolerant is bad, yet stays in their position while trying to rationalize it away, that's called cognitive dissonance.

> The behaviour of other people affects you and it's perfectly normal both to want to surround yourself with others who share your values, and to exert pressure to push wider society in that direction.

In the same vein that it is perfectly rational for slave owners to push society to reject abolishing slavery.

But rational self interest is a poor proxy for goodness.

That woman isn't owed a world where puritanism isn't on a steady centuries-long decline. She's owed tolerance to live the way she wants, and she owes others tolerance to live the way they want. She can prefer whatever she wants.

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