I'd like to talk to some LGBT LWers.

To a certain degree, different brands of feminism could function as different parties (certainly in academic feminism they do).

You are quite correct. There are large disagreements and fissures within feminism. These disagreements might not be obvious or cared about by non-feminists (similar to how many feminists don't recognize the differences within MRAs and PUAs). See out-group homogeneity bias.

As you also observe correctly, there are some common premises (and biases) even within these different groups of feminists. Although there are widely varying feminist opinions on porn, trans people, race issues, etc, there unfortunately seems to be a lot of homogeneity in how feminists view men's issues.

For example, the notion that "men are privileged over women" is very common, and I wish that there was more debate within feminism about whether that was an acceptable generalization, and what it means.

The acceptance of these concepts is merely a case of the availability heuristic. Women's oppression (and men's privilege) is more cognitively available to feminist women, so their theories often fail to account for oppression towards men and female privileges. This bias is not completely universal across feminist factions, but it's very broad.

I hope that if examples of male suffering, female perpetration, and female advantages were more cognitively available to feminists, then some of them would eventually update their theories into a form of feminism that is more inclusive.

I think you've been taking a step in that direction with your blogging, with your posts on undiagnosed brain injury in the military, how sexual violence, domestic violence, and abuse are much less gendered than the traditional feminist portrayal according to new surveying, and the underreporting and cover-up of sexual violence towards men in African conflict zones.

That said, I too would like more variation in the gender politics space; some groups (most notably, men) are distinctly underserved by the current gender discourse, and more competition in the marketplace of ideas can only be a good thing. :)

I couldn't agree more.

I too would like more variation in the gender politics space; some groups (most notably, men) are distinctly underserved by the current gender discourse, and more competition in the marketplace of ideas can only be a good thing. :)

What if an idea is highly competitive but factually wrong? Or even actively harmful?

So, what would be an example of a "gender politics" that is "liberal" and "progressive", but not represented by any "party"?

The men's rights movement and pickup are both gender politics movements. Some segments of those movements are "progressive" (defined later), and some are not (just like feminism: some of it is progressive, some of it is not). These movements are not "parties" because they have very little political power. Feminism has quite a lot of political power.

First, some definitions.

In gender politics, a "traditionalist" is someone who believes that our ideas and cultural practices around gender are better the way they are, or were better in the past. A "progressive" is someone who believes that gender politics is flawed, and should be changed according to a set of values. These values might include equality, autonomy, bodily integrity, and more.

Feminists had a problem with gendered cultural practices, and they created a successful movement. By changing gender norms and fighting sexism against women, feminists managed to change society towards greater equality and autonomy for women. In these ways, feminism is a progressive gender political movement.

Unfortunately, feminism hasn't been a consistently progressive gender political movement. Thanks to bias in feminism (self-serving biases, typical mind fallacy, availability heuristic), there are many traditional ideas that are unchallenged by feminism. In some cases, feminist arguments or behaviors reinforce tradition.

Feminists don't believe that they are being traditional, because their typical idea of tradition is a "patriarchy" where men where unilaterally advantaged over women of similar class and race. Yet that portrayal is only sometimes accurate throughout history. Men have experienced disadvantages throughout history that feminists haven't fully recognized (see forced labor for instance). Yet since feminists haven't recognized them, feminists typically seem to think that to be "progressive," the only (or primary) thing activists need to do is to improve the situation of women.

As an abstract example, let's say that is a culture with 4 ideas or practices around gender:

A and B: disadvantage women C: disadvantages men and women D: disadvantages men

Here are how the arguments look to me:

Traditionalists: Pro-A, B, C, and D

Typical feminist: anti-A, anti-B, "C disadvantages women more than men, or women exclusively"

What feminism thinks tradition is: A, B, and C disadvantaging women only. D is not recognized as tradition, even though it is.

Progressive non-feminist: anti-C, anti-D, opposes how feminism misrepresents the effect of C on men

Right now, in the wider culture, there is a two party system in gender politics: feminism (a partially progressive movement) and conservatism (a mostly traditional movement). Yet this two-party system under-serves many people. Conservatism doesn't serve any progressives at all.

There are a lot of possible positions for people who want to change how cultures treat men and women, but neither towards the past, nor in the exact ways that feminists typically want to change things. There are lots of people like this, but they don't have an influential and high-status movement like feminism.

So for people who want change things, there is only one party in gender politics: feminism. The men's rights movement and the pickup community are growing into contenders in the gender politics space, but they lack influence and status in white middle/upper class liberal discourse.

Yet without status, organization, representation, or a political lobby, non-feminists who are progressive about gender politics just get stomped on by both feminists and conservatives. They remain isolated, or they get folded into feminism, the men's rights movement, pickup, or libertarianism. Furthermore, there are feminists who like to portray vocal non-feminists as wanting to put women back in the kitchen, when that's not true of progressive non-feminists.

Simultaneously, a lot of the people who criticize feminism have traditional views that will be unattractive to progressives, leaving feminism without any competition among progressives, even though competition should exist to either incentive feminism to evolve in a more consistently progressive direction, or replace it if it won't.

NO ONE should proposition people in a "stuck" situation

I agree.

I don't agree that the event would have made the news if the propositioner had been sufficiently hot.

I don't agree, based on the previous, that "Hotness does not come into that decision."

Side note: a lot of what bothers me about conventional advice is that I saw my most romantically successful friends trample right over advice like this.

Wait, what? The analogy works exactly; you're just assuming a priori that the bit you think doesn't fit actually doesn't fit. The analogy logically goes that if it's wrong to point a gun at someone regardless of whether you think it's loaded because it might be anyway and that would be Very Bad, it's also wrong to proposition women in elevators regardless of whether you think they'll accept because the situation where they don't would be Very Bad.

No, the position of skepchic et al is (as best I can tell) that it would be no big deal if the propositioner were hot, at least to the extent that e.g. she wouldn't be making a blog post about, "hey, this guy I was really into asked me to his room [different terminology because she likes him] when we were on the elevator, and we had a great time, BUT YOU SHOULD NEVER DO THAT and don't take my acceptance on this occasion as an indication that it's okay, and I made this clear to him and informed his friends that he did something obviously very dangerous and which they should not repeat."

Now, you may have a point that there is a similarity between the two ("danger justifies erring on safe side as a rule"). However, there is a more important difference between how they're handled: specifically, that correct guessers on propositioning in elevators are rewarded, while correct guessers with gun handling are still punished (even if it's just a verbal rebuke). Yes, I suppose you "should" err on the safe side in both case, but as a practical matter no one is anywhere near giving a damn on correct guesses in one case, while they are very concerned in the other.

And this has fundamentally screwy incentives effects.

although I don't know what her OkCupid orientation and messaging behavior are

When I was only messaging guys on okc, I set my orientation to straight, even though I considered myself heteroflex, because I didn't want to falsely advertise to women. However in the match questions I answered the relevant questions as bi.

When I realized it was stupid for me to not message women on okc (I had been messaging guys as a default behaviour, even though okc allowed me to search only for bi/gay females, thus eliminating my primary reason for not dating girls in the first place), I changed my orientation to bi.

I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.