Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

shweta_narayan has posted some useful and interesting thoughts on category structures and oppression, starting with the idea that, for most people, a robin has more bird-ness than an albatross does. Weirder, apparently people think that an albatross is more like a robin than a robin is like an albatross; intuitively, I would have thought that "A is like B" was reflexive. And if you ask people
"is this a bird?" they'll say yes faster about a robin than about an albatross or an emu.

That's interesting when it's robins and eagles and albatrosses, or whether 4 is a "better" even number than 4,278, but it extends to different groups and kinds of people. And it may be part of why people "just happen" to think of white men more often than nonwhites or women when they're looking for contributors to an anthology, or speakers at a conference, or candidates for city council.

I'm annoyed at someone over on statements for making what struck me as a thoughtless remark, and when I called him on it, saying something along the lines of "I don't care if you think I meant that even nastier than it reads" rather than clarifying what he actually meant. (I'm assuming for the moment that his original intent wasn't hurtful.)

I briefly found myself thinking of posting something along the lines of "I hope something makes you understand how that felt." But I don't. I can't even wish I was still in a mindset where I wanted him to think that. Because it would do me no good, and probably neither teach him anything emotionally useful nor get him to stop making that sort of casually hurtful remark; and because I rather like being who I am, and while anger has its places and its uses, I have quite enough anger already.