There is a difference in my mind between shouldering the problems of someone else and preventing someone else from blatantly abusing them. Where someone is a victim through their own negligence I have very little sympathy, but the person taking advantage of that weakness is the one that I am more concerned about. No matter how pathetic their victim, if in my assessment someone IS genuinely being victimised then I think that should be shut down sharpish. On the internet that can be damn hard to define, but we all have to use our personal judgement. As long as you are acting to stop a bully rather than defend the position of their victim it's probably the right course of action. Of course if you start defending the position of a victim and taking on their role in the fight yourself then you are probably doing it wrong. The role of people shutting down bullies is to mediate a respectful disagreement, not to win the argument one way or another. Which I guess is my way of saying that I agree that people should FIGHT for themselves, but that sometimes fights need referees, and that is a role that we should all be prepared to take if we see someone handing out low blows, eye gouging, biting, or whatever the online equivalents of these are.

My analysis of your fundamental position was based on analysis of your arguments and not a single quotable sentence. This was how your arguments read. They may have been badly written, that may not have been what you meant, but it was what you wrote. I could explain at length the reasoning behind that analysis but I suspect that would be relatively pointless given that this was apparently NOT what you meant. Though I note that you offer no alternative. Further, I both disagree with you over the level of power that bad ideas like modern feminism have attained and over the worth of a response to them. Bad ideas often take root in the centres of power. Look at the dominance that religion has had over human cultural development for ever. It should not have escaped your notice that nearly all modern politicians and leaders in society and business now feel the need not to claim Christianity as a label, but rather Feminism. This ideology is absolutely not without power. Politicians stand on it as a foundation to their policies, laws are written based on it's flawed narratives, even the idea of innocent until proven guilty is genuinely under threat from it. To claim that it is powerless is to bury your head in the sand, stick your arse in the air and pray that the strap-on is still lubed by the time it reaches you. To suggest that this fantasy of "no power" means that you are empowered by not treating it as a threat is like curing myopia by sticking a hot poker in your eye. I entirely agree with you that offence is taken. I applaud your adult approach of not taking offence. However I must point out to you that harassment and bullying behaviour need not be offensive. They most often are intended to cause offence, however the most defining feature is that they are behaviours which are intended to not allow respite. The bullies who get away with it are the ones who minimise their offensiveness whilst maintaining a relentless onslaught of whatever action they have decided to take despite being asked to stop. I do not agree that the internet is a medium incapable of conveying harassing behaviours, it seems especially suited to the job. I also do not agree that we should expect that the only actions taken against such behaviour should be taken by the intended recipient. This is nothing to do with creating a safe space in the sense that an SJW would use the term. This is entirely about a conservative approach to communication etiquette and an expectation that when a peer requests that another peer desists in taking an action which defies common etiquette that the rest of the peer group will support and enforce that request, with the threat of being ostracised being the ultimate penalty for non compliance. The internet should not be a safe space for those who wish to be as offensive as possible, there is a safe space for that sort of speech, and it is in private, amongst friends - NOT in public whilst communicating with strangers. Even in private amongst friends there should be normal politeness limits on the targeting of jokes at any particular individual, the same goes for private sub forums, party chats and direct messaging. There is a fundamental difference between crybullies who claim harassment at the mildest criticism and genuine harassment. Just because the crybullies exist we should not assume that genuine bullies DON'T or that the medium is incapable of being used to bully. And YES, we should absolutely stand up and make ourselves heard against both genuine threats to society and against people who are genuine bullies. This should not be controversial