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I might be out of the loop there, but does this term actually have a more specific meaning or is it just "woman" with a layer of incel sneering ("woman (gross and stupid in the way women are)")?
Paragraphs like this make me think that if you want to really understand your outgroup, talking to someone like a divorced elder millennial woman is a fundamentally misguided approach, for you in particular. Your story could be more or less glossed as "this person believes things that are diagonally opposed to what I believe. I don't see a coherent way that anyone could arrive at this, but well, she is a primitive, pathetic creature that is not at all like me. I figure she believes those things for some primitive creature reasons". You are making it entirely too easy for yourself, and wind up with a conclusion that is largely useless. What you should instead be doing is seeking out people that are the most like you, who you will not be tempted to explain away as motivated by feelings or daddy issues, and still come to the same conclusions. There is no shortage of male contrarians out there who also sympathise with the DSA, find Elon disgusting and think Trump is an asshole. Try to talk to them, and understand why they believe those things.
Yeah, it's basically the gender flipped version of chud. Which means it needs to be used almost 1000x more often to achieve parity.
I didn't realise we were running a DEI program to increase right-wing representation in tribal brainrot here.
If we do it too hard, the betrayal will be great when it inevitably comes out that our latest 3x AAQC awarded MGTOW knuckledragger faked his CV and is actually secretly a stay-at-home husband for a muscle mommy female CEO.
This is just such a reddit-y thing to say. The sarcastic, passive voice phrasing flowing into the boo outgroup "brainrot" / "muslce mommy" comment.
I'd encourage you to say what you mean. If I had to take a shot at it, I think it's something like:
"Using terms like 'foid' doesn't help with discourse because they come pre-loaded with a heavily meme'd and polemic connotation. It makes the point any author is trying to make more difficult to honestly engage with because readers who are predisposed to agree will chuckle at the terminology and let shaky analysis slide, while those predisposed to disagree will discount perhaps valid evidence too quickly."
But maybe I'm wrong here?
Your gloss is pretty good (and, unironically, I appreciate that you theory-of-minded me fairly there). In my defense, I don't think you were saying what you mean when you chose to use "foid" either; and I don't think I've been exactly hiding my long-standing frustration with how the community rewards and moderators allow free-wheeling use of slurs in service of right-wing positions (as long as they are not crossing the window frame against racism that was already in place ca. 1980). In this situation, detached sarcasm feels like the only available outlet.
Also unironically -
A big part of the "founding situation" of The Motte was over-modding / policing of even the lightest of slurs. "Foid" is exactly one of those. It's not even a slur so much as a derogatory Very Online meme / shorthand.
I can't say I remember what exactly happened (did our stewards ever outright list what the Reddit overlords demanded of them in the end?), but I was under the impression that it was about much more than that, and there were specific demands from admins to ban particular opinions (content, not tone). Moderating on tone used to be touted as a core principle of this community, and it served it rather well, if you compare the quality of top posts when it was in place vs. now. Do slurs serve any purpose other than either pissing off those they are directed against (and their allies), or inducing camaraderie among those who know them and oppose those they are directed against? I don't see how gratuitously provoking irrational anger in some subset of readers could possibly make this forum better for its stated purpose, nor how allowing some users to bond over any shared identity (other than perhaps being a high-decoupling turboautist) would.
Please refrain from using slurs
That's not a slur any more than "nigga" is; the people who use it generally consider it to include themselves (as I did here) or use it with a tinge of admiration.
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