That's a good response, and I am beginning to get the idea of how I differ from you.
See, I can use "the n-word" (and I'm only using that because I think that spelling out the anagram of "ginger" would get me a warning). I used it today, and I used it yesterday, in the company of three lovers. One of them has very dark skin. The others have light skin. However, the latter two are also Jewish, though neither is theistic. (I also used the k-word and a few other *-words, but I ran out.)
Lenny Bruce once said, "I want to say (the n-word) over and over again until it loses all of it's meaning." I agree with him. Yeah, it can be risky--didn't he wind up in jail a few times? Still, I think we live in a better world because he did.
Right.
So there are a couple of things here. One might as well be termed pragmatic. Of course, if I treat a woman the same way I treat a man, there is a chance that she won't like it. It is my responsibility, and my responsibility alone, to handle that if it happens, and to ensure that it doesn't happen in the first place if I don't want it to. Here, I am treating women the same way that I am treating men, in that I am assuming that they are rational agents who can talk about things, even challenging and unpleasant things. I'm really not about to stop doing that. Still, in-person relationships are different, and though you may not credit it, I'm pretty good at doing it.
The other is moral, suggested by your "you are dismissing their experiences and dehumanizing them" language. That's where I balk, rather severely. I cannot tell the difference between those things you tell me that I have to accept (or if I don't, I'm dehumanizing people, bad me.) During my lifetime, segregation was the norm. "That's the way it's always been and how it's gotta be" from a song in Purlie, a Broadway musical my parents took me to when I was young.
So as far as I can tell, the current wave of gender essentialism is simply a reflection of the Status Quo. Of course, that's Holy and Correct. Still, I've lived a quarter century, and there seem to have been people arguing about how the Status Quo is Holy and Correct all my life.
Furthermore, I've seen a lot of things in the atheist communities where one woman got offended, but fifty women thought it was just fine or great. Then when the one woman's offense gets made into an internet drama, there are all these admonitions to consider her representative of all women and ignore the fifty. This does not seem to me to be a plea to treat women the way women want but rather a plea to accept the viewpoint of a minority of women as to how all women should be treated.
Dehumanizing was the wrong word. It's big and scary. I'm just not sure what the little and not-so-scary word would be, maybe dismissive will work.
Look at the negative way many people have responded to Watson's original video. She shouldn't freak out (she didn't freak out.) Skeptics should never date! (she never said that.) But mostly, that
they wouldn't feel creeped out in an elevator, so Watson shouldn't either.
Telling her that she should respond according to their background, their personal experiences, and a situation that they are imagining, not experiencing - it's really dismissive.
As a woman, I've gotten a lot of this in my 45 years (I'm guessing we're close in age, as a quarter century man wouldn't have clear memories of the 70's) Sometimes it's big stuff. Usually it's telling me how I should feel because somehow they think that their response to an imaginary situation is more valid than my response to a real one.
I know that women aren't alone in this. I've probably done the same thing myself. But in my experience, the times I get it the most are when I try to explain what it's like to be on the planet as a woman. Why it bugs the living hell outta of me when some guy gropes me on the subway, or pulls up in a car and asks for directions while jacking off. When my boss expects me to bring cake for a birthday party because I'm the only "girl" on the team. I could go on but I bet you already know.
None of these are particularly bad. The groper got elbowed, the wanker got the point and laugh, the boss got a rather severe eyebrow. I dealt with it. I was creeped out and uncomfortable. But when I try to tell a guy friend about this, I get the wall of excuses for males - groping happens, the poor wanker is just really lonely, my boss is old school, etc, etc. They rarely say "Damn, that guy was kinda rude, eh."
When you say "treat everyone the same" I hear it as a societal goal. That's where I am getting hung up. Because if we all started treating everyone the same, would men would get the same groping and surprise stranger-penis waggle?
Now if you are saying that you, specifically, want to treat women the same way that you treat men, I don't know how you treat anybody. It's an interesting concept, but too difficult to imagine the real world application.
Your last paragraph doesn't quite work. Because if only one out of 50 women think something is a problem, who is blowing up it into an internet drama?
