- It wasn’t until I started talking about feminism to skeptics that I realized I didn’t have a safe space.
Such treatment of people with whom you disagree is simply disgusting, but in a terrible way it's just laughable. A woman complains about sexism, and men react by being sexist pigs? They need to look at themselves. I think there are two things at work. Firstly, people - including so-called skeptics - generally hate having anything said against them or having their attitudes brought into question. These men don't like being told that they are sexist, but instead of reacting to it in the civilised way that they pretend to, they react like cruel children. Secondly, and I notice this very often, people confuse having obscure or unusual opinions for being "skeptical" or being "open-minded". In reality, this is an illusion. Having liberal beliefs, for example, makes you no more open-minded than someone who has conservative ones. This stems from the fact that at some point a "skeptic" must have thought skeptically about a particular thing - belief in God, for example - and ended up identifying themselves as a skeptical person when, in reality, they just happen to have non-mainstream views about which they are as dogmatic as people who never stray outside the norm. /r/Atheism over on Reddit is a very obvious and salient example of this. I've actually always thought that Richard Dawkins comes off as an asshole, too.
Most your points are spot on but a liberal is "Open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values" by definition open minded. There are many people who self identify as liberal who are just dogmatic windbags, perhaps that is who you are talking about.
Reminds me of the Anita Sarkeesian harassment incidents. It seems like these days the easiest way to piss off a bunch of guys on the internet is to tell them that somewhere a woman disapproves of them. EDIT: upon further reflection, I realized that the message these guys must be hearing is "you aren't allowed to court women", the implication of this being that they'll never get laid, find a girlfriend, marry, or otherwise get to enjoy the company of women. Given that message, I understand the angry responses, but that's not the message she's saying. Or maybe these guys are just sick of "american women." I hear that a lot from various guys, that "they're extremely picky and that it's hard to make traction with them." I don't know how true that is, I need more data to figure this thing out.
I have not been a single man in a long time, so I'm not terribly familiar with the current "dating culture", but my guess is that not much has changed. If the women that you interact with tend to be shallow or "picky", then perhaps you are fishing in the wrong ponds. My wife is beautiful, intelligent and really funny. By all accounts I out punted my coverage -a term I recently learned when a guy friend told me I had. I couldn't have met someone like her at a bar or even at a skeptics meeting, she just isn't the type to go to one (skeptical as she may be). So, if these guys aren't having luck with what they're doing, change your behaviors. Simple.
But theres no justification for any "rape culture" or for treating women poorly because they hold a difference of opinion. That's ridiculous. Rebecca Watson, if you're out there, stop by Hubski sometime... we play nice.