Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre

Who's pretending anything doesn't exist? I already told you I'm well onboard with your views. I just think you're really, really hurting your cause because you turn people away from agreeing with you on a personal level, inviting them to construct a counterargument in order to reject your personality rather than your logic.

Which wouldn't happen if you actually entered into these debates in situations arenas and in ways which bore some actual relevance to what you were saying. Nobody debates war crimes at the Manchester Derby, because it's a jarring, irrelevant change to the event's purpose. You debate that stuff at a college campus or on the news. You organise marches, write articles, publish stories through Avaaz or 38Degrees, question politicians, email your local MP/State representative, donate to funds you approve of, comment and argue against abhorrent views when they're actually presented specifically, encourage your friends to support good movements, discourage them from aligning themselves with the far right or socialy unconscionable, etc. There's no shortage of outlets for this stuff that are both better for the reach of your message, and also more effective because you'll actually be talking to people who, even if they disagree with your message, will at least be there to discuss your message and not you personally.

But if you show up and expect an actual discussion to occur (Positive or otherwise) if you drag a discussion about, say, Pepsi, into the domain of arguing against cishet white males... that smacks to me of someone who finds it very difficult to actually seperate out which elements of reality pertain to the "opposition" of their political beliefs, and instead has resorted to attacking an enemy at literally every opportunity.

And like I said, that encourages people to simply dismiss you as a person, before they even think about your argument. Most people aren't even going to get to that second stage where they, like I, say "I agree with you but this is a bad way of going about it". They're going to stop flat at "I don't like you" and the rest of whatever you said will get lost in the fog.