[Evan Thomas]

Originally Posted by Jammer Six

Vanya, I answered exactly the question you asked?

Actually, no, you didn't. I asked:

How is it unethical to offer people a range of choices when the result is to increase their freedom?

You wrote:

Vanya, my answer is "when one of those choices is unethical."

This amounts to "It's unethical because it's unethical," which, forgive me for putting it this way, is a bit silly.

It's also not the first time you've done this in this thread:

Originally Posted by Vanya

Jammer, when you say "establishing a set of ethics," I'm not sure what you mean by that -- can you say more about that, and maybe give some examples of the sort of thing you have in mind?

You replied:

Originally Posted by Jammer Six

Vanya, to answer your request, when I talk about teaching ethically, or a set of ethics, what I'm really saying is simply that as instructors, we need to teach ethically.

Sorry, but these are inadequate (and deeply uninteresting) answers to the question of why something is or isn't ethical.

If you want to claim that an action is unethical, you need to show, for one thing, that people are harmed by it; merely asserting that it "perpetuates stereotypes," or whatever, doesn't stand on its own unless you can show, first, that it in fact does this, and second, that the effects of such are harmful.

If an action harms no one, it's ethically neutral. If the good it does outweighs the harm, it's at least possible to argue that the action was ethical. For example, killing someone is presumed to be unethical -- except in certain very narrow circumstances, such as when a person does so as a last resort against a lethal threat.

So let me rephrase the question: what specific harm is done by women-only classes, and why does that outweigh the benefits that I and others have pointed out that they offer?

Originally Posted by Jammer Six

The google search answer is simple: that's called the fallacy of numbers.

Nope. My point wasn't "Look, there are lots of them!" It was that there is an obvious common element, which I asked you to consider.