I get where you are coming from.

One of the twitter links the author points to is to a guy who seems to dis AOC's sex abuse.

So I'll revise my generalization by saying that I don't take seriously any guy who takes that kind of attitude towards a woman's painful sexual abuse testimony, no matter his political affiliation.

Looking through the guy's Twitter threads a little more closely, though, he seems to be barely able to get a point across in general without a lot of difficult to parse grandstanding. In other words, he's a poster child on why I avoid Twitter. Every 30 seconds I spend reading a guy like that is 30 wasted seconds I'll never get back.

I have my own biases. I call them tapes. What we do with those tapes matters. If we act on them, it disqualifies any claims we have towards any opinion, really, right, left, or center, because it means we are living in a toxic stew that we need to resolve before we start sharing our opinions in public.

That may seem like a harsh test, but it's not (at least, not to me). Asking folks to take a gentle approach towards rape testimony seems perfectly reasonable. Same with racism. There are a few other topic areas where I think humanity is coming to general agreement on. There can be a litmus test on decency, and those who don't pass that test don't deserve attention.

A lot of people on the Left apply this test to people on the Right. If someone has a habit of uttering racially biased comments, we tend to start putting them on Ignore. This is an appropriate response.

Does that mean we need to be perfect? My own inner biases toward some things female would disqualify me, too. But there are some things - one of them is sexual abuse, that belong in a litmus test.

Not everything does. Not even equal pay (I believe in equal pay, but I would never use it as a litmus test).

Heck, same as abortion. A counter argument to what I just wrote is that some people DO use the right to choose as a litmus test. But a litmus test is a personal choice. I'm not advocating that you or anyone else follow my guidance on that. It is too subjective for imposition.

If it sounds like I'm being defensive here, that's not my intent. I'm just trying to add some clarity to my position. I appreciated your comment - it made a lot of sense, and I am not really arguing with it even if it sounds like I am. Maybe I should set up another Twitter account if my argument sounds like a mess! :-)