Reply To: Ladies First part 2

Joseph: “Everyone, see. All the naysayers are proven wrong. The OP is proof that my teachings in the CR are very much influential and having an impact on people in real life!”

Joseph, I don’t think that the “naysayers” think you are not influential. I think that you don’t realize how influential you can be, and therefore you aren’t as careful as you could be regarding how you phrase things. I think that if you realized that people might actually take the things you write seriously, you would be more careful how you phrase things. Most of the things that you write are 100% true, but you write them in a way that they can be taken very out of context and give a very negative and incorrect view of Chareidi hashkafa or Torah hashkafa and cause people to be turned off from Chareidiism or Judaism.

As you can see from the OP, your teachings are very influential ( much more than you realize), so try to be more careful about how you phrase things. Before you “send a post” try to think about how the reader will understand what you wrote. Language (whether oral or written) is not an exact science; it’s not about the words themselves or what the speaker/writer had in mind – it’s about what the reader/listener will hear.

Usually, the one who is speaking or writing something has something very different in mind than what their words convey to the one listening. It is the writer/speaker’s obligation to try to figure out how the reader/hearer will hear his words. We speak differently to a child than to an adult, and we speak differently to someone who has a different level of knowledge or is coming from a different background. We always have to keep in mind what the reader/listener is thinking.

I think you might be a bit naive.