That is, in a way, somewhere, somehow, I seem to have a sniff of something circular and self-perpetuating going on. Two threads of discussion developed, starting from this point. Both lines were running more or less simultaneously between Charles Ess, Herbert Hrachovec and Fiona Steinkamp respectively. Rather than recount the proceedings in their actual order, I shall present them in analytic separation. Charles Ess was quick to concede that, indeed, there seemed to be a problem with male self-regulation on the Net in particular and with his way of arguing for democracy in general.
Vicious circularity threatens if one neglects to distinguish between the ideal and the real.
But a rational form of life can be proposed without automatically supposing that this form of life has been already realized. There might be a plausible transition from a less enlightened to a more enlightened state. The two responses I still find persuasive are Kant's and Habermas's. Beyond that, I am also persuaded by Habermas's effort to ground a democratic discourse ethics in an arguably universal set of preconditions for discourse as such. Herbert Hrachovec worried about this.