[crumbshot]

> Ms. Elbakyan attacked me rather hysterically on Twitter when she learned of an article on my site that describes several methods to acquire free copies of scientific articles,

Just looks like an emphatic disagreement to me: https://web.archive.org/web/20200928010251/https://twitter.c..., https://web.archive.org/web/20200928011503/https://twitter.c...

Also, considering the etymology ("of the womb"), your criticism of her replies comes across as quite sexist.

[leephillips]

Thanks for digging that up, I appreciate it; I didn’t think of looking in the Archive.

We’ll have to disagree about whether her reaction was hysterical. She called my article “ridiculous” and compared it to recommending that people use horse-and-buggy transportation. I was pretty mystified by the tenor of her remarks. One of my points was that Sci-Hub could become unavailable, either globally or locally, so it’s good to know about other ways to get one’s hands on articles. Just mentioning alternatives was offensive to her. We see now that this was not an unrealistic consideration.

EDIT: It’s not ideal to add to your comments using the edit button without marking them as edits. Let me reply to your last sentence by saying I do not think it is sexist to use the word “hysterical”, which has a well-understood meaning apart from its etymology, to someone who happens to be female. In fact, I think it would be very silly to police one’s speech in this way.

[crumbshot]

> Let me reply to your last sentence by saying I do not think it is sexist to use the word “hysterical”, which has a well-understood meaning apart from its etymology, to someone who happens to be female.

Then do you think maybe you misread Elbakyan's tone from her word choices, in a similar way to how I misread yours? She even stated in her last reply that she wasn't being hostile.

[golergka]

Honestly, this seems to be a cultural thing. Having been exposed to both Russians and Americans, I would never dare use those words in a disagreement with American colleague, for example. But talking to a Russian one, I would use much harder ones for my point to be taken seriously, and would not have expected any bad blood over it.