Are you really serious with this? I read the whole thread from beginning to end and this seems like quite an overblown interpretation of the discussion. Doug commented on the position of a certain activist, who also happens to be a feminist, with regard to Israel/Palestine, while also paying her a more general complement. Then
Dennis gave us an account of her as a warm person but mentioned that his narrow experience with the person in question hadn't been tainted by what seems to be a well known and little favored (by at least Doug and Dennis--and a good portion of the left and this list) position on Israel/Palestine since the topic hadn't come up. But both pretty much agreed that she was a great person in general despite this significant disagreement they had with her.
Your retort is immediately to pull out the heavy artillery, saying that, instead of being a fairly consistent criticism of a position on Israel/Palestine each of them represents on the list, this slight criticism of the speaker was evidence of some degenerate chauvinist psychosis that leads them to "vast disrespect, fairly customary on this list, for feminism and for this major feminist figure. Shameful beyond belief."
Because you phrase it in this way, any point you might have made about your feeling that people should be more respectful of her was completely lost. This has everything to do with rhetorical savvy: if you'd begun with the high ground and merely told us more about the importance of Willis, you could possibly have led people (or "men" i.e. anyone who disagrees with you) to reiterate their points about her Zionist flaws which would have made your argument about their male ego problems more reasonable; alternatively, everyone could have agreed with you further expressed their admiration for her at the time of her passing and would know more about Willis than this distasteful argument you've started.
Further, when you start claiming that the death of Todd Gitlin would be met with anything close to the warmth Doug and Dennis included in their thoughts on Willis' passing, you obviously haven't done your homework. This was pretty obvious when you started with Doug being anti-feminist, but saying Gitlin would find any solace here shows that the people you're arguing with don't actually exist on this list. In fact you'd probably be hard pressed to find anyone but the cartoon male leftists you're arguing with who both knew anything about Willis and felt any camaraderie with Gitlin.
When you then say that anyone who argues with you about this is exhibiting some form of this same male psychosis, it only ratchets up the frustration of all the speakers (men, women, and everyone in between) and makes it even less likely that the discussion will be anything other than "vile:" when you're main tactic of argument is villification, the argument itself can be little else. Whatever your feelings on the list, it is hardly the bastion of chauvinism you wish it to be, though I'll admit that it would make your argumentative laziness easier to pull off.
-s