If you argue with the more intelligent conservatives about gender issues, sooner or later you are challenged with a famous quote from G. K. Chesterton:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
That argument makes sense as far as it goes; but what it ignores is why the “modern type of reformer” wants the fence taken down. It ignores the possibility that the person wanting the fence taken down is reacting to real and immediate pain, and that there might actually be some urgency in the situation.
Transcript of cartoon.
This cartoon has two panels.
PANEL ONE
In the first panel, a genderqueer person whose gender presentation is ambiguous, is talking to a suburban-looking man wearing a polo shirt. There’s a old-fashioned wooden rail fence running between them.
CAPTION: How they see gender.
GENDERQUEER PERSON (sternly): We need to dismantle this fence.
SUBURBAN MAN (cheerfully): Whoa! Let’s not rush.
PANEL TWO
The same scene, except now the post of the fence is going through the genderqueer person’s back, pinning them to the ground, and they are in agony.
CAPTION: How I see gender.
GENDERQUEER PERSON (agonized): WE NEED TO DISMANTLE THIS FENCE!
SUBURBAN MAN (cheerfully): Whoa! Let’s not rush.
To be more charitable, the “modern type of reformer” has an explanation of why the fence exists – patriarchy and a long list of *isms that need not be rehashed here. If they thought it existed through inertia or habit, privilege theory w/r/t gender wouldn’t exist.
The “immediate pain” is irrelevant to Chesterton’s Fence. Laws against theft cause immediate pain to the poor and hungry because they can’t just take what they need at will. However, there are good reasons why they exist, not the least of which is the fact that victims of property crime are likely to be poor themselves, due to proximity.
I’ve always seen the flaw in the Chesterton quote as existing in an elision between “I don’t see the use in this,” versus “I see no worthwhile use in this.”
I really like your idea and text here, but honestly, to me, the second panel reads as a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. It’s something about the pose. So I was really confused until I read your explanation.
It’s a very odd quote, because reformists don’t want to destroy things because they are useless. They want to destroy things they view as harmful. Now, it’s always worthwhile to think what good a harmful institution is doing before reforming it, and try to decide whether it’s either possible to do the same good without the harm, or, if not, whether it’s better to endure the harm or give up the good. But the Chesterton quote, as you say, seems to consider only the good the reformed institution would do and ignore the harm.
That said, I often find myself sympathetic to this quote when debating small-government libertarian types, who seek to destroy public institutions because they can see the harm they do but do not stop to see the use of what they seek to remove. And certainly I could see a right wing cartoonist creating a similar cartoon where in the first panel a business person complains about a tax fence to a bemused lefty, while in the second panel we see that the business person is crushed under the fence.
Now, seeing that cartoon wouldn’t make me any more sympathetic to the right winger. But that’s not because I don’t see the harm in taxation – it’s because I think the good the metaphorical fence does is worth that harm. I wonder if the gender conservatives are not in a similar position regarding the gender boundary. They know it harms some people, they just think it’s worth it.
Another worry I have about this cartoon is that you are presenting it as a question of timeframe – the genderqueer person wants the fence removed fast, the suburban person wants to take his time. But that’s not really the nature of the problem – the side represented by the suburban man doesn’t want the fence moved at all.
As a slightly amusing criticism, I just realised that you don’t actually ever identify which character “I” identifies with. While the natural reading is that the captions view gender from the POV of the genderqueer person, there’s also nothing to rule out an alternate reading from the POV of the suburban man, where in the first panel the genderqueer person simply thinks you are hesitant about dismantling the fence which keeps you apart but in reality you take sadistic glee as you imagine it is pushing the genderqueer person into the ground.
Not a surprising reaction when you figure that the person saying “Whoa! Let’s not rush” very likely either hasn’t ever heard of the concept of “genderqueer” or else rejects it’s very existence.
How They See Gender:
There is no fence.
There is a rather odd guy (or is it a girl?) wearing a strange haircut and clothing talking about concepts that don’t make any sense at all. Sex is a social construct, it’s not biologically based? Ridiculous. What fence?
RonF – the cartoon doesn’t show this very well, but the fence represents the clear-cut boundary between male and female that is assumed by traditional gender roles. “They” certainly see it.
RonF and Eytan, perhaps then it would be more accurate to say that many don’t see the fence as a fence, but as a natural formation of some kind, like a mountain. Dismantling a fence can be good and necessary; dismantling a mountain is harder to wrap one’s mind around.
@Eytan
The problem with that interpretation is that the fence doesn’t separate a man and woman, but a man and genderqueer person. You can just as easily read the cartoon as a person wanting to transition to a man and facing barriers.
The more I look at it, the more interpretations are possible. The cartoon is very ambiguous (appropriate to the subject?).
Eytan, Chris has the right idea. The “suburban-looking man” – I have no idea why Amp identifies him as suburban-looking – does not see that there is anything artificial there, or even a barrier at all. Men and women are different. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature, and it’s not a barrier.
Isn’t that how most people see it though? I think that even among feminists, probably the majority desires equal rights rather than to completely integrate men and women into an androgynous intermediate.
For average people, I think that the latter is unfathomable. This is not conservative vs progressive or man vs woman, since I am pretty sure that most progressive women feel this way too.
Besides, there is some solid scientific evidence that men and women are indeed different on various levels (some, like the biological differences, are truly obvious).
PS. I assume ‘sub-urban’ refers to the fact that the man is not a big city hipster/arty looking fellow, nor a hunter/blue collar worker. But the cartoon is trading on the stereotype of the older, white, sub-urban male conservative, which undermines the message of the cartoon (fighting stereotypes by playing to them).
I’ve got an open-plan living area: the dining room flows smoothly into the living room. The difference between that and two rooms bounded by walls is not that it’s not clear when you’re at the dining room table or sitting on the sofa; it’s just that the if you want to be half in the living room and half in the dining area, or move between them easily, it’s a simpler task for the open plan than for two rooms with a wall between them. Removing a boundary between two discrete categories makes a continuum, not a giant blended mass without distinction.
(I mean. It can do the latter. But assuming that it must, and then judging people’s ideas on that assumption, is incorrect.)
RonF:
The thing is, even though I think a lot of people would say that this is how they see things, in practice they don’t.
Okay, consider two statements:
1. “I am a man”
2. “I am a trans woman”
Both statements communicate the same information about the speaker’s sex. In fact, statement 2 is less ambiguous about the speaker’s sex than statement 1.
The person making statement 1 might be cis, or they might be trans; we don’t really know what sex they are. The person making statement 2 is making a less ambiguous statement. I suppose they could be either intersex or of the male sex, but we can be quite sure their biological sex wasn’t female, because that’s what makes that woman trans.
The categories of “Trans Woman” and “Trans Man” don’t hide or obfuscate biological sex; in fact they make the sex of the person they’re applied to more explicit than it would otherwise be.
So if people care mainly about biological sex, why the extreme anger at and refusal to use those terms? Why the frequent insistence that people using the terms “trans woman” or “trans man” are somehow confused or delusional?
There’s also the broader question of, if the fence doesn’t exist, why do we humans have to work to maintain it? If sex is the only concern, then why do we have to police behavior to make people conform to gender roles? After all, changing your behavior can’t change your sex; that’s a physical fact about your body. There’s no need to protect the integrity of biological sex by enforcing behavioral norms, so those behavioral norms must be protecting something else.
People who claim they don’t see a distinction between sex and gender constantly behave in a way that makes it clear that they actually do distinguish between those two things.
Something about sex and gender in particular seems to make it impossible for most people to think about it clearly.
I think that you dismiss gendered norms very easily and you falsely reduce them to limitations with no benefits. Take the norm that men and women are separated in some contexts that involve (substantial) nudity and/or bodily functions, such as locker rooms & rest rooms. This is desired by many who do not want to be physically judged by random members of the opposite sex, want to limit nude interactions with the opposite sex to actual sexual contexts, fear for their safety, etc. This is a widely supported gender norm that divides the sexes, but is not sexist.
If you believe that gender and sex are equal, then it is not illogical to assume that people who claim access to bathrooms of the opposite gender are peeping toms (like Huckabee argued for instance).
But this is not limited to conservatives, Caitlin Jenner also got flack by certain feminists who get very upset when men transition, due to their belief that these people are still men due to their social conditioning and thus still have substantial male privilege. This is also not illogical in their world view.
Anyway, I think that reducing gender norms to a single ‘fence’ is highly reductive and ignores many nuances (such as the fact that abolishing some norms may be seen as reducing rights of others, like on the locker room/restroom issue).
I’m not sure access to gender-specific–or, conversely, gender neutral–restrooms is a right.
I think that many people believe that they have the right to not be confronted by someone of the opposite sex in a rest room/locker room (and we accommodate that with gendered rest rooms/locker rooms). But you can call it a preference too, if you want, I don’t think it changes my point.
Of course that’s illogical. First of all, the framing that you handwave away – that gender and sex are interchangable – is itself illogical, because it involves ignoring a lot of real-life examples of situations in which they are not interchangable. Second of all, the immediate leap from “someone whom I believe is male is claiming access to the women’s dressing room” to “they are peeping toms” is also illogical; in the unexamined idea that Huckabee’s belief about what sex someone is should outweigh a person’s own self-evaluation, and also, in the stigmatizing leap to “peeping tom” when the most casual imaginable familiarity with the issue shows that there are a zillion more plausible reasons for (for example) a trans man to need to use the men’s room, which have been clearly stated about a thousand times by trans activists.
Yes, it’s true, if I accept Mike Huckabee’s ignorant and hostile framing of the issue, that makes Huckabee’s conclusions relatively more reasonable. But why should I accept his framing in the first place?
(There’s also pragmatic problems; the argument that women who want to not be “confronted” by members of the “opposite sex” in a rest room will have their situations improved if if they have to share a restroom with, for example, this gentleman, who is an out trans man, seems ridiculous on its face. But Huckabee’s proposal, as I understand it, would force that gentleman to use the ladies room. So even within its own premises, suggestions like Huckabee’s would actually make things worse for some cis women and men. And it would make things not only worse, but dangerous, for some trans people.)
(To be fair, that gentleman – because he looks very traditionally masculine – would ordinarily never be questioned if he uses the men’s room, unless of course someone already knows he’s a trans man. Instead, these laws would legitmize public harassment of both cis people and trans people with ambiguous gender presentations.)
Christopher:
Do you think the majority of Americans understands what that means? I don’t.
Aapje, welcome to Alas.
You are using the passive voice a lot, and displacing concerns onto other unspecified people, and in general using speech which comes across, at least to me, as twisty and indirect:
You come across as wanting to assert viewpoints without being responsible for having done so. If you agree with the people you are vaguely referring to, then have the courage of your convictions and say it. If you don’t agree with them, why present their arguments?
Before you continue in this discussion, I suggest that you read the following discussion threads:
https://amptoons.com/blog/2013/04/03/anti-transsexual-bathroom-law-in-arizona/
https://amptoons.com/blog/2015/06/17/the-mint-garden-a-place-to-discuss-trans-peoples-gender/
Grace
Ron, this comes across as you saying that you don’t understand what “trans woman” means. But Grace pointed out to me that it probably means that although you do understand what it means (since you’ve been on “Alas” for quite a while), you’re saying that you don’t think most Americans would understand what it means.
I think that most Americans are completely oblivious to all these issues, and that’s okay. But those who get involved deeply enough to be in discussions of the matter – or to be advocating for a bathroom bill – certainly should familiarize themselves with the basic terms.
Ron F
Do you think the majority of Americans understands what that means? I don’t.
Uh… yes and no.
tl;dr: If you really had no particular concept of gender as separate thing from sex, trans terminology would be odd but not particularly confusing.
On the one hand, most of what I see about sex and gender seems very confused to me, even when it comes from people who are immersed in those issues. Gender, in particular, I don’t think anybody has actually defined very well.
On the other… this is not a hard concept to grasp. I assume anybody who is going to talk about this issue should be able to understand what a person is saying about their physical sex when they call themselves trans, because they are saying something that should be very simple.
“I am a trans woman” means something like “I am a woman, in spite of not being identified as a member of the female sex”.
Now, if all you care about is sex and you ignore gender, that may sound like a contradiction, but really it’s just a new piece of terminology. “Man” and “Trans Woman” are giving you the same information about the speaker’s sex, and as I said, “Trans Woman” may be kind of unorthodox, but it is slightly more specific than “Man”.
Again, if all you care about is a vocabulary that accurately describes a person’s sex, trans vocabulary does that, and it really shouldn’t be hard to grasp why and how.
But it is, apparently, extremely hard for people to grasp. I think it’s hard for them to grasp not just because it’s unfamiliar terminology, but because often they do have complicated, often unexamined ideas about gender identities and gender roles.
I see where you’re going here, but I’d slightly reword that definition, since there are many trans women who are identified as female in the present day, by themselves and by everyone they encounter in their daily life.
Instead, I’d say a trans woman is a woman who doctors/parents/etc identified as male when they were born, but who now identifies as female.
(Of course, I’m no expert, but I’m trusting that people who know better will correct me if I’m off-base.)
(ETA: From Wikipedia: “A trans woman (sometimes trans-woman or transwoman) is a transgender person who was assigned male at birth but whose gender identity is that of a woman.”)
Christopher:
No, they don’t. For many reasons. Here are some:
1. Those statements tell us nothing about the context in which they are uttered, and the context can change their meanings dramatically. You are probably considering them to convey the same information because you are assuming a shared context. Later or sooner, you’ll run into trouble doing that.
2. A trans man may say “I am a man”. A cis man may say “I am a man”. I infer from your declaration, above, that you would consider those statements as NOT communicating the same information about the speaker’s sex (though see below). Context is essential. There are many, many contexts when “I am a man” is not merely sufficient, but a lot safer.
3. Likewise for “I am a trans woman”. In most contexts, if I had to declare my sex/gender, I would say, “I am a woman”. Because I do a lot of education on this topic, I say “I am a trans woman” a lot, much more, probably, than the average trans woman. However, most of the time I actually don’t have to tell people what I am. They look at me and know, because I have that privilege.
4. “Sex”, like almost every other word in English and every other language, has more than one meaning. Most people, in most conversations, use it roughly interchangeably with “gender”. Joan Roughgarden, evolutionary biologist, writes, “To a biologist, “male” means making small gametes, and “female” means making large gametes.” She also writes, “When speaking about humans, I find it’s helpful to distinguish between social categories and biological categories. ‘Men’ and ‘women’ are social categories. We have the freedom to decide who counts as a man and who counts as a woman.”
5. I have seen many discussions, including well-intended discussions by people trying earnestly to get it right, which attempt to define “sex” as strictly biological, and “gender” as something more squishy. It never works well. The terms are far too embedded in our thinking to be casually redefined or narrowed for purposes of a discussion; inevitably we end up using the wrong term, or the wrong sense of the word, and creating confusion and offense.
No. What makes that woman trans is that she was assigned male at birth and but has a female gender identity. Your definition presumes that the assignment accurately reflects something biological (usually, lay people go with chromosomes, but biologists would go with gamete size). There are many reasons that it might not be, including everything from chromosomal variations to undescended genitals to large visible clitoris to genetic mosaicism. But the only biological basis all trans people have in common is that they looked superficially enough like members of a category to be assigned upon a brief inspection to that category.
Example:
“A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter…”
–J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008 Jan;93(1):182-9
In that example, if we take a stab at the parent’s gender identity by assuming that she would agree with “mother”, then she was assigned female at birth, had a female gender identity, had a female social role, XY chromosomes, and is not trans.
Christopher:
Now THAT is spot-on. I have some thoughts as to what that thing is, but they’re brewing for another post.
Grace
Ampersand:
That definition is better than many, but I dislike it for the phrase “transgender person”, which seems so exquisitely careful and civil. “Hello, odd transgenderpersoncreature, you are so fascinatingly difficult to understand.” It has kind of that feel.
It’s really simple. A trans woman is a woman, a person with a female gender identity, who was assigned male at birth.
Oh, those transgenderpeoplecritterthingoddities! Here, check out this beautiful specimen I pinned to this card and then soaked in radioactive formaldehyde. It almost never tries to escape anymore.
Grace
@Ampersand
You are confusing ignorance with being illogical. These are not the same. Ignorance is when you do not know the facts. Being illogical is when you draw non-logical conclusions from the facts you possess. The distinction is very important because logical people who draw wrong conclusions can be educated by presenting them with facts. Illogical people are much worse and tend to be swayed by feelings and peer pressure. Of course, in reality, nearly all of use are both ignorant and illogical to some extent.
Now, I never defended Huckabee’s framing of the issue. I merely pointed out that the accusation that people like him ‘do not think clearly’ is wrong (and unproductive & divisive) if that assessment is based on that particular example. If you want to convince your opponents, a key step is to find the actual mistake and challenge that. So in the case of Huckabee, this might convince him that transgenders are fundamentally different and thus not ‘faking it.’ In contrast, blaming him for not thinking clearly would not be effective, as he then wouldn’t critically examine his wrong premises.
@Grace
I presumed that most of you would be familiar with the various branches of feminism and the stuff that was said about Caitlin. Here is an example of a feminist who says ‘Whoa! Let’s not rush’. I would be interested in you all’s take on this.
PS. I don’t see how ‘not illogical’ is twisty. I wanted to convey that it is not the only logical thought process that is possible, which ‘logical’ may imply. Therefor the double negative. Besides that, I don’t feel I have to always give examples upfront. If you want specifics, you are free to ask for them.
PS2. Grace, I agree that your definition is the most sensible one.
Aapje:
Before you continue in this discussion, I suggest that you read the following discussion threads:
https://amptoons.com/blog/2015/06/17/the-mint-garden-a-place-to-discuss-trans-peoples-gender/
https://amptoons.com/blog/2013/04/03/anti-transsexual-bathroom-law-in-arizona/
Grace
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
Any further replies to this, specifically…
…should take place in The Mint Garden.
Pieces like Elinor Burkett’s, and replies to it, are exactly the sort of thing The Mint Garden is intended to help us set aside so that trans people’s identities are not routinely up for debate.
Thank you.
Grace
If you believe that gender and sex are equal, then it is not illogical to assume that people who claim access to bathrooms of the opposite gender are peeping toms (like Huckabee argued for instance).
So? I have little patience for people who refuse to let the evidence get in the way of their theories.
I merely pointed out that the accusation that people like him ‘do not think clearly’ is wrong (and unproductive & divisive) if that assessment is based on that particular example.
I think he “does not think clearly” because when evidence is presented to him that he is wrong (he seems at least aware that there are people assigned male at birth who identify as girls/women) he assumes it must be wrong or insignificant because it doesn’t match his theories and assumptions, rather than thinks about whether he needs to modify his theory.
@Grace
I already read them (and the reactions you put into the other thread). No need to keep repeating yourself. However, I think you misunderstand me. I do not wish to discuss Burkett’s article to debate ‘trans people’s identities.’ I want to talk about who wants to keep the fences (which is completely on topic, as it refers directly to the cartoon).
In my opinion, Burkett is just the mirror image of Huckabee, yet apparently the latter can be discussed in this thread, but not the first. I don’t understand why the response to my comment was so one-sided by only referring to 1 of my 2 examples. I put them in the same post on purpose. Don’t you find it interesting how it is not just conservatism who clings to gender separation, but part of feminism as well? This goes beyond transgender issues, since cismen are also often stereotyped by feminists (see male privilege checklists for example). Do you agree with me that this is also part of the ‘fence’?
@closetpuritan
And that separates him from other people how…?
Anyway, you may say what you want. I happen to believe that all humans are partially irrational, but I don’t say that to people, since they perceive it as an attack. Similarly, telling someone that he/she “does not think clearly” seems very unproductive if you actually want to change their opinion.
Aapje:
I cannot know what you’ve read unless you tell me.
The Mint Garden is not needed because of what people wish to discuss. It exists because often people unthinkingly engage in topics — many topics — in a way which has that effect.
The original post in this thread references gender and the binary system we live in. Not every such thread needs to go to The Mint Garden, and I held off on moving this discussion there for a variety of reasons which I don’t plan to lay out in detail, because I’m not a huge fan of discussing moderation decisions.
Pieces like Elinor Burkett’s are exactly what The Mint Garden was created for. Not Burkett herself, but the piece you referenced. If we discuss it on Alas, we will discuss it in The Mint Garden. Should Huckabee write a detailed transphobic screed like Burkett’s piece, discussion on that will probably end up in The Mint Garden, too. These are the judgement calls moderators make.
Riveting. It makes for a delightful academic argument, if you’re in the position and mood to have such.
Sure, I agree that some feminists want to maintain a binary gender system. So do some trans people, whether they represent themselves as feminists or not. I also think our current binary system does more harm than good, and that the harm falls on everyone, but most heavily on those people who fit less well in it, who are regarded by the defenders of the binary system as essentially expendable for the sake of convenience for the rest.
I agree that some feminists stereotype men. However, not all generalizations are stereotypes, and collections of generalizations like privilege checklists can be valuable in helping people who acknowledge their privilege understand it better. They can be very useful tools for working on oneself. As a device for convincing people that privilege as a system exists, or that they benefit from it, they are, in my experience, ineffective.
A note on language: I suggest that you use “cis” and “trans” as adjectives, and avoid such constructions as “cismen” and “transgenders”. If you need to reference trans people generally, “trans people” works fine.
Grace
Aapje:
Mike Huckabee isn’t reading this thread, I’m pretty sure.
Also, you’re talking about what would be the most effective way to convince people not to be transphobic; IOW, we’re currently talking about how to convince people not to be transphobic and not currently going out and convincing them, and if we’re dishonest about what seem to be the actual reasons for transphobia in favor of more flattering reasons–if we don’t base our strategy on the facts as best we can ascertain them–our strategy is more likely to fail.
I’m also not actually convinced that telling someone they aren’t thinking clearly in a particular way on a particular topic* is counterproductive compared to other things I could say about that topic. And as I said, I don’t think the problem is that he merely hasn’t been exposed to the idea that some people assigned male at birth think of themselves as girls/women [he doesn’t seem nearly as concerned about trans men]; I think the problem is that he’s dismissed it as ridiculous because it doesn’t fit his idea of how the world works. So I disagree that the way to convince him is to tell him that some people assigned male at birth think of themselves as women/girls–that we merely have to present him with evidence and he’ll change his mind–that his ONLY problem is lack of exposure to the evidence, rather than not thinking clearly about the evidence, and if he simply read your linked article he would be convinced.
Also, why do you assume that I, or most people commenting on this blog, disagree that everyone is sometimes illogical, ignorant/has ill-informed opinions, doesn’t think clearly, has unconscious transphobia, etc., etc.?
*I think in context it’s pretty clear that I’m talking about on this topic, but I would be more careful to be explicit about that if I was actually talking to him. There is a difference between saying, “I think you are making this error in your thinking on this issue, here’s how” and “I think you’re stupid”; to the extent that talking to someone ever convinces anyone, either the person you’re talking to or third parties, I think this is one of the ways it does it.
Should my last post go under The Mint Garden?
@Grace
As I’ve said earlier, the article (or rather the ideology behind it) was an illustration of a larger point. I feel no need to discuss the article in great depth. Such analysis has already been done, as you showed with the various links you provided.
I think that is a very uncharitable way to look at it. Ultimately, there are two questions:
– which parts of the binary system are natural vs invented
– how we can accommodate people the best and where & how we ask people to adapt to others (which we all have to do in polite society and shouldn’t be considered unreasonable per se)
This is rather abstract, so lets take an example: sports. It is a fact that the best male and female athletes are not on par in pretty much all based sports where psychical strength/endurance/etc determines the outcome to a great extent. The overwhelming majority of athletes fall into this natural binary, with their ‘place’ directly corresponding to their sex. The only way to really do away with the binary is to un-separate men and women, so they compete together. In practice this would mean that women would be mostly excluded from the top-tier of sports.
So ‘we’ keep the binary sports system, even though it doesn’t really have room for fairly rare exceptions, such as people with mosaicism, CAIS, etc. The unfortunate result is that female athletes sometimes get tested for these conditions and get excluded from female sports for having them. However, integrated sports, which wouldn’t require these tests/rules, doesn’t serve them either, as their physical capabilities are usually not on par with men. Such a ‘solution,’ would just hurt women without such a condition and provide almost no benefit to people with it. Their condition is so rare, that it is also impossible to find enough people who are similar, to compete against. So from my perspective, on this topic society is doing its best to be fair to everyone, but is limited by nature.
I really think you are presenting a false choice, were we must either abandon all that is binary completely, lest we be unfair. I think that reality is partially binary and thus we are actually unfair if we don’t recognize that (although this certainly doesn’t mean we can’t get rid of quite a bit of binary baggage that we have for no good reason).
Anyway, your assertion that ‘defenders of the binary system’ consider people who don’t fit in as well to be ‘essentially expendable’ seems very unfair to me. I think that many either don’t see the problem or think that the minority should adapt. You may call that ignorant, dumb, etc, but I don’t see how this makes them malicious, which your choice of words implies. Furthermore, the use of the word expendable to situations where people are not accommodated does a great disservice to people who are expected/made to die, which is a more proper definition of expendable.
Well, my world view may be different from most in that I believe that all generalizations are stereotypes and thus that we all stereotype. In fact, I think that stereotyping/generalizing/abstract thinking is an essential and necessary part of how we understand the world. So I think that everyone (including all feminists) stereotypes every group they have some awareness of.
What many people see as stereotyping is actually the incorrect application of stereotypes/generalizations. However, this is pretty much unavoidable, since:
A. we apply generalizations subconsciously
B. pretty much all people use logical fallacies in their reasoning, which result in incorrect application of generalizations
The way most people use the word seems very unproductive. The common assumption that bad people stereotype and the fact that most people see themselves as not bad, leads to the inevitable conclusion that only others stereotype. As such, this belief stands in the way of self-improvement.
One problem is that the lists always seem to mix (human) rights that everyone should have with undeserved special treatment that no one should. However, the term ‘privilege’ strongly implies the latter, so people understandably read the entire list as things they should give up, which then comes down to an attack on their human rights. A sentence that is regularly used also plays a role in this: ‘give up your privilege’. My humble opinion is that the word ‘privilege’ has been so abused to mean different things (and has been used to attack people so often), that using is no longer productive.
The lists also tend to end with the claim that people with privilege can’t see it, which readers to which it applies understandable see as a an attempt to deny them a voice in the debate. After all, any denial that a ‘privilege’ exists can just be dismissed with ‘you can’t see it,’ which is a fallacious and proof-free argument.
Another issue and very germane to the topic of binary gender roles, is that many of the items on the lists only apply to people who fit the stereotype and/or are happy to conform to the norm. A feminine man or someone who makes traditionally female choices is often hurt by the things that are being called privileges on the list.
Finally, the fact that I’ve never seen a group make a list that challenges their own ideology makes me see them primarily as attacks on others, rather than tools of self-reflection. I’d respect them more if feminists (also) made feminist privilege lists, for example. That would also make the debate surrounding them much less one-sided.
@closetpuritan
His opinion is widely shared by conservatives and my issue was more with how people approach conservatives. So I wasn’t actually addressing him. I was addressing non-conservatives who in turn may address actual conservatives (who seem absent here).
I agree that these views are part of a broader set of beliefs on ‘what is proper.’ The belief that gays are just heteros who are confused/indoctrinated is also usually part of this, for instance. So it is quite possible that these people are unwilling to believe the evidence or if they do, will make up a different justification.
However, I don’t see why this is less likely to happen if you challenge his reasoning, so I don’t see how your observation makes it better to do that, rather than challenge his premises.
Also, none of disproves my belief that the main rational weakness in his argument is that the scientific evidence disproves his premises and that the emotional weakness in his argument is the final effect on actual people. The part in between is actually the strongest part of his belief system (relatively speaking). It is simply quite unwise to ignore the biggest mistake people make and attack them on something else.
I never said any such thing. If you reread my words, you will see that I talked about my own beliefs and didn’t make assumptions about your beliefs on this matter, one way or the other.
Fair enough, your earlier post didn’t have that ‘here’s how’ part, so I assumed you just told people that they were illogical. I now see that we actually agree on this.
closetpuritan:
Seems fine here, to me.
Grace
Aapje:
I don’t think the gender binary needs my charity.
Tell me, have you spent any time outside of it? Or being considered by those around you to be outside of it? I suspect that you and I have very different experiences of the gender binary.
I really think that you are putting words in my mouth, and having the discussion/argument you want to have. At some length, too.
I’m guessing that you’ve never been written off by people you trusted when they discovered that you were gender nonconforming.
I surely do admire your ability to take a ball and run with it.
Aapje, you don’t know what you’re talking about. LGBT people get assaulted and killed over this stuff. The more we fail to conform to our culture’s heteronormative standard, the more likely we are to be assaulted and killed. We could talk about “accommodation”, because there are surely issues there, too, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about my lived experience, and the lived experiences of people I know, and the lived experiences of people I will never know because they’re dead.
You think I’m talking about “accommodation”? I think you’re strolling into a conversation you don’t understand and trying to explain How It Is. I think that’s arrogant. And you’re doing it at great length. I think that’s unskillful and uninteresting.
I don’t have the time it will apparently take to educate you to the point where we might have an interesting conversation. Maybe others will. I have a busy life and for now I’m going to set the priority level of educating you to “Low”.
Grace
Aapje:
I think your posts were very insightful. You’ve put some thought into this, and I appreciated reading them.
Grace:
Your egocentrism, passive aggressiveness and all the rest are just going to cause unhappiness in your life. Just my opinion.
Frieden:
Oh, hello, random person from the Internet whom I don’t think I’ve ever seen before! I will give your opinion about how I should live my life exactly the weight it deserves.
Grace
Did we check to see if Friedan is a sock puppet?
Grace, you have been deeply patient and (I’m going to say it) graceful. Thank you for being willing to do educational work even when people are so willing to dismiss you and your experiences.
So I wasn’t actually addressing him.
I didn’t think you were. But you seemed to think I was, or at least you were telling me that I shouldn’t say something that I said in this thread because it would be unconvincing to Huckabee [“Similarly, telling someone that he/she “does not think clearly” seems very unproductive if you actually want to change their opinion”], as if you thought I was addressing Huckabee or my goal in commenting in this thread was convincing Huckabee-like people.
However, I don’t see why this is less likely to happen if you challenge his reasoning, so I don’t see how your observation makes it better to do that, rather than challenge his premises.
Huh? This seems to relate to how you didn’t seem to think that the way Huckabee et al arrived at their premises could be described as “unclear thinking”; you seem to be saying that one can only apply the “unclear thinking” descriptor to the logic chain between their premises and their conclusion. Why?
Also, none of disproves my belief that the main rational weakness in his argument is that the scientific evidence disproves his premises and that the emotional weakness in his argument is the final effect on actual people.
How is that different than what I said? I said that he was dismissing the data in order to make the data fit his theory.
“Did we check to see if Friedan is a sock puppet?”
Yes, please check.
I’ve posted on this site before – that has to be the case, by the way, if my post went through without “being in moderation” first.
I spoke my mind – even though I’m sure I’ll be banned down the road “for other reasons” – because I thought Aapje really had a few insightful posts, and Grace can’t see it because of self-centeredness.
I remember also posting when Grace gave the example that some local government agency (DMV or something like that) did a check because the name of the former person was male and the name was now female. That was supposedly an example of oppression of trans people. No, it was an example of someone not knowing what was going on and checking, because it was an odd set of circumstances. In other words, what everyone on this planet faces in life.
Grace is simply going to have an unhappy life with that egotism and passive aggressiveness.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to give me the winning lottery numbers in tonight’s drawing?
I remember you, Freidan, as someone I disagreed with. That doesn’t rule out you being a sockpuppet, though–we’ve had people here in the past posting from the exact same IP address over a period of time, but with different names at different times.
–putting my moderator hat on–
Ron, as soon as I can figure out how, I will move your comment referencing Fallon Fox to The Mint Garden, and your direct note to Amp will stay here. If you want to discuss that topic, please do it over there.
If you’d like to just post it over there, that would be fine and would save me a bit of trouble.
Thanks,
–taking my moderator hat off–
Grace
[UPDATE: Ron’s comment has been moved to The Mint Garden, apart from the direct note to Amp, which has remained on this thread.]
–putting my moderator hat on–
Frieden, if you want to comment about something I said at some other time, do it in the thread where I said it, or if comments are closed, take it to an open thread. Do us the courtesy of providing a link so that we can talk about what I actually said, and not your recollected summary of it.
If you want to discuss my character flaws and my future misery further, take it to an open thread.
If you want to respond directly to something on-topic in this thread, addressing the substance of the comment rather than making sweeping value judgements about the comment’s author, please feel free to do it here.
Thank you,
–taking my moderator hat off–
Grace
Amp: HAH! Yes, I see where that was ambiguous. You rightly detected what I meant.
Frieden:
It’s only because of Grace’s intervention on your behalf that I haven’t banned you already. But this is your only warning. Another comment like the above-quoted comments and you’re banned.
Your question is a bit weird, given the discussion we had before, since you are giving me only a binary choice (outside or inside the gender norm). Furthermore, I don’t see the gender norm as the only norm that society places on people. A very shy person also falls outside a/the norm and faces consequences. There are many other norms as well (some only in certain contexts).
In some ways, I failed the gender norm as a kid, especially my unwillingness to use violence to enforce my boundaries. But I deviated from the norm in presumable non-gendered ways as well (although gender can play a role in when and how other norms are enforced, so norms can overflow into one another). I faced rather severe consequences, that have made me distrust humanity permanently. I’ve read the account of someone who transitioned from male->female and who also was unable to fulfill the violence aspect of the male gender role sufficiently. I felt that her pre-transition experiences had strong similarities with mine, on that specific topic. I found her explanation how she was no longer expected to respond to similar situations with violence, post-transition, very enlightening to the nature of male and female gender norms.
That said, I never had the challenge of a gender-sex mismatch, so of course my experiences are very different from hers or yours in many ways. But I do believe in empathy and the ability to at least understand a portion of what other people face. That goes both ways of course. I think that my experience does not invalidate yours, but yours also doesn’t invalidate mine. And the experience of someone who happily fits in the norms should also be respected and their needs considered.
I honestly thought that you were advocating for the elimination of the binary system. In post 31, you really seemed to argue very hard for that. Perhaps you can tell me what you do think, instead of just telling me I am misrepresenting your words. It is not very helpful to do so, if you do not clarify what your actual standpoint is.
No, but I did face painful betrayals in my life. However, I am getting the feeling that you are playing the oppression Olympics. I am quite uninterested in the question who is oppressed more, especially since the end result always seems to be a categorical dismissal of the perspective of the other person. This makes it impossible to learn from each other, a process that requires an open mind.
They do. However, the ideology of conservatives like Huckabee doesn’t condone this in any way. In his ideology, you should be ‘saved’ and are worth ‘saving’, which is the opposite of being expendable. Feminists like Burkett also pretty clearly don’t want to see LGBT people die, while they do defend the binary system. So your insinuation that people like Huckabee and Burkett consider LGBT people to be expendable is simply false. I don’t see the need to make stuff up about their beliefs, when there is plenty to criticize in the things they actually stand for.
I also don’t think that the people who do use violence consider LGBT people to be ‘of relatively little significance, and therefore able to be abandoned or destroyed’ (dictionary definition of expendable). I think that they consider LGBT people a great threat. That is a completely different motive.
LGBT people are simply in a very different situation than the semi-slave workers in the middle east, who are actually ‘of relatively little significance, and therefore able to be abandoned or destroyed’. In no way does that mean that I dismiss the violence that LGBT people face, but I simply think we should be accurate about it.
That is a rather strange accusation, since I participated in this thread before you did. You chose to ‘stroll into my conversation,’ which you are welcome to do. However, I didn’t make you do that, so please don’t play the victim.
Nothing Grace said amounts to “oppression Olympics.” Asking if you have personal experience in the particular thing you’re discussing is not “oppression Olympics.” Please respond to what people actually say, not to what you “get the feeling” they are saying. If you can’t actually quote another person here saying something in their own words, then it’s intellectually dishonest to respond to what you “feel” they are saying. .
Also, the conversation on this blog long precedes this thread, as Grace indicated to you earlier this thread by pointing out relevant earlier posts.
@Mandolin
I do not operate the Frieden account, nor do I have had any contact with this person, beyond reading their posts here.
@closetpuritan
Because that is how I think that term would be understood by most people. But I think we are going in circles, because I’ve already explained that I don’t see faulty premises as evidence of unclear thinking.
Imagine a computer who can only think logically. Now we feed him these premises:
– Obama is president of the USA
– All presidents of the USA are bees
Then the logical computer will conclude that Obama is a bee. This is perfectly clear thinking. The computer lives in his own bubble where only 2 premises are known. The logic he applies to them is impeccable. The computer has never seen any counter evidence to make him question his conclusion.
When it comes to other people, you cannot simply assume that they have ever been exposed to facts that disprove their premises. If they haven’t, then their ignorance is just that, ignorance. Not evidence of unclear thinking.
Have you actually seen him done this in a debate? Or is this an assumption on your part?
Aapje:
Because that is how I think that term would be understood by most people. But I think we are going in circles, because I’ve already explained that I don’t see faulty premises as evidence of unclear thinking.
Your definition of “thinking” seems much narrower than most people’s, to me. When I say, “I’m thinking about my husband” or “Don’t think about marshmallows”, most people understand that I don’t mean “I’m logic-ing about my husband” or “Don’t logic about marshmallows”.
Imagine a computer who can only think logically. Now we feed him these premises:
– Obama is president of the USA
– All presidents of the USA are bees
Then the logical computer will conclude that Obama is a bee. This is perfectly clear thinking. The computer lives in his own bubble where only 2 premises are known. The logic he applies to them is impeccable. The computer has never seen any counter evidence to make him question his conclusion.
The small amount of thinking that the computer did was perfectly clear. The computer didn’t think at all about the premises. I admit that rather than sloppy thinking, it is possible that Mike Huckabee has never even given a moment’s thought to whether he should question his premises. But it’s also possible that he thought, “Some men feel like they’re women? That’s ridiculous. And anyway, it’s not as important as someone’s daughter not showering with a ‘boy’. Probably if we let trans people do that, lots of males will start doing it opportunistically to see naked girls.” [“Expendable” once again makes its appearance–‘someone’s daughter’ is not expendable, but a trans woman is.]
The “also possible” bit appears to be approximately what he did: in the infamous Huckabee quote about transgender people using the bathroom, he says,
So no, I’m not simply assuming that he’s been exposed to these ideas, I’m basing it on his own words. (I’m not sure how assuming that he hasn’t been exposed to the evidence is less arrogant than assuming that he’s being improperly dismissive of the evidence, but that’s pretty subjective anyway.)
Now I suppose I am guilty of this [“When it comes to other people, you cannot simply assume that they have ever been exposed to facts that disprove their premises.”] with you, Aapje. I assumed that since you brought up Huckabee you were familiar with what I thought was his most widely-known statement about trans people. Perhaps you were not, though.
Huckabee may not be up on the latest study saying that trans people’s brains are more similar to the gender they identify as than their assigned gender (IIRC the science is not very firm on that anyway), but he knows the basic premise: that some men and boys feel themselves to be women/girls. Instead of giving that careful thought, let alone trying to research the issue further and investigate the science or read some memoirs, or at least admitting that it’s not an issue he’s looked at carefully enough to give a strong opinion, he immediately dismisses the idea as ridiculous.
Expressing admiration for the clear thinking in between Huckabee’s premises and his conclusion is like expressing admiration for the home construction skills of someone who has great carpentry and architecture knowledge, but chose to put their foundation in a floodplain and wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to tell them, “Hey, you know half your house is gonna be underwater in the spring…” Like, yeah, I guess he’s good at that part, but I’m not sure why we’re focusing on how good he is at that part…
@closetpuritan
I have the opposite opinion, but even if a minority agrees with me, I still think you can express yourself in a way that is more specific and thus less likely to be misinterpreted.
You are mixing up the questioning of premises with being shown solid proof that undermines those premises. The difference is crucial.
A person who believes that sex = gender, can have two responses when confronted with people who claim otherwise:
1. I trust these people to tell the truth, so I will amend my premises
2. This conflicts with my premises, so these people must be mentally ill or lying.
Both choices are valid possibilities, if there is no hard evidence to show which one is right. Of course, this hard evidence exists, but Huckabee may not be aware. In fact, it is possible that he has been exposed to bad science which made him belief that 2 is right. Then the ‘facts’ he would have learned from that faulty science would be his premises as well, so then the problem would also be his premises.
After he concluded that option 2 was right, I presume that he wondered why men would lie to get to enter a place where women get (semi)-naked and his answer was sexual. In itself this part of his thought process is rational.
Your assumption that his research would have to include proper science or memoirs can easily be false. If he did research the issue on conservative sites, it is very possible that he was exposed to very selective information.
Imagine someone going to a religious school where the lecture material all claims that gender=sex. Imagine being part of a conservative culture where everyone beliefs this. Imagine visiting conservative sites, forums and such that form an echo chamber that presents data very selectively. You can spend a lot of time doing research inside this echo chamber and end up with completely false beliefs.
Come on, that is unfair and loaded language. Don’t turn ‘not irrational’ into ‘admiration’. Those are very different things.
Now you are turning the issue around. My point was not that you had to commend him, but rather that you should point out what he does wrong as clearly as possible.
In your example, saying: “you are a bad carpenter” is ineffective, since the carpenter would then not look at the river next to the house. He would look at the house he built and respond: “the carpentry is impeccable, I don’t understand your objection.” If you were to tell him: “your house is not build in a safe location,” he would not look at the house, but at the surroundings.
Technically, saying “you are a bad carpenter” is correct, since building a house in the wrong place is also bad carpentry. However, that is not the carpentry mistake that comes to mind first and it is far less precise an objection than you could make.
I’ve moved several comments regarding “Oppression Olympics” to The Open Thread.
@Ampersand
Various posts disappeared. Did you move or delete them?
edit: X-posted :/
[Thanks for acknowledging the cross post. I don’t generally delete comments that have been posted, unless they’re really over-the-top in their attacks on another poster – threats of violence, for example – or unless it’s something like an accidental double-posting. When I move comments, I put up a pointer, but sometimes I forget to, or sometimes there’s a few minutes between when I start moving comments and when I finish and put up the pointer. –Amp]
That’s not how I’ve typically heard the term used. “Oppression Olympics” means to set up two or more oppressions in competition with each other to figure out which is the biggest or most important – hence the name. Here’s the top-rated definition from Urban Dictionary:
And from the Geek Feminism Wiki:
And from Know Your Meme:
I guess that I had a more abstract notion of the concept and was referring primarily to the logical fallacies that underlie it:
– The false belief that a person in a group can speak for everyone in that group. This is false because experiences usually vary greatly for members of groups, which is also why anecdotes are not evidence.
– The false belief that people outside a group are always less capable of recognizing the tribulations of that group. This can only be true if it is impossible to learn those tribulations from objective facts that are available to those outside the group as well (surveys, government statistics, etc). Such a belief is highly problematic, since it effectively denies that people can have opinions based on proof, rather than personal experience.
In hindsight, I used the wrong term. I could have called it the ‘appeal to experience’ fallacy or a little more generically: ‘argument from authority.’
PS. Did you do an IP check for Frieden and me? If so, I’d appreciate it if you’d share your findings, as I’ve been unjustly called a person who uses sock puppets and would like my name cleared.
I disagree with Aapje and feel that I am a sock puppet of his.
Aapje,
Your earlier comment that ‘illogical people are much worse’, among other things, gave me the impression that you considered logically-consistent-with-your-principles thinking, like Huckabee’s, admirable. The point of my first comment was that there’s nothing particularly admirable or demonstrative of superior intelligence about refusing to question your premises. It’s something we all do to some degree, but I reject the idea that one type of mistake is better than the other.
Doing your research only in echo-chamber spaces is not significantly better than just not doing research–it’s just looking for support for a position you already hold.
In my first comment I clearly state that my problem is with people not questioning their premises, so I’m not sure why you keep insisting that I shouldn’t just tell people that they are doing unclear thinking, or acting like in my house metaphor I would just yell out ‘You’re bad at carpentry!’ without explaining the specific problem . Not only is that not what I would do and not what I said I would do, I have been demonstrating that that’s not what I would do.
Aapje, it seems to me from your comments throughout this thread that your main point (or the point underlying your arguments regarding logical premises, logical fallacies, etc.) is that it is understandable for people to hold harmful or incorrect beliefs if they reached them logically from their original premises, correct? Let me know if I’m misunderstanding your arguments, but that seems to be the gist. The question I have, then, is how do you tell what the premise of logical chain is? In formal proofs, the premises are explicitly stated. In real life, not so much.
We can call the belief that sex is synonymous with gender a premise, but it’s actually built on quite a lot of other supporting beliefs, such as the one that assumes that the many separate phenomena of physiology and behavior that are usually attributed to sex and/or gender are always related, which in some cases they are not; or that they’re discrete, when they’re often continuous, or that they occur as a binary rather than in degrees, such as hormone levels; or that they are universal to human experience rather than culture- and geography- and era-dependent; or… you get the idea.
There are a ton of premises underlying a second-order premise like “sex and gender are equivalent,” so saying that it isn’t illogical for someone not to question a second-order premise when presented with conflicting data is nonsensical for two reasons: first, because premises are by their nature assumptions, and any good logician (or clear thinker) worth his salt will take data that conflicts with his initial premise as evidence that the original assumption was flawed, rather than invent a reason the data is wrong; and second, because even if you’re trying to argue that original premises are sacrosanct, a second-order premise is still connected to the premises they underlie it by logical threads. Those threads would need to be examined, if they conflict with the evidence, or you can’t honestly say that the entire chain of logic is sound.
Either way, whether a flaw occurs in someone’s logic or in their poor choice of basic assumptions as premises, I don’t really see the point in arguing that they are thinking clearly. Both parts are crucial in logical reasoning, and especially in experiential kinds of reasoning where real-world data matters. So I’m not sure why it’s so terribly important to you to establish that one half of Huckabee’s thinking is sound, when you acknowledge that the premises are wrong. If the premises are wrong, why in the world would we say that he’s thinking clearly? Why would we want to? What would that accomplish in a discussion like this one (where Huckabee can’t see or hear us)?
And even if we were in the process to trying to convince him directly, how in the world would it help our case to waste time reassuring him that he’s done a bang-up job reasoning from steps B through Z? Step A is the problem, so if someone were actually trying to persuade him, we’d want to point out the problems he’s having in step A – the part where he isn’t reasoning clearly. You’ve made it clear that you agree that he’s having a problem with step A (I actually think he’s having problems with steps B, C, D, J, and Q also), but you insist that this isn’t an example of his not thinking clearly, and after reading all of your comments I’m still not clear on why. Why would a logical error in steps B, C, etc. constitute a flaw in reasoning, but a flaw in step A would not?
@closetpuritan
Less worse isn’t necessarily good, let alone admirable. Stalin killed millions and Bin Laden killed 3000. That makes Stalin much worse, if you objectively compare the numbers. Doesn’t mean that I like Bin Laden…
I much rather argue with someone who understands logic than with an irrational person. I know how to argue against false premises. When someone says stuff like: “my personal experience disproves your scientific evidence,” where do you go from there?
Anyway, lets just end the debate over this point here. I think we are 99% in agreement. We are mostly arguing semantics and stuff like that now.
Thanks for the engaging debate.
@Sarah
It is understandable in the sense that none of us has perfect knowledge. We all believe things based on cultural truths (things that society tells us are true), our own experiences (even though anecdotes are weak evidence), fairly cursory investigations, etc. Some of these will definitely be wrong. So we are all ignorant in some ways. I dislike it when people use words that can be perceived as attacks, which also apply to themselves (he who is without sin…).
Ultimately I think we are all part of an echo chamber to some extent, although some more than others.
A good question and this can indeed be quite difficult. Ultimately it comes down to reverting to a toddler a bit and going through the ‘Why?’ phase again. ‘Why does this person come to this conclusion?’ ‘Why does he think that transgenders must be lying?’ ‘Why does he dismiss the experiences of transgenders?’ Basically you need to do reverse logic, going from conclusions to premises, which is usually harder than forward logic.
I also find it invaluable to assume that the other person is not an inherently evil person (whether this is actually true is immaterial to the process). A major mistake I see many people make is that they believe that a person who opposes their beliefs is malicious. You can answer pretty much any ‘Why?’ question with with ‘because (s)he hates X.’ An answer that can be given for any question, is useless. Even hate usually has an underlying premise. Racists don’t hate Mexicans just out of the blue, they hate them for ‘taking jobs’ or another reason. They always have a reason in my experience. Find the actual reason and you may be able to convince them that their concerns are wrong.
Quite a few people like thinking in absolutes, indeed. I assume you mean to say that people like Huckabee are likely not receptive to nuanced world views and that may be correct. In that case the flaw in the reasoning is still that his premises are incorrect, but there may be some overriding premise that prevents him from accepting certain evidence.
In the case of Huckabee, I wouldn’t be surprised if his core premise is that God created men and women to be together and things like homosexuality and gender-sex mismatching threatens this. In that case, you may need to get into a religious debate to convince him (which is not hopeless, quite a few people have altered or abandoned their faith in life).
That depends. If your premises aren’t absolute, but in the form of ‘most X are like Y,’ then single data points that conflict with the premise do not disprove it. You need quality statistical evidence at that point.
Quality statistical evidence is often very hard to gather. It is very easy to make statistical errors or measure the wrong thing. Even scientists fall prey to this very often and there is evidence that most research findings are false. So given that premise, you need to be extremely critical of even scientific findings.
Of course, it is logical to assume that non-scientific data is considerably less reliable on average than data collected by scientists and since that is already possibly more than half wrong…. we are sadly always debating on logical quicksand.
I never argued that they were thinking clearly. I argued that ‘thinking clearly’ is a vague term, likely to be misinterpreted, considered an ad hominem or otherwise dismissed out of hand. Since it is a high level term, you can always be more specific. In short, it is bad strategy to use the term in a debate.
You are turning the situation around. I was arguing against telling people like him that they are not thinking clearly. You can ‘not do something’ without doing the opposite. I can ‘not lie’ by staying quiet. Then I’m also not telling the truth. I can ‘not eat something healthy’ by not eating at all. Then I’m not eating something unhealthy.
It is not a binary…
Frieden @58: Thanks, that comment made me laugh out loud!
I much rather argue with someone who understands logic than with an irrational person. I know how to argue against false premises. When someone says stuff like: “my personal experience disproves your scientific evidence,” where do you go from there?
I’m not sure why you think Huckabee is NOT doing that, or doing something different in kind than that. At best, he’s assuming there’s no scientific evidence, and giving his lack of experience with anyone transgender and off-the-cuff theorizing about transgender people’s motives more weight than people’s actual experience.
I never argued that they were thinking clearly. I argued that ‘thinking clearly’ is a vague term, likely to be misinterpreted, considered an ad hominem or otherwise dismissed out of hand. Since it is a high level term, you can always be more specific. In short, it is bad strategy to use the term in a debate.
I never defended Huckabee’s framing of the issue. I merely pointed out that the accusation that people like him ‘do not think clearly’ is wrong (and unproductive & divisive) if that assessment is based on that particular example.
You didn’t merely say it was vague, you said it was wrong, relegating unproductive and divisive to a parenthetical. And Ampersand as well as me specifically said that Huckabee’s framing was wrong, so I’m not sure why you continue to assert that the phrase is confusing (sure it is, IN ISOLATION, but it’s not used in isolation, is it?) when people who used the phrase “not thinking clearly” explained HOW the “not thinking clearly” happened from the beginning.
Anyway, lets just end the debate over this point here. I think we are 99% in agreement. We are mostly arguing semantics and stuff like that now.
Since you’re continuing to debate the same point with Sarah, you’re not really ending the debate… I may or may not respond further, if I feel like it.
(And obviously you are under no obligation to respond, Aapje.)
I take that back. I was a little hot headed then.
I take that back. I was a little hot headed then.
Thanks for your willingness to recalibrate.