Category: logical fallacies

Categories
gender logical fallacies science fiction

Geeze, Larry Correia, leave some straw men for the rest of us.

So, Larry Correia wrote a fantastically dickish blog post about Alex Dally MacFarlane’s post on Tor.com in regards to the default gender binary represented in mainstream SF literature. The post in question involved Alex making the incredibly revolutionary1 observation that transwomen and transmen, you know, exist. As well as other people who do not conform to the strict, aggressively Leave It To Beaver-ish gender binary that’s still presented as the default. And it’s time to get away from that being the default. And hey, there have already been works written that touch on the issue, so let’s discuss those and then move forward. (Alex, if you ever happen to read this, I hope I have not misrepresented your position overmuch in my rather flippant summary.)

Jim Hines, bless him from his shiny head to his sofa-marrying heart2, possesses such intestinal fortitude and abundance of spare time that he’s done a point by point take down of Correia’s post.

My normal inclination here is to have the same response as I had to John C. Wright and his wall of misogy-text, namely: would you get a load of this fuckin’ guy. But there are a few things that are bothering me particularly, though. In short:

  1. Correia spends the whole time calling Alex “he” in his original post. (Alex isn’t a man. It takes exactly one google search or two clicks to double check that.[ETA] Her bio is literally at the bottom of her post. What kind of fucking laziness does this take?) I actually went and looked at Correia’s blog to see if he corrected himself, and he did… kinda? Somewhere in the word salad of this long response to Jim he corrects himself on Alex being “she,” airily dismisses it as a mistake and says he further doesn’t care anyway BECAUSE IDEAS NOT PEOPLE. Perhaps at this point misrepresenting someone’s gender feels like a drop in the ocean of douchery, and that’s the excuse for not taking two seconds to type out the word ‘sorry.’ But it’s a damn pathetic excuse.
  2. Seriously, what is with the dog whistle liberal versus conservative culture war bullshit framing? Perhaps this is bothering me more than normal because in my offline life, I just had a strong reminder that being conscious of gender identification isn’t a default liberal versus conservative issue, it’s a not being a douchebag issue.
  3. Correia’s thesis as written seems to be that (a) straw Alex wants all books to be nothing but non-standard characters and there will be checklists nothing but checklists forever, (b) this would make everything a preachy issue book (presumably because straw Alex does not care about story?), therefore (c) that would destroy the genre of science fiction.
  4. The “I don’t like thing X, therefore if you write thing X IT WILL DESTROY THE GENRE,” line has gotten so common that I believe it deserves its own name. It’s like an appeal to consequences and appeal to tradition got together and had an ugly, whiny baby. Any suggestions? The best I’ve got is Appeal to Destruction, and that’s admittedly tepid.
  5. Correia keeps coming back to story being the most important thing. I don’t think there’s any halfway decent writer who would argue the point that story is where it’s at. So where the fuck is this disconnect? How does what Alex actually said in any way preclude the primacy of story? How does even making a conscious effort to write non-default characters equal preachy issue book? Is there some kind of mathematical proof I’m missing out on here that shows the number of transgender or genderqueer characters is inversely proportional to the amount of story and/or fun?
  6. Geeze, dude, leave some straw men for the rest of us. Seriously. Worldwide shortage.
  7. Cisgender hetero guy with enormous biceps kills vampires and then must face their sire in a world-shattering showdown versus Transwoman with slightly less enormous biceps kills vampires then must face their sire in a world-shattering showdown would both be driven by the same basic story. Each would be distinct because, say, for option B you’d have to consider how the heroine’s status as trans would effect her interactions with other characters and all of their choices–yet in the end it’s still about some badass killing a shitload of vampires and saving the world.
  8. I do not tend to buy books that promise to preach at me. But you know what I will go out of my way to buy? Books with female protagonists. Books with explicitly bisexual protagonists. Because like all human beings, I’m an egocentric jerk and I enjoy being able to see people like me in stories, saving the world and doing other badass shit. [ETA: I would hope this goes without saying, but you never know. I want good and interesting books with the aforementioned and following. Books with excellent story, which very much do exist when combined with “non-default” main characters. Yeesh.] But you know what else I’ll go out of my way to buy? Books with genderqueer protagonists. Books with non-white protagonists. Books with protagonists from cultures other than my own. Why? Because I want to imagine things outside of myself as well. And imagining ye olde heterosexual white dude? We all basically know how to put those shoes on mentally before we can tie our literal shoelaces in the real world.

 

1 – Mmm, sarcasm italics. How I have missed you.

2 – Some of the comments on Jim’s post are gold.

Categories
logical fallacies someone is wrong on the internet

Straw men

This is a term I’ve used in the past on my blog, and I bet most if not all of you already know what this is. But just in case, let’s cover it briefly, because this is something anyone who has, say, ever watched a politician speak ought to understand.

A Straw Man is a logical fallacy. If you’re not familiar with logical fallacies, there’s an excellent summary over at the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, which is worth reading. In summary, a logical fallacy is an incorrect argument, normally due to an error in logic or rhetoric, and either purposeful or accidental. There’s a massive list of formal fallacies, because certain errors just pop over and over again in argument.

Straw man tends to evoke the image of soldiers bayonetting straw dummies, and it’s used for a reason. In the straw man logical fallacy, instead of arguing against your opponent’s actual position, you make up an entirely different, misrepresentative position, one that’s normally a lot easier to attack, and then argue against that instead. Politicians do it all the time by putting words in their opponent’s mouth or purposefully misinterpreting something they’ve said.

I’ve attempted to come up with some real world examples, but feel free to offer your own in comments, or correct me if I’ve made a mistake.

  • Just about any politician ever who has claimed that anyone opposed to Law X just wants to maintain the status quo. George W. Bush did that when he argued for No Child Left Behind, Obama did it for the Affordable Care Act. While some opposition comes from wanting to keep things as they are no doubt, there were plenty of people opposed to both because they thought they didn’t go far enough (hey, wouldn’t it be awesome to have single payer?) or that it went about things the wrong way (way to require mathematically impossible rates of success in testing!) and cogent arguments to that effect.
  • Arguing against feminism because we’re all just a bunch of man hating bra-burners who want to put a matriarchy in place is one that happens all the time. So often, in fact, the Straw Feminist is a trope. 
  • Just about anything to do with the Fox News fictional “War on Christmas.” (Example here.) I would argue that the entire concept of the “War on Christmas” is a straw man, since it’s a characterization of people wanting to destroy the holiday when basically the evil opposing forces (anyone who says “happy holidays” and atheists for the most part) most commonly want to make the holiday season inclusive for all faiths and/or feel that the government shouldn’t be promoting a particular flavor of religion.
  • A popular one currently is to characterize any discussion of regulations on guns as an attempt to ban all guns forever. I’ve gotten hit with that on both my post Sandy Hook massacre blog posts; note in neither do I say anything about banning guns entirely.

Logical fallacies are a powerful, useful tool. Two things you need to keep in mind however:

  1. Just because an argument contains a logical fallacy does not mean that the conclusion will necessarily be false. Sometimes someone with shitty logic still gets to a correct conclusion. Also, sometimes people will purposefully commit these fallacies as a rhetorical device, so be cautious of that as well. 
  2. Just because you know the logical fallacies does not mean you are immune to committing them yourself. I know I’ve fallen victim to their siren call in the past. So don’t let it get to your ego, okay?
Categories
logical fallacies

Building a Straw Mosque

I know the bizarre controversy about the Islamic community center planned in New York City a few blocks from the site once occupied by the World Trade Center has been going on for a while, but I haven’t said anything before now because I’ve been so utterly baffled about the whole thing that words have simply escaped me. Imagine me reading article after article, staring open-mouthed at my computer screen (possibly with a little dangling string of drool depending on how late the hour is) and that’s about right. I’m basically stunned, confused, and filled with the need to plant my face in my palm, repeatedly.

I would like to note one thing. I don’t personally know anyone who was even injured on 9/11/2001. I’ve never even been to New York City. So I can’t really imagine the pain or anguish that is felt by someone every day when they get up and touch a hole that will permanently be in their life, or look at a scar that still sits in the middle of their city. I don’t want to insult or belittle that.

But I also think that grief and tragedy, personal or otherwise, should not dictate what rights someone is allowed to have, or how the law should be applied.

Go back to the first paragraph I wrote. Note that I said “Islamic community center” rather than “mosque.” Note that I said “the site once occupied by the World Trade Center” rather than “Ground Zero.” The words I used aren’t very emotionally charged, at least not unless you have a knee-jerk hate for all things Muslim, in which case I feel sorry for you. And particularly in the case of using “Islamic community center” instead of “mosque,” the less emotionally charged phrase is more accurate. If there is a mosque (and I’ve seen some disagreement on if it’s a mosque or if it’s “worship space,” whatever that means), it’s just a part of a community center that also includes basketball courts.

Word choice can have a lot of meaning. Some of this word choice might be shorthand to save time. But I kind of doubt that. I think there’s been a very deliberate decision to use the most inflammatory, emotional language possible. So “Islamic community center a few blocks away from the WTC site” has been replaced with “Ground Zero Mosque.” And I hope we all know what it’s called when you misrepresent something to weaken it, then argue against the misrepresentation.

It doesn’t necessarily bother me in principle that people are talking about this. There are a lot of times when the rights guaranteed in the Constitution end up resulting in things that make us personally squirm or feel angry – I’m thinking Fred Phelps and his gang, here, or the KKK having a rally on Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday – there are plenty of things to take your pick from. Most of the time it ends up at “Well, I don’t like it, but I’ve got to defend the right to do it.”

What does bother me, however, is that this debate is being built on top of a straw man – or a straw mosque as the case may be. And what bothers me even more is that this straw mosque is being used as a kind of dog whistle to call up resentment against American (and non-American) Muslims in general.

I haven’t had much nice to say about President George W. Bush in a long time. But I will compliment him on one thing at least – after 9/11, the man did his level best to strongly separate the terrorists from regular Muslims, both at home and abroad. And people from his administration are trying to defend the Islamic community center now. Too bad it doesn’t seem to be working any longer.

Maybe it’s because it’s an election year, and some of the politics have gone past the point of disturbing and pear-shaped to just horrifying. (I’m looking at you, Sharron Angle.) I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that American Muslims and their community center are being used as a political football. But I sure am disgusted, and more than a little worried that this could get escalated to a truly awful level.

Since it isn’t just the community center in New York:

In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.

In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.

How lovely.

“A mosque is not just a place for worship,” Ms. Darwish said in an interview. “It’s a place where war is started, where commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims occur. It’s a place where ammunition was stored.”

So we should trample one of the most important rights, the right to freedom of religion, because in the past, in other places, mosques have been used to commission violence and incite hatred. I wonder if this means that we ought to be protesting proposed Catholic churches, because they’re hotbeds of pedophilia. Or protesting proposed Southern Baptist churches because they encourage the murder of doctors and incite hatred against homosexuals.

Of course we wouldn’t. Because this is America, damnit. Because Americans are Catholic and Southern Baptist and Lutheran and Jewish and Atheist and Buddhist, and we have rights and freedoms, one of which is the ability to continue to believe or not as we see fit even if there was once a giant, murderous space bastard with facial hair you could hide a cute mammal in who claimed to have the same belief system as us.

Oh yeah. And Americans are Muslim, too.

Categories
logical fallacies

The link between rock music and oil

From the Department of “Correlation Does Not Equal Causation” I bring you this amazingly awesome infographic:
Rock (and U.S. Oil Production) Is Dead

I think we should just point at this one every time someone starts committing that fallacy. Or I guess we could just argue that the rockmeisters of old used gasoline powered guitars, and when US production started to fall off, that foreign stuff just didn’t have the oomfta.