Being very clear
I know, it’s just Twitter, but really the argument is so powerful I have to share it.
See what I mean?
One powerful argument after another. Hume isn’t in it; Mill wishes he’d decided to be a gardener.
Tip Jar
I know, it’s just Twitter, but really the argument is so powerful I have to share it.
See what I mean?
One powerful argument after another. Hume isn’t in it; Mill wishes he’d decided to be a gardener.
But why would a person ‘just shut the fuck up’ if they disagree that their ideas are harmful? Something I see over and over again is this total absence of a theory of mind.
I’ve been thinking recently about the “suicide threat” argument. It seems to come up mostly in cases of “You are not allowing people to do something I approve of, and they might commit suicide.” The “something” is most often gender “transition” or (most recently) abortion, but I’m sure I’ve seen it elsewhere. It comes up for people who are convinced by these arguments – “I’d rather have a living son than a dead daughter”. But it never seems to come up for other issues in any significant way. There must be many ways in which people’s wishes are thwarted, and they may be upset enough that they consider suicide; some of them I might agree with one side, some the other. And few people seem to be suggesting “I don’t support X, but people might kill themselves, so I’ll go along with X”; mentioning suicide threat seems to be mostly a way to get non-supporters to change their position.
Also, simply giving in to what the suicidal person is demanding is not a good course of action, according to experts. Threats are manipulation, conscious or not.
@Sackbut;
I think there’s a common example of the “I don’t support X, but people might kill themselves, so I go along with X” — religion.
There are nonbelievers who consider religious believers to be desperately dependent on their belief in God. It’s the only hope or comfort they have when life gets difficult; it defines their identity and gives them meaning and a reason to live. Accomodationist Atheists like this therefore think outspoken atheists like Dawkins are absolute assholes. Why try to take away people’s faith? Doesn’t he know how much they need it? Doubt sends them into despair and could well make them suicidal. Would their deaths be worth the sick thrill of acting so superior? Why not keep reservations to yourself and go along?
Obviously, it’s not only atheists with this attitude. It’s a common apologetic used by the devout: the Argument from Shut Up. You say there’s no God? Stop. Just stop. You’re hurting people.
Go on Twitter. It will boost your IQ for sure; higher and better than a Saturn rocket.!
I had never heard of this angry nebbish. I wonder how many other people first heard Jesse Spector’s name because he thoroughly beclowned himself in public. He sounds like an infuriated ten year old.
To some extent or another, one could make the suicide gambit for practically any subject, on the rather intuitive grounds that someone whose wants are thwarted is more likely to commit suicide than otherwise. If the premise is that we ought not do that which (possibly or putatively) results in increased chance of suicide, then we ought not argue against any P that someone, anyone desires or believes. What matter that the probability increase is only infinitesimal? YOUR ARGUMENTS RESULT IN DEATH.
And that’s without really examining the near certainty that anyone deploying the gambit engages in, uses, or endorses something that demonstrably makes people significantly more likely to die.
sackbut:
This is a remarkably difficult concept to explain to people vulnerable to emotional blackmail. Their minds seem to hold on to something very like Pascal’s Wager, with all the associated distortions of probability.
And even people who recognize the fallacious nature of the classic appeal to consequences (i.e., something bad will happen to you) for some reason are completely powerless against its inverse (i.e., something bad will happen to me). I just … I don’t get it. How can that rhetorical inversion be so effective?
I think that the suicides that have gone through have been due to bullying in school for being different from gender expectations, and presenting gender “affirmation ” surgery gives couch kids false hopes that the bullying will stop once they conform. That false hope is far more cruel, if you ask me. People like Spector have built this wall against reason and I can oy speculate as t why, but I think that a commitment to misogyny and gender conformity is a part of it.
“Shut the fuck up,” is the only argument they have. The entire arc of the T enterprise is to win, first by stealth, and then to maintain institutional capture by preventing any discussion whatsoever. The “shut up because YOUR IDEAS RESULT IN DEATH,” is as evidenceless as their theory of gender. Knowing that sex is real, is “an idea that results in death.” Knowing that people can’t change sex is “an idea that results in death.” Those aren’t mere “ideas,” they are brute facts. It’s not possible to change the facts or to avoid the facts. They are always true, for everyone. So, how, exactly, do these facts, that have been known as long as human beings have had language, if not longer, “result in death”? Which deaths? How many deaths? What’s the causal mechanism, the analytical nexus between knowing “sex is real, and you can’t change sex,” that “results in death”? They never explain clearly, because (1) everyone would see that it’s just a manipulation tactic, and (2) it isn’t true.
The Argument From But They’ll Kill Themselves always rests on what I’ve call the “little people” argument: WE are more mature and capable than THEY are. THEY can’t handle the truth. They’re weak, vulnerable, traumatized, and/or not particularly bright. A widow dealing with her grief by relying on Jesus’ promise of Heaven simply could not deal with it any other way. The transgender are the most marginalized group in the world; their entire identity rests on other people validating that they are “who (?) they say they are.” They just aren’t capable of cheerfully using the bathroom that matches their sex. Doing so undermines their very sense that they exist — andthey’re worthy of existing.
It’s always a state of emergency with fragile, desperate victims who can’t cope without our help. We usually suspend ordinary rules in such circumstances. Socially-constructed Mind Viruses with that feature spread more easily.
At any rate it’s certainly a much more convoluted route than posting the name and address of a percieved enemy along with a picture of a pipe bomb. But that’s perfectly okay; she deserves what she gets because SHUT UP TERF, YOU’RE GENOCIDING ME!
Sastra @ 10
I like the “little people” framing.
And let’s not forget “women and girls who are denied abortions are weak and cannot deal with the denial any other way”.
I very much support abortion rights, but the suicide risk argument is the same bad argument in that case that it is in the “gender affirmation” case, sometimes made by the same people for very similar reasons, and I reject it in both cases. There are other ways of dealing with suicide risks.
Sackbut, I’m not sure I can agree with that. If you don’t use it as an overall argument, but deal with it in individual cases where psychiatric evaluation shows it is a clear and present danger to an individual patient, then it is very real. And there aren’t always other ways to deal with suicide risks. Trust me; I know this. Suicide risks are very real, but should not be applied as an argument for or against a procedure, because they are individual and in many cases, not anything more than manipulation. So given that argument for a health-based abortion for an individual woman, it is actually a good argument if it has been determined that the danger is more than manipulation.
As for me, I don’t mind using the health risks in general as an argument for abortion, but I too often get the feeling that the “women have rights to bodily autonomy” takes second (or third, or ninth) place to the “good girls with health issues” argument. Which is more important? Health issues on the superficial look, because, well, dead women aren’t good optics. But in reality, the women’s rights to bodily autonomy are much more important, because they allow maximum freedom, and don’t lock women into the box of having to prove a health risk in order to have a procedure to which they should be entitled. But too many people find abortion “icky” and want to make sure only “good” abortions are allowed.
Trans has adopted the language of the pro-choice movement. When their lobby was forming, it appeared to be effective. Now, in a post-choice world, they can’t drop it because it’s all they have.