Guest post: For the purposes of reverse no-true-Scotsmaning

Nov 15th, 2022 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Originally a comment by latsot on Poking with a stick.

“Y’all” is very often used, at least by gender identity ideologues, for the purposes of reverse no-true-Scotsmaning.

It’s used to imply that a large group of people hold some ludicrous caricature of an already crazy view, then as an increasing number of counter-examples are presented, the target of the y’all switches to smaller and smaller groups, right down to some girl who goes to a different school, who you wouldn’t know.

It’s both more socially acceptable and more slippery by nature than “you people” because of implausible deniability (“oh, I didn’t mean all feminists are in favour of eating babies, how could you possibly have thought that?”) and because it can more easily slip in either direction, depending on how the argument is going (“no no no, I meant feminists in general which might or might not include this group specifically”).

But, most importantly, if this conversation is taking place on Twitter (and it usually is) the y’all is right there at the top of the thread, with its original implication, and that’s what most people will see.

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