What is up for debate
Holly Lawford on trans YouTube celebrity Natalie Winn:
At one point, Wynn spends a substantial amount of time describing, and then attributing to Rowling, so-called “motte-and-bailey” rhetorical tactics. These are arguments by which a person puts forward a difficult-to-defend claim (analogized to a lightly defended low-walled medieval courtyard known as a bailey), and then retreats to a more defensible claim (the metaphorical motte, or castle) when challenged, without conceding that the latter differs from the former.
But then Wynn uses this same strategy to impugn Rowling, first arguing that saying “transwomen are men” is transphobic (the bailey), and then retreating to a far more defensible position, expressed implicitly by means of the following rhetorical question: “Is it really hysteria to react with strong emotions when your basic inclusion in society is up for debate?” The sleight of hand here is aimed at convincing the audience that the widely accepted proposition—that everyone in society should be “included”—simply restates the far more dubious original statement.
Unfortunately, this sort of motte-and-bailey trick has become a common feature of the gender debate. And so one must constantly remind oneself that the motte and bailey are very different things: trans people’s basic inclusion in society isn’t up for debate (or, at least, not among gender-critical feminists). Whatever universal human rights there are, gender-critical feminists support trans people having them. What is up for debate is whether transwomen, by virtue of self-identification as such, should have access to rights specifically reserved for women.
This is the same cheap trick I keep harping on – the one where trans activists and allies shout that gender skeptics want to take away trans people’s human rights. Of course we don’t, I shout back. What we dispute is their entitlement to new fanciful invented “rights,” especially the ones that clash with women’s rights. I hadn’t thought to call it a motte and bailey.
H/t Mostly Cloudy.
That it has. Or rather, that it has always been. The sex/gender gambit, the core of the whole ideology, is just a motte (gender) and bailey (sex).
It’s not just a common feature of the gender debate, though. Once you have the concept of M&B, you start to see it all the time, because, well, it’s everywhere. It may actually be one of the most common modes of deception, period.
A thread on Ovarit is attempting to ‘steelman’ gender ideology arguments with, as far as I can tell, little success so far. How would we here steelman their position?
I dunno, look into Christian apologetics? It’s a similar position…
I think it’s not difficult to steelman the claim that we all know ourselves better than anyone else does. What follows from that, though, is more difficult.
But people can be wrong about what they think they know about themselves. Trump is a genius, Willoughby is a woman, Montgomerie is a feminist, etc. Delusion? Dishonesty? Lunacy?
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your epistemology. (with apologies)
twiliter, I would agree. I don’t know that I would say anyone else knows me better than I know myself, but they see me through a different mirror, a more honest one perhaps? Or not, because they have their biases, too. But in many cases, the me other people know doesn’t really look like the me I know.
To really find our true selves, we need to be willing to submit to an intensive look not only at what we think ourselves to be, but at what other people think us to be. Do I come across as smug? (I don’t think so, based on how people react to me, but it is something I can’t know for sure.) Do I come across as honest?
My mother swore she was supremely happy as a housewife; no one who knew her well believed this, but I think she did. She talked herself into it, because that was how it was “supposed” to be. My sister believed herself to be nurturing, but her sort of nurturing left open, bleeding wounds, at least until they scabbed over. My younger sister believes herself to be interesting; I can’t see it.
Yet so many of us, who can see things in other people that they don’t see, still buy into the trope that we know ourselves better than others know us. Yes, I am more likely to know what’s my favorite color, my favorite ice cream flavor, and what book I am currently reading. But we are a lot more than just our preferences…unless we are trans. Then, apparently, our preferences are all we are and are overwhelmingly important.
twiliter @ 5 – of course. I point that out when arguing about the trans ideology endlessly, to the point of tedium. But steelmanning is presenting the other side’s views as strongly as possible, not agreeing with the other side’s views.
I’m sure as hell not arguing that endless self-obsession is good or useful.
The “we know ourselves best” argument coupled with the “be kind” argument I think would make a reasonable steelman. Most of the people with whom I’ve had personal arguments about trans issues focus on being kind to individuals.
As I understand it, part of the point of a steelman argument is to show that, even when given maximal allowance, the opponent’s arguments are still incorrect.
Well that’s ultimately the point, because the person doing the steelmanning is arguing for the other side, by definition, but I think the core point is to make every effort to present the other side fairly and accurately. So as not to strawman.
I’m not sure the arguments of an untenable ideology can be made tenable. Even the best attempts, Kathleen Stock’s book for example, or many of the posts here, can approximate a steelmanned argument, but the ideology doesn’t lend itself to serious inquiry or criticism. Even starting from some point of agreement as an ice breaker usually ends up rapidly heading south. It’s frustrating.
guest: It’s difficult to represent the strongest form of their argument, not because their argument is bad, but because they have multiple arguments pointing to multiple conclusions that are mutually exclusive. The ends of their motte’s arguments are different from the ends of their bailey’s arguments. The arguments deployed in the motte are actually logically incompatible with those deployed in the bailey, so we’d have to handle each of those separately.
Even restricting our attention to just the motte or just the bailey, however, we find mutually exclusive arguments in terms of both premises and conclusions. In the motte, for instance, some arguments proceed from the premise that gender has no biological components, while others proceed from claims about neurology. Some conclude that we ought pretend that TWAW; others conclude that TW literally AW. Some don’t even go as far as pretending TWAW, and instead retreat past the gender motte all the way to freedom of belief.
We can’t steelman conclusions. We steelman arguments for given positions. It’s fundamentally impossible to steelman an argument for a position until you decide what that position actually is. Genderists intentionally don’t do that, in the same way and for the same reasons that the Karen Armstrongs of the world, the apophatic theologians and apologists, refuse to take a defined position on the nature and attributes of God. By leaving their conclusion formless and void, they’re free to deploy whatever arguments they want according to rhetorical expedience, and perhaps more importantly, they’realways free to say that their interlocutors are not engaging with their actual conclusions.
If you’re paying attention, you’ll have realized that this is precisely the motte and bailey. Make an argument for a conclusion and retreat when pressed, accusing your interlocutor of attacking a phantom. The trick works because we do on occasion misinterpret people’s intent. So we do have to acknowledge that sometimes our opponents really were always in the motte, and we only imagined that they’d attempted to occupy the bailey. (It’s a big reason I tend toward pedantry: it minimizes, but unfortunately doesn’t eliminate, this sort of honest misunderstanding.) Apologists, whether theists or Genderists, exploit this necessary conversational concession.
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