Jan. 23rd, 2011

azn_jack_fiend: (Seven Samurai)
Go [livejournal.com profile] lookninjas! The logic, it burns.

I don't think [livejournal.com profile] lookninjas would mind me quoting it, so I will go ahead and do so. Originally posted here and here.  Comments off on this post.

Honestly? Because seeing all these arguments lumped together like this has made me realize just how faulty they are. It's essentially a cobbled-together pastiche of logical fallacies, dusted over with a few choice insults and nerd references so that we can know that the OP is truly one of us, and all of it resting on a term that has yet to be clearly defined.

[...]

At one point in this post, the OP gives a list of specific instances that, to them, represent SJ gone wrong, or whatever. They are all incredibly recent. Many of them involve the same group of four or five people that are particular enemies of the anon meme. Later, the OP references the term privilege, which is used by a much wider group of people. Right after that, it switches over to a discussion of ableism. So which group is SJ? Does the fail meme have to single you out before you qualify? Is it people who post about ableism? Is it anyone who uses the term privilege? The use of a term this amorphous and new leads to an argument that rests entirely on equivocation, Straw Men, and the No True Scotsman fallacy.

I understand your argument better than you think. It's this: "They" are coming to take your free speech away. Who are "They?" Well, that depends. In the seventies and eighties, They were Militant Feminists and Hippies and Black Power Groups. More recently, They've been Secular Humanists, the ACLU, sometimes even "The Gays." They are whichever minority group is currently standing up and asking (some politely, some perhaps not so much) to please, please be treated like human beings with equal dignity. To not have the commonly-used term that describes their group used as a synonym for "bad" or "stupid" or "cheap."

(As usual recently with racist fuckery in fandom, the racist princesses at [livejournal.com profile] fail_fandomanon are somewhere behind it).

I hope this is the last time I post about this, but it's really gotten under my skin. The part that most disturbs me is this narrative that anyone who is complaining about racial issues in LJ fandom is, by default, a guilty white liberal. I don't give a fuck about guilty white liberals... and I mean that in a fairly nice way. I don't hate them. I don't love them. Like most other groups of people some of them are nice and some of them are irritating. They can go on and do their thing, whatever. But I am speaking for me. If I complain about racism I'm doing it as a person of color who is directly impacted by it.

I have never heard of the No True Scotsman thing before, but I kind of love it.

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