There are a lot of instances when conservatives and liberals will try to “____-splain” each other (can’t think of a good term for it) and say that if the other side truly supported their ____ cause, that they’d do this or that instead.
(Examples: “If pro-lifers were truly pro-life, they’d be supporting contraception and try to help the child after birth instead of merely pre-birth.” “If feminists were really about women’s rights, they’d be standing up to Muslim abuses of women such as burkas, wife-beating, honor killings, etc.” “If conservative Christians knew what Jesus was truly about, they’d be supporting universal healthcare and undocumented immigrants,” “If liberals were truly tolerant, they’d tolerate conservative speech,” etc.)
Without getting bogged down in the minutae of those matters - can Side A truly claim to know better than Side B what Side B ought to represent or do? Most of this comes across as some form of “-splaining” or a thinly-veiled attempt for conservatives to sneakily try to advance the cause of conservatism, but within the liberal camp - or vice versa.
The other side can often point out inconsistencies or hypocrisies in those positions better than the people who hold them. If someone holds a particular belief, they often see just the positives and ignore or minimize the negatives. For example, someone might say they are for gun control because they want to prevent children from being killed, but they may be ignoring all of the other non-gun ways that children get killed that may result in more deaths. It could be that reducing drowning deaths could save more children than eliminating guns. So pointing out these kinds of inconsistencies can help clarify why they hold a particular belief. It could be that the benefit can be achieved better in other ways, or maybe that benefit isn’t really why they hold that belief.
I hope no one reads any snark into this, because none is intended, but some people really like to tell others how they should think and/or behave, others abhor doing so.
I would be more convinced that pro-lifers cared about life if they were vocal proponents of universal healthcare and strong safety nets and family-friendly labor laws. I actually think if there was a political party that truly spoke to “pro-life” ideals, a lot of folks would be rushing towards it. Instead, the same folks faux-weeping over dead fetuses always seem to be the ones snatching away funding for services that improve life for actual people. It may cause the average conservative to feel some butthurt when this is brought to their attention, but that doesn’t mean their side doesn’t suffer from a serious PR problem (among other problems).
Some of it is seeing the hypocrisy of the other side. Some of it is seeing the other side through a thick filter.
For instance, I don’t think you need to be in favor of free healthcare or welfare or whatever to oppose murder. Why do you need to be in favor of those to oppose abortion? (I’m pro-choice, by the way. But I don’t buy into the “if you claim to be ‘pro-life’ but aren’t in favor of expanding social benefits you are a hypocrit” argument.
In the abortion debate it is pretty obviously a way to change the subject. Most people don’t feel confident defending the practice and try to shift the debate to something else by claiming that if pro-life people were really consistent they would care about some other issue and not abortion.
That’s simply a naming issue. They called themselves “pro-life” for a tactical political reason that has no relationship to their political or religious aims.
None of them are pro-life. They are ALL anti-female power. That’s what they are about.
You see this often when there are competing priorities that are not opposites, but you need to choose a priority. So one side could like apples more than bananas and vice versa. People will frame is as since you like apples you are anti-bananas, which isn’t necessary the case. You can like both but care more about one than the other.
This is a common example. There are competing priorities of fetus’s life and women’s autonomy. You can care about one and not the other, but you could also care about both and have to choose which means more than you. You can be pro-life and pro female power, but you have a pick one for this circumstance. In other circumstances you might have a different priority. Framing the issue this way is wrong and counterproductive.
The speed at which this thread devolved into liberals telling conservatives what to do is hilarious.
What the fuck are you talking about? We don’t have a problem defending the practice. It’s a medical procedure. It’s no different than having a wart removed.
Another one often used: *“If Black Lives Matter people really cared about black lives, they’d be focusing on black-on-black killings which dwarf white-on-black killings in frequency” * (Actually, this particular argument long predates BLM)
1 - Humans are irrational
2 - Humans have inconsistent beliefs
3 - Humans focus on other groups inconsistent beliefs but tend to ignore their own
My favorite is abortion and death penalty:
Many anti-abortion people are also pro-death penalty people
Many anti-death penalty people are also pro-abortion people
The problem is either side assuming the other side’s beliefs should be based on simple rational logic that should be consistent across all beliefs.
Actually, I think both sides are using consistent logic.
Pro-life: Opposes taking of innocent life = since convicted murderers are not innocent, they can be executed; ditto for the shooting or bombing of enemy combatants in warfare
Pro-choice: Opposes taking of born life = since fetuses aren’t born yet, they can be aborted, but since convicted murderers are already born, they should not be executed.
And my argument to this that our tax dollars entitle to us respectful, lawful police officers who won’t kill you just for moving too slow/fast/nervously. It doesn’t make sense to protest in the street against crime, since criminals aren’t beholden to anyone but themselves. However, the police serve the people. People are supposed to hold them accountable, and pulbic protest is one way to do that.
They don’t think these things would do any good, at the contrary. Why would they support them? They think that universal healthcare will make healthcare worse, not better. They believe strong safety nets discourage self-reliance, turn people into parasites, and encourage unhealthy lifestyles, like living on the dole as a single mother instead of creating a proper family. I’m pretty sure that the “family-friendly” labor laws you have in mind wouldn’t encourage mothers to stop working and take care of the children instead, which they would see as the best choice for children. And so on. Everything you see as good and promoting “life” they see as bad and detrimental to everybody and in particular children. They have no reason to support the policies you support, even if they care 10 times more than you do about children, unborn or otherwise.
Two things about “faux whipping” :
-Caring about unborn babies isn’t the sole province of the conservatives. Pretty much everybody cares a lot about their own unborn babies. They name them, imagine them, look amorously at their ultrasounds, try to touch them, talk to them, and if there’s a miscarriage, suffer greatly from the loss and mourn them. They definitely don’t call them " a clump of cells", a “parasite” or a “tumor”. It’s absolutely normal to perceive fetuses as babies in being. It shouldn’t be surprising that some people perceive all of them in this way. If anything, they could ask pro-choice people why they’re so emotional about their future babies since after all, it’s just a clump of cell, so why do they care? Unless, of course, they’re hypocrites and know deep down that fetuses are really human beings, even when they deny it to support abortion.
-People might not be really emotional about things that they nevertheless honestly view as evil. There are plenty of things I’m absolutely convinced are evil, and still I don’t shed tears when I hear on TV that they happened. They still run against my morals, even though it’s more an intellectual position, and not some uncontrolled emotional reaction.
I agree, I was opening this thread expecting it to be about concern trolling. I’m not sure it’s whataboutism, as that’s usually about excusing crimes based on someone else doing similar crimes, but I think most of the examples are Fallacy of relative privation. The feminism and BLM ones look like “You shouldn’t care about problem A, problem B is worse” The abortion vs contreception one is a step removed. I’m not sure “If you think A is a problem, then you have to agree with everything that reduces A” has a fallacy name, though it is clearly wrong.
I looked it up, and you are right, whataboutism is broader than I thought, and does encompass this scenario of looking for hypocrisy.