Ever see a photo of the NAACP leader Walter White? Dude’s last name is very apropos.
Unlike your cherry-picked example, my observation was simply that your claim was too broad and not supported by facts. The skeptical feelings to which to which we are referring was much more prevalent between 1970 and 1978. And, under the one drop rule that pervades American culture, the exclusionary groups were trying to bar membership even to people who had suffered discrimination under the one drop rule. Pointing to a single example of a person who had actually suffered under the one drop rule–and who made no attempt to pretend that he had no European ancestry–hardly makes your point. Pointing to a man who had relinquished leadership of the NAACP over fifteen years prior to the rise of the “not black enough” groups is simply one more example of your anachronistic arguments. Not really carefully chosen words, from my perspective.
So you carefully chose to word your claim in a manner that was at best deliberately misleading because you are so determined to “win” this debate that you don’t care whether what you say is actually true. That sounds an awful lot like outright prevarication to me.
On the one hand I do want to acknowledge your admission here. Doing that much is more than quite a few others manage on these boards in similar circumstances.
On the other hand your regret does not seem to be at having been so weaselly, at having knowingly stated something untrue, or at thinking that using an imprecise term could allow you to mislead without explicitly lying … but at having done it so poorly that you could not get away with it. None of happened here is others misremembering or misunderstanding. It was exclusively you misrepresentating and stating things that were simply not true. Calling doing that an “intellectual game” evinces a lack of understanding of the word “intellectual.” Debating can be fun but intellectual honesty is requisite.
Comes out to pretty weak sauce.
My question still remains unanswered. Do you honestly believe the positions you are taking in this thread or are you more just attempting to have fun playing the debate game?
No, the point was to state something vague that could be “spun” to best effect, specifically without stating anything untrue. I will not apologise for using spin, which I consider a perfectly legitimate element of discourse.
Flat out wrong. You said:
This can only reasonably be interpreted as a reference to my post in which I stated:
In retrospect I can see that this was an honest misunderstanding and that I should have worded it differently. But the fact is that I was not even trying to weasel my way here into making it appear that I was referring to actual peer-reviewed research. (One hopes I have gained at least the credibility of being believed that I would admit it if I were doing so.) The fact is, in that post I intended to be understood as having personally done research in the casual online sense, not in an institutional sense.
Why couldn’t it be some of both?
I will say this: in no thread do I ever take a position which is radically opposed to the one I believe. If I have a strongly felt position on something, that is going to be the one I express. If I am more on the fence, or do not really feel strongly about an issue, I may throw in a devil’s advocate argument (but one that I think does have some validity) if I think the debate is too one-sided and could benefit from some balance. I am not going to specifically answer which is true in any given case though.
:rolleyes: Ah, the exemplar of carefully chosen words lectures me about my having supposedly misunderstood the era in question. Obviously, it was between 1970 and 1978. Anyone with half a brain cottoned to that.
But wait: as far as I can see, the following were the only two references from others to said feelings before I posted about Walter White. First, Una:
Then, you:
Silly me for having the impression that “early Civil Rights groups” would refer to earlier than the 1970s(!); and that Walter White was in fact called upon to represent so-called “colored people” by being made head of the NAACP. Whatever was I thinking? You are so right, chief: I need to learn how to be more precise with my language, like you. :smack:
Silly you for not understanding when the “not black enough” movement actually occurred and then commenting on it, anyway, as though you did.
Correcting the reference to “early” would have been appropriate. Your claim was not.
I remain unconvinced that Una was referring to the 1970s (by the way, why did you exempt specifically just the year 1979, anyway?). I think she knows better than to call a time period well after landmark civil rights decisions and major legislation, and after both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were dead and gone, an “early” civil rights movement era.
I didn’t post anything about dates in my post, and it wasn’t necessary as the context was comparing exclusionism in 2nd-wave feminism versus early civil rights.
I don’t see why we need another hijack on a nitpick on an unrelated point to the master point of this thread. It seems to be done to distract and deflect arguments about the core issues.
It’s funny you should say that, because I suspect you know better than to describe “reading a single blog post” as “recent research” and “the less than 40 self-described 1960s radical feminists who signed this one blog post” as “a decent number of feminists and lesbians”.
Yup. Very silly you.
You have specifically gained a total lack of any credibility.
(I have have time thinking you are even keeping a straight face when you claim that stating “from recent research it appears …” in any could have been meant to mean "Based on a blog post I read there are at least a few …)
Is this ee cummings style word salad? I suggest proofreading, because it’s one thing to have a couple spelling or grammar errors, but it was giving me a headache to try to parse it before I gave up. Kind of inconsiderate to those reading, frankly.
That’s fine, I’m bored with this topic anyway. You all win, congratulations, well done, pip pip and all that.
Feel lucky that you have the luxury of being bored with it.
I do!
Do you object to links and citations or don’t you? Because it seems to me that without citations – without facts – the verbal sparring isn’t about anything.
Again, it’s possible that “becomes a reading room” meant something other than “turns into people backing up their opinions with the facts on which those opinions are based and to which they relate,” but I am, as I said, puzzled as to what that might be.
You know what’s actually inconsiderate? Demanding people recapitulate years-old arguments for your amusement because you can’t be bothered to read them yourself - because the debate must be presented to you just so and their time is worthless anyway.
Indeed I should have proofed better. Should have been:
I have a hard time time thinking you are even keeping a straight face when you claim that stating “from recent research it appears …” in any way could have been meant to mean "Based on a blog post I read there are at least a few …)
In any case: Buh Bye.
Hershele, it is easy to understand: it is a reading room if he is ask to read something, anything. It is his supporting his argument if he can seletively edit some citation so that it might look a bit blueish if you hold it up to the light just right. (Those who watch Breaking Bad will get it.)
If you are being sincere, then you did misunderestimate my point. I am fine, as I said upthread, with people backing up specific points with citations that take a reasonable amount of time to read (this is after all a leisuretime activity and not my job). What I’m not fine with is someone saying, essentially, “you shouldn’t have started this thread and we shouldn’t continue to discuss it, because here are links to old threads where we covered similar ground. Stop debating and just go back and reread those entire long threads quietly to yourself instead, as they will answer your questions.” My point is that if I “have questions” I want to learn the answers to, I will go next door to GQ. Here in GD, I want to jump into the arena and do battle, not passively watch an ESPN Classic replay of others doing so.
Make sense?
Also, what Fotheringay-Phipps said in post 349:
I’m editorializing, not poking at anyone.
IMO it comes down to a crisis of faith. I have faith beyond any doubt and with absolute metaphysical certainty that:
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I have a female mental gender.
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I have the right to live appropriately as that gender, as does anyone else with their respective gender.
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That a century of study of transsexual persons has shown there are physical causes.
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That a century of study of transsexual persons has shown there is no simple “cure” other than allowing the person to live socially as their mental gender, and allow them physical changes if their body dysphoria is severe.
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That the above two items are accepted, if not unanimously, by a multitude of major medical bodies and establishments throughout the world.
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That we all deserve equal and basic human rights and respect.
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That at heart, all of us want to have a simple, happy life. We want to have good mental and physical health and love ourselves. We want to find true love. We want to be good at a career, trade, craft, or art. We want to have friends and be friends. We want to be free from fear, want, hatred, violence, discrimination, intimidation, and prejudice.
Those who dislike me for what I am don’t really believe any of the above, do they?
Despite your introductory disclaimer, as the OP I feel the need to state a disclaimer of my own: I certainly do not “dislike you for what you are” and sincerely hope you did not get any impression to the contrary.