That’s why I threw in the Barry Bond’s bit. I wonder if Mario somehow gets royalties…
You know what bugs me? The insistence on conflating concepts. Believe it or not, secularism, globalization, (lack of) nepotism, (lack of) patriotism, beggars, and acceptance of transsexuals are actually NOT all part of the same phenomenon- in fact, most of those things aren’t related AT ALL. I can almost see how someone with an “ick” reaction to transsexuals could try to make a “social cohesion” argument and defend it far past the point of rational debate to try to convince himself that he isn’t just being a bigot based on personal ick-factor, but by the time you’ve compared acceptance of transsexuals in the workplace to THE INVASION OF IRAQ you know there’s a problem with your argument, no?
I think the term I’ve heard is “clutching at straws.” or perhaps “gasoline on the fire”? What total BS. mswas managed to pair the debate tactic of “when an argument doesn’t work, flail around in a wild and provoking manner” with the tactic of “get out of an unpopular position by insisting that you’re just playing devil’s advocate.” Bleh and Hmph.
Dragoness I see them as related -shrug- What is it with the dimestore psychoanalysis? I made an argument about social cohesion from the start. Many people find the issues related. I have had many discussions about the subject with other people on other forums and they understood the connection between the issues just fine. In fact I drew from many of those discussions when addressing the issue here. You were one of the least condescending, but you were still quite condescending in your posts to me.
This is the biggest divide in the world right now, and for me to bring it up and make people aware of it that makes me a bigot. Yet there are many people throughout the world that do not approve of these things, and I for one do not simply think that dismissing them as bigots with irrelevant opinions is an argument worthy of a thinking person.
The reality is that the majority of the world’s religions do not accept these choices as valid choices. The argument for tolerance often dismisses the immutable fact that you must be intolerant for people’s faith when forcing them to accept these things.
Next time I’m talking to my Evangelical Christian friends about how ridiculous I think singling out homosexuals as the cause of the downfaull of society, I’ll try to remember what the ‘tolerance’ crowd here at the SDMB thinks of me.
Wrong goalposts. More specifically, I was talking about the subtopic of what makes a woman a woman.
The initial serve: Transgendered women cannot satisfy the desire of a mate.
When pointed out that yes, a TG person could fulfill a mate’s emotional and sexual needs, you then go on to claim that because a TG woman cannot bear you a child, they aren’t really women.
Here, you baldly admit to making shit up. “I’m not going to present a case.” It’s kind of necessary to do so for any type of debate to know what the fuck you’re talking about. Oh, yes, and then there’s these two statements in the same post: “I’m not going to present a case, but if they are not a woman they are not a woman. That’s just how it goes.” followed up by “In short, I find yours and everyone else’s imperious proclamations to be uncommpelling.” You ain’t the only one tired of imperious proclamations.
And through this long, winding discussion about what body parts and defects allow a woman to still be a woman but not a man to be a woman, redtail23 makes this astute observation in which you are shown to claim that physicality is not the be-all end-all of what makes a person. Your offhand comment about tailoring your arguments toward materialism because nobody would get the non-materialism aspects is both pretty derogatory and makes you look fucking ridiculous. I know you’ve been on this board longer than two days.
Continuing the shifting goalposts, you then point out that if a TG woman were really a woman, she’d be able to produce her own estrogen. Except, of course, some natural women are incapable of that themselves, as was pointed out so very shortly after this post. Yet you didn’t let that stop your bullet train of idiocy!
A nice little backpedal in which you claim you’ve only been discussing how you personally use the word woman, even though up until then you have made no such implication, what with your “if they are not a woman they are not a woman” statements. In fact, here you’re right back to flatly declaiming that the word has a stable definition.
Okay, I’m tired of that topic. Let’s have a couple of miscellaneous gems of stupididdle. From here:
Note the contradiction within a single post. But then it gets better. From here:
So you get to define your own reality, although you seem to be confused about that, while reserving the right to define the reality for a TG person for yourself?
And finally, when getting your ass handed to you, you decide to call everyone hot and bothered. Never mind that by this point, nobody had really gotten worked up yet. A little insulting, yes, but perfectly within the bounds of GD which are quite tame. Nonetheless you refer to it as vilification.
Yet another pathetic whine about “vicious” ad hominems. If you were really getting as much grief as you acted like you were, a mod would have been blowing that whistle till they were blue in the face. It wasn’t until post 350 that tomndebb felt the need to step in and tell people to cool it (after you revealed your Devil’s Advocate position in the dumbest way possible).
I think I’ll stop there, as I feel it highlights the issues well enough. I don’t really care if I get a reply from you or not, mswas. I’ve made my case, and unlike you I’ve actually backed it up with more than simple bald assertions. I really just wanted to make it as clear as I am capable of doing that you are a shitty debater who doesn’t know dick about the position he defends so very vigorously, if sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and going “LA LA LA LA I’M RIIIGHT” can be considered a defense. I quite frankly am amazed that I and the others participating stuck it out as long as we did once it became clear you didn’t understand your own arguments nor how to present a solid, cohesive case.
P.S. If you ever decide to argue from a Devil’s Advocacy position again, I suggest making it exceptionally clear and upfront so people know how to approach your topic. Pretending that your opinions are genuine and then trying to backpedal later on as if it will somehow undermine the opposition’s argument is not a particularly effective tactic.
I read the first couple of paragraphs and realized where you fucked up. When I was talking about satisfying the needs of a mate, I ALWAYS meant reproduction. I didn’t shift the goal posts, you misinterpreted them. There’s a difference. I didn’t think sexual gratification was in any way relevant to the discussion. I don’t know why anyone else would either. People get turned on by any manner of things.
I see. So it’s our fault you write like shit. Got it.
Reading more of it. You and I live on another planet. Saying that physicality is not the end all be all of a person doesn’t mean that I at any point said it was irrelevant.
I revealed my actual opinion in Post 13.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8576792&postcount=13
See, I stated quite clearly that I personally have no problem with transgendered people. Then I went on to frame the debate around whether or not I was obligated to accept it.
I see within the first quarter of the first page where I laid things out clearly and honestly. I look at these words that I’ve typed and it looks clear to me. Apparently I have some crazy lack of facility with the English language, because they still look pretty damn clear to me.
Telling me I write like shit is far different from not accepting my correction when I attempt to make it, at least three dozen times. A lot of people understood me just fine. -shrugs-
I am sorry for just assuming that mating in a heterosexual context would be about procreation and not merely copulation. I’ve copulated with many people, both men and women who I would not consider to be ‘mates’. I attempted to mate unsuccessfully once, and successfully once. I have copulated successfully more times than I can count, with varying degrees of sexual gratification.
My wife agrees with you that she would assume that mate means just ‘fuck’ in general. I would not have used it in that context. I can see how that might be confusing.
I apologize if I came off as condescening in the other thread- I was just trying to be clear, as I’d read 5 solid pages of people talking straight past each other. I’ll work on the tone.
Yeah- some of those things are related, and if you want to make an ARGUMENT about that, we’re happy to hear it. You didn’t. You made the argument that acceptance of transsexuals, specifically, harmed social cohesion. When you were challenged to defend that and show how it’s different from any number of things we all agree ought to be accepted, you came up with things such as 1) it’s a sudden chance in apparent identity. That’s shot down. 2) It disturbs people by making them question the immutability of gender. That’s shot down. And so on and so on it goes- I can think of at least four rationalizations on the subject that were all specifically shot down- so you respond by flailing about how it’s like secularization, or globalization, or whatnot.
Seeing your argument shot down and then flailing is NOT the same thing as making and defending an argument that acceptance of transsexuals is somehow connected to other negative trends. Nope. Maybe you can make such an argument, but in that thread, you didn’t.
By the way, haven’t we all moved on from the whole “to be tolerant of some people you have to be intolerant of others! Hypocrites!” thingie? Somebody tell me if it’s been done to death-if not, I’ll start a thread.
Dragoness I guess I just don’t see exploring more facets as ‘flailing’.
What I saw was a lot of assumptions made from a liberal bias. I’ve done a lot of discussing with conservative Christians lately about these issues, and the assumptions you are making are way off from what they see as being true. Many of them do see their religion as being under attack by being asked to accept homosexuals. I have argued with them about that one. However, I don’t think you make a good case for tolerance by being intolerant.
There is sort of a cliche among conservatives, multiculturalism embraces all cultures as long as they are neither white nor Christian.
I am not calling people hypocrites for being tolerant of one group or another. It has nothing to do with hypocrisy and everything to do with choosing which ideals you back. My point is just that you can’t be simply pro-tolerance. It’s not possible to be pro-tolerance. By making choice you accept one thing and reject another. If I want to pick up my glass of water I have to stop typing. You can’t be tolerant of a religion that has prohibitions against certain behaviors AND be tolerant of those behaviors. You have to make a choice as to which one you are going to back.
The problem with this is the whole “Secular Humanism is not a religion” debate. No, it’s not a religion, but it DOES compete with them. It’s nice to think that we can have cultural plurality, but in reality we cannot. Cultures are not always compatible.
In terms of that debate I was setting markers. I’d take an extreme example and see where people stood in relation to that extreme example, whether that extreme example was secularizing Iraq or polymorphing into a dragon. I was trying to determine where BayleDomon’s fabled goalposts should be set.
I learned one valuable thing from BayleDomon though. I shouldn’t reiterate what I say, I should just link to the post where I said it before, so that people don’t miss it early on in the thread and think that I am suddenly introducing some new issue later on when in reality I said it in post 6 or 13.
mswas and QG are some of the most annoying additions to the boards in recent memory. Only lekatt is more incoherent and scatterbrained, but at least lekatt doesn’t have the vast and completely unwarranted superiority complex these two have.
They are to trolls what the intelligent design movement is to creationism: adaptations that have learned to at least stay within the rules while still being just as annoying and vacuous.
- What a great response. When in doubt, hit 'em with a nonsequitor.
- It sounds to me, in the post I quoted above, that you think because people are obnoxious in other threads that it makes it okay for you to do it. I have a hard time following that.
Dragoness In a nutshell for clarity. I don’t think you make a good case for tolerance by arguing that you don’t need to be tolerant of bigots. Arguing for acceptance of a particular group is all well and good, but I think it’s important to at least be aware of what you are asking people to give up, even if you don’t value it.
No, not at all. What I was saying was that sacred cow is on the menu here quite often. It’s a part of the rules of the game. If I didn’t want to see my sacred cows being grilled up and served, I wouldn’t come here. I think that’s just the nature of this message board.
Just declare that mswas isn’t really a doper and move on.
Ah, don’t get so worked up, people. You’ll mess up its bridge.
The thing you should realise about MsWas is that it lies, all the time, as a debate tactic, and if it can get away with its lying, it will. If no-one had called it on its shit, you can betcha there’d be no talk about a Devil’s Advocate position now.
Of course, when you do point out that it pulled shit from its own ass, it comes with the “ad hominems” and the “typos”. As far as I’m concerned, those are just two more of the many, many terms it doesn’t actually know the meaning of, but uses in debates anyway. It’s a veritable fount of debate-shitting crap.
It’s a troll, people. A very good one , but nevertheless just a troll. I don’t know why it wasn’t banned and only suspended last time, but I count the days 'til Little Miz Was is Little Miz Isn’t.
Actually, you didn’t. You may have said that elsewhere, but you didn’t say you had no problem with transgendered people, only that you thought people had a right to be transgendered.
I think people have a right to be total assholes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a problem with them. So if you think that’s “clear”, I hate to think what else you believe, sir Liar.
Excellent post. I’ll only add that not only do I not believe mswas was playing devil’s advocate (nice try, though), but even if he was, he chose to play using terminology and analogies that any regular around here should *know * would be hurtful to members of the group that he’s supposedly supportive of. There are ways to discuss the issue from the other side of the argument intelligently without adopting the attitudes and language of the most insensitive members of that army. Had he kept his supposed charade strictly within the bounds of a social argument, he may have fooled some of us. He blew his cover with
and
and
and
and
Apart from the fact that most honest debaters would frame their argument as one of playind Devil’s Advocate from the very beginning, the level of cruelty he displayed, knowing who is most certainly reading his posts, is enough to convince me that he meant every nasty thing he said.
KC, I wish you hadn’t done this. He’s a troll. That thread was trolling for someone to make this one. He disintegrated at the end because he was getting desperate, and now he’s just lying and pretending that the mods allowed him to be attacked in that thread, instead of admitting the fact that he was thoroughly owned over and over again by rational, intelligent questions he was incapable of answering and informed, considered points he was incapable of acknowledging.