Oh, that works too. 
I do have kids. “don’t do that” becomes something of a mantra and setting reasonable guidelines and giving moral and ethical guidelines are a parent’s job.
What try not to I do is jump to judgement and punishment before I get as full a picture as I can.
Being an imperfect human I once did it to my son and he was utterly distraught because I was massively unfair to him. He did something, on the face of it, obviously wrong but I never gave him a chance to explain why and sure enough when it all came out he was acting with the best of intentions and should have been applauded by me, not punished. I learned from that. Taking time to learn the facts would not have prevented me punishing him if he was in the wrong but damn sure not doing so caused a bad situation that was easily avoidable and I deeply regret.
That’s definitely not what that word means. The sentence you accuse of sophistry is clearly true.
Yet again, you create a quote to make it seem like I’ve said something I haven’t. I didn’t use those words now did I?
Decide on the final version you want to use and get back to me.
Well, it’s a tempting offer to be sure.
So first off, I’m not sure I even understand what point is being made in the war of hypotheticals. Gyrate posted a link to a tweet where a guy is making a complete tit of himself by a) telling women to stop whining about the cost of periods after b) making his own calculations based on some lazy and wrong assumptions. You then replied arguing that there was, in general, nothing in particular wrong with making assumptions about how many periods women have annually based on the results of a web search. I don’t know what the point of saying that was. There was a specific individual being criticised for specific behaviour. You appear to be defending a sort of similar but not really kind of behaviour - i.e. making dodgy assumptions in general. That is such a vague and context free thing to defend that it feels like there isn’t a great deal to say about it. Sometimes, making dodgy assumptions is forgivable. Sometimes it’s dumb. Sometimes it’s arrogant. You’re making a lot of play about the importance of context in reaching judgements but the flip side of that is that if you present context free hypotheticals then they’re not really worth pursuing.
Going back to the original tweet, there seem to be me to be two aspects that make the guy’s behaviour obnoxious. Firstly, he told women to stop whining. We agree that this is obnoxious. Secondly, he made those assumptions and did those calculations. You don’t seem to think this is obnoxious. Here’s why I think you’re wrong:
At the point where he starts making assumptions, the guy is implicitly declaring that he has no good info on how much periods cost - that’s why he’s doing the calculation, after all. But he does. He has the info that women are saying it’s expensive. He is disregarding that information. He’s treating the women who are telling him it’s expensive as unreliable, or untrustworthy - either they’re lying, or they’re too stupid to realise how much it costs, or they’re too stupid to realise what qualifies as expensive. If he didn’t think this - if he found the women’s information reliable - he wouldn’t need to do the calculation. If he wanted specifics, it was open to him to simply ask women - who might be expected to know - how much periods cost. Or how many they have a year. The fact that he’s dismissing women as a reliable source of info about the costs of periods such that he needs to work it out from scratch for himself is utterly dismissive of women’s experience and intelligence. They have literally nothing to tell him, the man who is about to deliver a solution to their problem.
Even if he wasn’t telling women to shut up - if his tone had been, “Hey folks, great news, I did some calculations and it turns out periods cost less than you think” it’s still arrogant and, yes, sexist, to decide that his pencil-scratchings provide useful and valuable information that women don’t have and need to know. And this would still be true even if he had managed to get his assumptions right because the root problem is that he didn’t need to assume anything other than “women know better than me how much periods cost”.
And it’s not like it’s a secret that women exist and might know this stuff. Even in your example of the single dad, you appear to rule out that he might have a mother, a sister, a sister-in-law, other women in his family, close female friends or literally any other woman to ask, such that he has no recourse but to make his assumptions without any input from anyone with direct experience. I mean, I can construct a hypothetical where all that’s true, but it’s so removed from any plausible real-world situation that it’s not really useful to discuss. And if the only way to justify not asking women for their input when you need to know about the frequency and cost of periods is to hypothesise a situation in which there are no women, then that just highlights how absurd it is to consider that not asking women might be a reasonable approach.
Oh, I don’t know. There’s a certain hilarity in watching someone reduced to babbling mindlessly because he can’t just say he was wrong. It breaks up the usual political spit fight.
And I have been consistent in condemning his behaviour, right from the start.
Sure, nothing *inherently *wrong in coming up with any sort of a figure to start with and plenty of ways in which people might come up with a wrong figure. You have to start somewhere. And the point was not just for periods, this is true for any given situation. As I’ve already said several times. I was making a general point rather than seeking to defend the behaviour of the tweet guy, who I already knew and admitted was a knob. I’ve said repeatedly that definitely I am not defending him but that falls on deaf ears.
“dodgy” is a loaded term. "Wrong is fine. “guess” is fine. “inaccurate” is fine.
There was no real point to it, as I say it was throwaway. I wasn’t expecting there to be *anything *to say about it.
As you seem to agree it is pretty much obviously true that someone can come up with wrong figures and there doesn’t have to be anything sinister or malignant behind it.
Exactly, they were not worth pursuing at all. The way I wrote that first hypothetical was clearly not to look for much feedback, it was a throwaway comment from me, pretty uncontroversial I thought and something that people would react to with a “duh, yeah!” at most.
The follow-on from that was continuing incredulity that anyone could come up with such a figure. It snowballed from there.
My original message was not and has never been a defence of the guy in the tweet.
I think what has happened is that the ongoing assumption of my sexism and defence of “mansplaining” (both of which are fiction) has lead people to mistake defence of a general priniciple with defence of the individual in the tweet.
My protestations and clarifications at this point are having absolutely no effect as very few people are able to read what I write through anything other than a prejudiced filter.
C’est la vie. I know that an unbiased reading of my posts will not turn up anything sexist or any examples of defending bad behaviour but will turn clear evidence of me condemning both
adds “sophistry” to the evergrowing list
…and “true” …
… and “paraphrase”, it seems.
You can’t *really *be thick enough to think “I didn’t use those *exact *words” is going to be a winning argument, can you?
Oh, who am I kidding - of course you can. I have 5 pages of proof that you can. You’re *exactly *that fucking thick.
Sophistry
the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.
Have admitted to errors many times in the past. Have no problem doing so now or in the future. I do have to be shown that error first though. You’ll note that in the thread so far that hasn’t happened.
I misplaced an apostrophe, I suppose that was an error of sorts. That was pointed out as evidence of something or other I guess. Its important to note such things I suppose.
So feel free to flex your fingers in readiness of quoting a slam dunk error on my part. Then worry as you realise there isn’t actually any for you to find. Get a little nervous as you scan my posts for those oft-reported incidents of sexism or mansplaining or defending those who behaved like arseholes. Then finally give up and either not post again or come back with an insulting retort when actually “sorry for the unfounded accusation” would be the right thing to do.
Look at the number of posts, look at the number of lazy accusations of error, sexism, mansplaining and defence of bad behaviour. Then ask yourself “actually, where is the evidence of that?” so many opponents scrabbling for a put-down with such a rich vein to mine must have found something somewhere? he must have said problematic things mustn’t he?"
No. Nothing. Zilch. Not a thing. And the reason for that is that there is nothing to find. Empty, lazy accusations,
Don’t worry though. It’s fine. You are going to side with the majority here. It is easier all round isn’t it?
Like “there’s a meaningful difference beween debate and argument in this forum”, *that *kind of superficially clever but false argument?
OK, well I think the steam has definitely gone out of this one. I’m bowing out before it stretches over to another page.
Too late!
C’mon. I’m sure you had another 2, 3 pages in you, easy.
“Bowing out” is a stupid term that is unnecessary when “fleeing” is perfectly serviceable.
5 pages and dozens of posts addressing the points and not dodging the questions put to me is clearly a definition of “fleeing” that I’m unfamiliar with.
The fact is that there is nothing new to discuss, the repetition is obvious, the only thing added over the last 12 hours is me bowing out, someone pointing out that my post actually did take it into a new page, and you with yet another creative attribution.
There’s nothing to add or for me to clarify that can’t be gleaned by re-reading the thread (god knows no-one is going to do that)
There are other things to do and other topics to comment on.
Feel free to have the last word as I suspect you feel you must but that’s me done.
…adds “bowing out” to the list…