And I nominate this as this week’s most irrational attack on me. Just how would a dictionary tell me what TwistofFate or Scylla or anyone else’s definition of “pro choice” is? How is it how is it hair-splitting to try to prevent misunderstanding by making sure that people agree on definitions of words? So far in this thread, I’ve been criticized for: responding to insults, responding to a bunch of posts with a comparable number of posts, and for asking for clarification of a vague term. What’s next? Are you going to criticize me for not having enough swear words? You people are absurd. If I hadn’t asked what ToF’s definition is, and instead had used the dictionary definition, you would have blasted me for “being too rigid” or some such nonsense. Don’t bother trying to deny it; I know you guys too well to fall for this. The phrase “pro choice” is used to refer to over half of the US population. Obviously it isn’t incredibly precise.
Of course all pro-choice people don’t believe the same thing, but that doesn’t change at all what pro-frickin-choice means. All pro-choice people favor leagalized abortion. Anti-choice people oppose it. There may be some individual views on related issues (rape, incest, personal feelings), but ToF has already explained those very well multiple times, and they are not the heart of the matter anyway. Asking then, “define pro-choice”, is just asinine.
To reiterate: is there any other definition for pro-choice such that when I say it, you think something different than “someone who supports abortion being legal”? Like any other movement, there’s varying levels of dedication, fanatacism, whatever–on both sides–but that hardly changes what it means to be “pro-choice”.
See, that’s the thing: nobody would care if TheRyan used the dictionary definition, or the common usage, and ran with it. When everybody understands what I mean when I say “pro-choice”–and there’s a perfectly valid dictionary definition–asking for a personal definition is just verbal masturbation.
Errr, pardon me: a mental lapse caused me to forget that it was **TwistofFAte[/b reposting a concise form of Scylla’s abortion views–taken from another thread.
sigh
It’s too damn early.
:rolleyes:
Just shoot me now, and revive my corpse at about 3 pm.
How about ignoring the horrible, horrible bolding error, and just substituting the one name for the other in my first post?
Why not? Are you the only judge of whether brains are on track, both yours and Jodi’s? Or are you saying that statements that are intentionally annoying are appropriate in debate? If it’s the latter, I invite you to consider the proposition that such statements tend to distract from the purpose of the debate, by diverting attention from the debate topic to personal disputes between the posters.
Of course not. Does that mean they have no place in Great Debates? Perhaps. You’ll notice that I confined my statements about your posting style to the Pit, rather than allowing it to color debate on the topic at hand.
(And to answer the possibly-rhetorical question, it would discomfit me a little, but not nearly as much as being told to keep my brain on track. I find descriptive statements about me far less upsetting than figurative instructions phrased in the imperative).
Just coming in from the Hillborough thread to let The Ryan that he can bite my crank if he thinks that I am going to feed his idiocy anymore.
good day to you all [raises hat]
Of course it does. The statement that someone is “pro-choice” has a different meaning depending on who says it. If I were to say that someone is pro-choice, that means that that person believes that abortion should be legal in the vast majority of cases. If Scylla were to say it, it would not mean that.
The heart of the matter is just what Scylla meant when he claimed to be pro-choice. Therefore, the issue of just what being pro-choice entails is very much the heart of the matter as well.
I didn’t ask him to define “pro-choice”, I asked him to define what he meant by “pro-choice”. There is a difference.
That’s absurd. I have repeatedly been criticized for using dictionary definitions instead of asking people what they mean by something. If you’re going to insult me for being polite and trying to understand someone’s point of view, what motive do I have to ever be polite to you? It’s people like you that make me think that the whole endeavor of being considerate of people’s feelings is futile, because no matter what efforts I apply towards reaching a common understanding, there’s always someone who just has to find something to be offended by.
Well, obviously I don’t understand what people mean by it. I would think that someone who believes that abortions should be illegal for two-thirds of a pregnancy is not “pro-choice”. Apparently I was mistaken in what people consider to be pro-choice, and so I instead of continuing with my own view, which has shown to not be universal, I asked for ToF’s view.
Your definition is incredibly vague. Does supporting abortion being legal mean that one thinks that abortions should always be legal? Or just that there is some situation in which an abortion should be illegal? Or something in between? Someone who supports the rights of Catholics to practice their religion, but not anyone else, would be supporting a religious freedom. Would this mean that they are “pro-religious freedom”?
But Ryan - you already know Scyalla’s stance. He reluctantly agrees that abortions should be legal for the first trimester and believes that they should be illegal after that (barring special medical cases, IIRC). So what is your problem? You’ve known all this in fact for weeks and have referred to the knowledge on several occasions, so why make even more of an issue out of it? This is the quibbling that people are objecting to. If you need clarification once or twice, then that is fair enough indeed. If you carry on quibbling over what “pro-choice” means to Scylla for weeks after you’ve already shown that you know what his stance is anyway, then that is just being contrary. See what I mean?
pan
How did you arrive at this conjecture? Since you didn’t follow the implications of my statements, let me make them more explicit.
- I said that I probably would get annoyed.
- I said that this is not a valid test.
- By preceding 2 with 1, I implied that 1 was presented to explain 2.
- By implying that 1 explains 2, I was saying that my determination that my brain is on track is not the Absolute Truth.
Again, I wonder where you’re getting your guesses as to what I mean. I was saying that different people are going to disagree about what is a valid conclusion, and often people will get annoyed when this happens. For instance, Jodi disagreed with my belief that her brain was not on track, and this disagreement annoyed her. It was the disagreement with my implication, not the implication istself, that annoyed her (unless she gets annoyed with criticism even when she believes it to be true, in which case asking me to avoid annoying statements is the same as asking me to avoid criticizing her). My post was not intentionally annoying. Rather, it was meant to express my own annoyance that Jodi was ignoring the point of my post.
This is a rather presumptuous statement.
But I never asked him whether he believes abortions after the first trimester should be illegal. What I asked was what he meant by saying that he would make an exception for rape. He refused to answer that question.
When have I ever made an issue of his belief that abortion should be illegal after the first trimester? I have made an issue of the fact that he has directly contradicted himself, not his belief that abortion should be illegal after the first trimester.
Nope. What do you mean by “quibbling over what ‘pro-choice’ means to Scylla for weeks after you’ve already shown that you know what his stance is anyway”? Can you give an example?
:rolleyes:
Bah. Scylla has stated several times that he would make no exception for rape, except perhaps in his own mind. I wasn’t even following the thread particularly and yet I know this. Are your reading skills really that low?
pan
Cite?
Good Lord. Try the thread referred to several times already. Ah bugger it - here you go:
Scylla declares several times in one post that he would not make an exception for rape.
pan
Bolding mine.
He didn’t say he would make no exception for rape, he said that he would not make an exception to rape after the first trimester. You really need to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.
Good go Ryan! He had already said that supports no exclusions to abortion during the first trimester! How many times do we have to bloody go through this.
So, in full:[ul][li]No exclusions to abortion in the first trimester[/li]
[li]No exceptions after the first trimester, unless medically necessary[/ul]Where the bloody thundering fuck is the confusion here? Where the goddamned priapismic donkey does rape come into it at all?[/li]
Scylla - I most humbly, totally, completely and irrevocably apologise. Everything you said about The Yarn is true and more.
pan
Er - that is Good God, not Good go. I only correct myself because it so drastically changes the meaning of the sentence and I would want noone to think that I believe Ryan had a “good go”.
pan
I know how you feel, kabbes. I thought everyone at the beginning of this thread was being unreasonable, too, until I actually got into a “debate” with The Ryan over here. After a while, I told him I didn’t want to debate him if he wouldn’t stop playing word games, and he responded with a bunch of immature attacks, along with perhaps one of the funniest things he’s ever said:
It’s much easier if you just ignore him and let him think he’s won.
I see. Now that I’ve shown your cite to be invalid, you’re changing the subject.
If you can’t understand my confusion at such statements as
and
Then I don’t think I can help you. In the first, Scylla clearly states that he would not support restrictions on rape. In the second, he clearly states that he would support restrictions on rape.
I would like to repeat my question to Scylla:
I clearly was asking when the exemption would apply. This is a very simple question, and can be answered quite easily. If the answer was “Never. When I said that I would make an exception for rape, I was mistaken”, then he should have said “Never. When I said that I would make an exception for rape, I was mistaken”. If the answer was “The exception only applies to my moral stance, and my moral stance is irrelevant to my political stance”, then he should have said “The exception only applies to my moral stance, and my moral stance is irrelevant to my political stance”. See how easy this is? Simply repeating what he had already said and what I had already told him was confusing was not a very constructive response.
Did you actually read the thread? What is the title???
Scylla:
Bolding mine.
Scylla clearly states that he would make an exception in cases of rape.
In other words, you didn’t have anything to counter my arguments, so you created an excuse to slink off to the Pit instead of admitting that you were wrong. I really don’t consider, for instance, pointing out that “similar” and “equal” are different words to be a “word game”.
Oooh, what a rebuttal! Not a single explanation for why I am wrong, just “those are immature attacks”. I see why you had “debate” in quotes. I am quite willing to back up any of my claims. You, on the other hand, have repeatedly refused to back up your claims, such as
Tell you what. If you find a quotation from me anywhere in that thread in which I demand that someone leave, I will admit defeat. Otherwise, I will remain convinced that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Well, was it? Did it serve any purpose whatsoever?
If you can’t rebut my arguments, I have won.