analysis of a fallacy

There was a little wank on Twitter the other day, when someone made an inflammatory remark about Chaz Bono @BrentSpiner, who RT'd it to his 500,000 followers, with predictable results. (FWIW, I hardly think Brent was in the wrong -- she tweeted to him first, he often RT's, she should not have been surprised.)

Anyway, the original remark was that she thought Bono's gender transition was a "tragedy [...] for the God that made her" (sic). It is extremely troubling to me when people invoke God in such ways, but it is pretty difficult to successfully debate religious beliefs. However, there was something else she said later that can be refuted: "a closet issue is that many are disappointed by it [transitioning]".

This comment sounds relatively mild on the face of it, albeit extremely weasely (how many is "many", and what does "disappointed" mean, and in what way is the issue in the "closet" -- what a heftily ironic choice of word!). But at the heart of it I see a very alarming and insidious thought process.

( Read more... )

analysis of a fallacy

There was a little wank on Twitter the other day, when someone made an inflammatory remark about Chaz Bono @BrentSpiner, who RT'd it to his 500,000 followers, with predictable results. (FWIW, I hardly think Brent was in the wrong -- she tweeted to him first, he often RT's, she should not have been surprised.)

Anyway, the original remark was that she thought Bono's gender transition was a "tragedy [...] for the God that made her" (sic). It is extremely troubling to me when people invoke God in such ways, but it is pretty difficult to successfully debate religious beliefs. However, there was something else she said later that can be refuted: "a closet issue is that many are disappointed by it [transitioning]".

This comment sounds relatively mild on the face of it, albeit extremely weasely (how many is "many", and what does "disappointed" mean, and in what way is the issue in the "closet" -- what a heftily ironic choice of word!). But at the heart of it I see a very alarming and insidious thought process.

( Read more... )