I’ve been thinking lately about making arguments that give away too much ground.
There’s three examples in particular that sprung to mind in quick succession, which should explain what I mean.
1. Born this way
Sexuality is not a choice. When somebody declares that a person “chooses to be gay”, they are, to within a margin of error, empirically incorrect. The idea that one’s sexual preferences are a mere matter of taste, which can be willed away or ignored if one simply stopped being so stubborn, is a falsehood, as many people have pointed out at length.
But if you’re arguing in favour of gay rights, it may be better to downplay this aspect of your argument, when engaging with somebody who is misstating facts in an effort to demean or denigrate homosexuality or homosexuals.
It’s not that you’re wrong to point out that you were “born this way” (or at least, that nature plays a strong role in determining sexual preference). It’s just an argument that gives too much ground.
Sexuality is not a choice. But so what if it was?
If you make the “born this way” argument your central theme, you’re implicitly accepting way too many of the homophobic assumptions behind the other person’s assertions. If most of your time is spent pointing out that a person’s sexual preferences are entirely beyond their conscious control, then it starts to seem like that is the lynch-pin of your argument, and should it ever turn out to be flawed – or even incorrect – then your opponents’ bigotry will be justified.
There’s always some value in correcting a factual misstatement, but beyond pointing out “It’s not a choice,” you might get more to the heart of the issue with: “Okay, say it’s a choice. If it is, it’s my choice. I’ve made it. Your problem with that is what, and I should give a fuck why?”
2. Big is beautiful
You don’t need to spend much time as either a vaguely attentive man or a barely conscious woman in the modern world to notice that there are some fucked-up standards of beauty out there.
There’s also an encouragingly prominent backlash against many of them. Unless you’re hanging out in very different parts of the internet from me, you’ll regularly be bumping into tumblrs and gifs and photoblogs and memes and other internet doohickeys intended to remind you that fat chicks are among the sexiest things you’ll ever see. That sentence doesn’t even need a citation linked anywhere in it. Just Google it. And make sure SafeSearch is turned off first.
It’s beyond trivially obvious that curves can be gorgeous, and the standards of beauty still considered conventional on many magazine covers are insanely narrow and restricted. This defiance is important and empowering, and no doubt helps many people feel better about their bodies – but again, there’s an assumption behind it which deserves challenging.
Even if every human above a certain BMI were universally considered physically unappealing, so fucking what?
Why should being sexually desirable or attractive be the factor most associated with improved esteem? I don’t for a second resent anyone searching this way for validation, or using attractiveness to encourage and bolster the spirits of those who it might help – but the fundamental question of whether it ought to be considered so important deserves a place in the conversation too.
And let’s not forget the chubby men, incidentally. The internet seems to be mostly about the curvy girls, but I hope there are zones of love for the fuller-figured fellas out there, too, in areas I haven’t spent as much time exploring.
3. “Hardworking people”
There’s a lot for a lefty like me to get angry about when it comes to the government’s recent war on welfare and rhetoric about “hardworking people”. Many more active activists have pointed out data which render the coalition’s whole output completely asinine – such as that the majority of people struggling to make ends meet, visiting food banks, and claiming benefits are actually in work – completing undermining the workshy scrounger image the Tories in particular are so keen to propagate.
For many, work doesn’t pay; the system is fucked and allows the rich to exploit the masses for their labour without offering them a decent standard of living (let alone the inhumanity of workfare). This is all important to recall.
But there’s one more assumption tucked in there which it’s worth ferreting out, lest the argument take a turn and veer into the kind of divisive territory we should be trying to avoid.
I don’t want anybody to have to experience the stress of worrying about being able to feed their family, or keeping them warm over the winter, or getting behind on rent and bill payments and ending up homeless, even if they’re lazy bastards who can’t be bothered to get off their arse and look for a job.
Those relatively few people who actually look like what the Bullingdon crowd imagine all poor people look like? I want a welfare system which supports them non-judgmentally too.
Compassion and an unconditional level of basic financial security, for hardworking people and feckless scroungers alike.
Classroom discussion questions
1. Is this a useful way to refocus the debate, or would it just distract from the liberating ideas that are already gathering momentum?
2. Are there any other obvious examples of this that I’ve missed?
3. How blatantly am I pandering to the overweight queer working class vote right now?
Well as an overweight queer…
You have my vote, for sure.
I actually really like this idea, that we should be careful about framing the debates in ways that actually get to the heart of the matter. However, I do think there’s also something to be said for meeting your opponent where they are, instead of fighting two battles– one to get them to see some goddamn sense, and one to get them onto your ground.
Totally agree, and by framing arguments in this way we can easily end up implying that people would only deserve their rights if they were born this way/attractive to someone. I would add anti-bullying messages to this list too (self-promotional link: http://failbluedot.com/anti-bullying-meme-fail).
Also just to note that if in your title you’re using “lazy” as the opposite of hardworking, the same title uses “fat” as the opposite of desirable.
[…] worthy of her benefits – National Insurance contributions or whatever – you’re giving too much ground to the conservatives’ premise, and simply lowering the bar for how much people have to prove […]
Here in America there has been a lot of citing of gendered unemployment statistics. Someone (at least as often as not somehow left of center) will try to raise consciousness about structural unemployment being a problem by pointing out that “the jobs aren’t coming back,” using “low-skill male workers” as the canary in this particular coal mine. These people tend to be <a href="“>third quadrant progressives who correctly view the post-Reagan decades as in some ways less preferable than the so-called post-war era in which there seemed to be an implied social contract calling for gainful (as opposed to contingent) employment being the rule rather than the exception. We may be tempted to forget that the shunt from high school to gainful employment was largely for white males, or that that time period has also been identified as The Managerial Age, indentified with William Whyte’s “Organization Man,” and was characterized by various political witch hunts. Even if we’re wise enough to want the economic security norms of that time without the socially conservative baggage, we have to decide whether to form alliances with paleoconservatives (in or near the 4th quadrant) who get it about populist messaging and can create an impression of feeling the pain of people frustrated by the New Economy labor market, or alternatively that faction of feminism that tends toward the second quadrant by entrusting advancement of women globally to “social entrepreneurship,” which inevitably promotes a “you gotta make your own breaks” type of economic climate.
Botched the link dammit, that was of course referencing the third (green) quadrant in the Political Compass™.