Haunted by a 1984 quote and looking for perspectives from fellow women

submitted by Rationalmind from self.GenderCritical

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[–]endless_assfluff 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

This statement is (a) impossible to prove and (b) counterproductive to focus on.

It's impossible to prove because it's ill-posed, first of all: is he saying that every single woman in existence is "more" bigoted than every single man, or the level of bigotry shown by women on average is higher than the level of bigotry shown by men on average, or that there is some fundamental connection between bigotry and producing eggs? And how do you measure something like bigotry? Especially if, as the character seems to be claiming in this case, it's not absolute and there's a sliding scale of bigotry that someone can score higher or lower on. Psychological tests can hint at a correlation but not outright prove it, the same way that IQ is a crappy measure of intelligence and good performance on standardized tests doesn't guarantee future success.

Second, suppose you adopt this belief or its opposite and meet a new woman who you know nothing about. Is it productive for you to decide "she's a woman -> she must be a bigoted drama queen" or "she's a woman -> she must not be a bigoted drama queen" before even knowing a single thing about her? No. Statistics don't apply to single cases. That is, posing the question in its current form already makes an unfounded assumption about causality. "Is there a problem with women?" isn't the right question. "How do people develop bigoted views and sustain bigotry, and if men and women are treated differently, how does this influence the way they show bigotry?" is a better one to ask; an even better, imo, would be "Is there a problem with biases in my perception---for example, do I believe there's something wrong with women because I've been socialized to be more critical of women's behavior than men's?"; and the best one is "Why am I going to stress out about not knowing something I can't really answer in the first place?"

Since these ill-posed, general statements are based on anecdotal evidence or improvable assumptions, the people who hold and defend them usually do so not because they actually care about the truth, but because they have something to gain if they can convince themselves they're true, like a sense of intellectual superiority. By pulling something out of his ass about how young women are the worst, the character Orwell wrote gets to justify his misogyny, avoid any painful introspection about his own behavior because he's not the real problem, and autofellate himself for being better and smarter than appx. half the population.

By the way,

However, because so much of 1984 has continued to hold true...

isn't good reasoning. It's an appeal to authority. Here. You might find it helpful to reread what you've written here and figure out whether you've used any other fallacies in your reasoning, and I'd particularly like to point you toward this one. This might also help. Have fun.

[–]Rationalmind[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Mostly I get told this haha:

(b) counterproductive to focus on.

To address, the following.

is he saying that every single woman in existence is "more" bigoted than every single man, or the level of bigotry shown by women on average is higher than the level of bigotry shown by men on average, or that there is some fundamental connection between bigotry and producing eggs?

Awesome, this makes me happy because you’re focusing on the first half of the quote I bolded. I am excited because how I read it was in terms of religious dogma or dogmatic beliefs and young women may be more eager to follow Party ideals? It reminds me of the nazi’s The League of German Girls. Part of me wonders if this is a self-esteem issue in women and girls and wanting to fit in, but being quickly criticized. Or whether this type of behavior comes from women being socialized to care and passive in terms that they are not taught to question, but to accept. I also am defining “bigotry” to mean obstinate and unreasonable or the general dictionary definition, but maybe we should pull a dictionary from 1948 to better define bigotry to understand a little better what Orwell meant by it.

Second, suppose you adopt this belief or its opposite and meet a new woman who you know nothing about.

Oh, sorry, no. I don’t believe in stereotypes on the basis of innate or superficial characteristics. I spend time making my own inferences about individuals and after a while you start seeing the same character traits in other people. I also know about confirmation bias and the rest of the social psychological concepts you refer. I’m not proposing that we should believe in a stereotype because it comes from 1984. I would suggest if this observation is true, then the stereotype won’t go away until a substantial amount of women no longer engage in the behavior. Things die out and go extinct or live on with time until addressed.

By pulling something out of his ass about how young women are the worst, the character Orwell wrote gets to justify his misogyny, avoid any painful introspection about his own behavior because he's not the real problem, and autofellate himself for being better and smarter than appx. half the population.

It doesn’t matter if he was misogynistic does it? He’s dead and can’t introspect. Even if the statement does indeed come from a bigot, does that make the statement itself false? (Hint: No).

1984 has continued to hold true.

I don’t see how it’s an appeal to authority because the statement is not appealing to authority (the reference to 1984 itself does not make it an authority in the context of how it was framed). I’m not saying 1984 played out as fact because Americans and the west do not live under a totalitarian regime since 1984. 1984 wasn’t a prophecy for sure; it was present impressions set in a future event. Rather, I am saying that Orwell’s political observations, evident in the timeless nature of his book, have lived on. Some of the many examples include: “Ignorance is strength. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery.” These also include the concept of “newspeak” and the Ministry of Truth and Ministry of Love, among other concepts he identified.

Even if you are correct, that I appealed to authority, the use of any given logical fallacy promotes critical thinking and that’s why logical fallacies are a paradox because they are used to promote critical thinking but lead to flaws in an argument. I do not think I was making an argument in that I asked a question seeking answers and expressed my concerns. However, I concede that the search for knowledge and argumentation tends to blur a line and is hard to identify and perhaps, distinguish.

[–]endless_assfluff 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I'm making a distinction between "being a bigot" and "performing bigoted actions." Bigotry, a state of mind, is not, and it's hard for even an individual to detect bigotry in themselves, let alone for an observer to detect it (edit: parallelism error, whoops). Bigoted actions are an observable thing that can be measured. That's true. The issue arises when you choose a set list of bigoted actions to measure, you're going to miss several---and introduce bias, since you're only measuring things that are on the list.

Oh, sorry, no. I don’t believe in stereotypes on the basis of innate or superficial characteristics.

Time for the basement metaphor again!

Say there are three people who own houses with basements. A friend visits the first person's house, goes down to the basement, and says "hey, your basement's dirty," to which person 1 immediately responds "Oh no, I'm sorry about that! I'll take care of it right away." Another friend visits the second person's house, goes down to the basement, and says "hey, your basement's dirty." Person 2 gets defensive. "What?! My basement can't be dirty! I'm a clean person! My house is clean! Where do you get off, accusing people of having dirty basements like some kind of neat-freak victim," and then never goes down to check. Because of course it's clean! And the third person goes down to the basement on their own before the friend visits, to try and get out any cobwebs beforehand, and invites their friend to hunt down any specks of dust if they so desire. So at the end of the day, who's most likely to have a clean basement?

You see what I'm saying? Making the claim "I don't believe in stereotypes" is an example of "sorry, my basement's clean, I don't have to look into that because I clearly don't do it." Similarly, simply being aware of confirmation bias and other concepts doesn't guarantee that you're not falling victim to them. By asserting these claims and getting defensive when they're challenged, you're creating a blind spot in your reasoning. If you are concerned with the truth of whether or not your claims are rational, rather than that what you are asserting appears rational and sounds reasonable, you don't say "I am rational," but rather ask "Am I rational?"

The use of a logical fallacy promotes critical thinking only if the person using it is capable of saying "you're right, this was a logical fallacy, and me having used it was wrong. I'll go back and see if I can defend or formulate this argument without using logical fallacies, and if not, I have a reason to abandon it." Which doesn't happen often on the internet. Yes, it is possible for one to defend a true statement using fallacies, but if the person can only defend a statement using logical fallacies, and refuses to reflect on the origin of the argument, it's not productive.

Don't see how it's an appeal to authority? Here:

  • Orwell said a lot of things that I think are right.

  • Here's another thing he said.

  • Since he said a lot of things that I think are right, maybe this other thing he said was right.

Arguments that assume statements have more value depending on whose mouth they come out of are either appeals to authority or ad hominem, or maybe a form of genetic fallacy if that's how you prefer to classify things. Like, if a hobo screamed at you on the street that women were more bigoted, you probably wouldn't mention where you heard it. Oh, and I didn't mean to use 'argument' in the colloquial sense; I didn't realize you would interpret it that way and didn't mean to accuse you of being combative. My bad. Replace it with 'assertion' if that's better. And it is an assertion, because the phrasing "I can’t help but wonder if there is a problem with women?" is loaded.

Because your response was to double down, restate your assertion while refusing to admit to using faulty reasoning, and condescend to me, I don't think it's a good use of my time to continue having this discussion. If you've started from the assumption that this statement has merit and refuse to consider otherwise, it's not really asking a question in good faith, is it? Even if you say it is.

[–]Rationalmind[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think you misread my reply. I also don’t see how your basement metaphor, which is actually an allegory or parable, is applicable. I wasn’t defensive, rather, I recognized you misunderstood the quote and the questions posed.

I enjoyed personally that you just told me I believe in stereotypes even though I stated that I don’t. No, I don’t believe in stereotypes. I know them to exist, but am vigilant not to actively apply them to others or myself. For example, “don’t judge a book by its cover” or “give someone the benefit of the doubt” are words I live by. Look at me, I am Orwell’s quote in terms of I repeat phrases that resonate for my life (they are illustrative and help others so they are helpful). You also don’t know what’s in my head, and frankly, unless you can get in my head, you can’t prove it. Thus, my protestations to the contrary govern and show you are wrong.

[–]emptiedriver 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I enjoyed personally that you just told me I believe in stereotypes even though I stated that I don’t.

I don't think many people claim to believe in stereotypes. It's generally a subconscious thing or a disagreement about where lines should be drawn.

[–]Rationalmind[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No, I don’t. It might be a weird notion because you might be unfamiliar, but I don’t. I know this about myself.