I’ve been told by a couple of people that my last post was attacking strawmen because I engaged the weakest arguments to my point and ignored the better ones.

Well…maybe.

But a decent argument can stand up for itself. Is it really a strawman if people have actually tried to argue the point at length with me, and expected me to take them seriously? Does it bother anyone else that, even though the argument seems weak to you, that someone out there thought it was brilliant and can’t see the glaring problems? That someone (lots of someones!) don’t see why judging someone based on their appearance or resorting to insults rather than discussing the actual matter at hand is…well, irrelevant? Rude? Especially when people who should know better participate in it? (Because there are feminists who attack other women as “sluts” or “bimbos” and don’t see the hypocrisy when they ask not to be judged by that same standard.)

Maybe it’s the weakest argument. I think sometimes attacking weak arguments is a good thing, because obviously someone actually made it and it didn’t occur to them on its own that there were problems. If people can’t understand why the argument is weak…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Feminist Movement, Theory.