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by Martinussen 733 days ago
That entire paragraph is mostly a strawman, or, if you're feeling charitable, coming from an extremely surface-level awareness of the actual issues they're talking about.
2 comments

"Anything I don't agree with is a strawman"
Not at all, but I would absolutely argue pretty much all instances of "List of single-sentence heavily polarised and editorialised talking points" are. You're not looking to engage in a good-faith discussion by throwing out a pile of points and hoping nobody puts in the effort to actually engage with every single one - look at the sibling thread to my comment and the disproportionate amount of effort it takes to respond without just being pulled aside to debate the minutiae of specific events.

Of course, that is all assuming they actually have some level of familiarity with what the topic being discussed and the talking points they are using. They could simply be uninformed, but trying to engage in rhetoric before learning more at that point doesn't seem like it would be in good faith either way.

(That is not to say that one should never respond to an argument that takes way more rigor than throwing it out there took, but it's definitely not "should always" either :p.)

Not necessarily.

I can recall that a few years back I was browsing some right-wing forum and someone wrote "they will force you to have sex with them" which seemed absolutely ridiculous.

Then I was browsing a left-wing forum and the concensus was "refusing to date black people is racism and therefore the worst thing you can possibly do, refusing to date transsexuals is kinda allowed but we'd rather see you do".

I had a "shit, they were right" moment.

I submit that the idea that it’s racist at face value not to date a Black person is ridiculous. If we indulge that type of view with any sort of seriousness, we’re just lending undue legitimacy to that idea.

It is no more or less ridiculous than me being sexist because I am not interested in women. I’m not sexist. I’m just not into women. Reasonable people can identify the difference. We shouldn’t mistake crazy views for sane ones.

The argument goes like this: if a sizeable part of the society refuses to date black people, then black people are in a disadvantaged position.

> It is no more or less ridiculous than me being sexist because I am not interested in women

I tried saying this but "race is race and gender is gender, two totally different things".

Who is forcing you to date trans people? No one. They were not right. C'mon.