Yes, the title is playing on Jmac’s “Real Work Conversations” theme. Anyway…
Me: oh fer fuck’s sake. it just keeps getting worse in this piece of crap.
Me: i would be drunk if i did a shot for every talking point
GDBF: you should do that and we should make a podcast out of it
Me: actually, i’d die of alcohol poisoning
GDBF: well, a light shot
GDBF: that could be a whole segment
GDBF: sentence-by-sentence, do a shot for eachy talking point in wooten’s column
Me: heh. you do wooten, i’ll do woman to woman, we’ll see who ends up shittier
GDBF: I think that should be our next podcast
READ ME: Disclaimer
6 Responses to "Real IM conversations"
I like in the article how the conservative refers to “premarital” as “extramarital” instead. Nothing like using the wrong words to drive your point home!
What I learned from the article was that 1) all women who have premarital/extramarital (because really, they’re the same thing) sex are irresponsible, don’t take sex seriously, have problems w/ emotional commitment, and have diseases; and 2) all women who don’t have premarital/extramarital sex are mentally challenged.
So, I am ready to do my podcast…
Premarital sex is a species of extramarital sex. All premarital sex is extramarital, though not all extramarital is premarital.
If social conservatives oppose all extramarital sex, then why not use the broader term?
And I agree with your (2) above, Amber. The “pro-premarital sex” article was particularly caustic and insulting to all who don’t share the author’s point of view. But I didn’t see the conservative’s article as being nearly so bad. Aside from the opening sarcasm about how patronizing the liberal’s article was (and it was patronizing, as I just said), the conservative made appeals to statistics, mostly.
Statistical arguments are not “all S is P” kinds of arguments. So it’s misleading to say that the conservative’s article “taught” you that ALL pre-marital sex-havers get diseases, etc. She said no such thing. She said that there are studies which show that pre-marital sex increases the risk of such things.
Now, her understanding of the stats (or the particular study she mentions) may just be wrong. She may be misreading the data, or whatever. But she clearly isn’t claiming anything about ALL pre-marital sex-havers. Except, perhaps, that they all engage in risky behavior. But that’s just tautologically true if, the stats she cites are valid. (and I honestly don’t know if they are)
Are you shitting me? Come on now. They were both pretty terrible, and represent a black-and-white, this-extreme-or-that way of thinking that really chaps my ass. But the “conservative’s” argument was definitely worse, as far as this reader is concerned.
More to come after I go to a meeting…
Here let me clarify why you both will never agree on which article was worse.
There was a study done (I’ll dig up the reference if you’d like) during which they let participants view a new report on Palestine/Israel violence. The participants were demographically either Palestinian family-of-origin or Israeli family-of-origin (I think this was done in the U.S.). Guess what happened — after watching the same news program the Palestinians said that it was biased against Palestine and the Israelis said it was biased against Israel. How could it be biased against both of them?
Same thing here — Amber sees the “conservative” article as worse because she disagrees with it most. Xon sees the “liberal” article as worse because he most disagrees with it. However, I would like to point out that Xon did say that the “liberal” article cites statistics and such, and in doing so cannot be classified as “black-or-white” (Amber’s reply). Statistics give us wiggle room and wiggle room is not black-or-white. So, no one can say “the article said ALL women who have premarital sex have x, y, z” unless it said those words — statistics are not those words, “more likely to have” does not equal all.
I have no idea which article was worse because I read neither.