Scam Tactics of Pushing Trans Sex on Gay men.
Six rhetorical scams in one short statement by Stonewall UK.
SAYING YOU AREN’T SHAMING WHEN YOU ARE SHAMING
This post by a LGBTQXYZ group, Stonewall in Britain was brought to my attention by the newsletter of David Kavanagh who has been banned on twitter. He has a newsletter on Substack and I provide a link to it at the end of this post.
What I want to review here the rhetorical scamming involved in this statement rather than discussing whether Gays should or will want sex with transmen. Our opposition heavily relies on rhetorical scams and knowing how to identity and then point them out helps us to discredit them. It also infuriates them and often then in anger they say what they really feel. There are six scams involved here.
First Rhetorical Scam: Against A but for A.
What Nancy Kelley is saying in this statement, is no one should be pressured into dating people they aren’t attracted to, then immediately starts pressuring people into dating people they aren’t attracted to. It is a self-contradicting statement.
You find this in a lot of cases where the person is going to advocate position A, and knows that there will be opposition to position A, and so they have a statement that basically has this logical flow.
“I am against A; you should support A.” Or, “I am against it, I am for it when stated differently.” Of course, reduced to these statements it is obviously absurd, so they don’t directly state it this way.
What Kelley is saying here is that she is against pressuring people to date, but if you don’t consider this list of people then you are a bad person. You have adopted social prejudices, or you are unwilling to reject social prejudices, or you are irresponsible in regards to social prejudices, or you are mentally deficient that you can’t understand you are incorporating social prejudices. You are any number of possible bad things.
The key to this type of argument is that what initially the person states they are against is implied, but not directly stated, in the second half of the statement.
Second Scam: Conflation
Notice that the statement has a list of groups all together.
Now let me make myself clear, if you don’t want to date any of these groups or don’t want to date the whole list, that is your choice. If you don’t find someone a sexually desirable person, I think you would be doing them a disservice to date them.
The tactic here is that if you don’t find one group desirable you are some how to be included among people who aren’t attracted to these other groups and are hostile to this whole list of people.
Rejecting transmen by Gays is made part of rejecting this whole list.
Third Scam: Omission.
The issue of sexual desire is entirely omitted. Notice is it dating that is mentioned and not whether you find someone sexually desirable. This is to include the asexuals I suppose. This is the key issue as to why you aren’t interested in dating someone with a certain characteristic. You aren’t dating them because there isn’t the possibility of a sexual relationship.
Also, it is very much a respectability ideology. That these interactions are going be dating, not hooking with someone on the app. Kelley can’t bring herself to bring up sex and sexual desire or its relationship to dating.
A lot of the ideology of the initialism (LGBTQXYZ) is basically anti-sex.
Four Scam: Stigmatizing
There is the term “social prejudices” making peoples’ desires negative. They don’t desire one thing or another because of social prejudices. The society in which we live in can have influences on our sexual desires. If there were no police officers in a society probably no one would be wearing a policeman’s uniform to a leather bar.
However, we don’t know the origin of an individual’s desires. Kelley technically escapes this criticism by saying “worth considering,” but it is implied in her statement that the lack of desire is due to prejudice.
Further, there is the assumption that rejecting a class of individuals is inherently due to prejudice and there is not reason other than prejudice. In this case, homosexual men don’t want to have sex with a vagina is due to prejudice. If a person had thing for feet, being an amputee might be a good reason that a amputee wouldn’t be considered an object of desire if a foot was missing.
Morbidly obese Gays are likely to have heath problems in the future and I don’t want the person on top of me. If that is your thing, really heavy guys, if you like that, then go for it. We don’t have to have the same desires, in fact it is good that there are a variety of sexual desires in the Gay community.
Fifth Scam: Misrepresenting the Issue:
Notice the phrase, “you are writing off entire groups of people…” This tends to position Gays as being actively seeking to discriminate and making lists of undesirables and consciously seeking to self-police themselves. That isn’t how Gay desire and the seeking of sexual partners works.
Gays in their sexual activities and in cruising become conscious of what is enjoyable and what their sexual desire is. It is more about what they seek and not what they reject. They do realize that they aren’t attracted to some characteristics. Gay desire is also a group of desires, so maybe some individual scores high in some elements in desire and not in others and the decision to have sex is going to be based on the total package.
Leather guys want to do leather and avoid vanilla guys. (Vanilla is what leather guys call Gay men who aren’t into leather.) I am vanilla but I don’t have a problem with leather guys not being interested in me. The leather guys don’t have an agenda of discrimination, they just want to have enjoyable sex.
I once hooked up at a bar with a guy in San Francisco who I thought was really hot looking and later I discovered was considered one of the more desirable guys in the leather community. People were astounded that I was able to pick him up.
However, we were NOT able to find some intersection of desire to have sex. It was a fun evening though. We talked about things and leather. I learned stuff. We parted on friendly terms. If you don’t find the person sexually desirable going to bed with them isn’t doing anyone a favor.
Of course, if you have an underlying anti-sex agenda, the considerations of sexual desire aren’t a part of your thinking. Again, Kelley’s statement has an underlying rejection of sexual desire in its thinking.
Sixth Scam: Stigmatizing Again
Gays are often already often aware that the larger social culture can shape desires and that unexpectedly people can be sexually desirable. There is a fair amount of experimentation going on. The presumption we are idiots is also stigmatizing.
CONCLUSION:
The Alphabet Soup (LGBTQXYZ) arguments rely on a lot of rhetorical scams. Pointing them out has two powerful effects.
1. The argument being analyzed is dispelled and discredited and shown to be manipulative.
2. The makers of the argument are also discredited as intellectually dishonest people. This means when they make other arguments, they won’t be considered credible. So in breaking down one statement or argument, you dispel the arguments they might make in the future.
