JANE'S RULES OF THE ROAD

I am doing something this morning that I promised myself I would never, ever do. I am writing when I am angry. In fact, I'm writing when I'm more than angry. I've got smoke coming out of my ears, and it's been coming out of them since sometime last evening. There's enough steam around the top of my head at the moment for me to sing "I'm A Little Teapot" and look like I'm engaging in factual reportage. My father's big watchword in my childhood was, "lose your temper, and you lose the argument." If he was right, what's going to follow this paragraph will be absolute gibberish.

That said, I have to admit that I have been very effective, in the past, when in a state of high piss off. Real anger can sometimes be a catalyst instead of a roadblock. In the matter of the subject of this essay, and the incident that set it off, I'm dealing with an issue that has been part of my life since I was very small. I've thought it over long enough to know what I want to say. I've only refrained from saying it because I haven't wanted to hurt anybody's feelings.

Contrary to what some people have said about me, I am neither relentless nor insensitive to the feelings of people on the other side of whatever it is I'm debating. I'm aware of the fact that some people feel emotionally and psychologically inadequate to deal with real argument, and that others are self-conscious about what they feel to be the inadequacies of their intelligence or their education. I mostly think these people underestimate themselves. The vast majority of them are far more intelligent than they give themselves credit for. I do understand that some of them just don't like conflict of any kind.

The problem is, even I have my limits, and right now I've reached one of them. So first, for a little background. And then for the bottom line.

I've gotten way too old to get sandbagged by this crap any longer.

Either that, or I've just gotten way too old.

This is what happened, short version. I participate in a Usenet newsgroup called rec.arts.mystery which, as the name implies, was invented so that people could talk about mystery books. By the time I got to it, about three years ago, it had become a catch all group for mystery writers, mystery readers and collections of both who like to discuss everything from international relations to whether lime jello is a food group. It's even got a FAQ meant to head off the sort of newbie who spends a day reading the posts and starts demanding, "This is hardly appropriate for a newsgroup about mysteries!" Half of everything on RAM is hardly appropriate for a newsgroup about mysteries. Some of it isn't even appropriate.

I like RAM, and I like the vast majority of the people I've met on it. One or two have become real friends. More have become the sort of cyber-friends who remember your birthday and worry about your children. There are RAM t-shirts, mugs, Teddy Bears and thong underwear. I have a couple of t-shirts and the Teddy Bear. In other words, this essay is not a slam at rec.arts.mystery. What happened there this last time has happened in a lot of other places I've been, and the incident in question was by no means one of the worst. Why it popped my corks when more egregious incidents of the same kind did not, I don't know.

The problem started in a thread about the war in Iraq, which could have been a contentious thread, but wasn't. That's because nobody on it was actually arguing. Instead, a number of us who were pretty much in agreement had made some fairly throwaway comments about what we felt was a bad situation, mostly in answer to a post by a new poster who was defending the war. There have been heated political discussions on RAM. There have even been heated political discussions on RAM about the war in Iraq. This wasn't one of them. Everybody was being remarkably sane. The original, pro-Iraqi war poster made a comment with which I heartily agreed--that too many people these days, on both sides of the political aisle, seem unable to simply disagree with their opponents' policies. Instead, they turn disagreements into proof of moral turpitude. "If you don't agree with me on taxation," Nina parodied, "you must fuck goats."

I really wish I'd thought of that.

Anyway, into this rather desultory discussion came a poster who's been a minor regular on RAM for all the years I've been there, to say how she just couldn't sit still and listen to "our leaders" being maligned, and other things of that sort, mainly having to do with the fact that she feels very vulnerable after 9/11. There was nothing wrong with the post, and nothing about it that signaled trouble. She didn't seem to be upset, or angry, or irrational. She seemed to be responding not just to the thread in question, but to a number of others, equally desultory, which had covered our complaints about the Patriot Act, among other things.

I answered her post the way I always answer posts. I put it up on my reader and responded to each point that struck me. The whole process took about a minute, if that. Other people responded as well, but when the kickback came, it came to me. "Bludgeoning" people might get them to shut up, she said, but it wouldn't change their minds. She hadn't been looking to "debate endless points." She just wanted "to state her opinion." In other words--she was supposed to have her say and not get called on it, because calling her on it was "bludgeoning" her and making her go silent.

It sort of went downhill from there. A number of other posts broke in to complain about her use of the word "bludgeoning," but she insisted. What I did when I argued "stifled social intercourse." The mere fact that I talked at all meant that she couldn't talk because she didn't want to be "put through" that kind of "ringer."

Now, all arguments of that sort are essentially a form of emotional blackmail, and once they've started, it's impossible for the person they've been lobbed against to win. Essentially, you've got two choices. Either you ignore the poster from then on out--which is what she's asking for, the "right" to "state [her] opinion" without challenge--or you respond. If you respond, you look like the Big Bad Wolf menacing a Poor Little Kitty Cat. I mean, she's just told you that she can't handle argument, and there you are, in full view of everybody on the planet with access to the Internet, forcing her poor, pitiful, painfully writhing body through the meat grinder of a rebuttal.

As stealth attacks go, this is as good as it gets. I have never seen this tactic fail to get the poster what she wants--which is an end to the original argument and a new argument focused tightly on her "tormentor's" personality, personal qualities, and all-round worthiness as a human being. I have seen people engage in bigotry of the worst kind and get away with it, because as soon as they got called on it they started complaining about how their opponents were "silencing" them and they had "a right to [their] opinion." In no time at all, everybody had forgotten what started the commotion to begin with, and all that was left was a discussion of the "tormentor's" debating tactics.

The "tormentor," of course, ended up looking like Hitler.

I'd like to tell you that I have found the silver bullet that can answer this kind of attack, and that will neither result in the end of the original debate nor in the skewering of the accused "tormentor," but I haven't. In the press of an argument, there's too much pressure for anybody to think clearly enough to outline all this sort of thing, and if the "tormentor" tries, it will be just one more proof of what a bludgeoning, bullying, insensitive creep she is.

So what I've decided to do is bypass the whole issue.

I walked out of the argument in question--and RAM--when I realized the discussion was henceforth going to be about me, and I sat down to write this essay.

I will no more debate other people about myself, my "tactics," my "bludgeoning," or any of the rest of it. I have formally resigned from all such arguments, and if people try to change the debate we're in in that direction, I will ignore them, and go on saying what I was saying.

And I will refer them to this essay, because that is what this essay is for.

These are Jane's Rules of the Road, Reality 101 for engaging in debate, on Usenet and off. They're not rules the way the Ten Commandments are rules. They're not edicts demanding that you behave the way I want you to. Rather, they're rules the way laws of nature are rules--they're descriptions of how something works. In this case, having an argument about anything more serious than whether you prefer chocolate ice cream or pistachio.

Before you go hauling off complaining about how you're being persecuted on Usenet by those nasty people who just won't let you "have" your own opinions, read this.

1) The words "in my opinion" are not a get out of jail free card. They do not excuse you from knowing what you're talking about. They do not mean that you have no obligation to back up your assertions with facts, or sound logical reasoning, or both. They are not Debate Restraining Orders meaning that people who disagree with you can't counter what you've said and demand that you back it up, or justify it. They most certainly do not allow you to make sweeping statements of outright bigotry--liberals are traitors; atheists are immoral; gay people are promiscuous--without expecting to be challenged on them.

2) Your feelings of inadequacy vis a vis other debaters are irrelevant to the issue at hand. Yes, we all end up in arguments in which we feel our opponents are smarter, faster, better educated, and more articulate than we are. I've ended up there many times myself. It is not the responsibility of the people who are making you feel inadequate to hold themselves back to a level at which you would feel more comfortable. It's your responsibility to get yourself up to speed in whatever way works for you.

3) The only time you're being deprived of free speech is when you're officially refused the right to speak at all. Note the "officially." Note the "at all." If I moderate the discussion group and refuse to let you post, I've deprived you of free speech. If you don't want to post because somebody might get mad at you, or you're afraid you'll look foolish next to the other people in the argument, or you don't want anybody to counter anything you've said--you aren't being "stifled." You're stifling yourself. You can do that if you want to, but you've got no grounds for complaining to other people about how it's all their fault.

4) It's not about you. Learn the difference between an attack on your argument and an attack on yourself. "You're a piece of ugly pond scum who fucks goats" is an attack on you. (Thank you again, Nina.) "The idea that the war in Iraq will make us safe from terrorism is illogical on its face" is an attack on your ideas, and taking it personally is changing the subject. It's usually a bad idea to identify too strongly with whatever position you're taking on whatever issue is being debated at the moment. You might find out you were wrong. You might change your mind. I started out opposed to a war in Afghanistan and ended up for it. I was in favor of the death penalty for many years and then became convinced that I had to be against it. Time doesn't stand still for anybody.

5) Yes, she's a girl. Get over it. I'd like to report that this problem is solely the province of male posters, but it's not. An amazing number of people have a very difficult time accepting female posters who just aren't "feminine" enough. "Feminine" seems to mean "uncertain" or "apologetic." The main complaint is that our Female Debater is too sure of herself, and the complainer demands that she admit that everything she says is "just [her] opinion." This is not the same thing as pointing out that somebody has made a statement in the form of a statement of fact when he is actually only expressing an opinion.

For instance, if I say that "The appendix should only be removed when it is medically necessary," I've left out the simple fact that the definition of "necessary" is a subjective one. I may define it as "only when the appendix is inflamed and likely to lead to near immediate death." Somebody else may define it as "when there's a history of appendicitis in the family and therefore a heightened risk for appendicitis in this patient." There is no consensus on a definition of "necessity," and therefore the original statement, which looked very straightforward at first glance, was not.

The kind of thing I'm talking about is very different. It is not a matter of pointing out a fact--that is, that somebody has presented as fact something that is opinion--but of demanding to have in writing what is already implied in the statement. When I say, "Chocolate ice cream is much better tasting than vanilla," I'm obviously stating an opinion, and the opinion is obviously mine. Adding the words "in my opinion" to that sentence does not provide the reader with any more information. There's no ambiguity to be cleared up. Adding the words "in my opinion" to a statement like that does one thing and one thing only. It serves as a self-apology. "Please excuse me, I'm not very important really, this is just my little bit to say, don't mind me!"

I have no idea why some people are so uncomfortable when women are confident about what they think and feel, and confident about speaking up--but there are a lot of such people out there, and they're as likely to be women as men. Giving in to what they want is a form of self-sabotage. It weakens the force of your argument by signaling to your readers that you don't take yourself seriously, and they therefore don't have to take you seriously either. That's why you'll never see phrases like that strewn all over an Op-Ed piece.

It's also why you won't see phrases like that from me.

6) Just because the subject makes you uncomfortable, doesn't mean everybody else has to stop talking about it. Mark the thread "read" and don't read it. Start your own thread about the uses of Marshmallow Fluff in fixing plumbing. If you're in a face to face, excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and don't come back. Don't burst into the conversation every twenty minutes demanding to know why anybody bothers to talk about this anyway, it just makes people upset, and besides it doesn't get anywhere, nobody's mind is ever changed, people just say the same things over and over again. I think golf is annoying as hell, but I'm not going to run out onto the fairway at Piping Rock to stop the action.

7) Just because the subject is raising tempers doesn't mean that everybody has to stop talking about it, either. Conflict is conflict. Discussing things that mean a lot to people is going to make people upset. That's entirely natural, and there's nothing wrong with it. If anything, there's something right with it. It means that people are actually listening to each other. This can be very uncomfortable, but long run benefits can come out of short run pain. There's no need, and no sense, to go jumping in to stop the action as soon as things get tense. Good debates are always tense. And their results are not visible until the argument has played itself out and people can recollect it in tranquility. To paraphrase, badly, a poet I never liked.

8) Declaring that to go on arguing with X only gives X a platform for her ideas, and that therefore everybody should stop responding to X completely, will always backfire. The first I ever saw of this tactic was in the women's movement in the 1970s, when movement "spokespeople" would turn down offers to debate right wing or antifeminist figures like George Gilder and Phyllis Schlafley because to do so "would only give them a platform" to further their agendas. Anybody who wants to know how well this sort of thing works only has to look around him--the ideas that didn't get heard weren't Gilder's or Schlafley's, and they got heard uncontested. We now have an entire generation of young people who know nothing of feminist arguments except what they've heard them described as by antifeminists. If you want to hand victory to your opponent on a plate, this is the way to do it. Your opponent will find a way to go on talking, and being heard. You'll look like the spoiled brat who takes his ball and bat home because he's been losing the sandlot baseball game. And, trust me, you will be perceived as losing.

9) Your emotions are your problem. They do not trump facts, or other people's rights. This one applies to a lot more than debate--we've been indulging in an orgy of it-doesn't-matter-if-it's-true-or-false, it-only-matters-how-it-feels-to-me in this country for a long time now--but it shows up in debate so often these days, it's ready to get its own Latin term as a new logical fallacy. A comment is not forbidden or taboo just because it makes you feel marginalized. "African Americans admitted under affirmative action are less qualified academically than whites admitted without affirmative action at the same university" is a truth claim. The way to deal with it is to address the truth claim, find the statistics, unearth the fine print, and argue that it's either true or false or maybe even something in between. The same goes for "Women are less likely to be competent at mathematics than men," "immigrants are less likely to be patriotic than people who were born here," and "fundamentalist and evangelical Christians are less highly educated than liberal Christians and secularists." Your fellow Americans--hell, your fellow citizens of the world when they're on the Internet--have a free speech right to make any of those statements, no matter how bad they make you feel. You have a free speech right to counter those statements with statements, and data, of your own. And that's all you have a right to. You have no right to insist that the forum be cleared of people expressing such opinions, or that a code be put in place forbidding them, because otherwise you'll "feel" unable to take part in the forum. As long as you're admitted to the forum on the same formal basis as everybody else, your rights have been fully observed. We don't have the right never to be offended, or always to be comfortable where and with whom we are.

Some of us never get comfortable anywhere.

10) Address the argument, not the 3,156 other things you think anybody who makes this argument must also believe at the same time. It's called "clustering," and it's true enough of the time that far too many people think it must be true all the time. For instance, people who oppose legal access to abortion also tend to believe in God, favor a constitutional amendment that would make it illegal to desecrate the American flag, and oppose affirmative action. People who favor legal access to abortion tend to support higher taxes to expand government services, oppose tort reform, and think "sexual orientation" ought to be protected under hate crimes laws. The trouble is, none of these positions has any necessarily logical connection to any of the others, and any individual human being could easily hold one and not any of the others. Nat Hentoff, for instance, one of the most outspokenly pro-life writers in the country, is also a vocal atheist who thinks burning the flag should be considered protected free speech.

We cluster our political and social opinions for a lot of reasons, but those reasons have far more to do with our social and educational backgrounds than with reasoned argument or rational foundations. Suddenly breaking into an argument about abortion with an impassioned cry against flag burning isn't going to win the argument, it's going to make you look stupid. That's true even when the issues are closer and less obviously without connection--say, sexual orientation in hate crimes laws and gay marriage. It's true enough that most people who support giving gays the right to marriage also support protecting sexual orientation in hate crimes laws, but neither issue logically requires you to affirm the other. I do, for instance, strongly support giving gays the right to marry, but I oppose all hate crimes laws, no matter what the categories.

Stick to the subject at hand, and don't wander off into areas you think are "connected," that may very well not be.

11) Pay attention, and don't assume you already know all the arguments on the other side. It's one of the great public exhibitions of sloppy thinking, the way so many people on the Net approach arguments about issues assuming they already know what their opponent on the other side of the issue is going to say. Get into an argument about the death penalty, for instance, and the anti-death penalty person is going to be right on out there, throwing around statistics about how the death penalty doesn't deter crime. The problem is, the guy on the other side doesn't give a damn about those statistics, because when he talks about "deterrence," he isn't talking about whether or not the death penalty will keep some random guy out there from committing a murder. He's talking about this murderer, right here, already convicted--if this murderer right here is executed, he will be deterred from some day getting out on parole or because his sentence is up or because a court somewhere decides his prison is overcrowded and murdering again. Listen to what your opponent is saying. Assume she means it. Address exactly what she says, and not some argument on the same topic you think is the "typical" one. You may be surprised to find that you don't know what the other side's arguments are at all.

12) Just because you've proved your point to yourself, doesn't mean you've proved it to anybody else. This should be obvious, but it's depressing how many Net debates end with some guy going, "I've proved my point absolutely and the only reason you won't admit it is that you can't ever admit you're wrong!" There are formal rules of logic and of logical reasoning, and if your argument follows those and your opponent's does not, you have some legitimate, objectively based grounds for complaint. If not, the simple fact is that the arguments that seem compelling to you may not seem at all compelling to somebody else. What's more, both sides may make arguments that fully comply with the rules of logic and of evidence. Sometimes, what's really at issue is what Catholics would call a "preferential option"--meaning a nearly visceral tendency to see a particular life choice as the fundamentally necessary one. Whether you think the provisions of the Patriot Act are a good idea depends mostly on whether you think you have more need to defend yourself against Osama bin Laden or the United States government, and that in turn will depend on whether you think that likely threats to yourself come from terrorists outside or overzealous law enforcement within. If you fall on one side of that divide and your opponent falls on the other, you can argue yourself blue in the face and you won't convince him. That's why gun control debates go nowhere. One side is afraid of criminals, the other is afraid of the mere fact of guns lying around at all.

One more thing--it is a corollary to this rule that no matter how convinced you are that the other side knows you're right but just won't admit it, you're probably wrong. Believe the opposition when they tell you they think you're full of shit. They're telling the truth.

So there they are--Jane's Rules of the Road, the ultimate insider's guide to debate. Or maybe not.

Now that I have this all written down and uploaded, I can go back to RAM and doing what I do, because I'm never again going to worry about any of the issues as they exist above.

Get in my face with any of this stuff in the future, and I'm just going to post the link.

Comments on this essay?