As a self-identified MRA, I encounter a lot of argument based in formal logical fallacy. It’s sharpened my rhetorical skills, particularly in the detection and debunking of arguments formed around formal logical fallacies. If you’re a men’s rights advocate, or you’ve argued with detractors of men’s rights, then this sharpening of skills is probably true of you as well.
An ad hominem argument is the attack on the speaker rather than the points of the argument. The major unstated assumption is the formation of argument with an implied acceptance of an unmentioned false premise. The appeal to authority, to force, and to emotion are all examples of logical fallacy.
One of the major arguments between the men’s rights movement and radical as well as gender feminism is the claim by feminists that women are now, or have at any period in recent history, been oppressed.
The power of, and near universal use by women of one particular logical fallacy, provided in context, explodes this idea. To supply the context necessary to grasp this, an awareness of hypergamy is useful.
Hypergamy [1] is the practice and custom among women of marrying upwards. It is the tendency of women to seek male partners who earn more than they do, or have a higher social status than they do.
The phenomenon complimenting this is males marrying socially or economically downward. Men do this as a means of reducing the probability that their spouses will cheat on them. As much as men and women may claim that marriage is a social institution built on love, or on god, the reality is that a marriage serves the same purpose as a business contract. Marriage, and every derived relationship, including boyfriend-girlfriend and romantically involved cohabitants, are about distributing wealth and other resources within the partnership between a man and a woman. It is not an accident that even with a real imbalance favoring men in lifetime earnings, it is women who spend 65% of disposable income [2], a number predicted to rise to 72% by 2028.
Women cheating on men within this framework can be better understood as defrauding their business partners of funds and resources from the partnership.
Women, speaking from a biological perspective have the natural advantage in this, in that women are now, and have always been the sexual selectors of the human race. Men by contrast are the competitors for sexual access to women who select from the competitors. Selection – meaning the propagation of genes. Failure for men in this competition means the extinction of their genetic line.
In any civil society in which brute force is not the absolute rule, this selecting power places women in control over sex, and thereby, in control over men; something everybody knows at the instinctive level.
This is why public social ostracism of a man, by a woman, is so powerfully devastating. We’re tapping into reproductive survival instincts that predate Neolithic culture.
I mentioned that men and women understand this dynamic of reproductive selection on an instinctive level. That is why the use, by women of a particular formal logical fallacy destroys the notion of women’s oppression, or patriarchy, or the fallacy of women’s lesser status within society.
If a woman is displeased with a man, or wishes to control his behavior through shame and fear, or is just in a disagreeable mood for no good reason, she will call him a “creep.” This is a universally popular tool of rhetoric used against men, by women. Some men will also use this – but when they do, it’s almost always in support, or anticipation of female condemnation of the target.
It is, of course, a formal logical fallacy. It’s the ad-hominem argument. And it’s used, even by rhetorically skilled females who would ordinarily be subject to ridicule for deliberate use of logical fallacy in argument over any point of philosophical disagreement.
It’s a unique and special ad hominem attack, in that it doesn’t actually have any distinct meaning, other than something along the lines of: “Man who I now condemn”.
Arguably, the worst thing a woman can say to a man, short of false accusations of rape, battery, molestation or sexual harassment, is the word creep.
Now in the past I’ve made the argument that in debate, anybody who repeatedly falls to the tactic of formal logical fallacy can and should be denied further attention or consideration. In using logical fallacy in argumentation an individual is actually pointing out that they have no creditable argument or leg to stand on. They’re implicitly admitting that their point of view is irrational, and should be ignored.
For individuals using the ad hominem attack of the word creep, this is no different, and further consideration of their expressed point of view is unjustified, until or unless they demonstrate a pattern of discussion eschewing continued reliance of logical fallacy.
That the word creep continues to be the go-to tool to marginalize any man’s point of view illustrates the social power society grants women and the exception from adherence to civil discourse we all indulge in. If you can repeatedly get away with use of such an obvious formal logical fallacy, then you do sit on a pedestal of privilege.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy
[2] http://www.womenwantmorethebook.com/press/septermber9.aspx
