The title’s in response to ”My feminism will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit!”

http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/10/my-feminism-will-be-intersectional-or-it-will-be-bullshit/

joy-mari (August 27)
“I use pigshit because a pig can be any sex, but a bull is always male”

joy-mari (August 29)
“And my feminism will overanalyse everything, or it will be bullshit!”

Please explain why it took you only two days to walk away from your own admonition to say “pigshit” instead of “bullshit.”

Regards

Finally, I see your comment. Yes, we face many oppressions. I am, for example, a poor, working class black woman who lives in the southern hemisphere. That’s a shit load of oppressions. But when I ask what oppresses me as a woman, the answer is men, ie the patriarchy.

I don’t get what you’re not getting, but I’ll try to break it down once more:

1. You wrote “I realised to NOT EVER adopt someone else’s opinion on something. Unless, of course, the opinion is evidence-based AND it’s something I find to be true.””

2. point 1. implies that you must ALWAYS demand reasons (either from your interlocutor, or from yourself) before adopting someone else’s position.

3. point 1.’s insistense that the opinion is evidence-based implies that the basis is independent of your faith in the interlocutor.

4. point 1.’s insistence that “it’s something *I* find to be true” implies that the adopter of the belief must have an ability to assess the evidence independently of the interlocutor.

5. We have opinions about a wide range of issues.

6. Many of these issues are in domains in which we are patently unqualified to assess evidence independently.

7. An example supporting 6. is AIDS. Somewhere on your blog you imply that it’s a good idea to provide antiretroviral drugs to poor people.

8. You have no training in virology, or in developmental economics.

9. Because of 8. you are unqualified to satisfy yourself with evidence backing up the claim in 7.

10. The problem in 9. applies to many domains (politics, literature, art appreciation, transport safety, self medication, psychological health, etc.)

11. 5. and 10. imply that the problem in 9. infects our beliefs.

12. 4. and 11. imply that the we need the ability to assess evidence independently in a variety of domains of expertise.

13. The ability referred to in 12. is practically impossible to obtain, as it requires training and experience in a wide variety of fields.

14. There is scholarship around testimony that argues ‘taking their word for it’ is an acceptable mode of belief adoption under the right circumstances.

15. Accepting the scientific consensus is an example of ‘taking their word for it.’

16. The acceptance referred to in 15. is a much more efficient belief-adoption strategy for persons outside of the relevant domain of expertise.

17. Theoretically, efficiency is desirable.

18. 13. and 17. support my claim that “…ALWAYS demanding reasons is practically impossible, and theoretically undesirable”

Now I admit that this post is hair-splitting and verbose, but that’s what happens when you’re called upon to be explicit.

I’ve taken pains to label not only the propositions, but also the steps taken to move between them. So if you’re still feeling that:

a) I’m not referring to what you’ve written.
b) I’m drawing an erroneous judgement from your writing.
c) some other error(s) slipped in.
d) all of the above

you now have the luxury of pointing out the error by number(s).

(and then please telling me what exactly is wrong.)

This didn’t follow from anything I said in my original piece.