I didn't avoid answering your question. I gave you an answer you didn't like by pointing out that the rhetorical concern your questions were trying to imply had been addressed in the parts of my post you were pointedly ignoring. I'm not a simpleton who can be led by the nose through contextomy, House, and considering how brazen you've been about trying to do that, you'll forgive me if I am less than amused by the attempt. I mean heck, you just tried to spin "that accusation you made about brushing aside police brutality on the basis of ethnicity is actually exactly the problem BLM is trying to fix, because right now that consistently happens when the victim is black" as saying that BLM only cares about police brutality against black victims and demands that cases against non-black victims be brushed aside. And you did so purely on the grounds that I used the phrase "black victims" in explaining that the movement was trying to combat the very pattern you invoked. That's such an egregiously bad and brazen attempt at a "gotcha" as to border on parody, House. And the worst part is that that's distressingly representative of how you've been arguing in this thread, towards myself and others.
I apologize for misinterpreting what you wrote. I accept that you were merely trying to describe the pattern, where I thought you were describing BLM's own mission statement.
You say that police brutality is being brushed aside, because the victim is black, and that BLM is trying to fix that problem.
We're in agreement there.
I make the claim that BLM ONLY focuses on black victims
by design.
As evidence, here's what BLM says on their /about page: "We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise."
So, judging by what BLM says about their own stated goals, do they, or do they not specifically focus on "Black lives"?
It's a simple question. Please answer it. If you think that the answer doesn't lead where I think it leads, first answer the question, and then explain why the answer doesn't lead where I think it leads.
I'd really like this conversation to work between us, but you gotta meet me half way here by answering the questions that I ask.
You've even been doing so in the the last few posts with Obsidian. You try to spin the "Teach don't rape, not don't get raped" sign as a plea for psychological treatment to address the underlying issues that cause rapists to rape. Obsidian explains that that's not what the sign means (the slogan being closer to "properly teach consent in Sex Ed" coupled with "stop victim blaming to dodge the issue"), not the point you were trying to claim it championed...you know to "talk to the men first and go through lengthy psychology sessions to solve their root issue that causes these rapes". At that point you tried to spin his response as if he were instead saying the sign was supporting victim blaming rather than being about the injustice of victim blaming. It's the same song and dance described above.
Obsidian did explicitly say that the sign was supporting victim blaming.
In post #101 Obsidian says "Telling women not to get raped is shifting the blame."
In post #103, confused by what prompted him to say such a thing, I said that he must have misread the slogan.
- I think he must have misread the slogan to say "teach women how to not get raped" or something
In post #104 he affirms "The picture you chose had that right on the front."
In post #110 he again affirms "I already stated that I was speaking about what the picture you posted."
I'm not seeing how it can be claimed that Obsidian wasn't claiming that the slogan "tells women not to get raped" and "is shifting the blame".
I'm not spinning anything. Obsidian is saying that the sign is saying one thing, and gorifas and I are saying that the sign says something different. That's the whole reason why I looped him in, to double-check myself in case I was just crazy.
If Obsidian wants to claim that the slogan on the sign doesn't mean "talk to the men first and go through lengthy psychology sessions to solve their root issue that causes these rapes", fine. But he explicitly says, twice, that the slogan "tells women not to get raped". This can't possibly be denied
And let's look back at another example in post 31. In response to my statement that the spirit of "Black Lives Matter" can be adequately represented to those confused over it by adding "too" at the end, you claim that that's disproven by the statement that "Black Lives Matter" needs no further qualification, that "too" is a qualifying statement and therefore that the slogan must by necessity be better represented as "Only" Black Lives Matter. Let me reemphasize that for a moment. You treat "too" as a qualifier despite it not actually modifying a statement literally synonymous with 'black lives do have value', and then you turn around and say that it makes more sense to treat it as being preceded by "only" instead, despite that itself being a qualifying statement, and one that radically changes the meaning of the phrase at that. It's yet another case where you twisted another snippet well past the point of reasonable interpretation, while ignoring the fact that your very reading was utterly built around the very objection you were incorrectly invoking to dismiss the other speaker.
Your logic is flawed. The lack of "too" does not mean that "only" should be inserted instead, and you've presented no reasoning as to why. You've only asserted that it must, "by necessity".
I never said "it makes more sense to treat it as being preceded by 'only' instead". I never typed that out, or implied it.
But I'm not going to accuse you of twisting anything. Your conclusion follows from your premises. It's just that your premises, in this case, aren't true.
But let's get into that a bit more, because that reading seems to reflect the heart of this. In order to divorce this from any preconceptions we might have on this topic, let's veer into analogy for a moment for a little linguistic study. If I say "I like chocolate", then that naturally only conveys that I find the taste of chocolate agreeable. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't think anyone here would disagree that saying "I like chocolate" implies nothing about my opinion of other flavors. In this analogy, however, your argument would be the functional equivalent of alleging that the phrase "I like chocolate" means that I don't like any other flavor, and indeed must be championing a chocolate only diet or at least that in expressing an appreciation for chocolate I must be suggesting it is superior to vanilla, caramel, or cream. "I only like chocolate", or "I don't like anything but chocolate" as you might characterize it. To be direct about it, the argument boils down to the position that because I said I liked chocolate the unstated implication was that I didn't care for other flavors and felt they needed to stay in the pantry, and if I actually cared about them I wouldn't have made the claim about chocolate in the first place.
That is an absolutely ludicrous take
I would agree that this would be a ludicrous take. However, this isn't my logic.
You seem to think that, because I attempted to shoot down the "too" qualifier, that means that I must believe that they really mean "only".
No, that was never my intent.
The "too" argument is, as I understand it, usually brought up in order to make it clear that BLM isn't discriminatory. It's as if the argument is "See? Black Lives Matter 'Too'! There's no way that can be discriminatory! That settles it!".
My counter argument was merely "No, it does not say 'too', and here's an official statement ruling that out..."
It was a counter-argument that disproved that BLM wasn't
not discriminatory.
It was not a stand-alone argument intended to prove that BLM
is discriminatory.
For example, suppose we were arguing about whether or not Alice likes chocolate. If you start off by saying "Of course she doesn't like it, she's allergic to it!", and I prove that she isn't allergic, my argument isn't that she likes chocolate BECAUSE she's not allergic to it. I'm just disproving your argument that she's allergic to it, and therefore, doesn't like chocolate. It still remains to be proven whether or not she likes chocolate, but now we've ruled out that she's not allergic to it.
Hopefully that clears it up.
Whether or not my argument is valid, that "too" is a qualifier, is separate from whether or not I am implicitly or explicitly inserting "only".
