A weekend bender

Evil Bender tries out on Vox Day the logic he received for his 10th birthday:

I just find what you say to be bigoted, poorly argued, and lacking in actual thought. You've created an imaginary world in which cause and effect run something like this: women fight for the idea that they are human beings, equal to men and worthy of respect. The world is a fucked up place where bad things happen to people. Some of these people are women. Therefore, feminists brought this on themselves.

Yup, that's fantastic logic.

Actually, when you recast someone's argument and then attack that, it's known as a straw man, but I'm sure our master logician knows that.

Try this for Vox's real argument:

The world is a "fucked up place" and people do bad things to one another. Since law cannot make people be nice there needs to be an internal societal compass (e.g. Vox's "Judeo-Christian culture") that keeps them from doing what the external cage cannot prevent. Feminism, by undermining the internal compass, allows the bad things to happen while trying desparately to strengthen the ineffectual cage. Ergo, when the bad things that are allowed to happen happen to feminists, they brought it on themselves.

You read that right: because I don't find SLAVERY funny, I must be a total morning (whatever that means - El B). Well argued, Vox! Here are some other things I don't find funny: war, oppression, genocide, and people who take delight in others suffering because they are bigoted, illogical thinkers.

Not surprisingly, since Evil Bender ignores Vox's point, his response that HE doesn't find something funny misses the point. Post-Chrstian Feminists have created a Germany where all are supposedly equal. Yet the society they create finds a growing trade of sex slavery within it. That's called irony, and when Vox uses that irony ("A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect") it is funny even if Evil Bender doesn't think so. When I am not paying attention and hit myself with a hammer, I don't think it's funny, but my opinion doesn't subdue the laughter of those around me.

What's best about this is that Vox challenges me to find a solution. I would challenge him to even suggest one.

[TAG] You're it.

And he's making one of the most basic logical errors of all: slavery happens in "post-Christian" Europe, therefore it must exist because people aren't Christians. Never mind that in the Old Testament the Israelites were keeping slaves and that the New Testament can be read as endorsing slavery insofar as slaves were exhorted to obey their masters.

"Can be read" is a nice way of ignoring Vox's historical point that the elimination of slavery worldwide was driven by Christians, primarily in England but with the help of American Quakers. His point that Christians owned slaves is well-taken, but Christianity never demanded that anyone hold slaves. It was precisely *because* of their Christianity that abolitionists fought against the world-wide norm of slavery, and no other philosophy/religion stamped out slavery before them. Now that Christianity is a rare beast in continental Europe, the re-emergence of slavery there is just a coincidence, I'm sure.

I'm not as simple-minded as Vox, so I don't believe that a solution to the problem of global slavery is a simple matter, but I know that...(a) solution for slavery starts by building a world where bigotry, intolerance, and hatred aren't acceptable.

Yup, all we have to do is rebuild the entire world and the desires of everyone in it. Sound familiar? But again, Evil Bender proposes the wrong solution. Sex slavery is not based on bigotry, intolerance, or hatred. It is based on a) a desire for sex, and b) a desire for money. Ridding the world of intolerance will just ensure that women are enslaved in properly defined racial and ethnic ratios. You've got to find something designed to counteract the greed and lust built into human beings.

My money's on our Lizard Queen. It's a safe bet, like betting Vox will say something disgusting and bigoted and back it up with "logic" that has more holes than a shot-up stop sign.

The original Lizard Queen is Hillary Clinton, and the fact that Evil Bender does not even know enough about Vox's writing to know that means his calls to "give me a definition of 'feminism' or whatever it is you think is causing the global slavery problem" is just asking for someone else to do his homework. Vox doesn't need to define feminism - it already exists and any political atlas or even a dictionary might answer his query.

The biggest problem with feminist "logic" (which Evil Bender defines as "the idea that (women) are human beings, equal to men and worthy of respect") is that it is rubbish. No one denies that women are human beings, people are worthy of respect to the extent that they, individually, act respectably, and women are not equal to men. If they were, we would not be discussing this issue because there would be no sex slavery. The existence of a traffic specifically in women because they are women proves that men and women are not the same, and no amount of law will change that fact.

UPDATE: Evil Bender answers the argument here, for those interested in following along at home.