Officially named Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement, this graphic categorises the quality of an argument, from clear refutation right down to simply insulting the other person. It is a visual representation of Paul Graham’s excellent piece from 2008 How to Disagree: a short but incredibly clear blog article which I really recommend reading.
The reason this graphic is a pyramid is not just to show what’s ‘better’; but because, as Graham points out in his original piece, the higher up the pyramid you go, the harder work it is and the fewer examples you will find used online. It is much easier to insult the writer or question their legitimacy than to counter the central points of an essay. Lengthy replies are not easy and frankly are often pointless in a public forum as you risk playing Argument Whack-a-mole.
But this tool is incredibly valuable to help us take a cool look at what is actually being said, and how we are responding. While writing this I got distracted by Facebook (obviously) and watched this excellent short video by Sofie Hagen about the problem with ‘body positivity’. Sofie is a fat woman who has a presence on the internet and so receives constant abuse dressed up as legitimate debate. Stepping away from the emotions raised by the Facebook comments for a moment and rating them against the above scale gives us a chance to see them for what they are: vitriol against a fat woman for existing unapologetically.
I could respond to any of these comments and get into an argument about whether fat people are automatically a drain on the NHS, whether thin people are always healthy, about invisible illness, or about how everyone deserves respect as a human regardless of body size. I could point out that poverty increases the risk of obesity, that cheaper food is more fattening and less nutritious; and that obesity correlates with poverty and is therefore not a result of greediness, as many of the comments imply.
But if I do this, I am getting drawn into arguments that do not refute, address, or even acknowledge the central point the original author was making. Her video is not about any of these things at all.
One of the reasons I wanted to start writing this blog, this long list of arguments against feminism and why they are wrong, is to get under the skin of what is really going on during these debates, to stop getting sucked into arguments with people who don’t want to care, who want to just carry on holding their own prejudices and anger, and to stop draining my own energy.
In order to do this, it’s important to have facts and statistics and knowledge – about domestic abuse, abortion, rape, childcare, inequality; about all the things feminists care about. But sometimes it’s more useful to be armed with knowledge about arguing. Because arguing is what women come up against every day on social media, at work, at school, in the street, in the pub, from their elected leaders in parliament; wherever and whenever women’s rights are affected. Which, let’s face it, is everywhere, all the time.
Sometimes it’s good to have a tool that recognises when we are arguing against a legitimate point, when to call out the other person’s bullshit, and when to just walk away.
Wrong Arguments 