RAIL

Note: As of this posting, RAIL has adopted the convention of posting the author’s name and institutional affiliation at the bottom of each article.

 

What do patterns of abusive argumentation reveal?  Feminists maintain that we receive a disproportionate level of abusive responses to our argumentation, and a disproportionate level of abuse, even relative to the level of anger and hatred on the internet.  Because people are skeptical about the prevalence and level of verbal abuse that feminists receive, and because abusive comments are deleted on many websites, feminist video blogger Anita Sarkeesian AKA “Feminist Frequency” has archived the response to her argument-based request for research support. More details can be found in The New Statesman, and I would add that I (and other feminist instructors) occasionally receive sexist abuse directed at the feminist course content in anonymous comments that are part of our student evaluations of teaching. Anonymity may be a crucial factor in this phenomenon.

Doug Walton’s account of the ad baculum fallacy suggests it results from an illegitimate shift in the type of dialogue, toward a negotiation dialogue in which threats might be appropriate, or even a quarrel in which injury is the goal.  If correct, that analysis suggests that the abusers refuse to engage feminist arguments in the spirit in which they are intended — assuming that feminists are not indeed embarking on a negotiation initially that would make the threats less problematic.  In Sarkeesian’s case she was arguing for donations, clearly aiming to persuade, and so that goal was denied by the abuse.

So the fallacy analysis tells us something that we don’t get from merely identifying the abuse as an attempt to silence feminists, and suggests there is a particular strategy involved, an attempt to transform an discussion into a power play. It’s not just excessive use of force but categorically erroneous use of force, an attempt to undermine feminist purposes tout court.   So the argument analysis can explain the mechanics of the silencing effect in its most immediate operation.

Argument analysis offers no remedy for the problem on the internet except to provide extra justification for deleting abusive comments, and no account of the long-term chill and harm that remains even when comments are deleted. Yet it might help justify the legal culpability for trolls which The New Statesman suggests is becoming increasingly possible by showing how freedom of speech is limited by abusive comments.  As Rae Langton has argued, speech that interferes with another’s freedom of speech is a strong case for censorship, and it may also be a case for punishment if that punishment has a deterrent effect.

Dr. Catherine Hundleby
Associate Professor & Graduate Director, Philosophy
Cross-appointed to Women’s Studies
Fellow, Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric
University of Windsor