There’s some great infographics floating around talking about logical fallacies, like this one, so I’m not going to beat a dead horse talking about strawmen and ad hominem. Instead I’m going to sink my teeth into avery special logical fallacy: Special Pleading.





Special Pleading

Often combined with the appeal to emotion, this is one of the most common justification for bullshit identity politics, used by desperate tumblrites trying to get in on the “oppressed minority” action despite not fitting any of the criteria of a said minority.



Special Pleading for Asexuality

Here I have an excellent example of special pleading from spiritgurgle, who edited and then deleted her very confident post after people started laughing at it:

There is a difference between sexual attraction and sensual attraction. Only main difference is the actual penetrative sex. Like you can look at someone and think “damn I want to get close to naked and touch them without having sex” and still be asexual. Repeat after me:

I AM ASEXUAL ENOUGH AND NO ONE CAN TELL ME OTHERWISE.[…]



Do you see any inconsistencies here? The most basic definition of an asexual person is one who does not experience sexual attraction, which you’d think would go hand in hand with not wanting to have sex. We understand, of course, that sometimes people have sex of curiosity, or to please a partner, but this is something wholly different from repeatedly deciding to engage in sex because you enjoy it and then insisting it’s not “sex” because an extremity doesn’t enter an orifice.



It’s the same contradiction you get when a fervently anti-gay politician is found to be a fan of the D and insists that repeatedly soliciting sex in the men’s room and hiring male prostitutes does not make them gay.



It’s the same contradiction you get when straight asexuals act entitled to being part of the gay community despite being, you know, straight people who like the opposite sex but don’t want to have sex with them.



In theory at least, since many dispute the idea of asexual meaning “lacking sexual interest” whenever they have the chance. By `gurgle’s definition, every single person who regularly eats out a lady, engages in mutual masturbation, or humps their partner without an extremity entering an orifice, can still qualify as asexual just as long as they write a philosophical treatise on how it’s ~sensual~ attraction and has nothing to do with sex.



When you start to ignore people who want you to never dare question their “definitions” of words, you start seeing other inconsistencies with the asexual label, such as the “gray A” category, which Avenwiki defines as “those who do not normally experience sexual attraction but do experience it sometimes”. Well shit, son. There’s a word for people like that; people who experience sexual attraction. You know, those slutty sexuals who make up 99% of the world’s population.



Special Pleading for Identifying as Trans*



Special pleading is also a stand-by logical fallacy of transtrenders, an irritating and vocal component of the tumblr “trans” community who claim to be trans despite experiencing no dysphoria whatsoever.



A quick refresher on the definition of trans: this term was created to describe people who were uncomfortable with their sexual characteristics and wanted to transition to the opposite sex. It was later found that this condition developed due to irregular brain development before birth. Trans people’s distress can be exacerbated by people expecting them to act as their gender role but this is not the root cause of dysphoria, because an idea of one’s gender is not the same as socially-assigned ideas of what men and women should act like.



Transtrenders are individuals who call themselves trans despite not experiencing a persistent feeling that their sex is not quite right. They are typically cross-dressers, people who feel uncomfortable with the social roles imposed upon them or, the most damaging, people who decide that gender is a social construct and they can therefore call themselves whatever they want. Special pleading occurs when such individuals talk about how they love their sexual characteristics, have no desire to transition but will tear into you as cis scum for daring to question their trans identity. In spite of them not actually being trans.

Another wonderful irritant, specific to the FtM community, is people who claim to be lesbian and FtM. Of course, the usual tumblr response is “what do you care what people identify as”? I care because I hate stupid bullshit. The definition of a lesbian is a woman who is attracted to women. The definition of an FtM individual is someone whose gender is male and who unfortunately happened to be born into a female body. A trans man can not simultaneously be both a man and a lesbian anymore than a biological man can be a lesbian. To argue otherwise is another example of special pleading, because you are saying “even though this is the definition, I’m right even though all evidence points to the contrary”.

Special pleading, I believe, reeks of entitlement regardless of the person doing the pleading. A lot of people on tumblr are so on board with the idea of “no one can define your identity but you” that they will regularly argue they deserve to be part of X group. When people point out that not only do they not have any reasoning to support their claim, but in fact their experience is in direct contrast to the criteria, they will respond with “I am X and nobody can tell me otherwise”.

The fact remains though, that when you have no grounds to support your claim, all the special pleading in the world won’t make you X, Y, or Z.