{"id":1086,"date":"2011-07-17T10:35:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-17T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/?p=1086"},"modified":"2011-07-17T10:35:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-17T05:05:00","slug":"the-sainath-fallacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/2011\/07\/17\/the-sainath-fallacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sainath Fallacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure this fallacy has existed for many years and has already been described and named <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nizkor.org\/features\/fallacies\/\">here<\/a>, but I first came across it in P Sainath&#8217;s opeds. I brought it up again because it seems to have been spreading beyond Sainath in the recent past (where India is concerned).<\/p>\n<p>The Sainath fallacy is basically this: &#8220;How dare you outrage about Cause X when Cause Y is so much more outrageous!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Specific examples are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sainath himself: how dare the finance minister worry about the stock markets <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hindu.com\/2007\/10\/26\/stories\/2007102653981200.htm\">when India is so low on the Human Development Index<\/a>! (This actually combines the Sainath fallacy with misdirected outrage, another thing that seems to be spreading these days, but that&#8217;s a topic for another post)<\/li>\n<li>Richard Dawkins: <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2011\/07\/always_name_names.php#comment-4295492\">how dare atheist women worry about men behaving creepily when Muslim women are at risk of genital mutilation<\/a>!<\/li>\n<li>Hindutvawadis: how dare the media talk about human rights abuses in Kashmir\/ riots\/ whatever the media is talking about when they never address the issue of Kashmiri Pandit refugees!<\/li>\n<li>I can&#8217;t find links right now, but I vaguely remember people outraging that women were Slutwalking for the right to dress as they pleased instead of focusing on far more pressing issues like dowry deaths or female foeticide.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Basically, it&#8217;s not enough to be outraged yourself. Everyone else has to share your outrage. And moreover, all outrage over anything else is illegitimate.<\/p>\n<p>Dear Sainath, Dawkins, and other outragers: as long as people are expressing themselves with their own money, or on their own blogs, and not using your money or house or website to do it &#8211; how about you let them say whatever the fuck they want?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure this fallacy has existed for many years and has already been described and named here, but I first came across it in P Sainath&#8217;s opeds. I brought it up again because it seems to have been spreading beyond Sainath in the recent past (where India is concerned). The Sainath fallacy is basically this: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charlatans","category-society"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7AOU2-hw","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1087,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions\/1087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}