There used to be a Black&Decker advert that never failed to get me shouting at the screen. It had an image of a man struggling with some DIY task, and the voiceover said, "Because the evolution of a third hand is taking a bit too long..." (buy this gadget that will free up a hand for you.) Yes, yes, funny and light-hearted and everything, but everyone who talks about evolution as if it was something you could hand a shopping list to is playing right into the creationists' hands.

After loudly contradicting the television a few dozen times, I came up with another objection. We already did evolve something that's a sight more useful than a third hand: the ability to co-operate. Who needs a third hand hanging around all the time when your mate can lend you one whenever you happen to need it? (Of course, you may then have to put up with the mate hanging around all the time and drinking your beer, but nothing's perfect.)

The other night, I realised something else we've evolved that's relevent. We've evolved the ability to make hand-freeing gadgets (as well as annoying adverts for them, *sigh*). Any time we spot a deficiency in ourselves now, we don't have to wait a hundred generations and hope evolution irons it out. We can use technology to fill the gap in a fraction of the time. We've evolved the ability not to be limited by evolution.

There's a kind of argument that I find myself using again and again in my essays. "If you believe A, it's perfectly natural to suggest that B, or even C. However, A is contradicted by D, making B and C completely unreasonable."

Nice, huh? In principle, yes. In practice, it means writing things like this.

If pregnancy is just something that happens to a woman, having to continue an unwanted pregnancy isn't hardship enough to justify destroying a maybe-alive fetus. It may be annoying or inconvenient to be pregnant, but all a woman needs to do is grit her teeth and endure it for nine months and she can put the baby up for adoption at the end of it.

I feel the urge to plaster that with a dozen disclaimers, just in case anyone might think I actually believe that, and then jump in the shower and scrub myself with a wire brush.

I was commenting on a blog post about school uniforms, specifically the idea that we have to inflict all sorts of petty shit on children to prepare them for the petty shit they will face in the adult world. I said

When people say that, I can respect their honesty, but I'd be nervous about them teaching my

and I paused. Until last year, the next word would have been "children", or possibly "kids". There was nothing odd about discussing how I would feel about my children when I finally got around to having a couple.

But now, the next word needs to be "daughter". I have Andrea, and you'd better believe I'll do my damnedest to protect her from educators with bogus ideas of what she needs to be prepared for in life. I might have had all sorts of theoretical feelings towards the hypothetical future children, but these mama-tiger feelings towards Andrea are from the gut.

Then again, I hope Andrea gets a sibling one day. I don't like to think this is my one and only attempt at raising a baby. (That may be selfish. I don't know.) So I have one solid, flesh-and-blood daughter, and an undefined number of hypothetical future kids.

But if I say "kids", it'll confuse people. "I thought you just had the one child? Is there another one on the way already?" And even if it doesn't, it feels awkward to bracket Andrea along with the children as-yet unborn.

My daughter it is, then. But it was so much simpler when all my kids were hypothetical.

This is more relevant to Alas than here: whether because Livejournal has more of a friendly community feel or because I don't post anything controversial much here any more. But here, anyway, are some things not to do unless you want to annoy me, irritate me or reduce me to incandescent rage.

Changing the subject. I don't mind topic drift, or the odd off-topic remark, but it annoys me when I write a post about some nuance of the pro-choice position and return a few hours later to find everyone discussing for the seven-hundredth time Why Fetuses are People Too. Don't use my threads to ask questions that have been answered in depth elsewhere, and if someone asks such a question, point them without comment in the direction of a more appropriate place or just ignore them.

Pink-boxing. I might be a girl. I might be a boy. But I've been considering the subject for several years without finding a conclusive answer, so I don't believe it's possible to figure what gender I "really" am by reading a couple of my posts. Ask how I reconcile behaviour A with my professed male identity by all means, but don't tell me that behaviour A "proves" that I'm a girl.

Aspersions about my parenting ability. Since I don't write posts about whether I'm a good or bad parent, any comment on the subject is automatically a violation of the first rule. If you think I'm putting Andrea at risk, remember that the whole social service apparatus is watching me and has no complaints so far. Cheap shots about how much therapy she'll need in later life will only make me lose respect for you.

Calling me "Nicky". Nicky is not my legal name. (If you don't know what my legal name is, that's probably because it's none of your business.) Neither is it my preferred form of address. There is no reason to call me Nicky. Let me repeat that: THERE IS NO REASON TO CALL ME NICKY. Calling me Nicky is possibly the single most annoying thing it's possible to do to me (certainly online), and I will not be merciful if you do it.

Apart from all that, I'm pretty cool about most things.

The story so far: I wrote a post at Alas about what seemed to me to be an uncontroversial fact: that a woman can be raped by someone she's looking forward to having sex with. The bulk of the post described an incident where that almost happened to me, because I thought telling my story might make the abstract idea clearer to anyone who wasn't already convinced.

The fact must have been uncontroversial, since it was mostly lost in the noise. The first wave of comments respectfully pointed out that I'd taken a risk they considered stupid, and the discussion switched to the subject of whether it's appropriate to make women responsible for avoiding rape. Subsequent comments set up a free-for-all about my moral character, my fitness to be a parent, my sanity and even whether I was making up the story out of whole cloth.

At first, I wanted to set everyone straight, to point out that social services have no problem with my fucking the entire Airborne Division should I so desire, to ask what was so bizarre about the idea of wanting to get laid during pregnancy, to explain that I'm not interested in a "culture of monogamy" that has so far done nothing but hurt me. But the sheer weight of comments, and the sick suspicion that no-one would listen to my responses, dragged me down. I started to feel physically ill.

"That's what you get," I was told, "when you bare your soul online."

I think there's a parallel with the way rape victims are told they shouldn't have gone to that bar or been alone with that man. Rapists cannot respect a woman's consent and internet trolls cannot discuss the substance of an argument without resorting to vitriolic personal remarks, so anyone who doesn't want to become a victim must modify their behaviour to protect themselves. Don't be too sexual - you might get raped. Don't be too outspoken - you might get shamed.

I'm not going to stop being outspoken. (Not because I'm brave; just because I suspect I have more chance of turning myself right-handed.) I'm not shutting up here, and while I'll take legitimate criticism of my ideas, I don't believe "This woman is a whore" or "I'm glad she's not my mom" constitute legitimate criticism.

But what can I do? This sort of crap would die away drastically if it was socially unacceptable, just as rape would be vastly reduced if society stopped tacitly condoning it. But I can't bring about social change on my own. Sometimes I can convince myself that I'm adding a drip or two to the stream that will eventually wear away the stone, but the stone is fighting back. When I talk about how the world ought to be, I'm being impractically idealistic, or worse, whining that the world isn't the way I want it to be.

Words don't do a lot, not directly, but words are all I have here. I can't saw people's skulls open and physically rearrange their brains until they agree with the way I think the world should be. I can tell my stories and make my points as clearly as my writing skills allow; the rest is up to the reader.

And some days, I get so frustrated.

I'm not well enough versed in US politics to understand whether Santorum is a fringe lunatic or a serious influence on policy, but he certainly manages to talk a great deal of nonsense. Here he is marshalling some of the usual incoherent arguments for why same-sex couples must not be allowed the protections of marriage.

He starts talking about the "ideal": that the best family for a child is a married heterosexual pair and that this justifies leaving all other family structures out in the cold. The first half of the sentence is hard to back up without invoking the Holy Gender Roles, but I'm more interested in the second half, since it's just another example of the garbage I've been hearing sporadically ever since my pregnancy was confirmed.

Let's accept for the moment that dubious assertion that a man married to a woman is the best possible family for a child. What happens if that's not possible? Supposing the child's mother slept with men in an attempt to "cure" herself of loving women - an attempt she now realises was futile. Shall we demand that the mother marry a man, even though everything she knows about herself proves that the marriage will never be stable? Shall we take the child away from a loving mother and allow him to languish in the depths of the care system until a suitable married couple is found to adopt him? Or shall we accept that the situation is not ideal and support this family as we would any other?

I keep hearing that since X is better than Y, we should not adopt Y. If the alternative is to adopt X, the reasoning works, but when the choice lies between Y and the status quo Z, which may not be as good as Y, it falls to the ground.

It would be better for me to have a home of my own, rather than renting from a private landlord. Unfortunately, I have no means to buy a home of my own and no building society on earth would offer me a mortgage. My choice is between renting and continuing to sleep in my dad's spare room: following the logic above I would have to remain in the spare room.

The ideal is all very well when it's practicable, whether immediately or as a distant goal. But when it ignores the facts of life and the facts of human nature, I start to worry. And when it becomes an excuse to avoid making changes that benefit those the ideal was set up to defend, it becomes positively dangerous.

Devotion to the ideal at the expense of lesser possibilities is perfectionism at its most destructive. A constructive perfectionism that seeks to improve on what exists has its place in policy, although it must always be tempered with an understanding that true perfection can never be achieved and our challenge in this world is to do the best we can with what we have. A destructive perfectionism that seeks to destroy or at least bury what is imperfect can only bring pain, because true perfection can never be achieved.

By this point, the perfectionists usually start wailing that I've mischaracterised their arguments. They don't believe that the imperfect should be destroyed, only that we should continue to pursue the perfect.

We should pursue the perfect by ignoring every possibility that falls short of the lofty ideal, even when common sense suggests that the perfect is impossibly far out of reach? We have only two options open to us: the utopian ideal or the imperfect-in-every-way status quo? Nothing else may be considered?

I keep trying to understand the logic, but all I ever get is a headache.

We'll get the joke out of the way first. Of course I don't see things in black and white: I'm a Scunthorpe fan.

Seriously, I'm baffled why anyone would think I see things in black and white. I have the kind of twisting analytical mind that will look for an exception to any rule you name: show me a binary line in the sand and I'll see it as a challenge to find something lying right on that line. It's not always an advantage in civil conversation, but it's about as far from seeing things in black and white as you can get.

There are always several sides to any question, and I consider as many of them as I can think of. It doesn't stop me from rejecting the ones that don't make sense. Take creationism as an example. The case for evolution has support in the form of observations and validated predictions; the case for creationism consists of a series of rather ill-informed attacks on evolution. Until the latter turns up some positive evidence, the case will be weak enough to justify dismissing it.

I do the same thing with moral issues. The case for same-sex marriage is simply that committed couples should be able to take advantage of the state's sanction without distinctions as to the sex of the participants. The opposite side mainly consists of appeals to gender roles that my own experience tells me are too weak to support the case. The possibility that same-sex couples might enter into marriages of convenience doesn't bother me: there have been heterosexual marriages of convenience since marriage first conferred advantages and civilisation hasn't collapsed.

In both cases, the basic arguments rarely change. They rely heavily on assumptions and biases that go deeper than the subject at hand, which means it's unlikely that anyone who's formed an opinion will change it purely through debate. To convince me that same-sex marriage would be harmful to society, you would have to convince me that conventional gender roles are worth preserving no matter what the cost, and given my personality that's likely to be a hard sell.

I've said before that I don't think it's useful to have a mind so open that you contemplate nonsense as readily as you contemplate logic. Nor is it useful to return again and again to arguments that by their nature can reach no resolution. Recognising this is not the same as denying that there are several sides to any issue.

Often, which side of an issue you come down on depends what you most value. Creationists place a higher value on religious belief than on scientific truth; those who accept the evidence for evolution may well have a religious faith but they do not allow it to trump scientific truth. The bright dividing line between pro-life and pro-choice is whether you would rather protect the existence of the foetus or the bodily integrity of the mother if you could only protect one. These values are rarely examined directly, but they inform every moral or philosophical debate.

Values can change. Mine shifted as I grew up, sometimes slowly and sometimes dramatically. A single event can overturn an entire value system, but more often a simple accumulation of data modifies it over time. Even now, I'm refining my ideas of what's more important and considering how best to apply those ideas to life and argument. What I won't do is abandon something that makes sense on the basis of an argument that's just a variation of something I've heard a dozen times this week already.

If that constitutes seeing things in black and white, I guess I've been supporting Grimsby all these years.

I've recently supplemented my diet of blogs by checking out Respectful of Otters every couple of days. That's where I found this interesting post about the eugenics movement. The comments section is full of lively debate about intelligence and IQ, but my favourite comment has got to be this one:

Over the course of time, however, it has occurred to me that what I decry as "stupidity" can often be more accurately desribed as selfishness, compulsivity, introversion, extraversion, stubbornness, procrastination, inattention, emotional disturbance, difference of political, religious, social or academic opinion, or cutting in front of me in traffic.

Not only did it cause me to spray liquid from my nose, it's also got me thinking about behaviours I describe by the term stupidity. Here's a far-from-exhaustive list.

Arguing with someone who clearly knows much more about the topic of conversation than you do. One relative of mine who will remain nameless was a particularly bad offender, insisting that he knew more than me about a scholarship I'd been offered, among other things.

Saying "Laa, laa, I'm not listening" whenever someone refutes your argument. Among people older than ten, this is usually done in a metaphorical sense rather than a literal sense, but is no less stupid.

Attacking someone's spelling and/or grammar while making spelling and/or grammar mistakes of your own.

Doing something clearly counter-productive because you're unable to let go of assumptions that make it appear to be the best option.

Panicking at the first sight of anything that resembles maths. Yes, I can understand lack of self-esteem to some degree, but when you don't even try to overcome it I get frustrated.

Accusing other people of intellectual elitism because they said something you didn't understand. I can enjoy exercising my brain without thinking any less of yours, and if you'd like to understand what I just said I'll be happy to explain.

Turning a discussion of some complex question into a fight by saying defiantly "You think I'm stupid, don't you?" My answer to that will always be "I do now."

Loudly expressing opinions on a topic about which you know nothing, then telling better-informed people you're not interested in discussing it.

Expecting the world to be other than as it is because you would like it to be so.

Complaining about problems but making no effort to solve them.

Supporting the Team from South of Kirton Lindsey.

A cartoon, and a joke:

A man gets a flat tyre on a lonely country road at dusk. He doesn't have a jack, so he sets off in the direction of the only house he can see, hoping the inhabitant will be able to lend him a jack. It's a couple of miles, so he has plenty of time to think as he walks. "What if he won't lend me a jack?" he worries. "I'd think twice, if a complete stranger knocked on my door and asked to borrow a jack. I'd probably put him off with some excuse." He walks on a bit further. "He probably won't even answer the door. It's late, after all, and it's a pretty lonely area." He reaches the entrance to the driveway, and sees that there's only one upstairs window lighted. "He'll pretend he's already in bed so he doesn't even have to speak to me." This thought makes him furious, so he storms the last few yards and pounds on the door like a bailiff. The upstairs window opens, and a voice says, "Who's there?" The man says, "If you didn't want to lend me your jack, why didn't you bloody say so?"

In our family, this kind of thing happens so often that we now call it "borrowing jacks". When we have to interact with someone else, we decide in advance what their reaction will be and why, and we work ourselves up into a righteous fury until we barely register what they said and what we imagined they said.

I'm not immune. Writing has taught me to understand the other person's point of view, but it's also made me very very good at arguing with imaginary people. If I'm feeling slighted by someone close to me, I'm quite capable of constructing an elaborate philosophical system with far-reaching implications for our future relationship around the way they say "Good afternoon". The same imagination and empathy that lets me create characters people care about makes the system so plausible it takes an effort to remember it's purely hypothetical.

But I find it interesting to speculate about who else is doing this. How many of the accusations that get thrown around in heated debates come from the argument one party is conducting inside his own head? How many prejudices are fuelled by the unconscious substitution of the imagined motives for the known?

Borrowing jacks is a bad thing; it stifles discussion and fosters bad feeling. It persists because, like so many bad things, it arises out of a good thing: the impulse to see the other guy's point of view.

Very small children and those who suffer from autism cannot imagine that the other guy has a different point of view. If they were borrowing a jack, they would assume that the owner wants to lend it because they want to borrow it. That way lies unconscious selfishness that's painful for anyone on the receiving end. The ability to appreciate that he might not want to lend anyone his jack is the first step towards respecting his choice in the matter.

But respecting his choice means not making it for him. It's all very well to work out, from what you know of a person, what choice he's likely to make and what arguments are likely to sway him. You can even conclude that no argument will sway him and asking is a waste of time. But it's hardly reasonable to then blame him for refusing you when you didn't even give him the chance.

To make matters worse, a certain amount of interaction has to happen in our minds. We're not telepathic, so the best we can do is build up a picture of the thoughts and feelings of someone else as best we can from their actions. And that's often a flawed lens anyway. Culture biases us all, so that what in one person comes across as sensible rationality comes across in another as cynicism. Isolated in our own skulls, we can only make the best guesses we can.

So we're all borrowing jacks, every time we interact with anyone. It's only when our best guesses go badly wrong that I give the behaviour a name.

More fun at Alas, a Blog (scroll down to bru's comments). Someone has poured treacle into the gears of a discussion on SSM by suggesting that a gay marriage represents "zero gender diversity", and that when a man decides he would rather marry a man, this is sexist in the same way that excluding blacks from a business is racists.

The first thought that crossed my mind (since it was posted several days ago rather than today) was that it was some kind of parody or extremely subtle satire. But the poster denies hotly that it was anything other than serious argument. And now, another poster expects "open-mindedness" and an attempt to refute the arguments.

Obviously, there are degrees of open-mindedness. A completely closed mind will accept nothing that runs counter to already held views; a more open mind considers other views on their merits. A completely open mind might be capable of coming to grips with nonsense like bru's post, but I'm not sure that's an advantage.

If your mind is utterly closed, you'll learn nothing new. But if your mind is wide open, you'll also learn nothing new. Time that you could spend learning goes instead to the contemplation of ideas that less open-minded people wouldn't waste ten seconds on. You need some filters to what you'll consider, otherwise you're left with chaos.

The filters needn't be particularly tough. When I consider an idea, I see whether it's consistent with the state of the world as I've known it for 25 years, whether it's scientifically plausible, whether it uses words according to their approximate Chambers Twentieth-Century Dictionary meaning. If it passes those tests, I'll examine it according to my value system; if not, I'll just laugh and ridicule it.

I don't expect to win an award for open-mindedness. There are some things I consider, from my own experience, to be self-evident, and I'm not going to spend much time debating with people who refuse to see them. If we're not on the same page, we can go round and round for hours without coming to any conclusion. I like to argue, but I have my limits.

Of course, one person's time-wasting nonsense is another person's interesting theory. A particularly nice example of this is the six-day creationists who refuse to accept any evidence of evolution but condemn as closed-minded anyone who dismisses creationism. Minds tend to be open in a particular direction, like some kind of aerial.

And that's often the heart of the problem. If you're starting from the principle that gay people are sinners demanding special rights and I'm starting from the principle that they're regular people demanding some human dignity, no amount of logical argument will get us to meet. I'll look at your arguments and address them, but as long as I'm addressing them from my starting point rather than yours you won't be satisfied with my conclusions. And having an open mind shouldn't mean abandoning everything you believe.

Sometimes all you can do is agree to disagree. Sometimes it's better not to open the debate in the first place. And if you do think something is complete drivel from beginning to end, better to say so straight out and avoid wasting everyone's time.

Whenever I read the thoughts of progressive liberals, I come across the idea that there is a conservative bias in the media. And whenever I slum it on the other side of the tracks, I can hardly move for allegations of a liberal bias. What gives? Who's imagining things?

It occurs to me that mainstream media outlets don't exist to serve any specific ideology. Some serve a demographic with slightly left-of-centre views, others a demographic with slightly right-of-centre views, but that's not their purpose in life. Their purpose is to sell copies or attract viewers so they can gain advertising revenue. And the similarity of their pursuit of the bottom line is much greater than any differences in ideology.

If you want to attract consumers, you don't want to offend anyone. So controversial ideas from the edges of the spectrum are out, and comfortable middle-of-the-road conformity is in. The progressive liberal who believes gays should be full citizens just like straight folk and the right-winger who believes gays should be banned from teaching in case they corrupt our children both get ignored in the stampede for the safe notion that gays are OK, but we wouldn't want our daughter marrying one. The liberal and the conservative both see bias in the media towards their ideas because it's there in both cases.

All this is only true of those media outlets that are mainly motivated by the bottom line, of course. There are plenty of outlets that put ideology above sales, although market forces have hitherto dictated that they're not as successful. But now, the rise of the internet has given everyone with a modem his own op-ed column, including yours truly. We can spread our thoughts, limited only by our skill with words, html and self-promotion.

The trouble is, everyone else is doing it too. Whatever fringe ideas you have, you can get online and start spreading the word. And if you believe that the word is more important than, say, the truth, the fun can really start.

There are a lot of lies on the internet. There are a lot of half-truths, and friend-of-a-friend stories, and opinions masquerading as facts. And there's a lot of factual information, and no easy way of separating it from the rest. When I read the tenth site of the day that proves with clever logic or dubious quotes that black is white, freedom is slavery and Kerry is bin Laden, I start to wonder whether there is really such a place as America or whether it's all a complicated trick to make me feel stupid. What can I believe when lies are everywhere?

Most people turn scepticism on like a tap: sceptical of things they don't wish to believe and credulous when something agrees with ideas they already have in place. Which is why this story went down so well with pro-lifers and Kerry-haters, while Kerry supporters and pro-choicers saw fit to question the source. Those of us who believe the truth is more important than party politics will hopefully look deeper even when a story seems to confirm our beliefs, but it's not guaranteed by any means.

Which is one reason why it's good to engage in debate with your polar opposite. If there's a flaw in your argument anywhere, a good opponent will find it. Searching for the flaws yourself often produces a parade of strawmen; getting your opponent to do the job finds any hint of ambiguity that could possibly be wrung from the question.

But not all opponents work. The debate flows best if both parties are civilised, respectful, willing to look at their own arguments, if not values, with some scepticism and, above all, honest. Without respect, debate degenerates into ad-hom attacks and meaningless comparisons to Hitler, Stalin etcetera ad nauseam. Without scepticism to their own arguments, the debate becomes a bickering match of "my expert is better then yours, so nuh". And without honesty, the old excuse of "media bias" can be used to explain away why no mainstream outlet reported this fascinating story of Kerry sacrificing babies to Satan while screwing a gazelle.

Of course, civilised debate usually ends in a recognition that my argument and yours arise from fundamentally different worldviews, and that neither can be called right or wrong in any absolute way. But that's not to say it's a waste of time. It sharpens the wits and gives a supply of new angles to consider the question from. And when it's done, by way of relaxation, you can always go and roast some trolls.

In the more anonymous kinds of forum, when debate gets out of hand, you can often spot the ad hominem attack known as a spelling flame. Rather than deal with the substance of his opponent's argument, a spelling flamer takes apart his opponent's spelling, grammar and punctuation. Sometimes this happens alongside an intellectual attack on the argument, by means of that useful little word [sic], and sometimes it's the only argument.

Spelling flames are pretty much below the belt. Even an anal grammar freak like me can admit that how someone spells doesn't correlate with the logic of his argument, although it's true that the really bad assaults on the language often go hand in hand with muddy thought processes, illogical arguments and the electronic equivalent of spittle around the mouth. So while it's fun to roast the garbled expressions of a troll who's already proved himself impervious to logical argument, spelling flames shouldn't be a substitute for debate.

But what happens in the opposite situation? When someone constructs a good case that you agree with, and expresses it with horror like "it's effect" and "you're marriage"? I have a hard time reading things that display such ignorance of the apostrophe, whether I agree with them or not. The misplaced punctuation marks draw my eye in first, and the meaning comes in a poor second.

I know this is a pet peeve of mine. I know that on any rational scale equality for gays is more important than correct use of the apostrophe. But my mind is just better able to absorb an argument if it's presented in good English, and I'm not the only person this affects.

I'm tempted to drop the offending writers a line privately and let them know that while I agree with what they're saying, I think a little proofreading would give it more of an impact. But I don't know how to express it without making it sound like another kind of spelling flame.

I found the website of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement while surfing, and I have to say it's got me good and steamed.

Firstly, I think they're just out to grab attention. What they're advocating is basically just responsible reproduction, so the "Extinction" label is slightly over the top. They deal in hyperbole about how we're killing the earth and are about to descend into barbarism due to overcrowding, and yet their only solution is for all good and noble people to get the snip. I can't shake the idea that it's all some grand hoax to see what drivel people will believe when it's served up in printed form, but they express enough views I've heard from sincere people to make them worth discussing.

They talk about the damage we've done to the ecosystem, illustrated with the familiar statistics. What they fail to mention is that animals also impact on their environments. We are at least capable of recognising the effect we have and taking some steps to repair any damage done. The site is full of arguments that the energy we expend reproducing could be better spent in other areas; equally one could say the energy they expend in mea culpas would be better spent putting right what's gone wrong.

But what really got me angry was the rejection of the choice to have children. They have a chart which lists stated reasons for having children, then glibly dismisses each as being founded in some selfish desire or emotional deficiency. According to them, all reasons for procreating are bad, and good and noble people will voluntarily abstain.

I've never seen this reasoning given a name, so I've christened it the Anchovy Fallacy. From a sample reasoning: "I prefer my pizza without anchovies, therefore anyone who claims to like anchovies on their pizza must have some mental or emotional disorder." In this case, the personal choice not to reproduce has been confused with some essential absolute rightness of that choice.

If you don't want kids, that's cool. If you feel it's good and noble not to have kids, that's also cool. But if you try to tell me I'm insecure and co-dependant because I do want kids, you've broken the bounds of civilised discourse. And if you argue that your philosophy has any compelling force in its own right, you've broken the bounds of logic too.

It's strange that many people who have no difficulty understanding pizza toppings as personal choice will try to find the hidden emotional deficiency that drives my career choice, or my sexuality, or my reproductive choice. I've had my dress sense used to "prove" my low self-esteem, my moral code held up as an example of how much I hate myself, my love of Scunthorpe cited as evidence of my wish to annihilate my personality. The idea that these are just my choices doesn't occur to some people.

They condemn the emotional responses of their opponents because they aren't logical, but neither is it logical to say we should stop procreating because the world's in such a state. It's an emotional preference for a given solution, dressed up in logic and rhetoric and garnished with insults to the psychological wellbeing of anyone who takes a different view. They repeat over and over that the V stands for voluntary, but they seem to want to shame everyone into joining them. At the risk of falling into the same trap, it's a normal emotional urge to want everyone on your side, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable to try all tactics to achieve that.

Why is political correctness supposed to be a modern liberal invention?

Euphemism is probably as old as language itself. Certainly the ancient Greeks knew about it, calling the Furies "Kindly Ones" in the hope they would take the hint. There's something deep in human nature that shrinks from putting the unpleasant into precise words.

Blunting the language with excessive euphemism isn't new either. In 1954, Ernest Gowers raged against the harm being done to the language by "assigning the blameless word lavatory to a place where there is nowhere to wash". Nowadays, we tend to think of lavatory as an exact, non-euphemistic term. Language changes, and every change is greeted with hand-wringing in certain quarters.

Then there's the social engineering aspect of PC. The idea that if we change the words people use, we'll change their attitudes. It's easy to see that it won't work, that the replacement words will end up as tainted as lavatory did by the meaning attached to them, but it's not a new idea. George Orwell satirised it with Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

If we eliminate euphemism and social engineering from the definition of PC, we're not left with a lot. And examining the use of the word more closely, you notice something odd. When was the last time you heard a liberal say something was or wasn't PC?

Occasionally, a liberal may chide someone less liberal, "That's not very PC," but instances of this are drowned by the conservatives, who declare almost everything PC, frequently followed by the word "bullshit".

Anything conservatives disagree with is PC bullshit. The idea that a male brain can be born in a female body, backed up by research and accepted by medical professionals, is PC bullshit. The idea that skill at crafts is as valid as skill at mathematics is PC bullshit. The idea that piss-poor defendants whose lawyers fall asleep in court get sentenced to death much more often than wealthy defendants who can afford a crack legal team is PC bullshit. The idea that no-one should be pressurised to pray to a god they don't accept is PC bullshit.

Who's screwing the language now?

Once, there was a concept called tact. Most people who liked living in a civilised society saw the need for tact. People who were raised Christian, unless they went to a particularly twisted church, knew that Jesus told his followers to treat others as they would wish to be treated. Some people were tactless, sure, but they were unpopular. Speaking out against tact was not a great vote-winner.

But people who would recoil in shock at the suggestion "Let us be tactless" embrace the idea "Let us throw off the shackles of PC". By changing its name, conservatives have made tact into the enemy. All they have to do to keep tact forever submerged is to create a parade of strawmen and attribute them all to "PC bullshit".

I don't know where PC came from. I guess it started as a well-meant but doomed attempt at social engineering. It became a bandwagon for the kind of people who jump on bandwagons, and then the conservatives saw how they could turn it into a stick to beat liberals with. I don't much care.

I'm standing up for tact. Let us avoid the worst excesses of PC by all means (although I suspect many of them are strawmen), but let us not forget to treat our fellow men with the consideration they deserve. Let us examine the facts without blinkers, and let us judge each case, not according to what is or isn't PC but according to what's just.

Freedom of speech is one of the most glorious rights we enjoy - and one of the most frightening. Because freedom of speech, if it is to mean anything at all, includes the freedom to say unpopular things. It includes the freedom to say that gays are deviant and need to be "cured", freedom to say non-Christians are going to hell, freedom to say the Nazis actually had a lot of good ideas. When people speak freely and say such things, our duty as members of a free and democratic society is not to gag them. It is to speak freely against them, to make the opposite case and to continue making the opposite case until hearers are in no doubt as to what is reasonable.

As the internet becomes more widely available, it becomes easier to speak freely. For the cost of a free GeoCities account, you can have your own press, and make your opinions accessible to a worldwide audience.

There is no censorship online. ISPs have restrictions as to what content you may have on a site they host, but some have lax restrictions or decline to enforce what they have. Your site is your castle, or as I heard it described, your living room.

You can say what you choose. If you want to take a stand against the excesses of PC, no-one's going to stop you. If you want to tell people who disagree with you that they're educationally subnormal, morally equivalent to child molesters or simply ignorant, they may complain but they can't prevent you from exercising your right to free speech.

Freedom of speech includes the freedom to be an asshole. Otherwise it's not freedom.

But suppose you have two friends. Suppose these people have been solid supporters of yours. Imagine you call these people liars for attempting to define themselves. Imagine you tell them that you, who have not lived their life, understand what they are better than they do, and better than psychiatric professionals do. Imagine you tell them in harsh, cold and patronising tones that they're deluding themselves.

You have every right, as a citizen of a free country, to do these things. But they have every right to form an opinion of you based on them.

If you don't respect people, it's likely they'll cease to respect you. If you don't accept them for what they really are, but insist on imposing what you believe they should be upon them, they will see through that. They will know what a hypocrite you are, making use of their friendship when you see fit but not taking the time or the trouble to understand them.

You always have the right to act like an asshole. But the rest of the world has the right not to put up with it.

I have to wonder what goes through some people's minds.

Terrorists, for example. The home-grown variety in Ireland, the Palestinians, Basque separatists. They have something they believe in, something they want enough to fight and die for, and whatever you feel on the issue you have to admire their commitment. Sometimes I even agree with the cause they're fighting for.

But then they start killing people, and they lose me.

Logically, of course, the cause isn't weakened by the fact that some of its supporters are murderers. Any list of logical fallacies includes the tactic of trying to discredit your opponent by saying Hitler held similar views. But who takes up their position based on logic alone? Most of us, human as we are, won't jump onto a bandwagon filled with murderers unless we already care passionately about the cause.

And then there are liberals who will use anything they can find to discredit Bush. They quote him out of context, they distort, sometimes they even utter provable lies.

Let's make this clear: I don't support the man. I find it worrying that someone so willing to bow to right-wing views has so much power. I find it incredible that someone with so little political intelligence managed to become President of the USA. I'd sleep easier if he was removed from office.

But lying isn't going to achieve that.

Lying is going to make moderates shake their heads and say "Those crazy liberals." And they'll go out and vote for Bush, because if his opponents have so little integrity, he must be the better choice.

The proverb says that the end justifies the means, but often it doesn't. Often the means bring the end into disrepute.

A colleague said today that sex reassignment surgery is as pointlessly vain as breast enlargement or a facelift. When I tried to explain that it's actually an attempt to correct a birth defect, he refused to listen.

In the thread I mentioned in yesterday's entry, several people said that the Muslim girl was trying to rebel and get her own way. And when other forumites tried to explain the religious law she was adhering to, they refused to listen.

I don't mind ignorance that comes simply from lack of knowledge. If you've never heard of the studies showing that transsexualism is literally a case of a male brain in a female body or vice versa, it will indeed seem as though transfolk are tinkering with their bodies for no good reason. And if you don't know enough about what Muslims believe to understand why they can't just ditch their headscarves, you may indeed feel that the girl is making a lot of fuss about nothing.

But when someone takes the trouble to explain the facts to you, and you choose to ignore them, you're stepping into a completely different realm of ignorance. The same realm as those kids inhabited who used to put their fingers in their ears and say "Laa laa laa" when they knew you were about to prove them wrong. The realm of people who enjoy their ignorance.

I understand the immediate shrinking from evidence that could prove you wrong. It's not good for your ego to be proved wrong, and I like to guard my ego as much as the next man. But sooner or later, you have to admit you're wrong. Attempting to rearrange the universe so you're right and everyone else is wrong only leads to trouble.

And there's another kind of ignorance by choice that I understand even less. People at work ask me how I calculate certain values to quote to clients, then cut me off in my first sentence, saying "That's far too technical for me." Friends start discussing topics in physics with me, but the moment they come to something they don't understand, say "I'm just stupid, obviously."

Not understanding isn't stupid. We're not omniscient beings here, we're human, and we all have things we don't understand. And if you choose to say "It would take too long to understand physics and bring me no benefit, I'll just leave it," that's not stupid either. Lacking an infinite timespan to learn everything in, we all have to make prioritisation choices.

But when you ask, it does suggest you want to know. And if you want to know but can't summon up the mental effort to listen to the first sentence of the explanation, that strike me as rather stupid.