So some Men’s Rightsers are up in arms because the powers that be at Wikipedia just deleted a page devoted to a phony “logical fallacy” invented by a friend of Paul Elam. According to the now-deleted Wikipedia page, “the apex fallacy refers to judging groups primarily by the success or failure at those at the top rungs (the apex, such as the 1%) of society, rather than collective success of a group.”
In other words, it’s a convenient way for MRAs to hand-wave away any evidence that men, collectively, have more power than women. Mention that men hold the overwhelming majority of powerful positions in the worlds of politics and business, and, I don’t know, podiatry, and MRAs will shout “apex fallacy” and do a little victory dance. Rich and powerful dudes don’t count, because of poor and powerless dudes!
On the Wikipedia discussion page devoted to the question of deleting the apex fallacy entry, one Wikipedia editor – who voted “strong delete” – noted that
This is men’s rights activist astroturfing. The guy above [in the discussion] isn’t posting examples of its usage because they’re all on websites showcasing brutal misogyny and hateful ignorance, like A Voice for Men.
He’s got a point. When I did a Google search for the term, my top ten results (which may be different than your top ten results, because that’s how Google works) included posts on The Spearhead; The Men’s Rights subreddit; Genderratic (TyphonBlue’s blog); Emma the Emo’s Emo Musings; and a tweet from the little-followed Twitter account of someone calling himself Astrokid MHRA. In other words, five of the ten results were MRA sites, several of them with explicit links to A Voice for Men. (That “MHRA” is a dead giveaway.)
The top result, meanwhile, linked to a post on the blog of the delightful Stonerwithaboner, who doesn’t consider himself an MRA, as far as I know. But he’s still kind of a shit, and he did recently confess to being (as I suspected) the person who was going around posting comments on manosphere sites as David H. F*cktrelle, Male Feminist Extraordinaire ™.
So, in other words , I think it’s fair to say that the term “apex fallacy” has not yet achieved academic or philosophical respectability just yet.
The deleted Wikipedia page attributes the term “apex fallacy” to Helen Smith, a psychologist who is a longtime friend to A Voice for Men, and dates it to an interview Smith gave to the odious Bernard Chapin in 2008.
But the idea seems to be a simple reworking of a bad idea that’s been floating around in Men’s Rights circles for a lot longer than that.
Back in the 1990s, New Zealand Men’s Rights Activist Peter Zohrab came up with what he called the “Frontman Fallacy,” a notion he spread via the alt.mens-rights newsgroup on Usenet and elsewhere; the term has been widely adopted in Men’s Rights circles since then. As Zohrab defined the term,
the Frontman Fallacy is the mistaken belief that people (men, specifically) who are in positions of authority in democratic systems use their power mainly to benefit the categories of people (the category of “men”, in particular) that they belong to themselves.
So, in other words, if you mention that men hold the overwhelming majority of powerful positions in the worlds of politics, business, and podiatry, MRAs will shout out “frontman fallacy” and do a little victory dance. Rich and powerful dudes don’t count, because of poor and powerless dudes!
Like the extremely similar “apex fallacy,” this idea is rather too silly and facile to count as a real fallacy, but it has proven quite popular with MRAs. Looking through the google search results for “frontman fallacy,” I see links to a wide assortment of MRA sites using the term, including AVFM, Genderratic, Stand Your Ground, Backlash.com, Toysoldier, Mensactivism.org, Pro-Male Anti-Feminist Tech, Fathersmanifesto.net, Mensaid.com, and some others. Like “apex fallacy” it hasn’t made much progress outside the Men’s Rights movement.
What’s interesting about this to me is that this is not the only bad idea that Peter Zohrab has ever had.
Indeed, Zohrab had some extremely bad ideas about Marc Lepine, the woman-hating antifeminist who murdered 14 women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989.
While Zohrab, to my knowledge, never explicitly justified Lepine’s killings, he described the massacre in one notorious internet posting as an “Extremist Protest Against Media Censorship.” Of Lepine himself, he wrote
I bet you don’t know he wasn’t a misogynist – because you have been conned by the media (as usual). In fact, he was a Men’s Rights activist (albeit an extremist one), and one of the things he was protesting about was media censorship.
Zohrab went on to say that it was clear from Lepine’s writings – or at least writing alleged to have been written by him — that
he [was] against Feminists — not against women — he clearly states that he is protesting against various issues which are aspects of Feminist sexism.
Indeed, Zohrab seems not only sympathetic towards Lepine’s “cause” but seems to feel that he was being unfairly misrepresented:
The write-ups on Marc Lepine concentrate on character-assassination. They take things out of context, in the same way that fathers are slandered in the divorce/family court, in order to deprive them of custody or access. …
Marc Lepine was not only not sexist, as the media stated – he was actually fighting sexism!
Lots of MRAs love talking about the “frontman fallacy” or the new and improved “apex fallacy.” They don’t seem much interested in talking about Zohrab himself.
Like it or not, MRAs, this man is one of the leading figures in the emergence of the Men’s Rights movement online, and in the intellectual history of the movement, such as it is.
If I were a bit more paranoid, I might wonder if the emergence of the “apex fallacy” was some sort of an attempt as a rebranding, an attempt to push the “frontman fallacy” and its creator, the old, odd duck Peter Zohrab, with his embarrassingly sympathetic feelings toward a mass murderer of women, down that famous memory hole.
P.S. Don’t read the comments to that MensActivism.org posting, unless you want to get really depressed.
Karinn sounds a lot like Alex with that there tone troll. How precious.
Since Sarr didn’t bother to read any of what came before her bloviating, I’m not sure we should bother with anything else she says.
Good luck in finding this unicorn of a neutral space, cupcake.
Karin is making about as much sense as Glenn Beck at this point (and perhaps crying in the supermarket). I did laugh pretty hard at parts of hir “response,” though, so thank for that I guess. So much goalpost shifting and misdirection…
So Zarin’s whole argument boils down to zer claim that women have more power than men because men hold almost all the positions of power.
Apparently the proof of women’s greater power is that women have a small voting majority (minor effect), women have lobbyists and (Zarin claims)there are examples of high-profile politicians standing up for women but none for them standing up for men.
Women’s lack of bodily autonomy, their being systematically stripped of access to contraception and abortion services etc are just issues which in no way counter the argument that women have more power than men.
So, in Zarin’s world (which is, apparently the USA) , if you have lobbyists, you’ve the power. There must be so many minority interest groups delightes to hear this. And to know that any bigotry, violence and removal of rights which they suffer are merely those little issues thsat niggle anyone in power.
I wonder what Zarin believes are the real issues that the relatively powerless men suffer … issues which would be oh so solvable if only men had more power than women…
I also wonder at what point I started spelling Karin with a “Z”. /embarrassed
(emphasis mine)
I was going to point out some of Karin’s wrong, but then I saw that ze won’t even go back to read zir own comments.
RE: (paraphrasing)’Why should poor little old me have to read 700(!) comments to post here T_T?’
You wouldn’t have to read all of them, here on page one Ian explains why looking at the apex is worthwhile.
Karin, I was the one who brought your profile picture. I said before that I had a problem taking an ordinary person’s photo for your own Facebook picture. It implies that you are that person when you’re not. I find that dishonest. This site has had a huge problem with sock puppets and when someone misrepresents who they are, we suspect the commenter is sockpuppeting. Can you explain why it’s bigotry to point out your dishonesty?
No one is obligated to respond to your questions, either. However, you are, by common internet courtesy, obligated to read the rest of the comments in the thread to see if your points have already been addressed. They have. People have better things to do that repeat themselves over and over to someone who is dishonest and isn’t listening.
Argenti – JAQing added. Man, Karin’s a bore.
*is trampled by herd of teal deer*
@augzz, that was awesome. My favourite part was when you repeated a whole section, like an artist comment on Karin’s comments, a meta-Karin. 😉
Yes, and the rest of the thread. But this isn’t about me. You asked why you should be expected to read before commenting, and I answered.
Yes. Even a cursory look at our politics will show this to be true in the US, as I said above; I’m sure other people can tell you how this plays out in their own countries.
That doesn’t follow from what Argenti said. I thought you were doing logic?
You’re missing my point: if women have all the political power in the US, why are our rights being threatened? What definition of power are you working with?
When did you make a valid argument? And no, lots of people telling you you’re wrong isn’t necessarily bullying – you might just be wrong. Like many of our trolls, you ignore the well-reasoned and well-written responses to your claims and try to refocus the discussion on the people who aren’t coddling you in the hope that you can salvage a moral victory (rhetorical victory being well out of your grasp at this point).
There is no “neutrality” on matters of fact. Would you also whine about “bullying” and “neutrality” is you wandered into a biology forum and started blathering about creationism?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say yes, that’s exactly what would happen.
WRT the Nazi/KKK bit, couldn’t one make a decent argument that:
1) The Jews did (eventually) have a lobby, the Allied Powers.
2) The KKK was/is a lobby (for “traditional [white] American values”).
It does kind of play fast and loose with the definition of lobby, but it seems like that was already happening.
In your little analogy here: The presence of a lobby (feminists) indicates a need for a lobby. Then you ask if this also works for the KKK; which is neither here nor there as we are not talking about the KKK. However, you little bit of sophistry neatly equates feminism with the KKK. You ask if the absence of a lobby indicates a group doesn’t need it, then directly compare the situation of men in today’s society with the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany. In that little metaphor, feminism becomes Nazism. Of course, neither the situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany or the Nazis are being discussed. In fact such metaphors don’t make sense and you used them only to be able to suggest that feminists, with their lobby, is in the same position as the KKK and Nazis. You are either a fucking idiot, or a disingenuous little shit.
The spouses of powerful men manipulating those men to do their bidding. When asked how this could be accomplished when said powerful man is unwilling to do the bidding of said spouse, you suggest blackmail. Well, gee, isn’t that a wonderful way to accomplish things. You words are right there, you disingenuous little shit.
You have yet to provide any evidence that men as a group are disadvantaged. And yes, when you are the so-called “Apex Fallacy,” that is exactly what you are doing. From the OP, which you claimed to have read:
So where’s your evidence? You’ve provided none.
Bullshit. Ally has answered this twice.
pecunium answered that. Argenti answered that. Why are you gnoring their answers?
So, if its not relevant to the discussion, why did you bring it up? Just talking out your ass here?
Bullshit. Comparing something to the Third Reich, when there is absolutely nothing to justify that comparison at all, is a tactic used to shut down the discussion. It also minimizes the evil and horror of the Third Reich. By the way, are conceding here that you are comparing feminism to the Third Reich?
Prove that women have more political representation. You have not proven anything. Are you conceding that men as a group are not disadvantaged, thus disproving the “Apex Fallacy?”
“Which ones? I
said many thingsused many words to say nothing.FTFY.
Karin (lousy speller) Sarr: Don’t twist my words. I said clearly that I don’t believe this to be happening in any way relevant to this discussion. I only said that it CAN happen
Again, you admit to making specious arguments. You try to buTtress a claim with, “X”, and when challenged say, “Well, it COULD happen”.
I could eat a lot of mud from a mine tailing and shit gold nuggets, but it’s 1: not likely and 2: not probative, just like your bullshit about blackmail.
What are you so afraid of in my writing that you have to go to the trouble of trying to look for problems with my profile photo to divert attention away from the issues at hand?
Oh, bubbleh it’s not about fear of your writing, it’s about your credibility as an honest debater (which, see above, you have precious little of).
Why should I provide evidence for something I never claimed?
You did claim that women have more representation than men.
That’s another lie. I gave that as one example, not for how women can weild power but for how a male politician might NOT be weilding the power you ascribe to him.
Which means you weren’t actually making an argument. It’s also pretty rich that someone who ignores an important qualifier in someone else’s argument tries to insist on the merit of an invalidating* modifier in their own writing.
Moreover, even if you were correct, your assertions about male politicians being controlled by women aren’t valid unless you can show that enough are so affected as to make an, overall, twofold effect. 1: they have to have a strong benefit to women, and 2: have to do that to the point they fail to represent men.
Because your claim was Women in fact have far more political representation and that’s easily shown in multiple ways.
Which ways you’ve not even tried to show. Instead you spin fairy tales about how it might be possible for women to manipulate men who are in office. Which is all well and good (even if, when challenged you back down and say, “I didn’t say it was happening, only that it might be), but isn’t showing the least bit of evidence women are actually being represented “far more” than men are.
Had you shown the least sign of intellectual honesty, or been willing to answer the questions put to you, you might be getting less pointed responses.
What goes around, comes around.
Which point does it contradict? Because I wonly wrote that to indicate that somebody in a position of power could POTENTIALLY not actually be weilding it.
Again, are you working to be this obtuse? Do you think we are stupid. You’ve not actually answered the question: How are men less represented than women?
Not how is it possible they might be, not some fantasy-land where the vast majority of politicians are men, controlled by wives who are working to see to it that women are more fairly represented; through the use of blackmail or some other unidentified form of coercive, “power behind the scenes”, but actual examples of 1: how men are ill-served and 2: how this ill-service is in excess of the good service given to women.
Because that is your claim, that there are “multiple ways” to show that “Women have far more political representation than men”.
So go ahead, support that claim. With things you believe are true, not just so stories about, “might be the case, you can’t prove it’s not”.
Liar. You did make it. Had no one challenged it then it would be standing as an, apparently, valid; acceptable, claim. You got caught spouting bullshit and are trying to tuck your ass back into your pants.
It’s a simple yes/no question. If no, then your example was indeed not real so it’s quite valid for me to point that out.
This whole logic thing is new to you, isn’t it?
If all the candidate are male or misogynist. That’s a statement which has at least two possibilities, and doesn’t require that all be so to disadvantage women
For someone who complains about strawmen, you sure like to stuff those scarecrows: . Or do you genuinely believe men have all the power and women have none?
Who said that? What we are saying (and you are pretending is something else) is that women, as a class, have substantively LESS power than men. Not none. Less.
Now all you have to do is find examples of this happening by gender and you might have an argument.
All you have to do is read with an open mind and you’d see them.
Supposing this were true, it’s still evidently possible for women to enter politics and get elected. Hence, women as a group and being the majority could vote out all male politicians should they wish to do so collectively. Your argument would have merit if no women were in politics at all.
See, this where you go on with the failure to read, and the mendacious presentation of arguments which weren’t made. Go back and look at my discussion of women’s political disadvantage (the one you pretend is where I said ALL candidates were misogynist, and that no man in office can’t be a misogynist), because this has been asked, answered, and elaborated.
If you are too dense, and stupid, to realise it, or just too dishonest to admit you have no actual counterargument, my repeating it, yet again isn’t going to help.
You just unwittingly conceded my argument that women have a stronger lobby.
Don’t be silly. I said they have MORE, not they have STRONGER.
Who do you think gets more play, The Koch Brothers, or Greenpeace?
There are a lot more members of Greenpeace, but they aren’t stronger.
I never claimed the example was to backup my claim that women have more political representation.
Another example of structural dishonesty. At this point a reasonable reader would have to assume you don’t believe any argument you make unless you specifically say, “and I believe this to be true” after one. Because this seems to be a habit. When challenged on the nature of a claim, you aver you didn’t really mean it.
So, which of the rest of your preposterous claims do you actually believe/
Well even if you’re right, “making declarations of your leaps of faith” does not equate to “no you’re wrong”. So no, it’s far from done.
Oh… so when you chastised us for, “making leaps of faith” and said that we were wrong to do so… you didn’t mean that either?
Heck, this “argument” from you is nothing more than another, “you’re wrong”.
So, as I said, done.
*because it makes the claim unprovable.
PS: Luckily most women aren’t as sexist as you.”
Do you think I’m a woman? If so why?
Sarr:
About this “women telling their husbands how to vote” angle – this is exactly what I was getting at, probably too vaguely, with my “hand that rocks the cradle” comment. The whole idea that women have power in the domestic sphere and thus don’t need it in the political or economic spheres. Which was, in fact, an argument used against women’s suffrage in the Victorian era.
Hehehe….blackmail.
@Karin Sarr
The only reason this discussion is dragging on is because some of the board regulars have the patience to slog through your troll bullshit. Personally I don’t have the same resolve and gave up on reading your endless posts a while ago. I am to address this “apex fallacy” nonsense because you seem unable to stop repeating yourself.
You realize saying an argument is a fallacy because it’s “a special case of the fallacy of composition” is gibberish, right? What you call the “apex fallacy” is a specific argument and not a informal fallacy.
What other informal fallacy even sounds remotely like the “apex fallacy”, referencing specific groups and their social standing, economic power and political influence? The fact that the “apex fallacy” is not recognized by any non-MRA true believer should clue you in that no one else is buying into this self-serving make-believe.
The “apex fallacy” is clearly an egregious example of bad faith. MRAs don’t want to debate female oppression, so they invent a fallacy and then ipso facto feminism is fallacious because that’s how logic works, right? The fact that you reject peoples’ attempts to bring in historical examples of oppressed minorities, such as slavery or apartheid, makes it clear that this “fallacy” exists solely to shutdown feminist arguments.
Shovel your low-grade bull shit somewhere else, this has become tiresome.
An earlier Karin Sarr quote
“Advancing understanding and clearing up myths” = sweeping generalizations based on preconceived notions
I can’t top pecunium, I won’t try, but this was directed at me so here goes…
First of, it was an example of an issue cis women face on which cis men cannot properly represent them. Following from that, infertile women have a perfectly adequate grasp of the complications involved in pregnancy — seeing how an inability to get pregnant is one such complication. Another example? Rape. You want to argue that cis men can adequately represent the issues surrounding rape laws when they’re talking about “real rape” and how “the body just shuts that whole process down”?
Second, arg you have it backwards! But no, those who’ve never needed a wheelchair are not equipped to fully understand the issues faced by people who do use wheelchairs. Same goes for other disabilities. I mean, do I seriously need to explain that a sighted person cannot fully represent the blind?
2b) that especially applies to the mentally ill. Letting other people claim they know what’s best for us has resulted in everything from forced sterilization and forced medication to deinstitutionalization. All of those practices, and the ones I haven’t directly mentioned, trade our rights for bodily automony and safety for what makes the neurotypical feel safe and comfortable, and, in the case of deinstitutionalization (and this is important), traded those rights for what makes them feel like good people for “helping” us.
Third, your argument that their are some women in politics, therefore women as a group are in no way oppressed? You’re using your little baby the apex fallacy to try to argue against the apex fallacy. While peddling in red herrings. Which is sort of nice, in that I haven’t had cause to call anyone a fish monger for awhile now.
Can we go back to the profile photo? That’s literally the only interesting thing that’s happened in this thread.
re: this troll’s major argument “women have power because they have a lobby group.”
On a whim, I started looking into american lobby groups just to see how powerful the women’s lobby was.
Now, I admit I didn’t take a huge amount of time, but via opensecrets.org, women’s lobby doesn’t even make it into the top 20 lobby groups. For me, this completely undercuts the whole argument, right there. (Though this totally explains a lot about why women are losing rights these days).
Overall, though, the whole “women have power because they can ask for things from the government” is dumb because it presupposes that men can’t. There are no laws in place to prevent a men’s issues lobby.
I’m sorry, moldybrehd, but I have to categorically reject your assertion that the “women’s lobby” isn’t in the top 20. I hear constantly from AVfM and r/mensrights that there is a huge, well-funded DV/IPV/rape “industry” and the only way such an industry could be funded would be through the government and therefore there must be an incredibly powerful women’s lobby but you just can’t find them because they’re blackmailing all those politicians so they keep their lobbying super-duper top secret, which is why you can’t find it on opensecrets.org.
Yes, I think I’ve figured it out.