Clarence "Sparr" Risher

0. She / her / hers (cisgender woman)
1. She / her / hers (transgender woman)
2. They / them / their
3. E / em / eir (and other popularized sets)
4. Unique invented pronoun set
5. Ella / la / suya (and other foreign sets)
6. She / her / hers / "call me a man"
7. She / him / their
8. You / you / your
9. 9. I / me / my

These are a sample of the personal pronoun preferences I have encountered, plus the implied binary opposite for the relevant entries. They are ranked roughly in decreasing order of frequency with which I encounter people willing and able to honor them, and to punish others for failing to honor or at least try to. Everyone is ok with #0, most liberal/progressive people are ok with #1 and increasingly often #2, things get fuzzy past that, and nobody is ok with #9. Of course most people draw a line in the "only" "reasonable" "obvious" "respectful" place in between and consider discussion of where those lines are to be extremely disrespectful.

1. What is the highest number you have seen in the wild?
2. What is the highest number you have successfully trained yourself to honor for someone, and who?
3. What is the highest number you would socially punish someone for not trying to honor?
4. What is the highest number you would socially punish someone for failing to honor?

My answers are 7, 2 for an ex-partner, 2, and 1.

You: "Murder is bad because the sky is blue."
Me: "What you just said is wrong."
You: "Why do you think murder is good?"
Me: ...

You: "Murder is bad because the sky is orange."
Me: "The sky is not orange."
You: "Why do you think murder is good?"
Me: ...

These two examples represent a fundamental failure of communication that I'm trying to figure out how to address when and where it happens, without confusing people further. It took me a long time to figure out that a lot of people can't tell the difference between me contradicting their argument or premise and me contradicting their conclusion. Since that dawned on me, I've only ever managed to successfully navigate this conversational space by accident. Starting from "Murder is bad because the sky is [blue/orange]", how do I get to a position where you understand the following things:

1) I agree with you that the sky is blue / I disagree with you that the sky is orange.

2) I agree with you that murder is bad.

3) The statements I have made that do not include the word "murder" are not about murder

Anecdotally, I can report that simply breaking the statement apart into those components does not have the desired effect. If anything, using more words in such a straightforward way makes things worse. Actually naming the logical fallacy being employed, more so. So, I am looking for different words to use.

Trigger warning

I recently included a clarifying footnote in a post: "the belief that rape is worse than murder, which is not universal". I had two people contact me to inquire about this. They were otherwise reasonable and informed people who did not think they had ever encountered any belief contrary to this one. I write a lot about value systems, priorities, decision making, and outcomes. I'm surprised that I've overlooked such a good example, amid the few others that come up with regularity. In this writing I'll try to elaborate on why this matters.

Rape, torture, murder. Even the most rationally ethical people can have different opinions about the ranking of these three evils, based on how they value others' lives, agency, happiness, etc. In the general case, considering each of these as a whole, they can go in any order. In more specific cases, it gets even trickier. Some people believe it's worse to murder an infant than someone on their death bed. Some people believe it's worse to rape a virgin than a whore. Some people believe it's worse to torture for fun than for information required to do good. And many (most?) people who have one of those beliefs also allow them to overlap. Torture can be generally worse than murder, while murder of an infant is worse than torture of an octogenarian for good reasons. Making it even more tricky, that good reason could be saving a life. Skipping rape, both torture and murder can often lead to saving one or more lives, and even a completely rationally ethical person can decide that it's preferable to intentionally murder one person than to let two others die through lack of action (look up the Trolley Problem).

Now, to throw some irrational, but very prevalent, people into the mix, consider devout religious adherents. The holy books of many religions give strict rankings of some types of evil, often including some of these three. Consider a Catholic, to whom suicide may be the only unforgivable sin, followed by the mortal sins that include idolatry, adultery, murder, slander, etc. Depending on their precise sub-sub-sub-sect, rape and torture might not appear on that list at all, not having been entirely proscribed by their deity. I know less about various other religions, but I do know that other Abrahamic religions have similar aspects, if not such a rigid ranking, and some even include rules mandating these actions in certain situations.

All of these factors combine to form an environment where it is often not fruitful to have a conversation with someone about avoiding or preventing evil, or doing good, without first getting at least some hint of whether their value system and priorities align with yours, and the ways in which they conflict. If you disagree on whether murder is worse than rape, or even whether slander is worse than rape, you'll be spinning your wheels trying to reconcile conclusions that stem from those base premises.