Category Archives: Phrases to Avoid

Without Evidence

newspapers_viabinoriranasingheIt is conventional to give people the benefit of the doubt—to err, when possible, on the side of uncertainty and not to presume the unlikely is untrue. But it is one thing to give the benefit of the doubt in uncertain circumstances, and it is quite another to give an outsized benefit with very little doubt indeed. That, in essence, is origin of false balance.

Worse, of late the media has taken to determining what subjects are in doubt not by what evidence is available, but instead by how forcefully people argue for one side or another. A forceful but untrue statement often triggers a confused and muddled response from journalists, who, by dint of their profession, know both that the statement is painfully untrue and that to contradict it outright is painfully taboo.

Journalistic conventions, intended to ensure fair treatment regardless of personal inclination, fail abysmally when public figures refuse to play by the rules.

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No Reason to Lie

Pinocchio_ViaJean-EtienneSometimes, in the course of a debate or discussion, a secondhand statement comes under consideration. The actors in the debate must then evaluate how relevant that statement is to the their discussion. This happens in media during interviews, in class discussions, on the internet, with friends and family, and beyond. Wherever it happens, you are as likely as not to hear a particular phrase—“no reason to lie.”

“Look, he has no reason to lie.”

“Why would he lie?”

“She doesn’t get anything out of lying about this—she has no reason to.”

However it arises, the implication of the argument that someone “has no reason to lie” is that having no reason to lie is, itself, evidence for truth.

And our understanding of logic and evidence is so bad that we often accept that.

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“Allegedly”

Working_in_the_dark_ViaErnstGräfenberg

“Allegedly” is one of those words that people stick in front of disputed things, and it serves the useful purpose of signaling that the dispute exists. But there is another way people use it as well, and that is less about signaling dispute and more about introducing it. And it works! For me, as a reader, when I see the word “alleged” tied to something, it makes me more critical, more doubtful, and more aware that some other people don’t think the thing in question is true.

So, I find it rather disturbing when people use the word “alleged” for things like sexual assault, abuse, and online harassment. In this context, the word is used as a rhetorical trick, even (especially?) when the event itself is not really in doubt, to create that doubt. People use this word, in short, to minimize the experiences of women.

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“No, Where Are You Really From?”

chairs_viaWildInWoodsThat was the question he asked, to a man near the front, when the first answer wasn’t good enough.

It was a workshop I attended recently with people I did not know. Some of them had traveled a ways to attend, but so had the presenter. And, when he called on the man, the presented asked what is an entirely reasonable question: “where are you from?” It was relevant to the work at hand, and something entirely acceptable to ask in a group.

“Boston,” the man replied.

With nary a missed beat, the (older, white, male) presenter replied, “no, where are you really from?”

I couldn’t miss the unspoken “…because of course you aren’t one of us.”

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Antidisestablishmentarianism

Establishment_viaFabioVenniI’ve been having a problem lately with the word “establishment.” It’s a two-part problem, and one part of that problem is that I cannot seem to read anything about our current election cycle without getting run over by “the establishment.” The other part of the problem is the difference between what it means and how we actually use it.

To take the first part of the problem, I keep hearing about how Trump supporters are against the establishment, and how Bernie supporters are against the establishment, and about how no, actually Hillary is also against the establishment, and Cruz is most definitely against the establishment, and to be safe, lets just say all political candidates are anti-establishment.

We’ll gloss right over the problem of who the establishment actually is for now and accept that it’s fashionable to be against it.

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A Few Bad Apples

Apples_viaThomasTeichert
Reliably, whenever issues of sexism, racism, and prejudice appear, so too does the phrase “a few bad apples.” University professors are harassing their students, but universities and media hasten to remind us that they are just a few bad apples. Police officers are abusing the people they are supposed to protect and serve, but mostly when those people are black—still, it’s a few bad apples.

“A few bad apples” is in-group language. It’s what you say when you identify with the group in question, and you just can’t believe anything bad about that group because it would also mean something bad about yourself. It is, in essence, group-level denial: that person did something I can’t be associated with, so that must mean they don’t really represent my group.

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“Causes Cancer”

One can and should simplify scientific research to make it intelligible, but there is a level of imprecision beyond which simplification becomes mere fiction. I think at this point, in most cases, saying something “causes cancer” is effectively fiction. It wasn’t always, but that phrase has been so abused that it now creates a one-to-one link in the popular imagination between the item of the week and our most potent medical boogeyman.

The recent announcement by the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) and the associated statements by the WHO (World Health Organization) have created a current hullabaloo over red meat, and processed red meat in particular. If you want a good summary of that issue, please read this one, and not any of the more sensationalized pieces exploding into your news feeds.

Because those sensationalized pieces dominate. Most of the media are busily reporting, nuance-free, how red meat and processed meat “causes cancer.” Most are using the most inflated statistic—an increase in risk of 17%. Most are not mentioning baseline risk. Most are not discussing potency. Most are not mentioning that this information is not new, but instead a result of slowly progressing scientific research.

In my view, reporting that something “causes cancer” gives you all the panic with none of the information. What is the baseline risk? In this case, it is 6%, or 6 people out of 100 will get bowel cancer in their lifetimes. What is the increased rate if you eat a lot of processed meat daily? 7%, or 7 people out of 100. So, if everyone ate processed meats only in moderation (about 50 grams is suggested, or two slices of bacon per day, or one bacon cheeseburger per week), we could avoid one additional case of bowel cancer for every 100 people who decreased their consumption.

That matters. That’s significant. But it also isn’t a one-to-one relationship. Processed meat does not “cause cancer” so much as it contributes to a slight increase in your risk of one type of cancer over your lifetime. And that isn’t even that much harder to say. Headline writers, please take note: your hyperbole is helping no one.

A Poor Choice of Words

via Neil Moralee

Have you ever made a complete ass of yourself and then had to apologize later? Ever found yourself rapidly backpedaling from something you said that, while ill judged at the time, seems head-smackingly foolish in retrospect? Have you ever found yourself stammering out an apology for “my poor choice of words?”

Personally, I can’t recall doing this—but I would bet that I have. I would bet that most people have (excluding incredibly inoffensive people, and assholes who never apologize). It’s not surprising that this phrase might come into your head at a moment of tension when you are fumbling for a way to take back something you said; after all, we hear it all the time. But if you ever find yourself about to say this, you really, really shouldn’t.

Last Friday I wrote about apologizing by claiming “it wasn’t my intent;” which is valid in minor incidents where good intentions can be presumed, but is often used to justify wildly prejudiced things. “A poor choice of words” is a close cousin: an apologetic phrase that makes perfect sense when you have a slip of the tongue, but not if you just said a meaner version of what you meant to say all along.

One place this phrase crops up often is in apologies from organizations, politicians, media personalities, and other individuals in the public eye. Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” then apologized for his “choice of words.” Arkansas representative Don Young called migrant workers “wetbacks” and then apologized for his “poor choice of words.” Congressman Geoff Davis called President Obama a “boy” and then apologized for his “poor choice of words.” Dr. Ben Carson drew analogies between LGBTQ individuals and “bestiality” and then apologized, you guessed it, for his “choice of words.” Senator Harry Reid gave Obama the back-handed complement that he “had no Negro dialect” and then apologized, as usual, for “such a poor choice of words.”

You might have noticed a theme in all these examples: specifically, that these are all people expressing absolutely horrible, prejudiced things and yet they seem to think it was how they said them that mattered. In this insane upside-down world, you can hold opinions that are sexist, racist, or many other kinds of horrendous, but all that matters is the words you use to express them. The sentiment, apparently, doesn’t matter.

I assume that you, the reader, are already ahead of me at this point and have realized, if you didn’t know it already, that apologizing for “a poor choice of words” is not, in fact, apologizing. Instead it is downgrading one’s offense from believing something terrible to making some kind of slip of the tongue. “Oops! I totally meant to say something else instead of ‘subhuman mongrel.’ My bad!” “So sorry, I didn’t mean to say you were ‘a slut,’ I just accidentally said it out loud because I thought being sexist was funny. JK you guys!”

You might have noticed another insidious theme here, and I want to make it explicit because I think it is very important. Apologizing for “a poor choice of words” is the same as saying your original sentiment was fine. You are basically saying the horrible thing you said is a valid, acceptable thing to say.

So, if you happen to be a school with a dress code, say, and it happens to advise girls that “we don’t want to be looking at ‘sausage rolls’” and tells those same girls that “you can’t put 10 pounds of mud in a five-pound sack,” you should know that it is no way sufficient to apologize for “unfortunate word choices.”

Now I know horrible non-apologies are put out there all the time, but that doesn’t mean we have to condone them or perpetuate them. If you see a leader apologizing for their poor choice of words, call them on it. Twitter, Facebook, whatever—let their terrible apology writers know that we do not accept their apologizing for word choice instead of sentiment. If your friends apologize to you this way, you may want to be nicer, but gently make it clear what is and isn’t a real apology.

Because the phrase “a poor choice of words” is a indeed very poor choice of words.

It Wasn’t My Intent

Intention is both more and less important than we allow. It matters what I meant to say and do, because those reflect my experience of the events in question. But what I meant to say and do may have little relationship to your experience of the same events. And the events themselves are yet another truth.

I am not suggesting it is easy to navigate these murky waters. It’s tough to anticipate how someone will respond to what you say or do, and it’s tough to know ahead of time how it will be perceived. Maybe you tap a friend on the should to say hello and they jump out of their skin—you mean to say hello, they experience it as being startled, and the objective act (tapping them on the shoulder) holds neither connotation. In this sort of circumstance, intent does matter, and the phrase “it wasn’t my intent” may actually be reassuring. The hurt is minor and results from an innocent misunderstanding.

But there is a different usage of this phrase, and one that takes it well outside allowable bounds. Where I more often see “it wasn’t my intent” cropping up is in apologies where it really has no business being. I am talking about circumstances where the hurt is large, or there is no misunderstanding, or the consequences are so significant that intent no longer matters. In these cases the phrase “it wasn’t my intent” and its cousins are the phrases we trot out to abdicate responsibility.

Tim Hunt - World Economic Forum

Tim Hunt – World Economic Forum

For example, Tim Hunt used the phrase “I certainly didn’t mean that” this past week when apologizing for sexist comments about women (he called them girls) being a problem in labs. He was worried that women would “fall in love with him” and “cry” and be “distracting,” so Tim thinks they should be in gender-segregated labs. And in his apology he says he “did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” so he seems to be burning the candle at both ends on this apology. By saying he “didn’t mean” to offend anyone, he seems to be saying that the inherent sexism of his views doesn’t matter, because he didn’t intend it to be offensive. Happily, lots of woman in science jumped in to tell Tim just how wrong he is.

Nevertheless, this is how I usually see phrases like “it wasn’t my intent” employed. Not to clear up some real misunderstanding of meaning, but rather as a verbal scalpel to separate someone’s offensive views from the consequences of expressing those views. When someone says something steeped in prejudice and then claims “it wasn’t my intent” to upset anyone, they are effectively saying that there is nothing wrong with their views, and the fault lies in your response.

At this point some people may be thinking “hey, wait a minute, maybe Tim Hunt didn’t mean to be sexist.” They are probably right. And they may be thinking of some time that they said something prejudiced themselves and didn’t realize until after the fact—I know I’ve done this. And that is true, and a good point.

And it doesn’t matter. There is no plausible deniability for those espousing sexism, or racism, or homophobia, or any other prejudicial viewpoint. The offensiveness of prejudiced views and the hurt they cause cannot be separated. This is why the phrase “it wasn’t my intent” is such an insidious bit of misdirection—it’s basic role is to suggest that when someone is prejudiced and offensive, whether they intended to be matters more than whether they were. It refuses to acknowledge the prejudice as the problem, and thus it reinforces, rather than diminishes, the original harm.

“It wasn’t my intent,” we say, “to give offence. But of course, we are decent people, so if you were bothered by our prejudices, we will happily apologize for the bother, even though the problem really lies with you. Sorry.”

“It wasn’t my intent” is the “I’m sorry your face keeps hitting my fist” of rhetorical apology.

Live in the Real World

Maybe you were just saying how we needed our government to be something less than corrupt, or how women need to be safe in our society, or how evidence and logic should trump nonsense and prevarication, or how arguing about scientific realities is preventing us from dealing with them. And the person you were speaking with replied, with a touch of condescension, a hint of derision, and a little eye roll: “You have to live in the real world.”

Now, it really doesn’t bother me where people choose to focus their time and efforts. If they believe in a just cause, and they can maintain the effort for that cause, more power to them. If they don’t have time for what I think is most important, that’s fine, too—people can and must choose where to put their time, and it cannot be everywhere. But this is a special kind of righteous dismissal, and it isn’t what it sounds like.

When someone says, “You have to live in the real world,” they think they are saying that your suggestions are implausible, or foolish, or unachievable. They think they are gently steering you away from wasting your poor misguided energy on something that you, poor naïve soul that you are, do not realize is worthless.

Via ViudadesnudaBut that isn’t what they really mean. What they mean is: “My version of the real world, the version I have created in my head, accepts these things as givens. So shut up about them already.” And maybe they mean: “…because changing them is too hard.”

Mostly they mean: “Stop making me question my assumptions.”

Now, there are reasonable ways to disagree with people. If one person is talking about systemic inequalities that disadvantage the poor and how we need more support structures, and another person is suggesting that the poor are leeching off the government safety net like the parasites they are, there is clearly grounds for disagreement. There is also room for both sides to support their arguments, and to reconsider their own assumptions. And even though I find one of those views offensive, that’s the place I would rather be in a discussion. Debating issues with people when I disagree with them helps me learn how their views differ, how to support my own, and where I am wrong.

But if either person says to the other “You have to live in the real world,” that room for discussion is lost. Instead of being a point of discussion, the issue has become a point of judgment. That is the signal to me that the other party in the debate doesn’t care about finding the truth of an idea, only about preserving their own worldview.

What’s worse, this phrase doesn’t just come up with people I radically disagree with—in its most painful, useless, divisive form, it is coming from people who I would like to have as allies. It can appear in even apparently friendly discussions, but its true meaning remains. “You have to live in the real world here. Wind power isn’t the answer; solar is the only workable choice.” And maybe: “The government is never going to be effective, so less of it will always be the better option. You have to live in the real world.” Or perhaps: “Of course men shouldn’t rape women, but you have to live in the real world—how you dress is going to matter.”

I can’t make people stop saying this. Neither can you. I can’t even avoid being frustrated every time I hear it. But we can keep the true meaning in mind. If we hear others saying it, we can translate and regroup—okay, what assumption are they guarding here? And, if we find ourselves thinking this about someone else, we can use it as a reminder to question our own assumptions.

Because, in the real world, people are going to say this, and think it, and not always know what they really mean. But in the real world, some of us believe in trying to build a better one.