On the More Serious Side: Arguments & Challenges, Content & Process

 If you haven't already read Neo's July 14, post on her site entitled "Arguing content, arguing process" it's worth considering in full at this link, along with the part that caught my attention, quoted below.  In her post, written in response to the exchange that took place between Senator Hawley and Bridges concerning who can get pregnant, she first clarifies the difference between a content argument and a process approach and then goes on to provide an example of what more might have been said to challenge the promoted premise and address the heart of the matter.  

"He (Hawley) then resorts to some snark, which Bridges has already displayed as well; that’s a process approach. But my suggestion would be to eliminate the snark and go to a different kind of process move – you might call it a meta-process move – and to challenge the entire premise of what the left is actually doing here, which is to redefine reality through words and to reify personal belief systems as truth. That’s actually the heart of the matter, and I think it needs to be called out.

Not that it would convince anyone on the left; of course it won’t. But it’s an attempt to pull back the curtain and expose the inner workings of the tactic, and make it clear what’s going on and how revolutionary it really is.

Here’s an example, off the top of my head (there are probably better ones):

 What you’re doing here is the sort of thing the left continually does, which is to attempt to redefine words as they see fit, in order to drive a political agenda. In doing that, the left throws out the obvious traditional meanings of a word such as “woman” or “violence,” and substitutes something that not only contradicts the word’s traditional meaning but contradicts reality, and substitutes a politically-driven completely subjective meaning for words, a meaning that denies reality. [Then I would suggest shifting to a more content-focused argument.] We all know – although you refuse to say – that only biological females who are past puberty – that is, young women or women – get pregnant, as opposed to biological males – that is, young men or men. To deny that is to deny reality. And we all know that words are words and are not violence, and that violence refers to acts rather than words. The left doesn’t get to determine these things, and the left sounds absurd when it tries to do so. "