#lying with statistics

[covid-safer-hotties]

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

How the AP (and WaPo and NY Times) Lie with Statistics

With the Associated Press claim that Israel's war against Hamas “now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history,” the wire ser

by Gilead Ini

January 12 Update:

AP Amends False Claim

After CAMERA informed journalists of the problems detailed here, the Associated Press changed its piece, noting that a study of damage in Gaza counted structures that were "likely either damaged or destroyed" as opposed to "destroyed." The other misrepresentations were not substantively addressed, and no appended correction informs readers of the change. See below for a detailed update.

On Thursday, the Associated Press argued that Israel’s fight against Hamas “now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history.”

Before sunrise the next morning, the language was quietly changed to instead cite wars in “recent” history. But the stealth edit did little to redress the many glaring problems in the piece, the latest in a parade of news stories that invent, distort, or otherwise misuse statistics to unfavorably compare the Gaza war with others across the globe wars.

An image by researchers Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek refers to "likely damaged or destroyed" buildings.

The reason for this assembly line of manipulations, it seems, is precisely to support overblown charges like the one that opens the AP story: Israel’s response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre is the most destructive… the deadliest… the biggest… the worst….

Urban combat is a notoriously destructive endeavor. Add subterranean warfare — the need to deal with the combat tunnels that snake below Gaza’s neighborhoods and serve as a lifeline for Hamas militants and a death trap for Israelis — and there’s no shortage of ruin in Gaza that could be discussed on its own terms.

But apparently that wouldn’t suffice. So cue the embellishments — like the one at the very center of the AP piece:   

Israel’s offensive has destroyed over two-thirds of all structures in northern Gaza and a quarter of buildings in the southern area of Khan Younis, according to an analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University, experts in mapping damage during wartime.

Destroyed? The satellite data used by the study’s authors can suggest which buildings have been damaged, but not whether they have been destroyed. When we double-checked with the researchers, Van Den Hoek reiterated that they only count structures as “likely damaged or destroyed” because, he explained, “we don't yet have means of distinguishing categories of damage severity.”

Which means the AP’s claim is egregiously false. And that’s hardly its only manipulation.

The second sentence, meant to support the lead sentence’s claim about the Gaza war being among the “most destructive” wars, reads:

In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II.

The worst… what? By what measure of damage does Gaza surpass these conflicts? The Associated Press doesn’t say.

The most destructive… the deadliest… the biggest… the worst…

The piece later claims that 33 percent of buildings across Gaza and two-thirds in northern Gaza have been “destroyed” (again, a falsehood counting any degree of damage as destruction). But the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which the AP has frequently cited in the past, has assessed that in Mariupol, one of the AP’s points of comparison, “up to 90 per cent of residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed.” The Associated Press itself had reported that Russian munitions left their mark “on nearly every building” in Mariupol. 

Is the AP referring to the absolute number of damaged houses rather than the percentage? Maybe. But it would be an odd comparison, since Mariupol is less than half the size of the Gaza Strip. Aleppo, too, is half as big as the Hamas-run territory — and the relevant land area is even smaller, since the rebel militias that came under devastating Syrian and Russian bombardment had only occupied a portion of the city.

So does the claim refer to the density of destruction? If so, then again, it is dubious comparison. The damage in Aleppo was not nearly as densely packed as other in Syrian cities, including Raqqa, Homs, Deir ez Zor, Damascus, and Hama. Why would the AP ignore more extreme examples?  

Whatever the reporter means to compare, it’s clear that the piece doesn’t play fair. Consider this passage:

During the 2014-2017 campaign to defeat IS in Iraq, the coalition carried out nearly 15,000 strikes across the country, according to Airwars, a London-based independent group that tracks recent conflicts. By comparison, the Israeli military said last week it has conducted 22,000 strikes in Gaza.

The most…. But not really. The Associated Press cherry-picked this particular Iraq war, but chose to ignore entirely the 2003 Iraq war, in which US-led forces dropped over 29,000 munitions on Iraqi targets in the first 30 days of fighting — double the rate of Israel, which dropped the same estimated number of munitions but in twice the time.

And what does the AP mean when claiming, at the top of the piece, that the Gaza offensive has caused more destruction “proportionally” than the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II?

The author later elaborates:

By some measures, destruction in Gaza has outpaced Allied bombings of Germany during World War II. Between 1942 and 1945, the allies attacked 51 major German cities and towns, destroying about 40-50% of their urban areas, said Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian. Pape said this amounted to 10% of buildings across Germany, compared to over 33% across Gaza, a densely populated territory of just 140 square miles (360 square kilometers).

In other words, the proportion of destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip is greater than in Germany only when comparing the small, densely packed Strip to the entirety of Germany, which in its current borders is nearly 1000 times larger than Hamas’s territory, and which was spaced out to a small fraction of Gaza’s population density. We can consider a closer equivalent within Germany: The city of Hamburg, which is far closer to the size of the Gaza Strip, and where during just eight-days in 1943, four Allied bombing killed around 40,000 people and destroyed over half of the city’s homes.

And if the Associate Press considers Allied bombing during World War II an informative point of comparison, why pick and choose? In just two days of bombing in 1945, the US killed about 100,000 civilians in Tokyo and destroyed 250,000 buildings.

We can forgive the AP for failing to find a perfect analogy. “[N]o military in the world has faced the context Israel faces today,” says John Spencer, a top expert in urban warfare. “No military in the world has fought a war against a military of 30,000 plus fighters (defenders) embedded in underground cities purposely interwoven into the dense civilian population” while dealing with incessant, indiscriminate rocket fire into their own cities. But that doesn’t excuse the AP “hunting for data,” as Spencer termed it, to promote a narrative.

Nor would the “everybody is doing it” excuse suffice — though it is true that plenty of others, including some of the largest and most influential newspapers, are likewise guilty of inventing and manipulating statistics.

A Parade of Distorted Statistics

• Less than a week into the war, the Washington Post reported that Israel had already dropped the same quantity of munitions on Gaza as the US dropped on Afghanistan in its most intense full year of bombing:

"Israel is dropping in less than a week what the U.S. was dropping in Afghanistan in a year, in a much smaller, much more densely populated area, where mistakes are going to be magnified," said Marc Garlasco, a military adviser at the Dutch organization PAX for Peace and a former U.N. war crimes investigator in Libya. He helped plan airstrikes for the Pentagon during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The highest number of bombs and other munitions dropped in one year during the war in Afghanistan was just over 7,423, Garlasco said, citing U.S. military records. During the entire war in Libya, the NATO alliance reported dropping more than 7,600 bombs and missiles from planes, according to a U.N. report.

But this is wildly false. The US had dropped 17,500 munitions on Afghanistan in just 76 days of bombing in 2001. The newspaper eventually corrected after outreach by CAMERA, but not before the fake statistic was echoed by the Los Angeles Times’ managing editor, NBC’s Mehdi Hasan, Al Jazeera, the Guardian, J Street, and members of Congress.

• In a front-page story published on Nov. 26, the New York Times claimed that “Israel has killed more women and children than have been killed in Ukraine.” This is a flagrant misrepresentation, which relied on Ukraine casualty figures that, per the newspaper’s own source, are “considerably” lower than the actual number of civilian deaths. The paper stealthily changed its language online, but it left the error uncorrected in print.

The piece also claimed that “more women and children have been reported killed in Gaza in less than two months than the roughly 7,700 civilians documented as killed by U.S. forces and their international allies in the entire first year of the invasion of Iraq in 2003,” citing estimates from a group called Iraq Body Count. But again, data from the Times own source revealed the newspaper’s egregious dishonesty. The overwhelming majority the Iraq casualties occurred in a just over a month of fighting, after which the regime was overthrown and major combat operations had ended. So contrary to the newspaper’s argument, the rates of claimed civilian casualties in the two conflicts were essentially equal. The newspaper refused to correct.

• Both the Times story cited above and a piece in the Wall Street Journal had misrepresented comments by a senior State Department official about casualties in Gaza. The Times reported, “Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told a House committee this month that American officials thought the civilian casualties were ‘very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited.’” Similarly, the Journal claimed that “The U.S. State Department’s highest official for Middle East affairs said that the civilian death toll in Gaza is likely higher than estimates suggest.” The official, though, wasn’t speaking about the civilian death toll, but rather the total number of deaths, Hamas included.

• This week, on Dec. 22, the Washington Post reported that the displacement of two million people in Gaza’s population was “the largest displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948.” On Syria, just on the other side of Israel from Gaza, 12 million people have recently been displaced, according to the United Nations. In Yemen, over four million have been displaced.

The image of a New York Times headline shared on X by Aviva Klompas.

• That same day, the print edition of the New York Times ran a large headline announcing, “Gaza Deaths Surpass Any Arab War Losses in 40 Years,” a reference to the Hamas government’s claim of 20,000 deaths in its fight against Israel. The same New York Times had previously reported on 470,000 deaths counted in Syria’s war; 150,000 deaths counted in Yemen’s war; 150,000 deaths counted in Lebanon’s civil war; 500,000 Iraqi deaths counted from the country’s war with Iran; and 150,000 Iraqi deaths during the gulf war. (The text of the article itself correctly referred to “Arab conflicts with Israel,” though that doesn’t help those who relied on the newspaper’s headline to be accurate.)

The Associated Press piece fits neatly into this parade of flamboyant distortions, and serves as just the latest example of how a zeal to push a narrative of Israeli excesses sends sober journalism slinking ever further into the distance. 

Update: Associated Press Corrects

After CAMERA informed AP editors of

the inaccurate claim that an analysis by Scher and Van Den Hoek counted “destroyed” buildings as opposed to damaged ones;

the questionable claim that the Gaza war has wreaked more destruction than Russia’s offensive in Mariupol, despite UN estimates showing more damage in the latter; and

the arbitrary comparison of Israeli airstrikes to those in 2014-2017 Iraq, while inexplicably ignoring the much larger number of airstrikes in 2003 Iraq

the agency redressed the first issue. Where the piece had characterized a study as finding that "Israel’s offensive has destroyed over two-thirds of all structures in northern Gaza," it now correction notes that the study looked at "likely either damaged or destroyed."

A minor modification was made to the language about Mariupol. Rather than account for the UN estimate of destruction there, AP changed the statement of fact that "the offensive has wreaked more destruction than" the razing of Mariupol to instead state that "researchers say the offensive has wreaked more destruction."

The cherry-picked data about Iraq was left unchanged.

While the date at the top of the story was changed from Dec. 22 to Jan. 11, there is no indication that a correction was made to the story, as journalistic norms would call for. 

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

A report claiming '32 transgender people killed in the USA in 2022' is misleading.

The 'Human Rights Campaign' releases a report on transgender deaths in 2022

By: Stephen Knight

Published: Nov 19, 2022

There’s a very sinister prejudice that the far-right and the far-left seem to have in common when it comes to minorities. The far-right tends to assume that any bad thing a minority does is due to their minority status. And similarly, the far-left seems to assume that any bad thing that happens to a minority is because of their minority status.

These polarising extremes are precisely why non-tribal scepticism is vital when attempting to assess the facts and inform the public. Which brings me to the annual report from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation which was also covered by USA Today:

The HRC annual report lists 32 transgender and ‘non gender-conforming’ individuals that have been killed in the United States in 2022. The HRC frames these deaths in the context of ‘deadly violence targeting transgender and gender non-confirming people’ and links the deaths to ‘anti-transgender legislation’ (emphasis mine).

The full report is titled ‘An Epidemic of Violence 2022: Fatal Violence Against Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People in the United States in 2022’. Director of Community Engagement Tori Cooper claims in the report that much of this violence is ‘fuelled by racism, toxic masculinity, misogyny and transphobia’.

But what are the specific facts we have about these deaths? Is it reasonable to use these deaths as evidence of an anti-transgender epidemic of violence? What details do we have and what (if anything) do we know to suggest these individuals were killed because they are transgender?

I have summarised the details of each of the 32 deaths cited in the report and assigned either ‘unconfirmed’ or ‘confirmed’ to them depending on whether an anti-transgender element has been established. This isn’t to say transphobic hatred definitely wasn’t the motivation (or won’t be confirmed at a later time)—I’m simply pointing out what information was available at the time the HRC produced and published their report.

1. Amariey Lej

Amariey was a 21 year old transgender woman from Wilkinsburg. She was fatally shot and found dead in the street in the early hours of Jan 1st 2022. Police said they have not established a motive yet. STATUS: Unconfirmed

2. Duval Princess

Princess was 24 years old and was in the early stages of transitioning. She was found dead in her car at a shopping mall in Jan 2022. Family members said she went there to meet someone she knew. A man was arrested in connection her her death in March 2022. No motive has yet been established. STATUS: Unconfirmed

3. Cypress Ramos

21 year old Ramos was found dead in a Texas storage container in February 2022. Allan Montemayor, 32 was arrested and charged with her murder. Police said Ramos and Montemayor knew each other. Montemayor claimed he had ‘heard a song telling him to kill Ramos and believed she heard a song telling her to kill him’. The police said there was “no indication” that “that this was a hate crime targeting the LGBTQIA+ community”. STATUS: Unconfirmed

4. Naomie Skinner

Skinner, 25 was killed in February 2022 at her home in an act of domestic violence. According to reports, her 26-year-old boyfriend, Michael Cortez Norris was charged with her murder. According to prosecutors, he ‘shot her in the neck, dragged her body into the hallway - and fled’. STATUS: Unconfirmed

5. Matthew Angelo Spampinato

Mathew was a 21 year old trans man. Reports say that Mathew was killed in a hit and run incident whilst walking home from work ‘along the shoulder of Route 273 near Quigley Boulevard’. The driver fled the scene. STATUS: Unconfirmed

6. Paloma Vazquez

Vasquez, 29, was found shot dead in her Houston apartment in April 2022. Police are still looking for a suspect and are yet to establish a motive. STATUS: Unconfirmed

7. Tatiana Labelle

Labelle, 33 was reported to have been beaten to death and dumped in a garbage receptacle in a Chicago alley. No suspect has been identified and no motive has been established. STATUS: Unconfirmed

8. Kathryn “Katie” Newhouse

Newhouse was a 19 year old trans woman killed by her father. Newhouse was suffering with mental health issues and according to Kathryn’s brother ‘she had to leave a mental health facility before the pandemic to live with her parents. He said the situation led to stressful situations’. There had been previous instances of violence between Kathryn and her father in the home. In March 2022, her father shot her dead, then killed himself. STATUS: Unconfirmed

9. Kenyatta “Kesha” Webster

Webster was found dead in Mississippi in March 2022. Webster’s mother told reporters that Kesha was killed in a “robbery homicide”. Jackson police are still investigating the murder. STATUS: Unconfirmed

10. Miia Love Parker

Parker was sat in a parked car with friends when shot dead in April 2022. A suspect has been identified as Saad Najeed Dwight who still appears to be at large at the time of writing. No motive has been established. STATUS: Unconfirmed

11. Ariyanna Mitchell

Mitchell, 17, was shot dead in April 2022 at a house party in Virginia. Jimmy Leshawn Williams was charged with murder. It was reported that the shooting was related to a fight that had occurred at a previous location. A friend of Mitchell’s said ‘the bullets fired by Williams were meant for her, not Mitchell’. STATUS: Unconfirmed

12. Fern Feather

Feather was stabbed to death in April 2022. Suspect Seth Burnell has been charged with her murder. Burnell and his attorney are arguing it was self-defence in response to unwanted sexual advances. Burnell has violent priors and a history of ‘mental instability’. Burnell is being held without bail after the judge ruled Burnell was “not adequately provoked for a deadly use of a knife”. A trial date has not yet been set. STATUS: Unconfirmed

13. Ray Muscat

Transgender man Muscat, 29 was shot dead at their home in May 2022. Police said Muscat was shot dead by his transgender girlfriend Ruby Taverner who also killed her own brother before committing suicide. STATUS: Unconfirmed

14. Nedra Sequence Morris

In May 2022 Morris was found dead. Her family told reporters she was shot in the head and dumped in a Florida street. Miami police are still investigating. No suspect or motive has been identified. STATUS: Unconfirmed

15. Chanelika Y’Ella Dior Hemingway

Hemingway was found dead in her Albany apartment in May 2022. Police have ruled her death as a homicide. No suspects or motives have yet been identified. STATUS: Unconfirmed

16. Sasha Mason

Mason, 45 was killed during a robbery in North Carolina, May 2022. Two suspects have been arrested with the police confirming that the suspects were known to Mason and targeted her specifically. There has been no confirmation to date that this will be investigated as a hate crime. STATUS: Unconfirmed

17. Brazil Johnson

Johnson was found shot to death in Milwaukee in June 2022. The investigation is ongoing and Milwaukee police are yet to determine a motive. STATUS: Unconfirmed

18. Shawmaynè Giselle Marie

Marie was shot dead inside a Gulfport apartment in June 2022. Marie and her sister were shot multiple times. Police arrested their friend Makhari Seven Gasaway. Police said the ‘shooting occurred after Marie and Gasaway argued, and Gasaway pulled a gun and started shooting’. STATUS: Unconfirmed

19. Kitty Monroe

Monroe was shot to death in June 2022 inside a Memphis home. A Samuel Ward Jr. was arrested and charged with voluntary manslaughter. According to reports Ward Jr. had ‘been inside a home with Monroe, and she ordered him to leave and pulled a gun on him. They struggled, both fell down a flight of stairs, and then Ward took out his own gun and shot Monroe several times, according to a police affidavit’. STATUS: Unconfirmed

20. Martasia Richmond

Richmond was stabbed to death in July 2022 . Her boyfriend, Daniel Burley has been charged with her murder. Burley’s legal defence are claiming he acted in self-defence and also pointed out Burley had previously taken out a protection order against Richmond after an attempted break in. STATUS: Unconfirmed

21. Keshia Chanel Geter

Geter was shot dead outside of a motel in July 2022. Jaquarie Allen, 22 has been charged with her murder. According to reports ‘Geter was the two-dozenth victim of an outbreak of lethal crimes’ in the area. A motive has yet to be established. STATUS: Unconfirmed

22. Cherry Bush

Bush was killed in July 2022. Suspect Eric Antonio Sanchez allegedly shot Bush and a bystander. Sanchez has been charged with the ‘hate-motivated killing’ of Bush. Police have stated that Bush was ‘allegedly targeted based on a presumption of his gender identity and sexual orientation’. STATUS: Confirmed

23. Marisela Castro

Castro was shot and killed in July 2022. Houston police are still looking for suspects and have said they do not know the motive behind her murder. When asked about whether this was a ‘hate-crime’ a police officer said "I don't want to say hate crime or not. This is a pending, fresh investigation”. STATUS: Unconfirmed

24. Hayden Davis

Davis was shot dead in Detroit in July 2022. No suspects or motives have been identified and a reward of up to a $5,000 has been offered for information. STATUS: Unconfirmed

25. Kandii Redd

Redd was killed in Kansas city in July 2022. Reports suggest a physical altercation ended in her fatal stabbing. A suspect or motive has not yet been identified. STATUS: Unconfirmed

26. Aaron Lynch

Lynch, a transgender man, was shot dead by police in July 2022. Lynch was reported to be having a “mental health crisis” when officers were called his home. Police body-cam footage shows Lynch threw items at the officers and attempted to attack them with a wine bottle. Officers used tasers to no effect then one officer opened fire, killing Lynch. STATUS: Unconfirmed

27. Maddie Hofmann

Hoffman was shot dead by police in May 2022. Reports claim Hoffman was suffering from a “mental health crisis” when officers were called to her home. Police body-cam footage recorded Hoffman pointing a gun a the officers. One officer responded by shooting (and killing) Hoffman. STATUS: Unconfirmed

28. Dede Ricks

Ricks was found dead in Detroit, August 2022 due to gunshot wounds. Deontae Antoine Close was arrested the same day and charged with murder. No statement/information on the potential motive has been given. STATUS: Unconfirmed

29. Mya Allen

Allen was shot dead in Milwaukee in August 2022. Clayton Hubbird was arrested and charged with first-degree reckless homicide. Surveillance video shows Hubbird having a conversation with Allen at a gas station before she got into the back of his car. They arrived at Allen’s apartment a little while later where witnesses described hearing arguing and then a gunshot. Hubbird has pleaded not-guilty. STATUS: Unconfirmed

30. Acey Morrison

Morrison who identifies as “two-spirit” was found dead at their home in August 2022 from an apparent shooting. The investigation is ongoing and no motive has been established. STATUS: Unconfirmed

31. Semaj Billingslea

Transgender man Billingslea was shot and killed outside a motel in Jacksonville in September 2022. No suspects or motives have been identified. STATUS: Unconfirmed

32. Tiffany Banks

Banks was killed in Miami in October 2022. Few details have been made public, but a suspect was arrested. No motive has been publicly established. STATUS: Unconfirmed

As you can see, out of the 32 deaths included in the HRC report in the context of an anti-trans ‘epidemic of violence’, only one of them can reasonably be categorised as ‘anti-trans’ (Cherry Bush) at this point in time.

You will also notice the bulk of these cases map on to the depressingly common types of killings we see generally—from domestic violence, gun crime in high crime areas and violent altercations with romantic partners and acquaintances. And that’s after you remove the four included examples of those justifiably shot by the police (Aaron Lynch & Maddie Hofmann), those not the intended target (Mitchell) or those murdered by a transgender individual themselves (Ray Muscat).

According to a 2015 survey ‘19 percent of all trans people, and 47 percent of black trans women, have engaged in sex work’. And as we know, sex work carries a higher than usual risk of violent encounters.

One ‘anti-trans’ killing is one too many of course. And it should go without saying that these individuals deserve justice whether they were targeted for their transgender identity or not.

However, it’s deeply irresponsible to create a climate of fear for transgender people—a fear that doesn’t appear to be justified. The FBI confirmed that the number of people murdered in the USA in 2021 was 22,900—which should provide some perspective on the scale of this particular ‘epidemic’.

Political scientist and author Wilfred Reilly did some analysis of similar claims made in years past:

…29 [Transgender people killed] in 2017, 26 in 2018, and 22 in 2019. Not only do these figures not reflect a year-by-year increase in attacks on trans persons—they are remarkably consistent, and may be trending slightly downwards—they also indicate that the trans murder rate is significantly lower than the murder rate for Americans overall.

and

The truth is there is no epidemic of transgender murders. The recorded transgender murder rate is 1/3 or less of the overall murder rate for all American citizens and legal residents. Further, when such murders do occur, few are motivated by hatred and roughly 80 per cent are same-race killings. These statements are not “arguments” or “allegations” but simply declarations of factual truth.

It’s misleading reports such as those pushed by the Human Rights Campaign that give the false impression that it is somehow open season on transgender people, or that we are in the midst of some sort of ‘trans genocide’. The fact remains that in the USA you are unlikely to be killed because you are transgender. This, I hope you will agree, is very good news.

==

How to lie with statistics.

The Burden of Proof is not an onus unique to religionists. Just as they don’t get to assume god exists by default until proven otherwise, HRC and militants don’t get to assume anti-trans/hate crime by default until proven otherwise. That’s a specific claim, starting with intent (to kill), knowledge (of their trans status), and and motivation (to kill based on that knowledge of that status). When there isn’t even a suspect, much less a motive, making this sort of claim as fact, while politically and narratively convenient, is categorically dishonest.

It’s not “hate” or “phobia” to remain skeptical until claims can be substantiated.

For context, the HRC has been ideologically corrupted by gender ideology. Like all formerly gay advocacy organizations, it no longer recognizes homosexuality, only a same-”gender” redefinition of “gay.”

[randomshoes]

Field Guide to MRAs: Level 3, The Wounded Dog

Basic Beliefs: “One woman hurt me or someone I know therefore I am oppressed / women are the oppressors.” The impetus for this feeling can range from the MRA having been legitimately severely abused by a female partner or relative all the way to being unfairly passed over for a job or promotion in favor of a woman, but the emotional logic is the same. Another form of this is “My life is shit because I'm poor (or non-white or non-straight) and some women are rich (or white or straight) therefore sexism isn't a thing!” In a nutshell: “I feel powerless or have felt powerless in relation to women therefore I cannot be privileged.”

Recommended Tactics: Similar to those of level 2, explain the concept of systematic oppression with an emphasis on the systematic. Try to depersonalize the issue and uncouple it from the traumatic or upsetting experience. Focus on the idea that victims can victimize other people, especially if there is an intersectional issue here, such as class or race. Express sympathy for what's happened to them if appropriate. This type also likes to produce lists of statistics (it's mostly the same one they copy paste over and over again) about bad things that happen to men more than women. A lot of these are things that have really obvious explanations if you think about them for more than a second. Some examples of statistics they like include:

On the job injuries are higher for men than for women. This is because physically dangerous jobs are considered part of the masculine realm, which also happens to be something feminists want to change. Also, what is this supposed to imply, that there is a feminist conspiracy to get men hurt in construction accidents? Because that makes sense?

More is spent on women's health care (in some countries) than on men's. This is because pregnancy is a thing that happens. Also men are taught not to ask for help, which is a bad thing that feminists also want to change. Not to mention that the governments and insurance companies are mostly if not exclusively run by men, so if there really is some conspiracy to underfund men's healthcare, it's a conspiracy made up entirely of men.

For an example of this list popping up in the wild and one feminist's response, see here. Many thanks to the helpful MRA who responded to the introduction to this guide (which contained no arguments of any kind) with this completely unrelated list. (My favorite bit is that the first “source” on this version of the list is from judgybitch.com and it ends with “how’s that for research?” and I’m like...poor? D-, try to not use bald-facedly biased sources next time?)

The purpose of this statistic dump is to make it appear to a random person scrolling through the conversation that they have “facts” on their side. It's a sea of links with no connecting argument, explanation, or point. Some of these statistics are actively fallacious, some just don't mean what they think they mean, and non of them are things feminists have any influence over. You can respond to each of these individually or ask your detail-minded friend to do it. Or you can point out that copy pasting a bunch of links from judgybitch.com does not a researched argument make. The overall idea is that just because you found some very bad thing that happens to men more than women doesn't negate the fact that men have been in charge of basically everything for the entirety of history.

Safety Tip: There may be other psychological issues or personal insecurities fueling this type. Beware possible explosions of anger in response to hidden berserk buttons, particularly if you do not know them well.

Identification Aid: This type is often obsessed with the draft and will bring it up in any conversation, no matter how unrelated. This behavior is not widely understood.

Intro the the field guide here. Level 0, Level 1, Level 2.

[mathhombre]

Triangle Dataviz

Really a bad display. I'm always interested in wealth disparity visualizations - so hard to communicate the crazy disparity, so was interested in Voronoi's recent try. It's terrible! They divide up a triangle by heights proportionate to the populations!

So I made an applet to do areas - not much better. Look at 40, 30, 20, 10 above!

Here's the comparison with Voronoi's.

And here's 10, 20, 30, 40!

[faboo978]

In which we learn just how much Trump and Kennedy are full of shit.

[mister-sin]

Peter St. Onge: Bureau of Labor Statistics ‘misplaced’ the loss of nearly a million jobs

8/23/2024

[meetingboy]

The boss bragged about our “new data-driven strategy”.

The data he’s using is a 3-row spreadsheet.

That he deleted two rows from that didn’t support his idea.