Don't leave a voicemail, seriously.

Boot up "Infinity on High." Now, read this fic.

( MCR/FOB: Sinking with the melody of the kiss of eternity. )

I was talking to poisontaster about her post today, regarding shunning, stupidity, how we need to gag the morons on the internet, and how people JUST DON'T GET IT. There are many many ways people just don't get it. The one we were discussing is the tone thing. Let me be upfront and just say outright, if you EVER bring up "tone" to a minority of whatever stripe and say "if only you'd been a nice girl and kept the discussion civil I would have listened, but, alas, you dared get screamy with rage"--you're a douche. The end.

But what I said to Erin was:

I think the issue here (with the tone thing) is that white people are
taught it's not "nice" to get into people's faces and everyone's mom
told them "don't lower yourself to their level," that combined with how
we're socialized as women not to make a fuss lends itself to people
saying "if you had just kept your cool" when they don't really have a
clue that what they're saying is "if you step out of line with your
righteous anger, you're entire argument is invalidated." This is a
particular issue in fandom where this concept is a built-in logical fallacy
that most fans seem to believe is REAL and not just a creative fiction
that helps maintain social norms. There are valid reasons to be angry,
and attempting to shut that down with "tone" commentary only pisses
people off more, naturally.


Tone is used a lot in polite society to shut down any kind of argument. There is no specific argument fallacy that covers tone, but I guess it's a form of appeal to ridicule. I guess it could also just be one variant of a red herring, sliding the argument from facts to someone's shoes--or in this case their "tone." Really, what it comes down to is that any mention of tone actually negates what the person defending themselves with said accusations is making. If I say "you shot me!" and you say "well, I won't help you now, lass, you've gone and yelled at me!" you're not any better/worse than someone who when I say "you're a bigot, GOOD GOD!" says to me "you took the lord's name in vain, and also, watch that capslock, you'd get further with honey than with vinegar." Except I hope if someone shoots me they take me out, because I'm gonna be pretty pissed!