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A false equivalence is a rhetorical strategy of applying an arbitrary substitution to a sentence and assuming that this substitution preserves meaning. An imaginary dialogue that exemplifies false equivalence: * Alice: "Hey guys, shut up and let the women talk" * Bob: "What a terrible thing to say! Why, imagine if you were saying 'shut up girls, let the men talk'? That would be bad, right? Therefore, what you said is just as bad."

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  • False equivalence
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  • A false equivalence is a rhetorical strategy of applying an arbitrary substitution to a sentence and assuming that this substitution preserves meaning. An imaginary dialogue that exemplifies false equivalence: * Alice: "Hey guys, shut up and let the women talk" * Bob: "What a terrible thing to say! Why, imagine if you were saying 'shut up girls, let the men talk'? That would be bad, right? Therefore, what you said is just as bad."
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  • A false equivalence is a rhetorical strategy of applying an arbitrary substitution to a sentence and assuming that this substitution preserves meaning. An imaginary dialogue that exemplifies false equivalence: * Alice: "Hey guys, shut up and let the women talk" * Bob: "What a terrible thing to say! Why, imagine if you were saying 'shut up girls, let the men talk'? That would be bad, right? Therefore, what you said is just as bad." Bob's equivalence is false because the imperative for women to be quiet in presence of male discussion has social structures of domination that support it and give it meaning beyond just Alice's own hypothetical statement. On the other hand, the imperative for men to shut up in the presence of women's discussion communicates an exceptional situation in the dominant sociopolitical culture. Social structures of domination, that discourage men from speaking up because of their gender, do not exist. As this example suggests, words have meaning, and context matters. False equivalences are one instance of a common silencing tactic of treating language as purely syntactic, assuming that arbitrarily changing a sentence's context while preserving its structure also preserves its meaning. Of course, people saying these things generally do not believe that language has no meaning; they just hope that others won't notice it does.
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