I belong to a debate club that meets once or twice a month. We also engage in rather contentious discussions online. Here’s a recent email exchange, which was the inspiration for this series of posts:
P: First on dog whistles. In my experience, accusing someone of using a dog whistle is a thought-terminating insult designed to avoid dealing with the actual point and having an actual conversation. Define woman without using the word woman. If you can't, don't hide behind that nonsense and actually do it OR admit your ideology prohibits you from defining an English word.
B: As you well know, the reason certain phrases are called dog whistles is that they sound reasonable on the surface, but they carry a message that the speaker doesn't want to say out loud. "All lives matter"… [This] is a way of saying racism isn't real, or it's being exaggerated, or acknowledging the oppression of black people is unfair to white people… It's the same thing with "you can't define what a woman is." It sounds reasonable…But those who see it and respond to it understand that it's a disparagement of transgender people, not a legitimate question.
P: …yet another personal attack. I invited you, even taunted you, to actually define the word woman and of course you can't. Not content to leave it there you decided it was a dog whistle and that you'd try yet again to demonize me personally instead of handing the ideas being put forth with reason and logic. I didn't tip my hand about any hidden bigotry, in fact I'm very transparent about all my views, but I certainly did prove my point with your help. In spades apparently.
[Some days later…]
P: I'm going to demonstrate just how stupid the thought-terminating cliche of "It's a dog whistle" actually is.
P: "I don't believe trans women are women therefore they shouldn't compete in woman's sports."
B: "You're wrong, trans women are women."
P: "You think so? Well here's how I define women. How do you define women?"
B: "OMG you used a dog whistle!! I can't have this conversation."
… You're simply afraid to defend your viewpoint.
B: No, we did not discuss sports at all. Because "what is a woman?" is a trick question, which, as Matt Walsh demonstrated, can never be answered to the satisfaction of the anti-trans contingent, I will continue to label it a dog whistle. In a previous email I demonstrated how the phrase is used to signal beliefs in an indirect way, which is exactly what a dog whistle is as applied to bigotry.
Which got me thinking…What counts as evidence that certain expressions are dog whistles? What counts as definitive evidence? How do we know what someone means when they say something? How do we know what their more general point is? How do we know what they’re thinking of when they say things? How do we know what they intend to convey? Or, even harder, what unconscious cognitions or intentions are behind their words? If their words have multiple meanings (i.e. are polysemic) and evoke multiple associations, how do we know which meanings/associations matter, or matter the most, which are central which incidental? How do we know our interpretation is the right one, or at least close enough? If words express multiple thoughts and the thoughts are of varying moral quality, how does one weigh the overall moral quality of a communication? Can words be true, valid, useful, insightful, demeaning and hurtful all at the same time? If so, how do we deal with it? When should we bounce, when give the benefit of the doubt?