- Relative Privation: "Height discrimination is not that bad because someone else has it worse."
- Just-World: The belief that bad things happen to bad people. "It's not about height, it's your bad personality."
- Survivorship Bias: "Whether it be movie stars, or athletes, or musicians, or CEOs of
multibillion-dollar corporations who dropped out of school, popular
media often tells the story of the determined individual who pursues
their dreams and beats the odds. There is much less focus on the many
people that may be similarly skilled and determined but fail to ever
find success because of factors beyond their control or other
(seemingly) random events. This creates a false public perception that anyone can achieve great
things if they have the ability and make the effort. The overwhelming
majority of failures are not visible to the public eye, and only those
who survive the selective pressures of their competitive environment are
seen regularly."
- Kafkatrapping:
People accuse short men of having short man syndrome or being insecure, then when
any short man argues against this, it's used as further confirmation for these claims. However, putting up no resistance results in these claims going unchallenged, and therefore accepted as fact.
- Appeal to Nature/Naturalistic/Biological Determinism: "Height prejudice, and the inequity that stems from it, is just the natural way of things." Plenty of things are natural and instinctive, such as the urge to assault somebody in a fit of rage, indulging in unhealthy but satisfying cravings, or taking a male more seriously than a female because the latter is physically weaker on average. Yet all of those things are discouraged, because something being natural doesn't inherently make it excusable. Unless someone has mental illness, a person's words and actions are their own responsibility.
- Burden of Proof:
The burden of proof lies with the person who is making a claim. Society
claims many nasty things about short men, yet expects short men to
"disprove" these stereotypes - the accused is guilty until proven
innocent (I've written a series of posts specifically about this).
- Composition/Division: Inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. "I have never experienced heightism, therefore nobody experiences heightism.
- False Dilemma: When something is falsely claimed to be an "either/or" situation. "You can either think about heightism, or live a fulfilling life."
- Appeal to the People: Believing something is true because many or most people believe it. "If so many talk about angry short men, it must be a real issue." Could also be done in reverse, "Society as a whole doesn't acknowledge heightism, therefore it doesn't exist."
- Argument by Laziness: A person makes a statement or gives an opinion on an issue without having studied the topic being discussed. Everyone seems to be an expert on height related issues, but how many have done their research?
- Strawman: Substituting a person’s actual position or argument, then attacking that new, false narrative. One person could be talking about height discrimination, but the other will act like the first is mad about dating issues.
There is of course also the
fallacy fallacy, which people use to excuse committing any of the above fallacies, but this only works when you still have a point despite being fallacious. Most of the time, a person has no argument aside from their initial fallacy itself.
