"When Comparing the Badness of Two Words, and You Can't Say One of the Words, That's the Worst One."

The quote above is from comedian John Mulaney. You can see how popular it is by the upvotes here. I don't know if this was ever meant to be used as a logical argument rather than just for comedy, but either way, I often see people cite it to prove a point. Sometimes this point is correct, but let's look at whether or not it's a cardinal rule.

For example, I've seen this line of reasoning used to prove fat shaming a woman is worse than height shaming a man. It's politically incorrect to merely ask a female her weight, let alone insult her about it. On the other hand, you can talk about a male's height however you want. Therefore, this clearly means fat shaming is objectively worse, right?

Nope. All this proves is that one form of prejudice is currently considered worse than the other. It doesn't prove why it's logically worse.

Mulaney’s quote confuses the way things are, with the way things should be, also known as the is–ought problem. By his own logic, racial slurs weren’t as bad back when people were allowed to say them, but hopefully we all know that’s not true.

While racism is considered worse than discrimination towards those with dwarfism, I've seen a lot of people take that as a go ahead to downplay, ignore, or justify the latter. This is called the fallacy of relative privation. Make no mistake, whether you think saying "midget" is as bad as a racial slur or not, prejudice is prejudice.

Now if only people could be as sympathetic about this as the late Roger Ebert. Someone with dwarfism once wrote to him about using the word "midget." After a polite exchange, Ebert immediately agreed to stop using the slur. He also didn't seem to care whether "midget" will ever be as taboo as "nigger," he simply said:

"Words that cause pain should be retired..."

Now wasn't that easy?

Common Fallacies When Discussing Height Prejudice

• 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.

Fallacy of Relative Privation and Heightism

Copy/pasted from here:

If you live in a first-world country you have likely heard somebody say that an issue doesn't matter because it's nothing compared to those "poor kids in Africa".

That is called the "fallacy of relative privation."

It appears to be used a lot to argue against heightism. Somebody states that they have been discriminated for their height and explains what heightism is, somebody is quick to say "Are you comparing what you deal with for being short to racism? When were short people enslaved?"

That is the argument of "your issue doesn't matter because others have it worse" is what university professors call a fallacy and will fail you (or give you a bad mark) for using.

Yes, black people were enslaved and gay people have been stoned to death. That is not okay. Saying that there is heightism is not saying that that racism and homophobia don't exist.

Just because there are other forms of discrimination does not mean that there isn't heightism.

A very simple example: stealing $50 is bad and stealing $1000 is worse. That does not mean that it is fine for someone to steal $50 from you if they also stole $1000 from me.

As for my own thoughts on this:

Even in the rare occurrence that someone acknowledges heightism is real (but not that serious), what the fallacy of relative privation causes is a general reaction such as, "sit tight and don't worry, we'll get to you once we're done with the more severe issues."

The secret is that they'll never be done with the other problems, because racism, sexism, etc. can never be fully eradicated. It's like telling people not to steal. Some will always do it anyway.

The other catch is that an issue doesn't have to involve anything like lynching for people to care. For example, weight discrimination is considered a social issue by enough people, to the point where it has a university course.

While wage gaps and mental health are also taken seriously by society, heightism still isn't, despite involving those issues:

“Being short is probably as much, or more, of a handicap to corporate success as being a woman or an African American.”

"A 5-cm increase in height was associated with a 9% decrease in suicide risk."

The fallacy of relative privation is just another shutdown tactic, nothing more.

Heightism, the Just-World Hypothesis, and Survivorship Bias

Whenever a short man airs his grievances about any aspect of life, somebody will always jump in with a lecture blaming short men themselves for their troubles. "You didn't try hard enough, you have a bad personality, etc."

Can you see what's going on? Here's a good explanation I found:

"Height presents a major problem with what most people consciously and subconsciously believe in: a just-world fallacy. You can't control your height, so they have to work extra mental gymnastics to justify why the problems you have due to your height are not in fact due to your height, but your attitude. That way they can believe it is your fault you suffer, the world is just, and their cognitive dissonance goes away." - Source

More on the just-world hypothesis:

"The assumption that a person's actions are inherently inclined to bring morally fair and fitting consequences to that person, to the end of all noble actions being eventually rewarded and all evil actions eventually punished. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of—a universal force that restores moral balance."

Also related is Surviorship 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.

People love pointing out short men who are successful socially, romantically, or financially. This ignores the adage of "life isn't fair." People love to believe life is cut out evenly. If there's something for this short man, there must be something for that short man. Wrong. While we should all strive to be at our best, we must also not be unrealistic. Karma isn't real. More importantly, we must be careful with where we assign blame.

As one Dr. Berscheid says:

"Genetic determinism is anathema to Americans, who want to believe everyone is born equal, with an equal chance for a happy life,'' Dr. Berscheid remarked in an interview here. ''It's simply not so. The most important factors governing success in life are genetically determined: appearance, intelligence, sex and height.''

"There is a hazard inherent in denying the impact of physical attractiveness: ''Unattractive children who are unpopular may wrongly attribute their lack of popularity to some flaw in their character or personality,'' she says. Such an error, she believes, could result in lasting and painful scars."