Playing devil's advocate. Can I discuss this here?

[AskBasil]

It's not always a feminist issue but often it is. Mostly when I've seen it done by women, they say up front "just to play devil's advocate here, what about...?" and they're honest about playing DA or just playing with the idea, throwing it out there and seeing if it's got any merit. Whereas the man I want to discuss ,does it as if he believes in what he is saying when I have previously heard him strenuously argue something else, so I'm not actually sure what he believes.

This makes me very uncomfortable, because I think there's a level of dishonesty and also disrespect about it; I feel like he's wasting my time and energy by engaging me in some sort of power game where he wants to get one over on me. Whereas I'm not interested in winning an argument, I like exploring ideas and issues. He's a friend I've known for a long time, he and his wife worked in the same company as me for a while and we've been friends ever since, but I've realised I don't actually like him very much, however I'm v. good friends with his wife (and kids).

Another friend of mine who knows them both pointed out that when people play DA they always do it from a right wing stance; (she's never heard someone with right wing leanings, argue for higher taxes and better income re-distribution in order to play DA and wind someone up). She reckons it's because people who do it are actually reactionary bastards who like to think they're liberal and so dress up their actual opinions as DA because they can't bear to think they share opinions with right wing people for whom they have some distaste. Another friend of our's reckons people who do it simply don't believe anything.

Anyway, we were over there for dinner last Friday and he did it again and it really pissed me off (and elicited this bitch-fest discussion with my other friend who reckons he's a deep down closet reactionary ). I felt the need to vent and also to find out if anyone else has a friend like this and how they engage with him - I actually try not to get into discussions with him because I realise I don't want And also to find out if there's any feminist angle to this because I have never seen him do this to men, only to women and he particularly likes to do it around feminist topics.

Something I find annoying is that playing devil's advocate is made hugely important in our education system. It is how a lot of people are taught to think.

I can see it has a certain amount of value in a classroom but it also makes me quite uneasy.

Yes, I wish they would emphasise that playing DA is appropriate in a classroom setting in order to ensure that you find out how to argue your case, but that it is absolutely not appropriate in the context of a dinner party with friends, or sitting in the garden with a nice cup of tea shooting the breeze and then turning that into some kind of hostile opinion-policing. Which is quite often how it turns out.

Something I find annoying is that playing devil's advocate is made hugely important in our education system. It is how a lot of people are taught to think.

Agree. Rhetoric is more valued in this society than evidence. (See Farage, Nigel) It forms the basis of our whole journalistic culture - for and against, Today Programme, the Moral Maze, BBC 'balance'. That there are two positions and they must be necessarily adversarial and whoever deploys the best rhetorical devices is the winner.

Playing devil's advocate is a way that (usually the privileged) get to hone their linguistic tricks. It's not interesting, engaging or attractive.

basil - yeah, but then, is it appropriate in a classroom setting? I have a student who is struggling because she feels done down by it. And I do think that is more common with girls than boys, because as a rule, girls are taught not to argue, and therefore they find it hard to do this. I really hate the way it works.

I admit, I know I do it automatically because I was brought up that way - and I'm sure tonde is right it's an expression of privilege - but I feel uneasy about it the more I think about it.

I have only ever seen playing DA as an expression of privilege or a detachment from an issue that one can only have when one is not directly negatively affected.

In other words it is trampling all over other people's lives, identifies and lived experiences "for the sake of argument".

It isn't called "playing" DA for nothing - it makes a rhetorical game out of social injustice.

Cheap and nasty and identifies the person as a privileged fuckwit who is doubly insulting because they are simultaneously dismissive of an issue whilst setting themselves up as the authority as to how the subject should be discussed by people it actually matters too.

It is a form of bullying/teasing IMO and nothing more.

And I think it shouldn't be used in educational situations.

It would be much more useful to teach young people empathy with an experience they struggle to understand as they are not affected by and the skill of listening rather than arguing for the sake of it .

God yes if only.

Am I right in thinking that originally, playing DA was a way of ensuring that lawyers/ clerics could argue their case and that was the purpose of it?

Was there any other purpose.

I don't think there's anything wrong with teaching people how to argue their case, how to see things from other people's perspectives. But the more I think about it, playing DA doesn't actually achieve that does it? It doesn't help anyone see things from anyone else's perspective at all because it's not real.

No it doesn't and it expresses the post-modern, anti-scientific and troubling notion that all points are valid and all perspectives are equal and should be given equal consideration.

It would be much more useful to teach young people empathy with an experience they struggle to understand as they are not affected by and the skill of listening

Completely agree.