Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. - Carl Sagan
Lately, I’ve run into a number of people who seem completely unable to comprehend that the burden of proof is on the one proposing some extraordinary concept such as “rape culture”, “social construction of gender” or an epidemic of “sex trafficking”; they seem to believe that their assertion that these things exist is enough, and that I am some kind of heartless monster for even daring to question their veracity. If I told one of these people that my waiter had spontaneously combusted during dinner, or that there had been a rain of toads on my property today, I daresay he would insist on proof despite the fact that these things have indeed actually happened in the past (though very rarely). Yet, I am supposed to accept his declaration that the laws of biology are suspended for human beings, or that the laws of logic and economics somehow do not hold when sex is involved, without any proof whatsoever…despite the fact that these things are roughly as credible as the claim that a group of six-headed lemurs from 61 Cygni has established a colony in downtown Hoboken.
So in order to have something very simple to link to when arguing with these people (or more accurately, in lieu of arguing with them), I have prepared the following little lesson in comic-strip form. Because my drawings would be distractingly bad I have decided to enlist the aid of Sir John Tenniel; I don’t think y’all will mind, and I know he won’t.
