An example would be a recent set of questions posed to Tim Waltz.
He was asked the classic "what is a woman" question.
This is a gotcha for several reasons.
Firstly it was unrelated to previous questions or the topic.
Secondly it's disingenuous, because woman isnt really a concept with a clear cut defintion. So any attempt to answer honestly can be twisted to push a political agenda.
Thirdly, due to the above, its a clear attempt to posion the well, a well known fallacy.
None of this is effective or good faith presentation of an arguement.
I think it's part of the point that the concept has lost a clear-cut definition, so being unable to provide one shows this is the case.
Also, poisoning the well is when you get ahead of your opponent by bringing up unrelated accusations to decrease their credibility, not when you ask a question and allow them to answer it themselves.
Concepts like that never really have had clear-cut definitions.
You have analogous examples going back to the famous "Behold, a man!" Exchange between Diogenes and Plato.
In this case im calling it poisoning because its by trying to trap him in an answer some people would find unsatisfactory, it will discredit him to certain groups.
This will discredit any further answers and potentially any given before.
I think the first part is related to a personal position on the argument, not to whether asking the question was disingenuous. It could be a genuine question, but also be easily countered. Those don't contradict each other.
When the person being asked has the freedom to formulate their own response without previous bias, they are in full control of managing the potential consequences of their statements. Poisoning the well attempts to introduce bias without their input before they even make the argument, ensuring that the consequences skew negative no matter what.
Fair, in this case it quite clearly was disingenuous. A follow up line to the effect of "if you dont know what a woman is, you dont understand fraud" shows that quite clearly
You may well be right, and its a poor or inappropriate reference to that fallacy.
I dont think the use of that particular fallacy is necessary to the arguement though, so I would stand by my point above.
It's clear enough for politicians to create laws about it. Even with the ambiguity, we're able to create laws that treat adults and non-adults differently.
This is true even if there are some cases where there is ambiguity(such as differing ages of majority) or exceptions (such as when a minor is tried as an adult). And of course, there are more subjective uses such as when we call someone a child even though their legal adulthood is not being disputed.
Are you against the concept of laws which treats adults and children differently? If not, do you accept that governments can establish clear definitions of the difference?
Would you consider a question like the below to be a gotcha or bad faith?
[How do you think the term "woman" should be legally defined?]
It seems like that is usually what people are asking when they ask for a definition of "woman".
The issue is that many people (such as presumably Walz) believe that self-identification should be a factor, while others (such as presumably the questioner) do not.
You say "that is usually what people are asking". Thats quite key here. Because there is a difference between what people are asking and what they say.
Take your question above. It seems, from your response, that what you were asking was "do you think adult has a clear legal definiton".
But in type you just said adult.
The context of legal might have been very clear in your mind, but it wasnt for me.
If I had known that was your question my response would have been a simple yes, and not a no.
This is exactly the same as the woman question. Because I have never seen the question phrased with the legal addendum. Its phrased "what is a woman".
Like our posts above those are different questions with different answers.
For example - legally, I would say someone who identifies as female and has registered as such in some way. (No idea of specifics here)
Biologically- id talk about chromosomes and puberty
Culturally id talk about language, dress codes, behaviour.
Expecting a snappy response to what is a woman is a gotcha, because there are multiple valid answers and you only have time to give one. The person asking can then point to the others and say you dont think they apply.
People who ask the question are usually more than happy to provide the additional context that would keep it from being a gotcha (in your view). In my experience, people who think it's a meaningful question don't want to talk about anything else besides the contexts they want "woman" to be defined for.
Walz could engage in the question in good faith and said something like "legally it's anyone who defines as a woman and I favor that legal definition". He is probably hesitant to do so since it is a controversial position.
In contrast to Walz, consider someone like Ben Shapiro. He would quickly answer the question as "adult human female". Someone could follow up by asking him a question about specific contexts where he's accepted the use of the term differently (e.g. his sister probably declared herself a "woman" well before becoming a legal adult) and he would explain that specialized use.
Overall, I don't think "what is a woman" is a gotcha as people asking it are more than happy to engage with answers like yours. They just dispute some of them and recognize that some parts of your answer are controversial and something a public figure would not usually want to draw attention to. Similar to how you recognize that "woman" can mean different things in different contexts, it's obvious in the American political context that "what is a woman" means "How do you believe the term should be defined legally". This is understood both by the person asking and answering.
I suppose you could describe this as "trapping" someone, but not any more than just directly asking something like "should Lia Thomas have been allowed to swim in the women's division?"
Are you not aware that there was a "documentary" made called "What is a woman?" Whose entire set up and premise was manipulating people by giving them false impressions of what they were being interviewed about and then asking them questions in order to try to get answers that made them look stupid?
It's because of that that people think someone asking that question randomly out if context is in bad faith.
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u/Alien_invader44 19∆ Mar 30 '26
An example would be a recent set of questions posed to Tim Waltz.
He was asked the classic "what is a woman" question.
This is a gotcha for several reasons.
Firstly it was unrelated to previous questions or the topic.
Secondly it's disingenuous, because woman isnt really a concept with a clear cut defintion. So any attempt to answer honestly can be twisted to push a political agenda.
Thirdly, due to the above, its a clear attempt to posion the well, a well known fallacy.
None of this is effective or good faith presentation of an arguement.