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Consider the following argument

We all agree that sexism is bad. Sexism is the discrimination based on sex or gender. Discrimination is 1) the practice of unfairly treating a person or group of people differently from other people or groups of people; 2) the ability to understand that one thing is different from another thing.

A gynecologist treats only women. Thus, she "discriminates" based on gender. Thus, she is sexist. Thus, gynecologists are bad.

So, the fallacy in this argument is that we have a negative connotation that is based on the first definition of "discrimination", and we then use the second definition to carry the negative connotation over to other concepts.

Is there a name for this fallacy?

PS: I know there are a lot of "name of the fallacy" questions. I tried to make the title as distinguishable as possible.

1 Answer 1

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This is called equivocation.

See:

http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/equiv.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation

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