Culture

Whataboutery: the Toxic Art of Deflection

This defensive technique doesn’t encourage debate — it stifles it

Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels

If you’re a woman on the internet who writes about feminism or women’s issues, you’ve probably received some variation of “But what about men’s problems? What about us?” as a comment. Welcome to the poisonous world of whataboutery.

What is whataboutery?

Whataboutery, also known as whataboutism, is a technique used by professional trolls to derail a conversation by deflecting attention away from what was actually being discussed.

It often comes in the form of a question but they don’t want an answer —they simply want to discredit your argument. They do this by creating a false equivalency with an unrelated or tangentially related issue.

Here’s how it typically goes:

1. You raise a specific problem or argument.
2. Instead of addressing the point at hand or coming up with a counterargument, your troll will respond with “What about this other issue?” or “What about when something completely different happened?”
3. If they’re successful, the focus of the conversation changes to their preferred topic and your argument is dismissed or discredited for…