The Toxicity of "Toxic Empathy"
Deconstructing Fallacies Behind the Lie That Empathy Can Be Toxic
The idea of “toxic empathy” or “empathy is sin” has been floating around in Christiamerican circles lately, most recently in defense of their stance on immigration. — a position that is unbiblical, inhumane, and arrogant. This particular terminology, while nonsensical and oxymoronic, is used in their arguments regarding this topic as well as others in an attempt to wash their hands of their own sins, among which include:
The idea of “empathy as sin” has been around since at least 2019 when Joe Rigney, who serves as Fellow of Theology at the ultra right wing New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, ID, posted an article entitled The Enticing Sin of Empathy.1 He argued that empathy is a weapon that the “sufferer” uses to control the empathizer. He believes that empathy requires a “fusion” between the sufferer and the empathizer “so that one personality is lost in the other.”2
This concept emerged into a broader church culture a couple of years later during the midst of the COVID pandemic. The timing of which seems to be aligned with the Christian right’s dismissiveness of the various edicts that were enforced to mitigate the spread of the virus.3
This notion reemerged in the national discussion a few weeks ago, beginning with Christiamerican responses to Bishop Mariann Budde’s Inagural sermon. Since then, many Christiamericans have put on their best Simone Biles impressions, backflipping over the cognitive dissonance between their politics and biblical teachings on how to treat people — particularly immigrants.
The work of one particular author and podcaster, Allie Beth Stuckey, who has been deemed the “New Phyllis Schlafly for Conservative Women,” is front and center in pushing the baroque idea of “toxic empathy.”4 She published a book of that title in 2024 to capitalize promote the idea. Her arguments, both flimsy and unoriginal, provide a broad explanation of how she and her fellow Christiamericans came to view empathy as sin.5
It reads like a sequel to Mein Kampf.
If Hitler was a millennial Aryan blonde, with a successful podcast that serves a large conservative female audience. Filtered for the aesthetic kindness of webcam video. With all the emotiveness and hand-waving of a praise & worship song leader. Followed by the bigoted “hell, fire, & brimstone” of an AM radio station in rural Indiana.
As a proud empath, I am intrigued by the concept of “toxic empathy.” I recently read her book to attempt to understand this paradoxical viewpoint. It did not take long for the illogical, immoral, and fascist influences in her arguments to reveal themselves. As a dutiful empath, and someone who just tries to be a decent human being, I feel compelled to dismantle the lies she wants to convince others to believe.
Ultimately, it is Mrs. Stuckey’s Christofascist world view that impacts her opinions and humanity. Her opinions demonstrate a consistent reliance on illogical reasoning, confirmation biases, and a priori argumentation. This is pretty typical of the Christofascist gestalt, which manifests itself in a uniquely American right-wing religion I call Christiamericanity.
This article is Part 1 of a three-part series in which I will deconstruct the arguments that Stuckey and her Christiamerican colleagues cling to in promoting the idea of “toxic” empathy. The focus of Part 1 is unraveling her arguments intellectually and logically, while Parts 2 and 3 will delve respectively into the moral/ethical weaknesses of her claims, and reconstructing the truth about empathy.
There is much to cover, so away we go…
Overgeneralization
The Fallacy of Incomplete Evidence6 is the act of using select or individual cases to confirm a position, while ignoring other significant and/or relevant data that validly contradicts the argument. In other words, rather than relying on evidence that demands a verdict, it’s a backwards approach — selecting only that evidence which supports a specific verdict. This is at the heart of what creates confirmation bias, which we will examine in Part 2 of this series.
In the chapter entitled Lie #1 - “Abortion is Healthcare”, Stuckey cites several emotionally-charged incidents of abortion-themed horror stories. Her goal is to use broad strokes to paint all doctors who perform abortions as murderous monsters, and organizations such as Planned Parenthood as greedy capitalists focused on making money by convincing women to abort their pregnancies. Any functioning human being would agree that stories, such as a 2009 abortion malpractice performed by Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique, are troubling and should never happen.7 But, contrary to what Stuckey would have us believe, stories such this represent an isolated case, and are not representative of the care and caution that is the norm for any medical procedure, including pregnancy termination. The Fallacies of Incomplete Evidence she relies on are no different than someone claiming that all air travel is unsafe based on accidents such the recent tragedy in Washington D.C.
Stuckey uses similar tactics in her attack on transgenderism in the chapter entitled Lie #2 - “Trans Women Are Women”. Here, she introduces the character, Laura Perry Smalts, who transitioned from female to male before detransitioning back. A quick Google search suggests that Mrs. Smalts is THE poster child for essentially every conservative Christian anti-transgender platform. It’s easy to understand why, as she has created a public persona based on her story about becoming a born-again Christian and how that impacted her choice to detransition.
What Stuckey, and the rest of the conservative Christian voices exploiting sharing Laura’s story fail to admit, is that her story is an anomaly and not representative of most transgender individuals. In reality, several scientific studies, over a number of years, have reliably demonstrated that the vast majority of transgendered persons remain so for the rest of their lives. The largest study of detransitioned persons, published in 2016, found that only 8% of respondents (n = 27,715) had detransitioned temporarily or permanently at some point, and that the majority did so only temporarily.8 Furthermore, the most common reasons given for detransitions were as follows:9
Pressure from a parent (36%)
Transitioning was too hard (33%)
Too much harassment or discrimination (31%)
Trouble getting a job (29%).
Debate tactics such as this fall under the umbrella of the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization, in which a small and/or very specific amount of evidence is used to make universal claims. A more common term for this is “jumping to conclusions”. This is a tactic that Christiamericans like Stuckey utilize rather frequently. Another example of this is found in the chapter Lie #3 - “Love is Love”. This chapter, which condemns both homosexuality and the medical procedure of in vitro fertilization (IVF), includes a story of Olivia Maurel, a 32-year old woman born via traditional surrogacy. As with Laura Perry Smalts, Ms. Maurel appears to be the token example for Christian fundamentalists pushing an anti-surrogacy agenda.10 She shared some of her story in an interview with Omnes magazine from April 2024:
My parents were older than the average of my friends' parents, and I had an "older" style of upbringing. I never had the relationship with my parents that I currently have with my children. I never cuddled with them, I never trusted them, even though I had everything I needed, materially speaking. Today I am very close to my children, with a very close connection to them. I loved my parents and I know they loved me, and I think they did the best they could with what they had. They both had rough childhoods, so they didn't grow up with the mentality that my generation has, for example. As a child, whenever I was with my parents, I always had to be accompanied by nannies, because I was afraid they would abandon me. I always had that gut feeling that something wasn't right. This hunch became more intense during my teenage years. I became a very complicated teenager (more difficult than the average teenager, I think) and was extremely difficult with my parents. I actually mentally distanced myself from them at those times.
Stuckey even points out that Olivia struggled with “feelings of abandonment, troubled relationships, and addiction to drugs and alcohol” growing up.11
It is easy to empathize with Olivia. Clearly her childhood was sad, lonely, and troubled. But it is quite a stretch to associate that with her surrogate birth, without considering other more likely contributing issues, such as the harsh childhood of her adoptive parent. The fallacy of ascribing causality between two corresponding events is called The Fallacy of Causation (or Causal Fallacy), which will be discussed in greater detail in the next section. In this case, both Stuckey and Maurel argue that the problems that Olivia faced in life were directly caused by the fact she was born to a surrogate mother. There is no evidence that this was the cause, especially when there could be any number of reasons why the relationship she had with her adopted mom was strained.12 In other words, while her troubled childhood correlated with the fact that she was a surrogate birth, there is no evidence to suggest that her birth was the direct cause of her negative experiences.
That Stuckey relies so heavily on stories like that of Laura and Olivia demonstrates her lack of the understanding of logical, empirically-based arguments. There’s a thread of irony that weaves throughout the book as Stuckey consistently slams liberals for using emotionally-charged arguments — all while using them herself for essentially every point she tries to make. The reliance on emotional anecdotes to promote a viewpoint is one of the purposes she uses spurious arguments to claim universal “truths” — even if the argument is based on singular or a very small number of similar incidents.13 This inevitably leads to enough Straw Man Arguments to recreate a scene from the low budget movie Husk. One such Straw Man is the MAGA favorite that suggests that all transgendered women are just mentally ill and/or perverted men eager to harass or assault cisgender women— a central theme pushed by Stuckey in Lie #2 - “Trans Women Are Women”.14
Similarly, Stuckey frequently utilizes a propositional fallacy known as Denying the Antecedent, as with her claim casting doubt on the existence of systemic racism in America. She argues that the gaps between white and black Americans should have been much wider before Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 than they are today.15 This type of fallacy supposes that…
If A, then B
Not, A
Therefore, not B
Or as Stuckey would argue…
If systemic racism was a problem in America, then things would have been worse for black Americans prior to 1964 than they are now.
Things are worse for black Americans now than they were prior to 1964, therefore that proves there is no systemic racism in America.
There are numerous examples of this type of argument throughout Stuckey’s messaging — so many that I could dedicate an entire essay to each position and the “evidence” she uses to support her views. Some of the more significant ones include statements that monsterize reproductive care professionals by claiming their motivation is financial greed.16 As well as the vilification of teachers who follow protocols about not “outting” gender-variant students to anyone, including the student’s parents.17 These types of Appeal to Ignorance arguments are key components of the MAGA-Christiamerican zeitgeist that creates a bubble of belief impervious to truth or facts.
Correlation vs. Causation
The misconception that correlation implies causation (formally known by the Latin phrase, cum hoc, ergo propter hoc) looms large in Christiamerican mentalities. We’ve touched on one example of this in the story of Olivia, the surrogate-born woman. The term for this type of argument is the Questionable Cause Fallacy, wherein a claim is made that one correlating factor caused another without any proof of anything more than coincidence.
It is this type of rationalization that makes faith problematic. Belief in divinely guided circumstances, miracles, etc. make it easy to make statements such as “Well, it was God’s will that this happened.”18 Philosophers, religious scholars, and scientists have wrestled with the dichotomy of faith and reason since earliest recorded history. It’s not a rabbit hole I intend to go very far down in the scope of this essay. Without arguing the existence of God or his will, I do want to point out the danger of singularly embracing faith, without allowing space for other premises based more so on reason.
It is even more problematic when this type of thinking leads to offensive, immoral, and unethical beliefs. Such as the types of lies that Stuckey and her MAGA cohort push every time a new story about an undocumented person committing a crime is published.19 They want America to believe that just because some Central and South American immigrants commit crimes, all immigrants could and probably would do so as well.20 Unfortunately for them, we know that study after study has demonstrated that immigrants are significantly less likely than non-immigrants to commit crimes. The mistake Stuckey makes in this instance is believing the following:
A is regularly associated with B
Therefore, A causes B
Or in the case of immigrants and crime…
Some immigrants have been guilty of committing crime
Therefore, immigration has increased crime in America.
The temptation to confuse correlation with causation is a common mistake for people like Stuckey. At the age of 32, and with an education where exposure to foundational principles of science, research, and debate are unlikely, she is a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The real toxicity isn’t empathy, but the toxic mixture of arrogance and ignorance that people like her represent — a more dangerous concoction than C3H5N3O9.
And the reason for so many weak and fallacious arguments used by MAGA, Christiamericans, and other likeminded people.
Slippery Slope
When someone’s world view is based on such precarious illogic as described above, it creates a system of beliefs constantly on the verge of collapse. There is even an account of Jesus teaching about this weakness in his parable of “The House Built on the Sand”.21 The image of a house built on a weak foundation sliding into ruin brings to mind one of the most significant and frequently employed fallacious arguments used by Stuckey and her peers - The Slippery Slope Fallacy.
Slippery Slope Arguments are any arguments which claim that a position or decision will lead to a series of unintended negative consequences — outcomes which are often hyperbolic, outlandish, and meant to incite fear.22 A common example of this is the right wing lie23 that suggests that all immigrants at the southern border are bringing waves of crime into the United States, an argument Stuckey propagates throughout Lie #4 - “No Human is Illegal”.24 This despite real data that suggests that immigrants are actually significantly less likely to commit crimes than natural-born citizens.
Other Fallacies
The examples I have highlighted thus far represent the main types of fallacious reasoning used by Stuckey in her book. While a more fine-toothed comb could tease out a plethora of other examples, it is my hope that the samples I have already shared are sufficient in making my points. Before I wrap things up, here are a few additional fallacy types with examples found in her book. These are typical of the types used by Stuckey and her MAGA-Christiamerican sisteren and brethren.
“Black and White” Fallacies
The Black and White Fallacy is a type of False Dichotomy Fallacy which states that there are only two possible options in an argument. These options are often extreme opposites, ignore any middle ground or nuance, and essentially force a choice between "black" and "white" when there are many shades of gray in between. This type of thinking is the most malignantly cancerous type of bias shared by Stuckey and her compatriots. It is what encourages their various absolutist ideas, including her argument that since all social policies and programs are evil (ooo…scary Communism!), any social justice efforts are also evil.25
This mindset is at the heart of the current MAGA antagonism towards DEI efforts in our country.
Another example of False Dichotomy (aka Either/Or Fallacy) includes her attempts to differentiate between love and empathy throughout the book, and her insistence that there is very little overlap between the two.26
False Equivalence
False Equivalence Fallacies are those arguments where two completely opposing arguments seem to be equally logical and valid, simply because they happen to share a specific characteristic between both viewpoints.27 This too is another frequent tactic of Stuckey’s rhetoric, including the suggestion that disparities which favor white over black Americans can’t be racist because disparities between Asian and white Americans supposedly favor Asian-Americans.28
Whataboutism
Donald Trump and MAGA Americans are experts in the art of Whataboutism, a form of Tu quoque Fallacy. This methodology, found frequently throughout social media, partisan hack talking heads, and political speech, is the act of responding to an accusation or argument by deflecting to an example of someone or something else that is equally “bad” or worse.
To no surprise, Stuckey intersperses these types of arguments throughout her book. For example, she appropriates the popular MAGA trope of comparing the angry responses to the George Floyd murder to question racism as a motivator for his death and the ensuing anger it caused.29 She uses similar illogic to tie the militant actions of the group Jane’s Revenge in order to cast all pro-choice activists as violent, window-shattering firebombers.30 This is just one of several instances of cherry picking extreme, isolated cases to paint her arguments with broad strokes of universality.31
Red Herring
Most people reading this essay are likely familiar with the Red Herring Fallacy, the practice of diverting attention away from a main argument by introducing an irrelevant point. As with all the previously discussed fallacies, this is a main part of the MAGA-Christiamerican arsenal for debate. Stuckey uses this approach in posing disingenuous pseudo-questions related to the difference between a fetus and a baby,32 as well as in presenting her definition of “acceptable” vs. “unacceptable” immigrants.33
Final Thoughts
There are three different mindsets when it comes to understanding and using logic to inform opinions and world views. The most traditional logicians from Aristotle to Zinoviev view faith/religion somewhere between falsehood, but societally useful, to one that is dangerous to society.
On the other extreme, there are some who argue that faith trumps reason. Religious fundamentalists such as Doug Wilson, and some of the worst bad actors currently in United States government, are actively pushing the Christian nationalist agenda detailed in Project 2025.34 They, like Allie Beth Stuckey, believe in a reality based on their interpretation of rules which they believe are articulated in the Bible.
The entire point of Stuckey’s book is to rationalize the unethical, inhumane, and anti-democratic views that she and her companions believe.
The middle view, one held by many Americans, believes that faith and reason can co-exist because they serve two different purposes. Social synthesizer
articulates this masterfully in a recent Facebook post in which she states:The problem with this mostly unexamined assumption that faith actually makes life simpler for us all, and that it renders one spiritually superior to the faithless, or that it grants the mind more free time to worship, relax and enjoy being alive? Once people get conditioned in early childhood, by being coerced into believing in things they really don’t know to be true (as in: you’ll burn in hell forever if you dare to question the existence of our God!), then the introduction of new evidence that challenges the faith-based narrative becomes intolerable, even terrifying, for the repressively frightened minds of the faithful to hear.
Why? Because faith does not operate in the same way as does knowledge, information, data, wisdom, facts, or truth. Faith proudly declares, by definition, “I absolutely refuse to entertain any possibility whatsoever that this belief of mine might be incorrect.”
Thus, faith alone cannot possibly stand up to any of these other modes for knowing, particularly if they challenge the faith or begin to contradict it. It therefore NEEDS to be weaponized to lock it in place; otherwise it’s fangless and nonthreatening to the mind. Which means it takes far more energy to “defend faith” constantly against all of these other dangerous, well-fanged ideological interlopers—ie: science-based studies, mathematical computations, experiential knowing, or even any alternative faith-based narratives. Frankly, the amount of mental, emotional, human lives, and natural resources we humans have already spent on “defending the faith” against all interlopers (whichever faith we’ve been conditioned to embrace) likely exceeds, exponentially, whatever we’ve been investing in our pursuit of actual knowledge that we can use more confidently, more universally, and that we can apply to maintain our own alignment with life as we continue to learn more.
For if evidence truly exists for something, having faith in it becomes unnecessary. Do we need to have faith in electricity, or is its existence self-evident? Do we need to take up arms to defend or aggress against unicorns as an abstract position of faith—or can we acknowledge that fantasy and reality may often seem a bit blurred around the edges?
There is certainly room for both faith and reason in a pluralistic democratic society, regardless of one’s personal beliefs.
But…
It requires the ability to have a pluralistic mind, humility, grace, curiosity, and…well…
Empathy
Stay tuned for more on this topic as I revisit Toxic Empathy by Allie Beth Stuckey in Part 2 of this series where I will deconstruct the ethics and inhumanity of her rhetoric. In the meantime, please subscribe to my Substack and share this essay with friends, especially those who are working to combat the fascism of MAGA and Christiamericanity.
Here are some other great articles that explore these topics in more depth:
The Sin of Toxic Empathy is a MAGA Dogwhistle to Make Sure Mothers Stay in Line by
"Ordo Amoris" and "Toxic Empathy" by
New Saint Andrews College is a close affiliate of Doug Wilson and his church, Christ Church in Moscow, ID. He is as crazily right wing as they come. He preaches on themes that support slavery, disenfranchise women, and Dominionism. His theology is heavily influential on current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Learn more about Doug Wilson and his teachings by listening to podcasts presented by the Sons of Patiarchy.
Rigney is doubling down on his stance with the upcoming release of a new book entitled The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits.
See On the Sin of Empathy by James White
Allie Beth is a member of the Reformed Calvinist brand of Christianity founded by Doug Wilson
There are several instances of plagiarism from Joe Rigney’s work (ex: pp. xiii)
Also known as “cherry picking” an argument
He lost his medical license after a medical board investigation of the incident
James SE, Herman JL, Rankin S, Keisling M, Mottet L, Anafi M.. The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality; 2016.
While I am unqualified to determine what factors influenced Laura’s decision to detransition, I find it interesting that the subtext in her story, as shared by Mrs. Stuckey, suggests that some of these items could have been part of her experience as well.
Interesting fact - she claims to be an atheist
Toxic Empathy, pp. 75-76
There have been several studies regarding the wellbeing of children born via IVF. Current data suggests that most grow up to be healthy, while results are mixed regarding the effects on their mental health with some studies suggesting there might be a correlation and others that there might not. Several have found that the mental well being of IVF children might be more correlated to parental characteristics. The reality is we don’t have conclusive data but most research suggests that children born from IVF are as normal as traditionally birthed children.
This is known as an Argument from Anecdote
Toxic Empathy, pp. 54-56
Toxic Empathy, pp. 142
Toxic Empathy, pp. 13-17
Toxic Empathy, pp. 41-43
A fallacy known as Magical Thinking
Lie #4 - “No Human is Illegal” from Toxic Empathy
A fallacy known as Appeal to Fear
Matthew 7:24-27 & Luke 6:46-49
Slippery Slope Arguments are often used in conjunction with Appeal to Fear tactics — one could argue that right wing fundamentalism was created with just this type of reasoning
Based on cherry picked data
Incidentally, this type of reasoning that extrapolates characteristics of one part of a population to the whole is called Pars pro toto Fallacy
Lie #5 - “Social Justice is Justice” from Toxic Empathy
Toxic Empathy, pp. xii-xviii, pp. 119
Often used in conjunction with Straw Man Arguments
Toxic Empathy, pp. 144
Toxic Empathy, pp. xxiii-xxiv
Toxic Empathy, pp. 23
This also ties into the Fallacy of Composition which infers that something is true about the whole based on one small part of it
Toxic Empathy, pp. 12
Toxic Empathy, pp. 124-128
Such as Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, Mike Johnson, and others