definition of kitchen sinking

Excerpts from my book (in progress)

Kitchen Sinking is uncontrolled motor-mouthing, with the only goal being to make one’s opponent look worse, to prove that one’s opponent is lazy or selfish or incompetent or ineffective, with no minimum standard for relevance and accuracy of the evidence cited. Kitchen Sinking is fighting dirty, in the sense of hurting the opponent’s feelings instead of hurting his case. {Source: “Definition of Kitchen Sinking” by J. E. Brown.}

— J. E. Brown

Ancient Myths.

Kitchen Sinking is not about “holding it in until someone explodes”* but about You Can Do No Right syndrome (YCDNR), the phenomenon where someone gives up on you in disgust, and has such a total change of heart that he or she starts to see all of your attributes as negatives. It’s not that your partner was holding all the complaints in; many of the complaints didn’t bother him or her until recently. I’m not necessarily blaming the Kitchen Sinker — in some cases, the Kitchen Sinker has simply had enough of his or her partner’s troublemaking, and snaps. So when your partner starts kitchen sinking, your challenge is to figure out which of the many complaints triggered the falling-out, which of the offenses turned out to be most important.

When your partner begins to see your relationship as a mistake, that’s when the free and vocal complaining begins. It’s not an explosion or a change in your partner — because from your partner’s perspective, the change was in you. Some event, probably a newly noticed pattern, has triggered the complaining party to re-evaluate the whole relationship.

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* “Holding it inside too long” is also known as the “hydraulic theory of the emotions”, a centuries-old folk theory which has fallen out of favor with psychologists. Modern science has come to the understanding that the metaphor about “the Last Straw Breaking the Camel’s Back” is the correct interpretation.

— J. E. Brown

Signs and Symptoms of Kitchen Sinking

• The dialog becomes a monolog.
• The conversation drifts off topic by getting away from the original complaint. It becomes a whole laundry list of complaints, a barrage of barely related beefs.
• The listener may feel baffled and unable to get a word in edgewise, as the saying goes.
• The complainer attacks from many angles (on many unrelated topics), and so, puts the victim in the position of having to defend himself, at all times, and on many fronts, not just on the trigger issue. The resulting division of the victim’s attention between these many fronts causes confusion. The lack of connections in the rambling monolog may leave the listener unable to reconstruct the conversation and therefore unable to remember everything that was said and unable to decide how to respond.
• Changing the subject rapidly is a form of interrupting, because it deprives the accused of the privilege of answering.

— J. E. Brown

How to Write a Letter of Reprimand. How to Correct Someone.

Kitchen Sinking means throwing in all the complaints you have, large and small, not because they’re on the same topic, but because once the floodgates were open, you couldn’t stop. Topic Jumping is similar, and means attacking from all sides, like a pack of wild animals or a school of sharks, changing the topic to the next complaint before the listener can answer. An example of kitchen sinking is the letter that starts out “You hurt my feelings when you said....” but later changes the subject to a list of small gripes like “and by the way, we don’t like your dog either.” {Source: “Definition of Kitchen Sinking” by J. E. Brown.}

Here’s a good reason to stick to a single complaint topic: You want to convey (or at least not convey the opposite of) a belief that the relationship is salvageable. The problem with kitchen sinking and topic jumping, though, is that they convey “See what I’ve been thinking about you all along, while I was pretending to be friendly toward you?” So unless you want your reader to stop trusting you or to think the situation is hopeless, don’t kitchen-sink.

— J. E. Brown

To Wear Down or to Tear Down?

To the untrained eye, kitchen sinking seems to be about wearing the listener down. But that’s not the heart of it — that’s not the motivation, only the side effect. The goal of the kitchen sinker is to make someone look bad in every way possible, not simply to fill time with a rant.

— J. E. Brown

Translations

Statement	Meaning
“My ex was abusive. Also, he dresses funny and he has a skanky car.”	“I think my judgmental opinions of his car and clothing are as serious as his abusiveness. This proves I have no sense of proportion.”
“He’s a radical extremist, a terrorist. Also, he was once seen in a strip club.”	“There’s no limit to the tiny objections we’ll make. We’re not above using information sourced from gossip rags and tabloids as long as it’s damaging to our opponent. If it’s salacious, it’s relevant.” [Inspiration: The Southern Poverty Law Center apologized for falsely accusing Maajid Nawaz of being an extremist. And yeah, they added the off-topic bit about naked women. Story here.]

— J. E. Brown

Comebacks

If someone tells you:

Your correct response is:

Any kitchen-sink statement or behavior.

“You seem to have an inability to stay on the topic.” “Uh huh. If I may change the subject back to the subject….” “And that’s relevant because…?” “And that hurts you how?” “Your goal is obviously to make me look bad in any way possible, even if you have to change the subject to do it.” “So you’re just going to change the subject every time you feel like it? Do I not get to finish my thought?” “Are you going to change the subject every time I try to answer your question? Is that how you operate? See how you are?” “I notice you keep changing the topic. Does that mean you’re not expecting an answer to any of these questions? So really you’re just running your mouth.” “Shut up until I finish my thought for once.” [Note to reader: This is not to be used until the complainer becomes loud and heated and abusive. At that point, you are expected to defend yourself, not to mumble weak excuses about the importance of being the only polite person in the room.] “The fact that you would say that tells me that you don’t see the problem, or why your words were hurtful. I think we should take some time off, so you can figure out how things work.”

— J. E. Brown

Random Thoughts.

The goal of Kitchen Sinking is to make the opponent look bad at all costs, even if one must change the subject to do it.

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Kitchen sinking proves that someone will complain about anything.

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Because kitchen sinking indicates the absence of respect for your boundaries, you can be sure that if you’re not being bullied already, you will be. A show of strength may re-establish the boundary, and the relationship. Bullies look for partners who won’t fight back or stand up for themselves; and so, setting your own boundaries and insisting on respect for those boundaries is the show of strength you need.

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Avoid people who can outtalk you. Never move in with one, never work under one, and never ever marry one. Because if they and you ever get into a disagreement, not only will they win by talking until they emotionally crush you, but they will also convince many bystanders that you’re the villain. {Source: “Definition of Kitchen Sinking” by J. E. Brown.}

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Kitchen sinking backfires once the complainer starts in with the trivial complaints: how she doesn’t like your accent, your friends, your dog, the way you spend your free time, etc., etc. Each tiny whiny gripe gives the listener the power to latch onto it and use it as evidence of “See how trivial the complaints against me are? See what a nit-picker you are?”

Here’s my advice to complainers: If you want to lodge an effective complaint, and you want it to be unassailable and airtight and bulletproof, you need to leave the trivial complaints out.

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Try to limit yourself to one complaint per person, per conversation. Better still, one per month. If you have to correct an adult much more often than that, you should probably be living apart or trying to replace him or her.

— J. E. Brown

Quotes

2^nd edition 27 Feb 2019
1^st edition 24 Jul 2018

Further Reading at Other Sites

• “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon. The ultimate kitchen sinking song. (He flew out to see a solar eclipse? Oh. The humanity. And that scarf? It’s genocide, I tell you.)
  See if you can point to the real trigger. (I believe it’s in the line “But you gave away the things you loved / And ___ ___ ___ ___ ___”.)
• The “Gish Gallop”, a very similar debating tactic (at RationalWiki)
• John Oliver of Last Week Tonight defines “whataboutism” (≈2.5 minutes) (political)
• Ben Yagoda is especially insightful: “One Cheer for Whataboutism” (at The New York Times) (political)

more Thoughts of the Week

More at This Site

• Definition of Verbal Abuse

• Is there a booklet of manners in your house?
  We offer this one:
  How Rude! — a booklet about rude and abusive people, and how to recognize them