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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9702748" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Folks are rarely willing to use an argument they know doesn't get them very much, e.g. "that offends my sensibilities and so it shouldn't be done" because that invites the obvious retort "why should that sensibility be the only one that matters?" Even if that would be more accurate to the situation, they want something harder to assail. So they aim for an argument they think is stronger by being "objective", claiming to want historicity.So they argue that X shouldn't be included, not because it doesn't fit their mental model of "this is what medieval times were like", but because it really didn't exist in medieval Europe. If all that were being argued was "that doesn't feel 'medieval' to me, so I don't want to see it", then your criticism of "whataboutism" arguments would be quite warranted. But it never is that. It's almost always "but that isn't REALLY medieval, medieval people didn't have that technology". The most obvious example of this is gunpowder weapons vs plate armor (plate armor is a significantly more recent development, about a century newer than European cannons, and about 3-5 decades newer than "hand cannons" aka handguns of varying description.)</blockquote>