on false equivalences
The term oppression is pretty heavily loaded and wikipedia's quality standards are certainly not met by the article at that link. But I want to write a bit about oppression.
I want to write to my fellow straight white able-bodied rich men (SWARMs?) of the tech industry, and perhaps of the broader internet. There are a lot of us! A disproportionate number, in fact. I will get to proportionality in a bit.
I want to discuss oppression because of a reaction a lot of my fellow SWARMs seem to have to many recent displays of sexism, homophobia, racism, classism, that sort of thing.
This is the reaction of stating false equivalences (and their close relative: false balance). I want my fellow SWARMs to learn not to do that. Just that. I want you, if you can get through reading this, to reflect on false equivalences you've heard, maybe some you've uttered yourself -- hey, we all do it sometimes -- and make a promise to get better about it. Don't even promise me. Promise yourself, on the basis of trying to be a decent and reasonable person: make yourself a promise to not emit false equivalences anymore. As a bonus round, try learning to recognize them fast enough to tell other people who emit them to stop too.
A false equivalence is when you say "X is just like Y" for an X and a Y that are superficially similar, but different -- really, really different -- in exactly the ways that make either X or Y the subject of a current conversation.
There are two major types -- the second with two subtypes -- that I'll deal with here.
One I'll call false-equivalence-of-action, wherein a present anti-oppression activity is equated to oppression itself. Here are a few examples, you've probably heard (and maybe emitted) a few of these yourself:
The other common form I'll call false-equivalence-of-grievance, wherein a sometimes-present but frequently historical grievance of the oppressed is equated to a grievance of the SWARM engaged in conversation. It has two major sub-categories: the collective and the personal. Here are a couple examples of the collective form:
In all cases, we can understand (if not accept) the impulse to make such false equivalences. Unpleasantness is superficially similar to unpleasantness! And the desire to relieve oneself from either immediate unpleasant curtailment of one's own privileges, or the weight of responsibility for addressing a past grievance, naturally tends towards grasping at these sorts of straws. It's tempting to emit a false equivalence in these situations. We can almost convince ourselves that it makes us seem ... insightful, or empathetic.
Except as wikipedia helpfully points out, the similarity is superficial: the equivalence being made is between two massively disproportionate phenomena. Proportion matters; ignoring it, mountains and molehills are the same. What a (disproportionate) false equivalence actually makes us look like is infuriatingly stubborn, ignorant, rude and possibly even speaking in bad faith.
At very least -- assuming we're not heckling, but trying to have a polite argument with someone we ostensibly respect and feel good will towards -- it makes it seem as though we have difficulty perceiving the dis-proportionality of what we said. Which might be true. There is a responsibility we have when arriving at a conversation about these topics, which is to know enough about both the history and present situation that we respect the magnitude of the problem: otherwise we are signalling that we're wasting everyone else's time.
If you do not know enough about the history or present reality of such a topic -- which can be observed relatively easily if, for example, any of the false equivalences above seemed remotely reasonable things to say, or more directly if people keep telling you to go read up on it -- then my advice is the same: go read up on it. Literally. Find a book that's recommended on the history and current state of the axis of oppression you're discussing, and read the whole thing. Then another. Maybe three to five books will start to give you a feel for the magnitude and texture of a topic (and as a bonus, it will begin to average-out idiosyncrasies of any given author).
If you haven't time or energy to get yourself to a point that's respectively "well read" on the topic, then please at least avoid emitting any equivalences at all. Listen to such conversations but do not add your input. It is monumentally rude, and as a SWARM, the assumption that we should be listened to at all, much less while speaking in ignorance about a topic that we are major culprits in propagating, is itself a form of re-enaction of the axis of oppression that is the subject of the conversation. Oppression really is somewhat fractal.
I will end on a bleak but humorous note, with this clip of Aamer Rahman discussing "reverse racism":
This entry was originally posted at http://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/192881.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I want to write to my fellow straight white able-bodied rich men (SWARMs?) of the tech industry, and perhaps of the broader internet. There are a lot of us! A disproportionate number, in fact. I will get to proportionality in a bit.
I want to discuss oppression because of a reaction a lot of my fellow SWARMs seem to have to many recent displays of sexism, homophobia, racism, classism, that sort of thing.
This is the reaction of stating false equivalences (and their close relative: false balance). I want my fellow SWARMs to learn not to do that. Just that. I want you, if you can get through reading this, to reflect on false equivalences you've heard, maybe some you've uttered yourself -- hey, we all do it sometimes -- and make a promise to get better about it. Don't even promise me. Promise yourself, on the basis of trying to be a decent and reasonable person: make yourself a promise to not emit false equivalences anymore. As a bonus round, try learning to recognize them fast enough to tell other people who emit them to stop too.
A false equivalence is when you say "X is just like Y" for an X and a Y that are superficially similar, but different -- really, really different -- in exactly the ways that make either X or Y the subject of a current conversation.
There are two major types -- the second with two subtypes -- that I'll deal with here.
One I'll call false-equivalence-of-action, wherein a present anti-oppression activity is equated to oppression itself. Here are a few examples, you've probably heard (and maybe emitted) a few of these yourself:
- "Criticizing someone's sexist behaviour is just another form of sexism."
- "Criticism of homophobia is censorship."
- "Now you're being (reverse-)racist against whites."
- "Criticism of the richest 1% of US society is a form of Fascism."
The other common form I'll call false-equivalence-of-grievance, wherein a sometimes-present but frequently historical grievance of the oppressed is equated to a grievance of the SWARM engaged in conversation. It has two major sub-categories: the collective and the personal. Here are a couple examples of the collective form:
- "Men have historically had to serve in armies and work in factories, and that is as bad or worse than the historical plight of women."
- "My white ancestors were of an ethnic subgroup that was historically discriminated against, among whites, and that is as bad as chattel slavery."
- "I am or have been extremely awkward, sexually, which is like being queer or trans."
- "My family wasn't so rich, compared to our neighbours, so I'm like a poor person."
- "I've been to a foreign country / nonwhite part of town where I was a visible minority, too."
- "I got teased / beat up a lot as a kid, so I know what it's like to face systemic discrimination."
- "I have to pay child support, so I got a worse deal out of being male than my ex-wife got out of being female."
- "I have days when I'm really blue, or my back hurts, so I know what mental illness and disability are."
In all cases, we can understand (if not accept) the impulse to make such false equivalences. Unpleasantness is superficially similar to unpleasantness! And the desire to relieve oneself from either immediate unpleasant curtailment of one's own privileges, or the weight of responsibility for addressing a past grievance, naturally tends towards grasping at these sorts of straws. It's tempting to emit a false equivalence in these situations. We can almost convince ourselves that it makes us seem ... insightful, or empathetic.
Except as wikipedia helpfully points out, the similarity is superficial: the equivalence being made is between two massively disproportionate phenomena. Proportion matters; ignoring it, mountains and molehills are the same. What a (disproportionate) false equivalence actually makes us look like is infuriatingly stubborn, ignorant, rude and possibly even speaking in bad faith.
At very least -- assuming we're not heckling, but trying to have a polite argument with someone we ostensibly respect and feel good will towards -- it makes it seem as though we have difficulty perceiving the dis-proportionality of what we said. Which might be true. There is a responsibility we have when arriving at a conversation about these topics, which is to know enough about both the history and present situation that we respect the magnitude of the problem: otherwise we are signalling that we're wasting everyone else's time.
If you do not know enough about the history or present reality of such a topic -- which can be observed relatively easily if, for example, any of the false equivalences above seemed remotely reasonable things to say, or more directly if people keep telling you to go read up on it -- then my advice is the same: go read up on it. Literally. Find a book that's recommended on the history and current state of the axis of oppression you're discussing, and read the whole thing. Then another. Maybe three to five books will start to give you a feel for the magnitude and texture of a topic (and as a bonus, it will begin to average-out idiosyncrasies of any given author).
If you haven't time or energy to get yourself to a point that's respectively "well read" on the topic, then please at least avoid emitting any equivalences at all. Listen to such conversations but do not add your input. It is monumentally rude, and as a SWARM, the assumption that we should be listened to at all, much less while speaking in ignorance about a topic that we are major culprits in propagating, is itself a form of re-enaction of the axis of oppression that is the subject of the conversation. Oppression really is somewhat fractal.
I will end on a bleak but humorous note, with this clip of Aamer Rahman discussing "reverse racism":
This entry was originally posted at http://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/192881.html. Please comment there using OpenID.