Ouch, right in the childhood
The trouble with getting involved in social justice is that you start to learn the scripts that people use.
Social justice has its own scripts, but they are generally employed in response to the ones that come from outside. "If you were more polite, maybe you'd get more support." "Other people may be like that, but not me! You shouldn't generalize!" "All this PC crap is just people being too sensitive." There are reasons these arguments are a problem, and the SJ scripts seek to explain or circumvent them.
I should clarify: the problem isn't in the scripts. The problem is when you hear someone you love and respect regurgitate one. And suddenly you realize that this person you've looked up to for years has unexamined prejudices which conflict directly with your own sense of right and wrong. The scripts act as telltales for entrenched trains of thought which are the actual issues.
I've thought pretty hard about a lot of my SJ positions. I've focused on my moral sense: what I do shouldn't hurt people, no matter what my intent is. Other people have perspectives different from mine, which I won't know unless I listen to them. Harm isn't okay even if it's only hurting a small demographic. I examine my assumptions on a regular basis, checking to make sure that my actions align with the impact I want to have on the world. And I'm pretty sure that the positions I've taken are compassionate, rational, and progressive.
Unfortunately, the people around me haven't done some of that introspection, and that's how I get my own mother -- whom I have always highly respected -- telling me that nobody sees any splash damage in body-shaming Trump except the oversensitive group I'm part of. At that word (oversensitive) I felt my emotion overwhelm my reason, and I shut down the discussion. Because if she feels that I'm making something out of nothing, convincing her otherwise will take far more explanation than I have energy for right now, if it happens at all.
I could write a small book on why she is incorrect (and I may later, just to get my thoughts out in a medium where I don't feel like I'm getting shouted down after every paragraph). But I realized that the really hurtful part isn't that she disagrees with me -- we do that regularly, and we have good discussions about it. It's that she was spouting one of the classic "you're just thin-skinned" scripts used to shut down marginalized people who complain about ill treatment.
Am I seeing something where there's nothing? I've been asking myself that since this whole kerfluffle started, and each time I conclude: no. My reasoning is sound, and it's based on fairly well-known societal phenomena. A lot of my rhetorical opponents are caught up in unexamined prejudices or moral codes that I want no part of (e.g. "an eye for an eye"). I can even put my finger on those points while talking to them, and identify them. So I'm not arguing out of dogma, or blind emotion, or strawmen, or fallacious logic. I pass my own tests for a good argument; most of them don't (and the ones who do have morals I can't support).
So if I'm listening (and questioning) enough to understand their arguments, what's happening when I get dismissed with a script is that they're not listening to my arguments. Either I'm not being clear enough (it happens) or they can't see past the end of their own nose. My mom expressed the frustration one gets when watching a friend repeatedly bitch about something that isn't a real problem, and that means it's not just the one issue. She feels I'm thin-skinned about a range of related issues which have come up recently. I realize she's not naturally introspective; I guess what I'm scared of is that she *has* thought this through, and that her moral code doesn't align with mine. That she thinks that just because a small number of people feel that they're being impacted, that doesn't mean it's actually a problem. And that kind of moral mismatch makes it hard for me to respect someone.
When it's somebody I only met a couple of years ago, I sigh and distance myself a bit. When it's one of my chief childhood role models, whom I still feel close to? Ouch.
I'll talk to her about this later, when I'm not burned out and emotional and hating everything and struggling to breathe every time I walk outside (damned wildfires). But the script is something I will bring up explicitly, because it's a minimizing and derailing tactic which is really pretty toxic. The response to the feeling that someone you respect is making a big deal out of nothing shouldn't be "stop being so thin-skinned", it should be "what are they seeing that I'm not?"
I have an account as Torquill on Dreamwidth, and that's where I posted this. You can sign in with OpenID to comment on the original post, or you can go ahead and comment here; either way works.
Social justice has its own scripts, but they are generally employed in response to the ones that come from outside. "If you were more polite, maybe you'd get more support." "Other people may be like that, but not me! You shouldn't generalize!" "All this PC crap is just people being too sensitive." There are reasons these arguments are a problem, and the SJ scripts seek to explain or circumvent them.
I should clarify: the problem isn't in the scripts. The problem is when you hear someone you love and respect regurgitate one. And suddenly you realize that this person you've looked up to for years has unexamined prejudices which conflict directly with your own sense of right and wrong. The scripts act as telltales for entrenched trains of thought which are the actual issues.
I've thought pretty hard about a lot of my SJ positions. I've focused on my moral sense: what I do shouldn't hurt people, no matter what my intent is. Other people have perspectives different from mine, which I won't know unless I listen to them. Harm isn't okay even if it's only hurting a small demographic. I examine my assumptions on a regular basis, checking to make sure that my actions align with the impact I want to have on the world. And I'm pretty sure that the positions I've taken are compassionate, rational, and progressive.
Unfortunately, the people around me haven't done some of that introspection, and that's how I get my own mother -- whom I have always highly respected -- telling me that nobody sees any splash damage in body-shaming Trump except the oversensitive group I'm part of. At that word (oversensitive) I felt my emotion overwhelm my reason, and I shut down the discussion. Because if she feels that I'm making something out of nothing, convincing her otherwise will take far more explanation than I have energy for right now, if it happens at all.
I could write a small book on why she is incorrect (and I may later, just to get my thoughts out in a medium where I don't feel like I'm getting shouted down after every paragraph). But I realized that the really hurtful part isn't that she disagrees with me -- we do that regularly, and we have good discussions about it. It's that she was spouting one of the classic "you're just thin-skinned" scripts used to shut down marginalized people who complain about ill treatment.
Am I seeing something where there's nothing? I've been asking myself that since this whole kerfluffle started, and each time I conclude: no. My reasoning is sound, and it's based on fairly well-known societal phenomena. A lot of my rhetorical opponents are caught up in unexamined prejudices or moral codes that I want no part of (e.g. "an eye for an eye"). I can even put my finger on those points while talking to them, and identify them. So I'm not arguing out of dogma, or blind emotion, or strawmen, or fallacious logic. I pass my own tests for a good argument; most of them don't (and the ones who do have morals I can't support).
So if I'm listening (and questioning) enough to understand their arguments, what's happening when I get dismissed with a script is that they're not listening to my arguments. Either I'm not being clear enough (it happens) or they can't see past the end of their own nose. My mom expressed the frustration one gets when watching a friend repeatedly bitch about something that isn't a real problem, and that means it's not just the one issue. She feels I'm thin-skinned about a range of related issues which have come up recently. I realize she's not naturally introspective; I guess what I'm scared of is that she *has* thought this through, and that her moral code doesn't align with mine. That she thinks that just because a small number of people feel that they're being impacted, that doesn't mean it's actually a problem. And that kind of moral mismatch makes it hard for me to respect someone.
When it's somebody I only met a couple of years ago, I sigh and distance myself a bit. When it's one of my chief childhood role models, whom I still feel close to? Ouch.
I'll talk to her about this later, when I'm not burned out and emotional and hating everything and struggling to breathe every time I walk outside (damned wildfires). But the script is something I will bring up explicitly, because it's a minimizing and derailing tactic which is really pretty toxic. The response to the feeling that someone you respect is making a big deal out of nothing shouldn't be "stop being so thin-skinned", it should be "what are they seeing that I'm not?"
I have an account as Torquill on Dreamwidth, and that's where I posted this. You can sign in with OpenID to comment on the original post, or you can go ahead and comment here; either way works.