Still thinking.
I've been up for more or less the last twenty hours (hooray for car alarms at 3:42 am!), and I should have gone to sleep at least a half an hour ago, but someone linked me to Fugitivus (FYI, contains material related to sexual assault) and I've been working my way through the posts there. Right now, I've got a tab open with the collaborative list of Stuff What Boys Can Do, real-life examples of men allying with women against misogyny. It's helping crystallize some thinking I've been doing lately about my social politics and how to make them something I do instead of just something I have.
Here's the thing. In social settings, political action (which I'm using to mean action taken deliberately to name or disrupt an unequal, disrespectful, or unsafe dynamic) isn't comfortable. It isn't funny, because on some basic level, you have to refuse to let what's happening be excused or be trivialized, so even if you say something that's well-timed or well-worded enough to inspire laughter, it's laughter as a reflexive response to discomfort. It isn't polite, because it breaches social norms (at least many communities in the U.S.) to call negative attention to someone else's behavior, and breaching social norms is rude by definition. It isn't a one-off, because if you decide to start asking your friends (for example) to quit calling things retarded, you will be asking at least one of them not to do that nearly every goddamn day.
It isn't self-righteous, because if you are at least somewhat aware of your own bullshit (which we all have) then you are calling someone's actions or words out while thinking of all the times you, too, have made a situation unequal, disrespectful, or unsafe. The times you cracked the joke about bad movies being "time rape" (I'll never get that hour of my life back). The time in high school you and a couple of friends laughingly and ignorantly wrestled lipstick onto a then-butch acquaintance (Cai, on the off-chance you're reading this: I don't even know if you remember, but I still feel like an asshole every time I think about doing that). The times someone said something crass that made you uncomfortable, and you regained your power in the situation through oneupsmanship ("You think that's objectifying tits? Watch a master in action!"). The times you joined in on the over-the-top remarks that proved how aware and (say) post-racist all of you talking were, even though you knew damn well that everyone in that conversation was white.
For values of you in the above paragraph, substitute the authorial I/me.
Among the things that I know about myself, and for which I have a great deal of unsolicited corroboration: I can and will frame almost any topic with humor, and I place value on other people's emotional comfort and safety. In most situations, I like to think of these things as virtues, and my friends have described them to me as such. But they're huge weak points for me when it comes to acting on my social politics, because to call negative attention to someone's words or action, I have to accept that I will be neither comfortable or funny. Here are two different social science ways to frame the mechanism that operates when you publicly call attention to someone else's poor behavior. If you're a behaviorist, you can describe it as positive punishment: the application of an aversive stimulus following an action, which by association may gradually suppress the likelihood of that action. If you're a skills trainer or therapist (and possibly less of a sanctimonious jerk than the behaviorist, but possibly not), you can call it attaching a natural consequence: it's not that you're going out of your way to create a contrived punishment, you're just not buffering someone from the reasonable outcome of their own poor behavior (i.e. your ire and everyone else's attention thereto).
When I act on my social politics, which I do far less than I think about doing it, I have to accept that I have to be in earnest more than I am witty, and prepared to tolerate everyone else's discomfort along with my own. I have to accept my own hypocrisy, because shining light on someone else's unequal, disrespectful, or unsafe action calls my own personal Al Cheit -- the litany of my transgressions -- up in my head. I have to prepare to be framed as a buzzkill, or humorless, or histrionic, or pedantic, or any of the other adjectives we use to punish people (especially women, especially minorities) who act on their social politics and try to rewrite the rules of what's acceptable. I have to accept that I will not always be able to counter these tactics effectively.
I have to accept that I can't be sure that I am acting rightly, and that I can't be doing this only when I think I'm going to win. There may be times that I can do this gracefully, or with humor, or with compassion, but there will be more times that I'm going to come clattering in on the easy dynamic like a two-by-four dropped down the stairs. But I think I'll like myself better in the long run than I have for letting things slide in the name of keeping the conversation easy and funny. Right now, that's starting to sound worth it to me.
Here's the thing. In social settings, political action (which I'm using to mean action taken deliberately to name or disrupt an unequal, disrespectful, or unsafe dynamic) isn't comfortable. It isn't funny, because on some basic level, you have to refuse to let what's happening be excused or be trivialized, so even if you say something that's well-timed or well-worded enough to inspire laughter, it's laughter as a reflexive response to discomfort. It isn't polite, because it breaches social norms (at least many communities in the U.S.) to call negative attention to someone else's behavior, and breaching social norms is rude by definition. It isn't a one-off, because if you decide to start asking your friends (for example) to quit calling things retarded, you will be asking at least one of them not to do that nearly every goddamn day.
It isn't self-righteous, because if you are at least somewhat aware of your own bullshit (which we all have) then you are calling someone's actions or words out while thinking of all the times you, too, have made a situation unequal, disrespectful, or unsafe. The times you cracked the joke about bad movies being "time rape" (I'll never get that hour of my life back). The time in high school you and a couple of friends laughingly and ignorantly wrestled lipstick onto a then-butch acquaintance (Cai, on the off-chance you're reading this: I don't even know if you remember, but I still feel like an asshole every time I think about doing that). The times someone said something crass that made you uncomfortable, and you regained your power in the situation through oneupsmanship ("You think that's objectifying tits? Watch a master in action!"). The times you joined in on the over-the-top remarks that proved how aware and (say) post-racist all of you talking were, even though you knew damn well that everyone in that conversation was white.
For values of you in the above paragraph, substitute the authorial I/me.
Among the things that I know about myself, and for which I have a great deal of unsolicited corroboration: I can and will frame almost any topic with humor, and I place value on other people's emotional comfort and safety. In most situations, I like to think of these things as virtues, and my friends have described them to me as such. But they're huge weak points for me when it comes to acting on my social politics, because to call negative attention to someone's words or action, I have to accept that I will be neither comfortable or funny. Here are two different social science ways to frame the mechanism that operates when you publicly call attention to someone else's poor behavior. If you're a behaviorist, you can describe it as positive punishment: the application of an aversive stimulus following an action, which by association may gradually suppress the likelihood of that action. If you're a skills trainer or therapist (and possibly less of a sanctimonious jerk than the behaviorist, but possibly not), you can call it attaching a natural consequence: it's not that you're going out of your way to create a contrived punishment, you're just not buffering someone from the reasonable outcome of their own poor behavior (i.e. your ire and everyone else's attention thereto).
When I act on my social politics, which I do far less than I think about doing it, I have to accept that I have to be in earnest more than I am witty, and prepared to tolerate everyone else's discomfort along with my own. I have to accept my own hypocrisy, because shining light on someone else's unequal, disrespectful, or unsafe action calls my own personal Al Cheit -- the litany of my transgressions -- up in my head. I have to prepare to be framed as a buzzkill, or humorless, or histrionic, or pedantic, or any of the other adjectives we use to punish people (especially women, especially minorities) who act on their social politics and try to rewrite the rules of what's acceptable. I have to accept that I will not always be able to counter these tactics effectively.
I have to accept that I can't be sure that I am acting rightly, and that I can't be doing this only when I think I'm going to win. There may be times that I can do this gracefully, or with humor, or with compassion, but there will be more times that I'm going to come clattering in on the easy dynamic like a two-by-four dropped down the stairs. But I think I'll like myself better in the long run than I have for letting things slide in the name of keeping the conversation easy and funny. Right now, that's starting to sound worth it to me.