as small as a world and as large as alone

1:14am April 9, 2015

fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton:

valhallanbadger:

lizardywizard:

fierceawakening:

fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton:

I see more people talking about how toxic call-out culture has become, and it usually tends to center around the idea that some people deserve more gentleness than other people (young people, mentally ill people, abuse survivors) and also that, in the end, the person being called out must certainly be wrong and must certainly be brought around to the right answer.

This thinking doesn’t go far enough. There needs to be a certain standard of treating people well that goes beyond just ‘if they’re young or mentally ill, be gentle.’ You shouldn’t be harassing or abusing people whether or not they’re more fragile than other people.

And there needs to be more acknowledgment that the crowd isn’t always right about the “call-out.” In fact, because of how mobs work, they’re more likely to be wrong.

And finally, there needs to be acceptance that you can’t always change someone’s mind. There needs to be a basic acknowledgment of boundaries: People are allowed to think for themselves, even if they reach the wrong conclusions. You can’t control people for their own good.

The thing that’s wrong with call-out culture isn’t that it goes all-out against even vulnerable people. That’s part of it, but the thing that’s wrong with it is that it refuses to acknowledge that people have a right to not be harassed or controlled.

Yes, this.

It’s not about some people being unacceptable targets, to me.

It’s “can we consider what targeting means? Can we rethink whether that’s anything we should be doing?”

I agree.

As a confession: I’ve used “be more gentle because you never know if the person might have anxiety/other mental illness” before. And it’s partly because, yes, being called out can be particularly horrific for some people with anxiety. But it’s partly because… sometimes, I’m scared to say “don’t bully anyone regardless of who they are”. Because “ALL people deserve X” is now a taboo thing to say and a thing you get taken down for - you have to point out how some already-marginalised group benefits somehow.

And… reading over that sentence. I’m scared to say “don’t bully anyone regardless of who they are”. 

That… just doesn’t feel like something that should happen within the context of “social justice”. If this is what I’m looking at as the new normal, we have taken a terrible wrong turn somewhere.

This. Everyone deserves kindness and respect until they prove they honest to gods are hateful shitheads. But until then, be willing to give them patience. I know it’s hard when you’re a member of an oppressed minority. If you can’t handle it, please let someone else speak for you until the person shows they’re actually a cruddy person. But don’t attack them until you know they have no desire to learn. You can’t know until you give them a chance and part of that is patience and kindness.

But there is a point here I am also trying to make:

People have a right to set boundaries. Including choosing NOT to learn. Someone choosing not to educate themselves doesn’t give the go-ahead for other people to abuse them, either.

I don’t think introducing conditions like “unless X…/until Y…you can’t abuse people” helps, because abuse… isn’t something that can be managed. That’s not what abuse is, that’s not how it works.

And the entire concept of a “shitty person who deserves it” is dangerous, too, for the aforementioned reasons. Because as long as people think “well, it’s bad to do that, except to genuinely terrible people who refuse to do the right thing,” then anyone can STILL be painted as “genuinely terrible.” And my point is that it’s not useful to hairsplit over categories of acceptable and unacceptable targets, when we shouldn’t be treating people like targets to begin with.

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