9:44pm August 5, 2013

➸ So a mage and a cleric walked into a tavern: #192

thisisabledprivilege:

Abled privilege is…the term “slacktivist"

Doing activism online is not slacking when most activist events…

-Are not ASL-interpreted
-Are not audio-described or prepped with alternate-format materials
-Are held at wheelchair-inaccessible venues
…

I think it’s complicated.

There’s real activism beyond things that can be done in person.

There are also things people call activism. That make them feel good or feel like they’re doing something. But they’re not ever going to accomplish anything, and may even hinder their cause.

And slacktivism sometimes applies to the second thing. Sometimes.

But I’ve heard people say the second kind of thing isn’t activism, and get told “you’re being ableist because I can’t go to protests”. Which… Whether it’s ableist would depend on why the person said it. Just saying “that’s not activism” is only ableist in some situations, not others.

(And inability to do protests also affects people based on class, race, trans status, and anything else that can make going to jail more dangerous.)

I see slacktivism sort of like laziness. Except I never use the word slacktivism. But I can tell some of what it refers to.

And like… Laziness exists. It’s real. But it also gets misused against disabled people. Like people with depression, fatigue, motor planning problems, and executive functioning problems.

And some people actually say the entire idea of laziness is ableist. But I think laziness is just a real thing that gets misapplied against disabled people. I suspect the idea of slacktivism is similar.

Also I think there are offline forms of slacktivism not just online forms. Like real activism can be both online and offline, and so can false activism. And there is more kinds of real offline activism than protests.

Not all kinds of activism are obvious either. Like for some disabled people, just existing as ourselves and making the rest of the world deal with us as who we are, can be activism. Including many people who can’t use language.

An example I wouldn’t call activism but many do…

Flaming someone over something where they have no idea what they’re doing wrong or why it’s wrong, they can’t be expected to just know it, and you’re not telling them.

Like if a parent of an autistic kid says something that many autistic people know can harm autistic people, but would be much harder for a nonautistic parent to know. And an autistic person rips them a new one. And the parent goes WTF and the autistic person refuses to explain or point someone at an explanation, but continues flaming then anyway.

That’d be understandable if the patent was defending murderers or something. But sometimes it’s over something much more subtle and the response they get is extreme.

And the reason it doesn’t work? To the parent it feels like they’ve been going about their business and someone out of nowhere is screaming at them. They will become either frightened, angry, or confused. They are likely to become defensive. They are unlikely to change for the better. They are likely to develop a highly negative opinion of “those autistic activists” and pass it on to other parents.

The only good result of flaming someone in that context is that it feels good to vent and blow off steam. But venting is not the same thing as activism. Activism involves doing things that are likely to change things for the better. The problem isn’t the anger, and I’m not saying everyone always has to explain everything. But these actions have virtually no likelihood of being effective and creating useful change, so to me they’re not activism.

And like… even if I turn out to be wrong. It’s still important to be able to discuss whether or not I’m right or wrong, without assuming my reading of the situation is ableist.

Like it’s one thing to say “that’s not activism because it’s not going to protests”, but it’s another thing to say “that’s not because it doesn’t work”. An activism d in the exact situation described above, I’ve seen someone describe flaming people with no explanation as “being an activist”, a second person come in and say “that’s not activism”, and the first person say “that’s a very ableist thing to say because I can’t do offline activism”.Which… maybe it was ableist, but maybe it wasn’t, you can’t know just from words like “slacktivism” or “that’s not activism”.

So I’d say whether these things are ableist depends on context. Just like “lazy” and “stupid”. I don’t really like the word slacktivism. But I think there’s a real thing where people do things that are easy, satisfying, and ineffective, and call them activism. Even though disabled people get accused of it just for doing activism online.

Notes: