2:10pm June 9, 2014

➸ http://clatterbane.tumblr.com/post/82384994129/matociquala-its-all-well-and-good-to-say-were

neurodiversitysci:

matociquala:

It’s all well and good to say we’re not going to give people “cookies” for behaving decently, and please don’t think I’m saying it’s anyone’s job and calling to go around praising men for showing a crumb of empathy and compassion—or even just recognition—to women, or straight…

Thank you for this.  I will never understand why people get that praise motivates people to do good things in parenting, romantic relationships, life in general—but forget about that when it comes to activism.  And changing your socially problematic behavior might be even harder than changing your behavior as a parent or partner or person in general, because there is so much social pressure pushing you to stay the same. With the effort to change being so much higher the need for positive reinforcement is probably even greater.

Yeah and quite often what people get when they make any effort at all, is this stern “Don’t expect us to think you’re doing anything good, you know, by being minimally decent.”  When the person may have had to work really damn hard to get to that point – and usually that point is more than just “minimally decent”.  And then they get insulted, and everything goes to hell, and they wonder why they should bother trying.  Which isn’t to say everyone needs to be “rewarded for being minimally decent”, but at least people shouldn’t have to constantly face that irritated response when they may have just made the biggest effort in their life to do things right.

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