3:10pm June 9, 2014

matociquala-its-all-well-and-good-to-say-were

youneedacat:

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.

Yeah. I’ve been there so often myself, though not necessarily in a social justice context. When I was a kid I’d work so hard to do basic things like not scream at my mom when I was furious with her, or clean my room when all I could see was a mess of stuff I had no idea what to do with and my mom wouldn’t even notice. It was so demoralizing and it felt so unjust. Like, here she was yelling at me to do these things and then I managed to do them and I couldn’t even get a “good job?” It was like I could never do the right thing. So it’s not hard to imagine what some people might go through in the early stages of learning to be more socially just. They might or might not have disability reasons for struggling, as I did, but either way I can relate, so I try to recognize people who are making an effort and encourage them to do more.

Wow very much agreed. I’ve had similar experiences where I’ve been doing my utter best and it’s never quite enough for people. Especially in school, having to do with organization and stuff, or hygiene, or lots of other things like that. And it was like 200% effort wasn’t worth anything if I only got 5% results compared to what people wanted.

I have a friend who says that they remember when “intent isn’t magic” became a catchphrase in the SJ community, and how rapidly things went downhill for people who were really making an effort but not quite getting there, after that point. I think I was around during that time, but I didn’t notice the change quite as much as my friend did because I was focused on other things.

Intent may not make everything alright, but intent has meaning, too. It’s not this meaningless thing where trying to do the right thing counts for nothing unless you get it perfect.

Notes: