3:50pm June 9, 2014

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

youneedacat:

neurodiversitysci:

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.

Plus there’s a thing where even allies to a cause get caught up in collateral damage. No, they don’t suffer the same consequences as the oppressed people.

But there is real courage required, and real hardship faced, to be a man who faces retaliation for speaking out against an old boy’s club that victimizes a female coworker. An ally caught up in hate crimes or police brutality that victimizes LGBT people - plenty of people are beaten in hate crimes for being assumed gay. White freedom marchers who were hit with the same hoses, the same dog bites, as African Americans.

And is it an equivalent thing to living, constantly, unavoidably, under an oppressive system? No. Does risk absolve privileged people from sacrificing their privilege and using it to assist others? No. But beatings and losing your job and dog bites still hurt like hell even if you’re a white/straight/dude. I think people who step outside the roles they were raised with to do better, they do deserve at least consideration, encouragement, respect, maybe even praise. Not to exclude others working the grassroots from their due - praise and respect is not a zero-sum game.

Sometimes I look at what the activist community expects as “basic human decency” and it’s pretty risky, radicalized stuff, more than I can do some days. Both in terms of courage, in terms of personal risk, in terms of education and Right Think. On some tangents, more than I can do at all.

Very much agreed with all of that, and better put than I could have said it right now.

There are some things too like…

There was a boy in high school who was pretty much the only kid who would spend time around me and treat me like a friend. Mind you, I was so heavily bullied in high school that he got bullied just for being associated with me. And yet he just hung around with me and didn’t care that I was autistic or weird in any other way, even though everyone else cared.

And that meant a lot.

And there are people out there who would say that he only did what a person should do.

And that may be true.

But he only did what a person should do, while facing immense social pressure to be utterly horrible to me. And facing immense social pressure telling him not to do what a person should do.

I’m uncomfortable with those things where people praise the guys on the football team for ~including~ a student with an intellectual disability or something. They make me sick.

And yet if someone is genuinely being a friend to someone who everyone is trying to keep you from being friends with due to oppression and prejudice and etc., then yes they deserve credit for that. Not overwhelming, sappy, disgusting credit. But credit. Because it’s hard to be a minimally decent human being when your entire culture and surroundings are telling you to be an utterly horrible human being.

Context seems utterly missing from a lot of these expectations people have.

And context is what says that what my only high school friend did for me was an extraordinary act even though it shouldn’t have had to be extraordinary. And it wasn’t extraordinary because “who would want to be friends with that autistic girl who wears shawls” (his description of the situation at one point), it was extraordinary because of the amount of pressure not to be my friend.

Pretty much every actual friend I made at that age, which is very few, has talked about pressure they were under not to be my friend, or to see me as broken or crazy or not friend material or other things like that. I wasn’t even aware at the time how much pressure there was, but everyone I talk to now, who was around then and wasn’t one of the assholes, talks about pressure to basically hate me and shun me and treat me like I was barely human.

And that’s why context matters. I don’t see the people who befriended me as inspirational heroes, the way they would doubtless be painted if the wrong TV producer got hold of our stories (I’ve seen ones like that, horrible glurge). But I do see them as people who were strong enough to do something good, despite pressure to do something horrible.

And that’s worth credit, even if in a much more just world, it would be nothing extraordinary for me to have had friends growing up. We don't live in that world where it’s nothing extraordinary, and that’s where I differ from the people who say “it’s only minimal human decency, I’m not giving out any cookies”.

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