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strypeyOk, so I want to spend a bit of time talking about social justice activism as it plays out in geek communities in the early 21st century. Now, if you're not a geek, or a social justice activist, or both, you're probably thinking, "well who cares?", and fair enough. This rant (I'd be flattering myself to call it an "essay") is not written primarily for family entertainment purposes, although I aim to make it entertaining so it's not a painful struggle to get through. My goal here is to provide myself with a firm place to stand next time I get drawn into yet another one of those awkward and seemingly irresolvable debates about what straight white guys (like me) should and shouldn't do, to make the geek communities we take part in more welcoming and "safe" for people who aren't straight white guys.
The first challenge whenever we talk about this stuff is just how many straw man arguments we have to wade through, from people on both sides of the aisle. I mean it, there is literally an army of scarecrows waiting to be slaughtered, both by those who think it's enough to just treat everyone as equals, and those who think groups needs "Safer Spaces Policies" to make sure that actually happens. This is a problem, because a lot of people get so tired of wading through this bunch of predictably beside-the-point arguments before a proper dialogue can even begin, they get into the habit of going straight for the rhetorical flamethrower any time the subject comes up, and that can be intense and scary. I suspect I might be one of those people, which is why I've been feeling for a long time that I need to write about this.
Oh, in case you're not familiar with the phrase "straw man argument", it's a way of describing an aggressive reply to something other than what you actually said. Like if you say, "I think that woman who drives the forklift at work has beautiful hair", and your friend says, "you know, it's really inappropriate to sexually objectify people you work with". Wait, what? You never said anything about asking her on a date, or even finding her sexually attractive, you just complimented her hair. That's something you're just as likely to do if you're gay, and not sexually interested in woman at all.
The point your friend is making is not unreasonable in itself, it's just that it doesn't necessarily follow from what you actually said. Your friend is jumping to conclusions about what else you might have been thinking, and then making an implicit accusation based on those assumptions, which is not just slaughtering straw man - as the saying goes - but is also passive aggressive (we'll get to that). They're assuming "bad faith". When a person is told - indirectly but unmistakably - that the person they're talking to is assuming bad things about them, then tend to return the favour. Cue the rhetorical flamethrowers, and the chances of having a discussion where both people learn something from each others' perspective gets smaller and smaller.
How many of you noticed that the example I gave assumed that you - the reader - are a man (or at least identify as a man). How many of you assumed I didn't notice that? If I gave that example in a face-to-face conversation, how many of you would have launched into a lecture about how the gender bias in my choice of example is symptomatic of an unconscious unwillingness to be gender inclusive? Hopefully you wouldn't, but there are definitely people who would, because whenever these topics come up, their default mindset is to assume bad faith.
As it happens, I did notice the gendered nature of my example immediately after I finished writing it, and I had a go at rewriting it to assume a female reader, then with neutral pronouns. But then I reminded myself it was intended to be a light-hearted anecdote based on the sort of well-meaning miscommunication that happens in real life, and that I'm essentially talking to myself here anyway. There's nothing wrong with picking my own gender for an anecdote, and anyone who picks on that is most likely doing so to give themselves an excuse to dismiss anything they feel uncomfortable about further on in the piece. In other words, it's a straw man. They're assuming bad faith, but at the same time, notice how I'm primed to expect a nitpicking response that fails to engage with the serious issues I want to take about. To some degree, I'm assuming bad faith too.
How did we get here?
This is an important question, which I can't answer for everyone, but since this is about giving myself a place to stand, I can say a bit about how I got here. Which is what the next piece in this series will be about. In part three, having given myself a place to stand while talking about finding a place to stand, I'll actually get to the point. I hope.
The first challenge whenever we talk about this stuff is just how many straw man arguments we have to wade through, from people on both sides of the aisle. I mean it, there is literally an army of scarecrows waiting to be slaughtered, both by those who think it's enough to just treat everyone as equals, and those who think groups needs "Safer Spaces Policies" to make sure that actually happens. This is a problem, because a lot of people get so tired of wading through this bunch of predictably beside-the-point arguments before a proper dialogue can even begin, they get into the habit of going straight for the rhetorical flamethrower any time the subject comes up, and that can be intense and scary. I suspect I might be one of those people, which is why I've been feeling for a long time that I need to write about this.
Oh, in case you're not familiar with the phrase "straw man argument", it's a way of describing an aggressive reply to something other than what you actually said. Like if you say, "I think that woman who drives the forklift at work has beautiful hair", and your friend says, "you know, it's really inappropriate to sexually objectify people you work with". Wait, what? You never said anything about asking her on a date, or even finding her sexually attractive, you just complimented her hair. That's something you're just as likely to do if you're gay, and not sexually interested in woman at all.
The point your friend is making is not unreasonable in itself, it's just that it doesn't necessarily follow from what you actually said. Your friend is jumping to conclusions about what else you might have been thinking, and then making an implicit accusation based on those assumptions, which is not just slaughtering straw man - as the saying goes - but is also passive aggressive (we'll get to that). They're assuming "bad faith". When a person is told - indirectly but unmistakably - that the person they're talking to is assuming bad things about them, then tend to return the favour. Cue the rhetorical flamethrowers, and the chances of having a discussion where both people learn something from each others' perspective gets smaller and smaller.
How many of you noticed that the example I gave assumed that you - the reader - are a man (or at least identify as a man). How many of you assumed I didn't notice that? If I gave that example in a face-to-face conversation, how many of you would have launched into a lecture about how the gender bias in my choice of example is symptomatic of an unconscious unwillingness to be gender inclusive? Hopefully you wouldn't, but there are definitely people who would, because whenever these topics come up, their default mindset is to assume bad faith.
As it happens, I did notice the gendered nature of my example immediately after I finished writing it, and I had a go at rewriting it to assume a female reader, then with neutral pronouns. But then I reminded myself it was intended to be a light-hearted anecdote based on the sort of well-meaning miscommunication that happens in real life, and that I'm essentially talking to myself here anyway. There's nothing wrong with picking my own gender for an anecdote, and anyone who picks on that is most likely doing so to give themselves an excuse to dismiss anything they feel uncomfortable about further on in the piece. In other words, it's a straw man. They're assuming bad faith, but at the same time, notice how I'm primed to expect a nitpicking response that fails to engage with the serious issues I want to take about. To some degree, I'm assuming bad faith too.
How did we get here?
This is an important question, which I can't answer for everyone, but since this is about giving myself a place to stand, I can say a bit about how I got here. Which is what the next piece in this series will be about. In part three, having given myself a place to stand while talking about finding a place to stand, I'll actually get to the point. I hope.
