Challenges

[liv]

I have no time at all for the obvious arguments against political correctness. Claiming that it's curtailing free speech to ask people to refrain from using offensive terms for minority groups is risible, claiming that it's just too much effort to keep up with the ever-changing terminology is rude and dismissive. Especially coming from people who have notably extensive vocabularies and are willing to be extremely pedantic about precise terminology when it doesn't involve offending people!

So I was particularly impressed by rho's thoughtful piece about language policing. I don't agree with her entirely but she makes some very important points and succeeds in saying something actually novel and relevant about this contentious issue.

In similar vein, I basically buy into the idea that it's desirable to have a broader diversity of people represented in all types of media. Again, most of the counter-arguments I've seen are rude, lazy and are more about making the arguers feel less uncomfortable than actually making a point. But this video discussion presents some novel and grounded arguments about why more representation isn't always a good thing.

It's quite a long, personal soliloquy, which unfortunately isn't captioned. If you have the technology and the ability to listen to the whole thing, I do recommend it. For people who aren't in that position, I will try to summarize, but preferably don't quibble with the exact word choices I make in my summary, because that's my fault for not doing the discussion justice. The speaker refers to a book including a story about a character with a medical condition that he happens to share, and points up several issues with "more representation" as a default goal:

• Readers may erroneously assume that the fictional character really represents the speaker, rather than just happening to share this particular medical issue.
• Indeed, with a small press book published and shared among a relatively small subculture, readers may assume the character is actually based on this particular individual.
• In doing research to create a sensitive and accurate portrayal, the author may have used online resources designed to support real life members of the relevant minority group. This makes the speaker feel uncomfortable about going to such sources for support, in case there is some budding author lurking who is just using the material and even participants' personal experiences for research.
• The character in the story is easily able to obtain medical support for their condition, even though in real life the condition is hard to treat and dealing with the medical establishment can be really frustrating.
• The speaker has unpleasant memories of having to deal with his medical issues, and doesn't want to be reminded of them by encountering them in leisure reading.
• The book assumes that the medical issue is a politicized Identity, but the speaker would prefer to see it as just a minor part of his life history and not make it such a focus.

Anyway. I thought both of those were interesting and worth thinking about.

Comments

[siderea]

Re the latter: I'm curious if you realized what the medical condition under discussion was and whether your reaction to the piece reflected that understanding, or if not, might change if you knew. One phrase in your paraphrase suggested to me that perhaps you hadn't realized what the issue under the elipses was.

[liv]

Yes, I have a pretty good idea what the medical issue is because I know (slightly) the person who made the video. Where I've phrased things weirdly it's because I'm making an effort to respect privacy as much as possible. In fact I hesitated to link to the video at all. It definitely does make a difference to how I reacted to the argument presented here, but I hope there is a useful level of abstraction without revealing specific details.

[siderea]

Well, the problem, as I see it, is that identity works quite differently in the case he's referring to than just about any other medical issue. If the book assumes that the medical issue is a politicized Identity, well, yes, that would have something to do with the vast majority of press about the issue coming from and about people who have made it their very-much politicized Identity. Marching in the streets and all.

While I am enormously sympathetic with his plight -- heaven knows, I have my own head of resentment for popular press representations of all sorts of things I am, too -- I am very uncomfortable with the rhetorical strategy he is using here. It is something I recognize from political battles between different schools of therapists, and where I consider it dirty pool and very much disapprove of it: instead of taking disagreements and debates to forums where they will seen (and possibly rebutted) by the people with whom one is disagreeing, wage a campaign in the popular press to position one's approach as "the reasonable one" and discredit one's opponents with the general public, or at least the more numerous outsiders who are not fulling informed and therefore more easily swayed.

And that's what this vlogger is doing. The people he really has a beef with are those people who share his medical condition history but who do make an identity issue out of it. But instead of confronting them, he goes to considerable length to avoid them and avoid mentioning them, and to attempt to sway his audience by generalities in ignorance of just who he is getting them to agree is wrong. That feels quite dishonest to me. He could, instead, be taking it to the activists, saying, "Hey, now, see what you've done? This is not the direction I want us to be going. How about some respect for my perspective?"

Of course, I understand why he might not want to do that. Some of those people can be awfully... ardent. I wouldn't particularly care to wap that wasps' nest with a stick, myself. Especially as seeing that he seems to be a sensitive, thoughtful young fellow who probably doesn't feel like being hounded off the internet this week.

Yet arguing the specifics he does, under the guise of generality, for an ignorant audience... not cool. Especially considering that the militants who oppose his position have some wicked good reasons of their own. For instance, arguing that more media representation is undesirable when there are kids growing up with this condition thinking they're they only ones in the world, really strikes me as irresponsible (at least in absence of an argument that such representations are harmful to them, as opposed to uncomfortable reminders of the past for adults). Especially in consideration of the elevated suicide rate in that youth population.

When we refer to it blandly as a "medical condition" the fact that this medical condition has those additional wrinkles is glossed over, and is it precisely those additional wrinkles which make it political, and which motivate the other side.

[liv]

Thank you, this is a really pertinent and cogent argument. I'm generally on the side of more representation anyway, so I'm already sympathetic towards your side of the argument. And the fact that some of the people who agree with you on this issue are a bit militant doesn't really detract from that.

I don't think political or not political falls into two clearly defined sets, though. There's a continuum between things like race, which is almost entirely political (although there are certainly some physiological and medical implications), and things like, oh, acute, treatable injury or infection which are almost purely medical (although I wouldn't want to deny any relevance at all for politics and identity). This issue is somewhere in between, and I think there's a legitimate debate about which aspect is more important.

I think there's also a question of tactics. There are some kinds of political change you can really only achieve by defining an Identity, and shouting about it loudly and marching in the streets and yes, demanding more representation. However, doing that has downsides as well; I wonder if it's possible to reach a point where the original political goals have been sufficiently achieved that the harm of strident Identity politics starts to outweigh the benefits. I mean, in many ways the goal of the political campaign in the first place is that the identity shouldn't make an important difference, right?