Bullying for social justice
Mar. 12th, 2018 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livIt seems to have become a truism in certain corners of the internet that the Social Justice movement has gone bad because all they do is bully people in the name of vaguely pro-minority causes. This is a slippery sort of meme, I feel. It's hard to counter without appearing to argue in favour of bullying. I am going to attempt to push back against it, though, because what I see is that this social justice = bullying idea is being used as a rhetorical shield for some quite nasty stuff.
Certainly people can come up with examples of unarguably inappropriate behaviour carried out in the name of social justice. Yes, Requires Hate was abusive and sometimes used the language of anti-racism to justify her abusive behaviour. But she's literally one person, and I really don't think she's typical of people who care about addressing racism. Yes, there are examples of people posting hateful anon comments on Tumblr because they don't like someone's fandom ship. But somehow, this is being treated as directly equivalent to literal Nazis: both sides are just as bad.
What I'm seeing is that any kind of criticism along social justice lines is more and more dismissed as bullying. If I state that I have a problem with Marvel portraying Captain America as a Hydra agent, I am not bullying Marvel. I'm also not bullying people who like Marvel properties, or comic book nerds, or white people. If I make a case that women should be able to do their jobs without constantly dodging attempts to assault them, I am not bullying celebrities and bosses who misuse their power, or men who aren't as romantically successful as they'd like to be, or men in general.
The nature of the modern internet is such that it's quite easy to get into a situation where lots of people at once disagree with you or criticize you vehemently. I can see that a pile-on like that has many of the same emotional resonances as bullying, but again, it's false to equate lots of people agreeing that whatever media used shitty racist tropes, with deliberately targeted attacks. It's certainly not equivalent to actual mob violence, as detailed in this old but very cogently argued post by Mandolin: Criticism alone is not an Assault.
I do appreciate that some people have mental illnesses or are survivors of abuse or both, and find criticism a lot harder to deal with than people like me. I am very interested in finding ways to support social justice causes that are as inclusive as possible. But I don't think the right answer is never to criticize anyone for eg being racist, because some people have stuff going on that makes any criticism painful. I don't think it's right to say, we should never have rules against bigotry, because some people find it hard to deal with complex social rules.
One example that's been really bugging me is more and more people claiming to suffer from 'scrupulosity'. I don't doubt that that's a real symptom of some kinds of mental illness or neurodivergence, because pretty much anything you can imagine is sometimes a psych symptom. But equally, almost everybody has the experience of getting worked up due to over-estimating how strict a particular rule is, and how bad the consequences are of breaking it, especially if they've ever been young or new to some subculture, and they recognize their experience in the label of a symptom, so they assume they must have that symptom. It's not reasonable to argue that there should never be rules regulating anyone's behaviour in any (virtual or physical) space, because some people have 'scrupulosity' and might be distressed.
Another variant is people claiming to be 'triggered' by feminism. Sure, it's possible, people can have trauma triggers from just about anything. It seems like most of this sort of discourse grew out of some kind of utilitarian thought experiment or rhetorical gotcha: haha, you can't ask people to stop committing microagressions against people who have past trauma, because what if someone is traumatized by feminism or anti-racism?! It's based on a complete straw man: no actual social justice activist is arguing that you have to ban ever doing anything that anyone might possibly find traumatic or triggering. Rather, the point is that it is right to support people in dealing with their triggers, including giving notice of where something triggering might be encountered, and providing spaces where a particular trigger is guaranteed to be absent (no, they are not completely 'safe' spaces because nowhere is entirely safe for all people from all threats). It's not bullying people who enjoy fireworks to set up a space where sudden loud noises are avoided, and the same goes for more complex social and psychological triggers.
I started noticing this during #RaceFail, where particular white women were very upset about being criticized for making racist comments, because they had social anxiety or they had been bullied as children or their parents or exes had abused them with unreasonable criticism. I don't doubt that this is true in many cases; unfortunately there is a lot of bullying and abuse around and it leaves lasting scars. There needs to be a better solution than welcoming and supporting bigoted and hateful behaviour, though. In the last 15 years, this idea seems to have spread much further, it's no longer specific individuals not being able to handle criticism, it's more like, all criticism of anything along social justice lines is bullying, because there might hypothetically be a mentally ill person or trauma survivor out there who can't handle any negative comments.
There's some weird language slippage going on, too. I keep seeing people arguing that it's horrible to describe anything as 'problematic' because that means everybody who has anything to do with that thing is a terrible evil human being, and it's bullying to imply that might be the case. But the whole point of the word 'problematic' is that it means the opposite of 'irredeemably evil', it's a reference to How to be a fan of problematic things, where the exact point is that
What it looks like to me is that 'purity culture' is the new 'identity politics'. Anyone who cares at all about issues that disproportionately affect minorities, who wants stories to be more diverse and less prejudiced, is an evil bully who cruelly attacks people for having different tastes. Criticizing anything at all along social justice lines (as opposed to purely aesthetic criticism, as if a totally apolitical critical view were really possible) is equated with wanting to ban, censor and punish anything that doesn't completely follow an impossible standard of totally unprejudiced perfection. My feeling is that the impossible standard is the other way round: there's all kinds of advice to criticize the behaviour not the person, not to use absolute moral language, and so on. But if even saying "I found that media a bit problematic" counts as bullying, well, what that boils down to is that nothing that supports the status quo can ever be criticized in any way.
I don't want anyone to be bullied, and I most certainly don't want to contribute to bullying. But I also don't want the concept to be extended so much that it becomes meaningless, or worse, a way to let racists go completely unchallenged.
Certainly people can come up with examples of unarguably inappropriate behaviour carried out in the name of social justice. Yes, Requires Hate was abusive and sometimes used the language of anti-racism to justify her abusive behaviour. But she's literally one person, and I really don't think she's typical of people who care about addressing racism. Yes, there are examples of people posting hateful anon comments on Tumblr because they don't like someone's fandom ship. But somehow, this is being treated as directly equivalent to literal Nazis: both sides are just as bad.
What I'm seeing is that any kind of criticism along social justice lines is more and more dismissed as bullying. If I state that I have a problem with Marvel portraying Captain America as a Hydra agent, I am not bullying Marvel. I'm also not bullying people who like Marvel properties, or comic book nerds, or white people. If I make a case that women should be able to do their jobs without constantly dodging attempts to assault them, I am not bullying celebrities and bosses who misuse their power, or men who aren't as romantically successful as they'd like to be, or men in general.
The nature of the modern internet is such that it's quite easy to get into a situation where lots of people at once disagree with you or criticize you vehemently. I can see that a pile-on like that has many of the same emotional resonances as bullying, but again, it's false to equate lots of people agreeing that whatever media used shitty racist tropes, with deliberately targeted attacks. It's certainly not equivalent to actual mob violence, as detailed in this old but very cogently argued post by Mandolin: Criticism alone is not an Assault.
I do appreciate that some people have mental illnesses or are survivors of abuse or both, and find criticism a lot harder to deal with than people like me. I am very interested in finding ways to support social justice causes that are as inclusive as possible. But I don't think the right answer is never to criticize anyone for eg being racist, because some people have stuff going on that makes any criticism painful. I don't think it's right to say, we should never have rules against bigotry, because some people find it hard to deal with complex social rules.
One example that's been really bugging me is more and more people claiming to suffer from 'scrupulosity'. I don't doubt that that's a real symptom of some kinds of mental illness or neurodivergence, because pretty much anything you can imagine is sometimes a psych symptom. But equally, almost everybody has the experience of getting worked up due to over-estimating how strict a particular rule is, and how bad the consequences are of breaking it, especially if they've ever been young or new to some subculture, and they recognize their experience in the label of a symptom, so they assume they must have that symptom. It's not reasonable to argue that there should never be rules regulating anyone's behaviour in any (virtual or physical) space, because some people have 'scrupulosity' and might be distressed.
Another variant is people claiming to be 'triggered' by feminism. Sure, it's possible, people can have trauma triggers from just about anything. It seems like most of this sort of discourse grew out of some kind of utilitarian thought experiment or rhetorical gotcha: haha, you can't ask people to stop committing microagressions against people who have past trauma, because what if someone is traumatized by feminism or anti-racism?! It's based on a complete straw man: no actual social justice activist is arguing that you have to ban ever doing anything that anyone might possibly find traumatic or triggering. Rather, the point is that it is right to support people in dealing with their triggers, including giving notice of where something triggering might be encountered, and providing spaces where a particular trigger is guaranteed to be absent (no, they are not completely 'safe' spaces because nowhere is entirely safe for all people from all threats). It's not bullying people who enjoy fireworks to set up a space where sudden loud noises are avoided, and the same goes for more complex social and psychological triggers.
I started noticing this during #RaceFail, where particular white women were very upset about being criticized for making racist comments, because they had social anxiety or they had been bullied as children or their parents or exes had abused them with unreasonable criticism. I don't doubt that this is true in many cases; unfortunately there is a lot of bullying and abuse around and it leaves lasting scars. There needs to be a better solution than welcoming and supporting bigoted and hateful behaviour, though. In the last 15 years, this idea seems to have spread much further, it's no longer specific individuals not being able to handle criticism, it's more like, all criticism of anything along social justice lines is bullying, because there might hypothetically be a mentally ill person or trauma survivor out there who can't handle any negative comments.
There's some weird language slippage going on, too. I keep seeing people arguing that it's horrible to describe anything as 'problematic' because that means everybody who has anything to do with that thing is a terrible evil human being, and it's bullying to imply that might be the case. But the whole point of the word 'problematic' is that it means the opposite of 'irredeemably evil', it's a reference to How to be a fan of problematic things, where the exact point is that
you can like really problematic things and still be not only a good person, but a good social justice activist.
What it looks like to me is that 'purity culture' is the new 'identity politics'. Anyone who cares at all about issues that disproportionately affect minorities, who wants stories to be more diverse and less prejudiced, is an evil bully who cruelly attacks people for having different tastes. Criticizing anything at all along social justice lines (as opposed to purely aesthetic criticism, as if a totally apolitical critical view were really possible) is equated with wanting to ban, censor and punish anything that doesn't completely follow an impossible standard of totally unprejudiced perfection. My feeling is that the impossible standard is the other way round: there's all kinds of advice to criticize the behaviour not the person, not to use absolute moral language, and so on. But if even saying "I found that media a bit problematic" counts as bullying, well, what that boils down to is that nothing that supports the status quo can ever be criticized in any way.
I don't want anyone to be bullied, and I most certainly don't want to contribute to bullying. But I also don't want the concept to be extended so much that it becomes meaningless, or worse, a way to let racists go completely unchallenged.
