Category: Uncategorized

“You should make a complaint!”

Real Social Skills

So, I’ve noticed this pattern:

  • Someone will describe some act of discrimination or social violence
  • And then very well-meaning people will weigh in and say things like
  • “They can’t treat people that way!”
  • “Wow, you should really report that!”

Reporting incidents of discrimination can be a good thing, and sometimes it goes somewhere. But, hearing this well-intentioned advice can actually be really frustrating, for a number of reasons:

The thing about being a marginalized person is that discrimination is a routine experience, not an occasional outrage:

  • Things that sound like aberrations to folks who are usually socially valued enough to be treated well most of the time are daily life for a lot of marginalized people
  • If we filed a formal complaint every time we experienced this, we’d have no time or energy for anything else
  • And sometimes, we want to get on with our lives and do things other than fight discrimination
  • Which means that, sometimes, when we talk about discrimination, we’re not asking for advice on how to make it go away; sometimes we’re accepting that we’re not going to be able to make it go away this time
  • And it needs to be ok to disagree about the right way to proceed

Also, sometimes complaints don’t actually help:

  • When the bad thing is the rule rather than the exception, it’s unlikely that anyone will care.
  • When the offender is much more socially valued than the victim, it’s likely that no one will care
  • People who complain frequently are generally seen as problem whiners, even if they are entirely justified in every complaint they make

Complaints are a good idea sometimes. But complaining is a very personal decision. Understand the costs and risks of complaining. Do not pressure a marginalized person to make a complaint in order to make yourself feel better about the state of the world. Do offer to support them if they want to do so.

Don’t miswrite dialects

Real Social Skills

So, I’ve seen this problem when people want to write characters from a culture other than their own:

  • They know that those characters speak a different dialect than they do
  • And they want to convey this
  • But they don’t realize the dialect actually has a rich grammar and other idioms and conventions
  • So they end up just using a lot of stereotypes, or mis-using well-known attributes of the dialect
  • For instance, white authors who want to write characters who speak AAVE often misuse “be” as an indicator (by replacing “is” with “be” at random times rather than learning how “be” actually functions grammatically and writing it correctly.)

It’s important not to do that. If you want to write dialogue in a particular dialect, it’s important to actually learn that dialect so that you can write it correctly. 

Wishful thinking

Real Social Skills

If you think someone is a jerk.

And then you’re attracted to them sexually.

Or they offer you a job you really want.

Or they introduce you to a really cool group of people you look forward to spending time with.

Or you otherwise want something from them.

And then you stop feeling like they’re a jerk.

They’re probably still a jerk. You were probably right the first time.

If you think you’re right now, think through why that is. Why did you think they were a jerk before? Do you have new information? Has anything changed?

Don’t just assume your now-good feeling about them is right.

Wishful thinking is a powerful thing, and it can lead you astray.

“No one would do that!”

Real Social Skills

This happens a lot:

  • Someone is regularly subjected to a particular injustice or kind of social violence
  • They would not do that particular thing to a different group they aren’t part of
  • and are under the mistaken impression that *no one* would do that thing to members of that group
  • And then they reference that in their advocacy in ways that hurt that group

For instance:

  • “No one would say it’s ok to say the n-word, why does anyone still think it’s ok to call someone a f*g?”
  • This is bad, because racists call black people the n-word all the time. That word hasn’t gone away, and it’s not ok to ignore the harm it still does. 
  • “No one would ever tell someone with a physical illness that they just need to get over it, think positive, and stop taking medication. Stop doing that to people with mental illness.”
  • This is bad because people, including some doctors, teachers, and others with power do exactly that to people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. (Especially if they’re also fat, people of color, poor, or also have mental illnesses). And it’s not ok to pretend that this doesn’t happen.

Chances are, the thing you’re thinking of also happens to the group you’re thinking of. It’s a lot better to avoid those kinds of comparisons.

Treating people well is a skill

Real Social Skills

Sometimes, people go into various fields thinking that they are inherently safe people because they know certain things from experience. For instance, people with disabilities go into the field of service provision thinking that they will know how to avoid abuse of power. Or people who have had bad experiences in school and think that they would never use their power in ways that hurt kids.

Sometimes people think that they are safe people because of their political values, or other values. For instance, people sometimes think that reading a lot of disability rights theory makes them ideal staff. Men sometimes think that reading a lot of feminist theory means that they’re immune to gendered power dynamics. White people often think that reading things about diversity and tolerance makes them immune to white supremacist attitudes and hurting people of color with their privilege. But it doesn’t actually work that way.

Your politics do not make you a safe person. Treating people well is a skill, and it goes far beyond knowing what’s at stake. It also goes far beyond knowing the right words and being able to deploy them. It also goes beyond being angry at the world or objecting when other people do blatantly awful things. There is a component of action, too. You also have to know how to act right towards others, and this is something you have to work on continually. No amount of radical conceptual knowledge will replace the need to work on the actual skills involved in treating people well.

And to state it somewhat more simply – knowing that there are power dynamics doesn’t make you immune from abusing power. Neither does identifying them when you see them. Having spent a lot of time thinking about it doesn’t make you immune, either. No one is immune. You have to constantly watch yourself, listen to feedback from people you have power over, and work continuously to improve your ability to treat people right and use your power the right way.

No one is ever, ever beyond the need to keep working on the practical skills involved in treating people well.

It’s not about what kind of person you are; it is never possible to make yourself into a kind of person who is too good to abuse power. It is possible to continually work to improve your actual actions.

Make sure you’re doing that work. It’s important.

“Why didn’t you *tell* me?”

Real Social Skills

So, here’s a conversation:

  • Rachel: I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping for the past several months because I’ve been worried about school.
  • Sarah: Why didn’t you *tell* me? I could have helped!

And another:

  • Dan: It’s going to be really weird going home for Christmas this year now that my sister isn’t talking to us.
  • Dave: Why didn’t you *tell* me that your sister did that? I could have helped you! My brother did that too!

If you react that way, it shifts the focus away from your friend who needs help, and onto your self image as a helpful person.

Do not do this. They’re coming to you now. Be there for them now. Don’t be angry on behalf of an imaginary situation you feel cheated of.

Someone else’s personal problem is not about you.

They’re telling you now. Don’t make it about you. Offer support. Not like they owed it to you to want your support all along.

The value of preaching to the choir

Real Social Skills

The choir has spiritual needs and oftens spiritual commitments. That is why they show up every week.

They need a sermon. They need to keep learning and growing.

Preaching isn’t just about telling people to care. It’s also about telling them how. And reminding people who already care that their efforts matter and are appreciated, and that they still have room to grow.

No group can be outreach-oriented all the time. Not religious groups, not activist groups, not social groups – everything has to, at times, focus on the needs of committed members.

Preaching to the choir isn’t enough. But it’s not something you should neglect, either.

Living with our anger as marginalized or abused people

Real Social Skills

When you’ve been mistreated for a long time, it can be hard to notice that something is wrong. 

Even if you do know it’s wrong, even if you hate it, even if it makes your life awful, it can be very, very hard to realize that it’s ok to object. It can be hard to be upset or even actually *mind* what’s going on in any active way. (And, if you’re like me, you might feel like the problem is that you’re just too broken, and try to shame yourself into becoming someone else)

And then maybe you finally start to get angry. And maybe you meet other people who are angry about the same thing.

And maybe – you start to say so. You find ways of expressing anger. You say the angry things and you even tell people they’re hurting you and that it’s wrong. And you yell and express yourself in emphatic terms in other ways. And you don’t die. You learn that it is, in fact, actually possible to say these things out loud and actually press the issue and win from time to time. And that even when you lose, you survive.

And at first it’s exhilarating and liberating. Because it gives you really, really important things that you’ve never had before.

But sometimes, for some people, this can lead to a place where most of what you have access to is rage. And.. that’s not a great place to be in either. It’s dramatically better than not being able to get angry and express it, but it’s still pretty horrible.

And, a caveat here. Do not even think of using this post to shame people for their anger, or for the amount of time they spend being angry. People have damn good reason to be angry, and sometimes anger is all you have and it is a terrible, terrible idea to try to stop being angry in those circumstances. Anger is important.

Anger is also exhausting and draining.

And anger is not the only way to be able to say what’s wrong without backing down. It is possible to get to a place where you can do that, *even without being actively enraged*. It’s very, very hard to do that, and it’s not always even remotely possible. But it’s a useful skill to acquire and use sometimes, because it means you can sometimes fight these battles without it costing you as much all the time.

It doesn’t mean you stop getting angry. We all get angry, even enraged, sometimes. Trying to eliminate anger is incredibly destructive. Don’t do that, and don’t pressure others to do that. We need anger. We have reason to be angry. Anger is not a failure.

There are other tools, in addition to anger, that we can use to protect ourselves and fight these battles, for instance:

  • Avoiding or limiting emotional entanglement with toxic or dismissive people
  • Spending time explaining things to people who are worth talking to and actually give a damn
  • Spending time with peers who understand and face the same things, and doing things other than being angry about the things
  • Emphasizing and appreciating the value of people like you, even when everything in your world is trying to tell you not to. (Eg: celebrating your culture, eating your food even when it’s stigmatized, body positivity, supporting businesses run by marginalized people, seeing unique value in the perspectives you have)
  • Saying no to things that hurt you even when you’re calm
  • Telling people that they’re hurting others and need to stop even when you’re not enraged by what they’re doing

These tools do not replace anger, but they are also helpful. And so are others. There are a lot of reasons it’s worthwhile to learn additional approaches, for instance:

  • Anger is expensive. It is not as expensive as seeing yourself as someone who isn’t entitled to anger and suppressing it at all costs, but it is expensive and being angry takes a tole.
  • Anger can center the villains more than the good guys. We have damn good reason to be angry. But, push come to shove, good is more important than evil and sometimes it’s worthwhile to center the worth and lives of our own rather than focusing on those who seek to harm us (we can’t ignore them; this is not about positive thinking or pretending that if we don’t acknowledge evil it will go away or any of that BS. What it’s about is making sure we’re remembering to value the people we’re fighting for)
  • Sometimes anger isn’t as effective as something else could be. (It’s more effective than doing nothing, and it’s absolutely legitimate so don’t even try to use this to tone police people. And sometimes it *is* the most effective available tool. But it is not *always* the most effective approach, and it’s good to have other options sometimes)

This is hard. It is also worthwhile.