Real Social Skills

The rules about responding to call outs aren’t working

October 24, 2017September 12, 2024 Real Social Skills

Privileged people rarely take the voices of marginalized people seriously. Social justices spaces attempt to fix this with rules about how to respond to when marginalized people tell you that you’ve done something wrong. Like most formal descriptions of social skills, the rules don’t quite match reality. This is causing some problems that I think we could fix with a more honest conversation about how to respond to criticism.

The formal social justice rules say something like this:

You should listen to marginalized people.
When a marginalized person calls you out, don’t argue.
Believe them, apologize, and don’t do it again.
When you see others doing what you were called out for doing, call them out.

Those rules are a good approximation of some things, but they don’t actually work. It is impossible to follow them literally, in part because:

Marginalized people are not a monolith.
Marginalized people have the same range of opinions as privileged people.
When two marginalized people tell you logically incompatible things, it is impossible to act on both sets of instructions.
For instance, some women believe that abortion is a human right foundational human right for women. Some women believe that abortion is murder and an attack on women and girls.
“Listen to women” doesn’t tell you who to believe, what policy to support, or how to talk about abortion.
For instance, some women believe that religious rules about clothing liberate women from sexual objectification, other women believe that religious rules about clothing sexually objectify women.
“Listen to women” doesn’t tell you what to believe about modesty rules.
Narrowing it to “listen to women of minority faiths” doesn’t help, because women disagree about this within every faith.
When “listen to marginalized people” means “adopt a particular position”, marginalized people are treated as rhetorical props rather than real people.
Objectifying marginalized people does not create justice.

Since the rule is literally impossible to follow, no one is actually succeeding at following it. What usually ends up happening when people try is that:

One opinion gets lifted up as “the position of marginalized people”
Agreeing with that opinion is called “listen to marginalized people”
Disagreeing with that opinion is called “talking over marginalized people”
Marginalized people who disagree with that opinion are called out by privileged people for “talking over marginalized people”.
This results in a lot of fights over who is the true voice of the marginalized people.
We need an approach that is more conducive to real listening and learning.

This version of the rule also leaves us open to sabotage:

There are a lot of people who don’t want us to be able to talk to each other and build effective coalitions.
Some of them are using the language of call-outs to undermine everyone who emerges as an effective progressive leader.
They say that they are marginalized people, and make up lies about leaders.
Or they say things that are technically true, but taken out of context in deliberately misleading ways.
The rules about shutting up and listening to marginalized people make it very difficult to contradict these lies and distortions.
(Sometimes they really are members of the marginalized groups they claim to speak for. Sometimes they’re outright lying about who they are).
(For instance, Russian intelligence agents have used social media to pretend to be marginalized Americans and spread lies about Hillary Clinton.)

The formal rule is also easily exploited by abusive people, along these lines:

An abusive person convinces their victim that they are the voice of marginalized people.
The abuser uses the rules about “when people tell you that you’re being oppressive, don’t argue” to control the victim.
Whenever the victim tries to stand up for themself, the abuser tells the victim that they’re being oppressive.
That can be a powerfully effective way to make victims in our communities feel that they have no right to resist abuse.
This can also prevent victims from getting support in basic ways.
Abusers can send victims into depression spirals by convincing them that everything that brings them pleasure is oppressive and immoral.
The abuser may also isolate the victim by telling them that it would be oppressive for them to spend time with their friends and family, try to access victim services, or call the police.
The abuser may also separate the victim from their community and natural allies by spreading baseless rumors about their supposed oppressive behavior. (Or threatening to do so).
When there are rules against questioning call outs, there are also implicit rules against taking the side of a victim when the abuser uses the language of calling out.
Rules that say some people should unconditionally defer to others are always dangerous.

The rule also lacks intersectionality:

No one experiences every form of oppression or every form of privilege.
Call-outs often involve people who are marginalized in different ways.
Often, both sides in the conflict have a point.
For instance, black men have male privilege and white women have white privilege.
If a white woman calls a black man out for sexism and he responds by calling her out for racism (or vice versa), “listened to marginalized people” isn’t a very helpful rule because they’re both marginalized.
These conversations tend to degenerate into an argument about which form of marginalization is most significant.
This prevents people involved from actually listening to each other.
In conflicts like this, it’s often the case that both sides have a legitimate point. (In ways that are often not immediately obvious.)
We need to be able to work through these conflicts without expecting simplistic rules to resolve them in advance.

This rule also tends to prevent groups centered around one form of marginalized from coming to engage with other forms of marginalization:

For instance, in some spaces, racism and sexism are known to be issues, but ableism is not.
(This can occur in any combination. Eg: There are also spaces that get ableism and sexism but not racism, and spaces that get economic justice and racism but not antisemitism, or any number of other things.)
When disabled people raise the issue of ableism in any context (social justice or otherwise), they’re likely to be shouted down and told that it’s not important.
In social justice spaces, this shouting down is often done in the name of “listening to marginalized people”.
For instance, disabled people may be told ‘you need to listen to marginalized people and de-center your issues’, carrying the implication that ableism is less important than other forms of oppression.
(This happens to *every* marginalized group in some context or other.)
If we want real intersectional solidarity, we need to have space for ongoing conflicts that are not simple to resolve.

Short version: “Shut up and listen to marginalized people” isn’t quite the right rule, because it objectifies marginalized people, leaves us open to sabotage, enables abuse, and prevents us from working through conflicts in a substantive way. We need to do better by each other, and start listening for real.

On solving the right problem

October 9, 2017September 12, 2024 Real Social Skills

Not every problem disabled people have is a failure to understand social situations.

Sometimes the problem is that our bodies are considered socially unacceptable.

No amount of social skills training will change our bodies.

No amount of social understanding will make typical movement and typical speech physically possible.

No matter what we learn, bodies and brains matter. We’re still disabled when we understand things.

It’s ok to be disabled. It’s not ok to be bigoted against disabled people.

If we want to get anywhere, we need to make sure that we’re solving the right problems.

Absolution seeking behaviors

October 5, 2017June 9, 2021 Real Social Skills

Dear disability professionals,

We need to talk about your absolution-seeking behavior. When disabled people go to conferences, disability professionals flock to us and ask us to help them feel good about themselves and their field. This isn’t ok. It needs to stop, and you need to be part of stopping it.

This is never ok, but it’s especially bad when it’s a defense against listening. Disabled people often put themselves on the line to bear witness to the problems in the disability field. When we do this, the last thing it’s appropriate to do is seek out validation. It’s a time for reflection, not absolution.

Too many disabled disability advocates are having some version of this conversation with disability professionals:

Disabled Advocate: Your field is doing serious harm to disabled people.
Disability Professional: Tell me about it! They’re all awful. But not me, I’m the exception. I’m one of the good ones.
Disabled Advocate: How?
Disability Professional: I am the exception because I recognize the uniqueness of individuals by doing Something Disabled Advocates Oppose and Another Thing Disabled Advocates Lobby Against. I’m sorry you’ve had such bad experiences with other people in my field, there are a lot of bad apples!
Disabled Advocate: Actually, the things you’re describing are the things we object to in your field, and here’s why.
Disability Professional: I agree with you! That’s why I do those things. I’m one of the good ones.

Please stop doing this to disabled people. Please stop assuming that you’re one of the good ones and that what we say doesn’t apply to you. Everyone seems to think of themselves as an exception because they have helped some people or had some sort of good intentions.

Please keep in mind that it is not remotely unusual to do good things in the disability field. Most people who have done great harm have also done some good. That doesn’t make you special, and it doesn’t erase anything you’ve done to disabled people. Good intentions don’t heal broken bones or broken dreams. Don’t seek absolution from us. Listen to us, acknowledge the problems, and find ways to do better.

Sincerely,
The disabled presenter who you called inspirational

Autistic people can have friends

October 4, 2017June 9, 2021 Real Social Skills

One reason I started writing this blog is that I got tired of seeing social skills programs teach autistic people that they have to become normal in order to have friends.

It’s not true. There are a lot of autistic people who have friends without becoming remotely normal. Oddness and friendship are entirely compatible.

You can be autistic, seem autistic, and have friends who like you and enjoy your company.

Some people won’t like you, and that’s ok. Not everyone has to like everyone.

Some people will dislike you because they are bigoted against autistic people. That’s not ok, but it doesn’t have to ruin your life. Ableists don’t speak for everyone. Those people aren’t your friends. Other people can be.

You’ll probably always face ableism. Trying to be normal probably won’t make that go away; accepting yourself probably won’t make that go away either. You don’t need to change the whole world in order to have friends.

You can have friends as the person you are, in the world as it is now.

On bearing witness to the humanity of disabled people and the destructiveness of ableism

September 27, 2017June 9, 2021 Real Social Skills

One of the most powerful things that we can do is to bear witness to the humanity of disabled people and the destructive consequences of ableism. When we bear witness to our humanity and to the things that others do to us, it changes the conversation. Our stories are powerful.

Some people have the privilege of being largely untouched by ableism. (Or being untouched by a particular kind of ableism.) Most people who are privileged in this way are also unaware of how deeply marginalized disabled people are being harmed. (I’m using disability as the primary example here, but this actually applies to ever kind of marginalization.)

We are dehumanized, and a lot of people don’t notice that it’s happening. They’re taught to overlook our humanity, and a lot of what happens to us is hidden from them. When people learn how to notice, they often start caring.

Bearing witness to our humanity means making it impossible to discuss disability in the abstract. It means making people have to notice that when they talk about disability, they’re talking about *actual human beings*. We do things. Some of us have jobs. Some of us are artists. Some of us write. Some of us are married. Some of us are fans of TV shows. Some of us are experts in our fields. Some of us cook. All of us matter. Making people notice us as real human beings changes the conversation about disability.

Speaking out about the consequences of ableism also changes the conversation. When institution survivors bear witness to what happens in institutions, it becomes much more difficult for people to believe that institutionalization is good for disabled people. When people speak out about what authoritarian childhood therapy did to them, it’s harder to pretend that compliance training is harmless. When people speak out about electric shock, it is much harder to pretend that people who are tortured with electric shocks think that it makes their lives better.

When disabled people talk about what it is like to learn the name of their disability by eavesdropping and googling, some parents listen. Likewise, when disabled people talk about what it’s like to grow up without accurate language for ourselves, some parents come to understand the importance of talking to children about their disabilities.

Bearing witness also matters to other disabled people. We often learn to overlook our own humanity. We often learn to disregard the things that others have done to us. When other disabled people are unapologetically human, it’s easier to see ourselves as human. When other disabled people talk about the harm ableism does, it’s easier to remember that these things shouldn’t happen to us.

This doesn’t always work. When people with disabilities bear witness to our humanity and to what happens to us, we often get hostile responses. Even when some people are listening, there are usually also angry people who are not. Even when people are eventually willing to listen, they are often initially angry and mean. Those of us who talk about these things pay a price for doing so. Everyone has the right to decide for themselves whether this is a price they’re willing to pay in a given situation.

Your stories belong to you. Stories can be a powerful force for liberation, but you are not a liberation object. You are a person. You have the right to decide whether or not to tell your stories. If you choose to tell stories, you have the right to decide which stories to tell, how you want to tell them, and who you want to tell them to. (Including, whether or not you want to answer questions that people ask you.) You can also change your mind. Doing some advocacy work doesn’t make you an advocacy object, and it doesn’t strip you of the right to say no. No matter how politically or socially useful your stories are, they belong to you.

You can’t fight stigma by making disability unspeakable

September 16, 2017September 12, 2024 Real Social Skills

I’ve noticed that a lot of well-meaning people try to fight disability stigma by making disability unspeakable.

The logic seems to be like this:

They notice that when people are seen as disabled, they are respected less.
They call this stigma, and think of stigma as a very bad problem.
They then try to figure out how to make stigma go away so that people will be respected more.
They think that if no one was seen as disabled, there would be no stigma.
They try to get people to pretend that disability doesn’t exist.
They expect this to somehow improve the lives of people with disabilities. (On the grounds that if everyone ignores disability, there will be no disability stigma.)

This approach doesn’t work. Disability exists, whether or not anyone is willing to acknowledge it. When we try to fight stigma by ignoring disability, we send the message that disability is unacceptable.

When people are made to pretend that their disability does not exist, they learn that basic things about their body are unspeakable. When people are made to pretend someone else’s disability doesn’t exist, they learn that if they stopped ignoring basic things about them, it would be impossible to keep respecting them. These are not good lessons.

If you need to pretend someone isn’t disabled in order to respect them, you’re not really respecting them. You’re giving imaginary respect to an imaginary nondisabled person. People with disabilities deserve better. People with disabilities don’t need fake respect handed out as a consolation prize. People with disabilities need to be treated with real respect, as the people they really are.

If we want to fight stigma, we have to get real. Disability exists, and pretending that it doesn’t just makes the problem worse. Stigma is not caused by noticing disability; stigma is caused by ableist attitudes towards disability. It is ok to be disabled, it is not ok to be ableist, and it is upon all of us to build a culture that understands that.

A problem with “behavior is communication”

August 31, 2017June 9, 2021 Real Social Skills

In certain contexts, just about everything a disabled person does will result in someone following them around with a clipboard, taking notes on their behavior, and designing a behavior plan for them.

This is often called ‘listening to what the behavior is communicating’ or ‘keeping in mind that behavior is communication.’

I know that nothing I’ve ever done was intended to communicate ‘please put me on a behavior plan’. If anyone asked me, they would know with certainty that I don’t want them to do anything of the sort.

I’m not alone in this. Very few people would willingly consent to intense data collection of the kind involved in behavior analysis. Far fewer people would willingly consent to the ways in which that data is used to control their behavior.

A lot of people never get asked. People do these things to them that very few people would willingly consent to — without asking, and without considering consent to be a relevant consideration.

Somehow, an approach that involves ignoring what someone might be thinking gets called ‘listening to what is being communicated’.

That is neither ethical nor logical. Behaviors don’t communicate; people do. If you want to understand what someone is thinking, you have to listen to them in a way that goes beyond what any behavior plan can do.

Collecting data is not the same as listening, modifying behavior is not the same as understanding what someone is thinking, and disabled people are fully human.

We need to be as good at lifting up as we are at calling out

August 10, 2017June 9, 2021 Real Social Skills

In advocacy/activist space, we’ve gotten really good at noticing and naming oppression. We’ve gotten really good at criticizing the things that people are doing wrong, and demanding change. We’re also good at noticing organizations and people who shouldn’t be supported, and explaining why people shouldn’t support them.

This is important — and it’s not enough. We need to be equally good at noticing and naming things that *are* worth supporting. We need to be equally good at noticing what people are doing well, describing why their approach is good, and finding ways to support it. Calling out isn’t enough. We need to seek out things to lift up.

When we focus exclusively on finding things to call out, we send the implicit message that nothing good anyone is doing is worthy of our attention. But none of the work of building a better world happens by itself. It depends on the people who are putting the effort into doing the work. When we ignore the value of the work people are doing, we both harm those people and the work itself.

The work is hard, exhausting, and vital. It’s also often thankless — because we’re not acknowledging it in the way we need to be. Often, doing activism and advocacy means signing up for a life of being paid less than a living wage (or volunteering your very limited time), having your work ignored, and being noticed by your community only when people are angry at you.

This is particularly common when the work is done by marginalized people. Our culture socializes us to ignore the work that women and other marginalized groups do, except when we find reason to criticize it. This dynamic carries over into activism/advocacy spaces. It’s just as toxic when we do it as when corporations do it.

There’s nothing inevitable about this. We can make it stop. We can pay attention to the work people are doing, and we can show respect to the people doing it. We can describe the worthwhile things people are doing, and talk about why they should be valued. We can seek out ways to support what people are doing, whether that means donating, signal boosting, going out and voting, connecting people to each other, or any number of other things. By getting just as good at support as we are at call outs, we can make the world much better.

The drawbacks of anger, and some alternatives

August 1, 2017June 9, 2021 Real Social Skills

A lot of things that are normal aren’t ok. It’s hard to notice this. We’re socialized to accept a lot of things that really ought to be unacceptable. When we try to object, we’re punished. Being punished for objecting is often humiliating and disorienting.

It’s hard to remember that these things are wrong even when others punish you for saying so. It’s hard to remember that you have rights when others act like you don’t.

One way to remember that things are wrong is to get angry about them. Feeling outraged can make it easier to hold onto your sense that, no, this isn’t ok, and yes, it is ok to object.

Unfortunately, the price of rage is high. Rage hurts. It’s physically unpleasant, physically exhausting, emotionally draining, and makes it hard to think clearly. The physical and emotional exhaustion from anger makes it harder to do other things. The fog of anger can lead to mistakes that make it harder to remember after the fact that you were justified in objecting. Rage is better than nothing, but there are other strategies that don’t hurt as much.

One thing that can help is to develop your understanding of the situation over time. If you learn to understand what you’re angry about and why, it can make it possible to use understanding rather than anger to stay oriented.

Questions like these can help:

What am I angry about?
Why am I angry about that?
What happened that I think is wrong?
Why do I think it’s wrong?

For instance, say I’m in class, we’re doing an activity, I’m not able to do the activity, and I’m feeling angry. We’re writing thoughts on big paper, and I can’t do handwriting well enough to participate. In that situation, I might think:

Why am I angry?
I’m trying to participate and failing over and over and that’s intensely frustrating.
Why am I angry about that?
Because I’m sick of being left out all the time.
What happened that I think is wrong?
The teacher knew about my disability and didn’t do anything to accommodate it when they planned the activity.
When I pointed out that I couldn’t participate, they didn’t do anything to fix it.
Why do I think that’s wrong?
Because I have a right to be here, and the teacher is supposed to be teaching me.
I’m a student here, and I have the right to learn the material and be part of the activities we’re using to learn it.
This is disability discrimination, and that’s wrong.

Then, the next step in using understanding rather than anger is to notice that something is wrong before you start feeling enraged. Sometimes that can make it possible to fix the problem without having to get to the point of outrage. It can also make it more possible to decide when to fight and when not to.

For instance, take the class activity. If I remember that I have the right to be there and that it’s the teacher’s responsibility to teach me, this might happen:

I go to class and see that there is big paper on the walls.
I remember that I can’t do big paper activities.
I remember that I have the right to participate in educational activities.
I remember that I have the right to learn the material.
I ask right away “Are we doing a big paper activity today? How will I participate?”
At this point, I’m annoyed, but not outraged, and able to assert something without it hurting so much.

They may or may not respond the right way — and I might still get really angry. But if that happens, I can repeat the strategy again, figure out what I’m angry about and why. Then I can get further without depending on anger the next time. (Even when you can’t win or fix the problem, it’s still often possible to use that kind of strategy to stay oriented without rage. I have more posts in the works about that specifically.)

Anger isn’t a failure. It’s ok to be angry when unacceptable things are happening. It’s also ok *not* to feel physically angry. Anger hurts, and you don’t owe anyone that kind of pain. You don’t have to be pushed to the point of rage in order to be justified in objecting to unacceptable things.

Sometimes it might help to explicitly remind yourself of this. Some affirmations that have sometimes worked for me:

I don’t have to hurt myself to prove that this is wrong.
It’s still wrong if I’m calm.
It’s still wrong if I’m not crying and shaking.
It’s still wrong if my heart isn’t pounding.
Even if I’m ok, the situation isn’t ok.
Even if I’m ok in this moment, it’s ok to object to a situation that’s hurting me and/or others.

It also helps not to beat yourself up for getting angry. Anger in the face of outrageous things isn’t a failure. No strategy can completely replace physical outrage for anyone. Holding yourself up to impossible standards won’t help. Working on your skills at staying oriented in other ways will.

These strategies are harder to learn and harder to use. They also make it a lot more possible to resist and stay oriented without hurting yourself. It’s not all or nothing — any skills in this area help, and it gets easier with practice.