Listening beyond words

Real Social Skills

Sometimes, words are misleading. Sometimes, if you only pay attention to words, it can make communication difficult.

Words are approximations, and they don’t mean the same thing to the everyone. Patterns of words can have very, very different connotations for different people. The same words, even the same phrases, can mean radically different things said by different people.

(Even slur words, sometimes. But I’m mostly not talking about those here.)

So you can’t rely on just the words. That’s misleading. A lot of other things matter too.

Part of it is paying attention to what you know about the person. Do their words match what you’d expect them to say? Is there another way of reading those words that matches that person better?

If someone seems to be saying something dramatically out of character, it’s entirely possible that they don’t mean what you expect those words to mean. It can be good to ask. Like, to say that those words seem to say x, did they really mean that, or something else?

In person, paying attention to tone can be helpful. And body language. And what sort of mood they seem to be in. And pauses. Not everyone can use all of these cues, and that’s ok, you don’t have to.

But there’s always more going on than exact literal meanings of words.

Another thing about Facebook

Real Social Skills

Facebook is an environment with confusing boundaries. It’s easy to inadvertently cross lines on Facebook. Almost everyone ends up inadvertently violating boundaries on Facebook that they would never violate in person.

But not all boundary violation on Facebook are like that. Facebook can also be used for stalking. Serious stalking. Not semi-cute awkwardness like commenting on too many things.

Facebook can be used to harass people. It can be used to try to force contact. It can be used to track someone’s movements. It can be used to find out who the victim associates with, and then to try to use those people to get to them.

If you are Facebook friends with both an abuser and their victim, this can hurt the victim. It can, and often does, result in you accidentally giving information to the abuser that it is dangerous to the victim to have. This is the case even if the victim has blocked the abuser.

(For instance, photos of the victim that you post or comment on can show up in the abuser’s news feed.)

If you’re close to someone who is extracting themself from an abusive relationship, and they ask you to unfriend their abuser, it’s important to take that request seriously.

Making the point about therapy more sharply

Real Social Skills

Three year old children in preschool are some of the least socially powerful people in our culture. But, they are routinely given a lot of choices about what they do and how they do it.

They’re not usually required to do painful and boring things over and over with no regard to their feelings or their experiences. And, from time to time, they can say no to something an adult had planned for them and have it stick.

Preschool teachers know that their work depends in large part on getting the willing cooperation of most of their students. That doing things to them over their miserable protests over and over is probably going to end poorly.

All too often, therapy for people with disabilities is less respectful, consensual, and individualized than the average preschool class.

If you’re exercising more control over a ten year old kid with a disability than you’d feel comfortable exercising over a nondisabled three year old child, you’re doing it wrong. All the more so if you’re doing it to an older child or an adult.

About avoiding slurs

Real Social Skills

There are a lot of slurs that are so ingrained into English-speaking culture that people who say them don’t always realize that they are slurs.

  • People say them without meaning them as slurs, but they still hurt people
  • Because people also say them as intentional slurs
  • And it’s not usually obvious which is which
  • And even when people genuinely don’t mean it that way, hearing slurs about your group all the time hurts
  • Also, sometimes the people who are using the slur don’t know that the group it’s about actually exists
  • Being erased to the point that people only know about the stereotype is also really horrible

And…

  • Often when people in the target group point out the slurs, people react badly
  • Instead of apologizing and fixing it, they get angry and hostile
  • And often behave in really humiliating (or even dangerous) ways towards the person who pointed it out
  • Reacting that way is fairly similar to using a slur intentionally
  • You can’t actually invoke a trope related to the slur without also invoking the slur in ways that hurt people it’s used against
  • Even if you would never react that way, people in the target group don’t know that when you say the word.

I’m a bit uneasy about saying those words, so I’m not going to include any examples. (I’m not sure that’s the right decision, but that’s what I’m doing for this post). But if people these words are used against want to reblog with comments or send asks, that would be very welcome.

“Take a rain check”

Real Social Skills

p-3a answered your question: Idioms?

“Take a rain check”?

“Take a rain check?” means:

  • In principle I would like to do the thing you are suggesting
  • For some practical reason, I can’t do the thing now
  • I want you to know that I do actually want to do the thing
  • Can we do it at some yet-to-be-determined point in the future?

I think it’s a reference to a practice some stores have with sales:

  • Sometimes they will advertise a sale
  • And then run out of the thing that’s on sale
  • And give people who want to buy it rain check, which is a piece of paper entitling them to buy the product at the sale price once it comes back in stock
  • Most stores don’t do this anymore, but some do

When you don’t want to reconnect

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
What do you do when you hurt someone to the point that they end a relationship with you, but then later on, they’re the one who wants to be friends with you again (or get back together, or otherwise start being part of each other’s lives again), but facing up to what you did makes you feel really bad and you just want to move on without being in each other’s lives?
Is there any way to say, “I think we’re better off not in each other’s lives” without hurting them even more?
First and foremost, it’s ok to decide not to resume the relationship. You don’t have to have a relationship you don’t want to have, even if the reason it initially ended is that you hurt the other person.
It’s probably not possible to completely avoid hurting them, because rejection always hurts. It’s painful to want to have a relationship that someone else doesn’t want, especially if there’s a loaded emotional history. You probably can’t prevent that hurt entirely.
But, saying no to a relationship you don’t want is not the same kind of hurt that you caused by whatever you did before. (Even if it’s triggering because of what you did before, which happens sometimes.)
What you can do is avoid being cruel about it, and avoid sending mixed messages. You could maybe say something like, “I’m sorry that I hurt you, and I hope you’re doing well. At this point, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be interacting.”

Depending on context, sometimes politeness is the better option and sometimes rudeness is the better option

Real Social Skills

igotpillstheyremultiplying said:

Right, I have been in situations like that. I guess I’m just reacting because being polite has sometimes kept me in dangerous situations. I guess it’s up to each person, but you shouldn’t have to be.

Yes, absolutely. It’s important to be rude sometimes.

It’s just that there are tools besides rudeness that work better for managing some situations some of the time. And it can be worth learning to use them.

But being able to be rude as-needed is really important too.

When people won’t stop asking for reasons

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
When you don’t want to give the reason for saying no, and the other person is pressuring you, what is a polite way to get them to stop?
Unfortunately, there often isn’t a completely polite way to get them to stop. People who do this are often very good at manipulating the rules of polite conversation in ways that make it impossible to assert a boundary without being rude.
And even if you are being entirely polite, you’re still likely to offend them. Someone who feels entitled to an answer is probably going to feel wronged if they don’t get one.
That said, these are phrases that sometimes end that kind of conversation without making you appear too rude:
  • “Thank you for your suggestion. I’ll think about it”.
  • “Maybe; let me get back to you.”
  • “I’ll have to think about that.”
  • “I have to leave now. Nice talking to you.”
  • “Thank you, but I’m not interested, and I don’t want to talk about this further.”

Sometimes you can also just change the subject and ignore anything they say about the thing they’re demanding reasons about. This can be especially effective if there’s something they will usually take any opportunity to discuss. That doesn’t work in all situations, but it does work sometimes.

Basically, though, it’s not always possible to defend boundaries politely. It’s ok to be rude when you need to be in order to protect your boundaries. No one has to be polite all the time at all costs.

Being aware of privilege only helps if you do something

Real Social Skills

Talking about how privileged you are and how much you acknowledge your privilege doesn’t do much, on its own.

It has to actually change what you do.

It can actually make things worse, if all you do is mention it.

Because then the implication is “yeah, I know I’m privileged and have all kinds of unwarranted power over others, but I don’t really care and it’s not going to change what I do. Please to be praising me for noticing this. I’m pretty great.”

And people you have power over can come under a lot of pressure to give you the praise you want, and to help you feel ok about the discrimination you participate in. Don’t do this to people.

When you have privilege, you have obligations that go along with it. You have unwarranted power that you can’t renounce, and the obligation to learn what to do with it. If you’re not willing to think about your power and examine what you do with it, you’re not going to be able to avoid abusing it.

There are any number of other implications too. And there are things it’s not ok to participate in even if it would benefit you, and even if it’s hard-to-impossible to get those things otherwise.

Don’t expect noticing and naming your privilege categories to be enough.