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Nonviolent Communication can hurt people

July 13, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

People who struggle interpersonally, who seem unhappy, or who get into a lot of conflicts are often advised to adopt the approach of Nonviolent Communication.

This is often not a good idea. Nonviolent Communication is an approach based on refraining from seeming to judge others, and instead expressing everything in terms of your own feelings. For instance, instead of “Don’t be such an inconsiderate jerk about leaving your clothes around”, you’d say “When you leave your clothing around, I feel disrespected.”. That approach is useful in situations in which people basically want to treat each other well but have trouble doing so because they don’t understand one another’s needs and feelings. In every other type of situation, the ideology and methodology of Nonviolent Communication can make things much worse.

Nonviolent Communication can be particularly harmful to marginalized people or abuse survivors. It can also teach powerful people to abuse their power more than they had previously, and to feel good about doing so. Non-Violent Communication has strategies that can be helpful in some situations, but it also teaches a lot of anti-skills that can undermine the ability to survive and fight injustice and abuse.

For marginalized or abused people, being judgmental is a necessary survival skill. Sometimes it’s not enough to say “when you call me slurs, I feel humiliated” – particularly if the other person doesn’t care about hurting you or actually wants to hurt you. Sometimes you have to say “The word you called me is a slur. It’s not ok to call me slurs. Stop.” Or “If you call me that again, I’m leaving.” Sometimes you have to say to yourself “I’m ok, they’re mean.” All of those things are judgments, and it’s important to be judgmental in those ways.

You can’t protect yourself from people who mean you harm without judging them. Nonviolent Communication works when people are hurting each other by accident; it only works when everyone means well. It doesn’t have responses that work when people are hurting others on purpose or without caring about damage they do. Which, if you’re marginalized or abused, happens several times a day. NVC does not have a framework for acknowledging this or responding to it.

In order to protect yourself from people who mean you harm, you have to see yourself as having the right to judge that someone is hurting you. You also have to be able to unilaterally set boundaries, even when your boundaries are upsetting to other people. Nonviolent Communication culture can teach you that whenever others are upset with you, you’re doing something wrong and should change what you do in order to meet the needs of others better. That’s a major anti-skill. People need to be able to decide things for themselves even when others are upset.

Further, NVC places a dangerous degree of emphasis on using a very specific kind of language and tone. NVC culture often judges people less on the content of what they’re saying than how they are saying it. Abusers and cluelessly powerful people are usually much better at using NVC language than people who are actively being hurt. When you’re just messing with someone’s head or protecting your own right to mess with their head, it’s easy to phrase things correctly. When someone is abusing you and you’re trying to explain what’s wrong, and you’re actively terrified, it’s much, much harder to phrase things in I-statements that take an acceptable tone.

Further, there is *always* a way to take issue with the way someone phrased something. It’s really easy to make something that’s really about shutting someone up look like a concern about the way they’re using language, or advice on how to communicate better. Every group I’ve seen that valued this type of language highly ended up nitpicking the language of the least popular person in the group as a way of shutting them up.

Short version: Be careful with Nonviolent Communication. I-statements have their uses in some contexts, but NVC is not the complete solution to conflict or communication that it presents itself as. NVC can be particularly dangerous for people with communication disabilities, and for people who have trouble setting boundaries.

When you want to start changing the world and it feels daunting

March 9, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

I’ve learned a lot about rape and rape culture from Tumblr, and now I want to start educating people. However, I am quite socially awkward, so I’m not really sure when and how to bring it up appropriately. Also, how do I make sure I don’t overwhelm them when it is the first time I am talking about rape culture to them? Should I arrange a campaign at my high school or should I talk one on one? Also, I don’t want to trigger anyone, how do I do that?

realsocialskills said:

Thank you for your question. It’s a really good one.

Before I say anything else, I want to say something about perspective:

Part of fighting rape culture (or any pervasive injustice) involves coming to a degree of acceptance about how awful the world is. Before you knew about pervasive evil, you might have been able to get angry and fight every time you saw something awful. That’s not going to work anymore, because rape culture is everywhere. Now that you can see it, you will notice something horrible multiple times every day.

Rape culture is as bad and outrageous as you think it is, and it’s hard to come to terms with seeing it all around you. But it’s also possible, and important, to learn how to see it without getting furious every time. You can’t go after every instance of rape culture you see with everything you have. Doing that will cost you everything you have, without putting much of a dent in the things that are wrong with the world.

Some kinds of activist perspectives make things worse. You see some of them a lot on Tumblr, but they’re not just Tumblr things. Some people will sell outrage and falling to pieces as the standard of virtue. It’s ok, and often worthwhile, to be angry. But rage isn’t the measure of how much you care about something, or how dedicated you are to fighting evil and building a better world, or how effective your work is. We all get outraged sometimes and there’s nothing wrong with that, but push come to shove, it’s the work that matters. The important thing is to look for opportunities to act, and to find places where your work can be effective. Honor your anger, but prioritize your work.

I wrote a post about anger and a post about the fight that I think are relevant here.

That said about perspective and the importance of finding opportunities to act, here are some thoughts about tactics:

There are two basic faces of activism/advocacy.

Forcing people to change what they do
Convincing people to adopt your values

Both are legitimate, and important. Your work will involve both. The proportion will depend on your personal skills, opportunities, and preferences. Don’t devalue either. And, in all cases, it’s important to be realistic about what you have the power to do. You can do more when you are looking for opportunities to act than when you are assuming that your dedication will overcome every obstacle.

When you are seeking to persuade others:

Focus your attention on people who are willing to listen to you. Lecturing people who aren’t interested isn’t likely to get you anywhere. Hostile people are almost never persuaded by arguments; arguing with hostile people is almost always draining and demoralizing. The only time arguing with a hostile or uninterested person is likely to get you anywhere is when you are speaking to them for the sake of an audience that *is* listening to you seriously. You can’t reach everyone. Focus on the people you can reach.

When someone is sincerely trying to understand, speak to them respectfully. Don’t condescend to them. Don’t speak to them with contempt. Don’t tell them to go fucking google it. So long as they are actually being sincere, treat them respectfully even if it takes them a long time to understand. Keep in mind that three years ago, you didn’t know all of this either. Don’t expect people for whom these ideas are new to get it within five minutes. (And keep in mind also that you’re new at this and probably not very skilled at explaining in a way others can understand yet, and keep working on that skill.)

Some people will pretend to be interested while actually being hostile and unwilling to listen to anything you say. It’s ok to tell those people to go away. It’s ok to be rude about telling those people to go away. Sometimes it is very hard to get those people to go away; sometimes they will be very aggressive and whiny about it. It’s still ok to end the conversation. You don’t owe hostile people your attention. (Beware of spending lots of time arguing with someone about whether or not you have an obligation to argue with them. That’s a way they will suck you back in. You do not have to persuade someone that the conversation should end in order to end it.)

It’s also ok to decide you don’t want to keep trying to explain rape culture to someone anymore even if they *are* sincerely interested and being respectful about it. Activists are allowed to have boundaries, even with nice people. But if you don’t think someone’s being a jerk, don’t treat them with contempt when you set a boundary. (Eg: Something like “I don’t want to talk about this anymore”, not something like “Go away with your male tears” *unless the person you’re talking to is actually doing something wrong*.)

When you are trying to force people to change what they do:

It’s important to look for opportunities to act. You can’t force people to do things unless you have power over them. At this point in your life, the coercive power you have is probably somewhat limited, but here are things you might be able to do:

Insist that friends not tell rape jokes around you. Refuse to play Card Against Humanity with people who use it as an excuse to tell rape jokes, and say why.
If you watch children, respect their physical boundaries and insist that they respect each others’. (For instance, if a boy chases a girl and she says stop, don’t act like it’s cute. Make sure he stops. Do this regardless of the genders involved.)
Captain Awkward often writes about confronting rape culture in social situations; it’s probably worth having a read-through.

Also, there are situations in which exercising coercive power is *not* an ok way to fight rape culture, for instance:

If you are responsible for children, it is not ok to keep them isolated from mainstream culture and media in order to prevent them from adopting mainstream ideas. Kids are not world improvement objects, and they have the right to come to their own conclusions about things
If you are supporting adults with disabilities, it is not ok to install filters on their internet access, refuse to take them to places you see as supporting rape culture, or control which movies they watch
Just, generally speaking, expressing an extreme degree of control over someone else’s life is not ever an ok form of activism

Keep in mind that you already have power, and that as you get older you will probably have more. Start learning about the ethics of coercive power now, and take that seriously. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re too disprivileged to have to worry about this; *everyone* has power over others that’s morally relevant; no one is exempt from having to think about their use of power.

A word about speaking truth to power

One power you have now is the power to speak up when others do not. If a teacher says something dangerously wrong and you object, it sends the message to other students that objecting to the wrong information is *possible*, even if no one else speaks up. This can be very powerful. It can also bring down the wrath of people who have a lot of power to hurt you, particularly if you are a minor and your parents aren’t on board with your activism. Don’t let anyone pressure you into or out of taking this risk; it’s a very personal choice. And in neither case are you responsible for the actions of the powerful (eg: If you decide to stay silent, it is not your fault that a teacher is spreading dangerous misinformation; if you decide to speak up, it is not your fault if they decide to punish you. Their choices are theirs and you are not responsible for them).

About a campaign at your school

I don’t know whether a campaign at your school would be a good idea or not. Some factors to keep in mind:

Do you have anyone else willing to work on it with you? If not, it’s probably better to wait until you’ve discussed this successfully with more people
Are campaigns part of the culture of your school? Does anyone respect them? If so, it might be a good idea.
One purpose a campaign might serve is to identify other people interested in this issue. A petition might also serve this purpose.
If you can get people to sign a petition with their name and email, then you have their name and email and might be able to continue talking to them and find ways of working together on rape culture

A final word about perspective:

Effective activism is a skill. It takes time and experience to get good at it. Don’t pressure yourself to be an expert right away. Just keep working on identifying and taking advantages of opportunities to act. You will get good at this with time and experience.

The word “institution”

October 23, 2013June 14, 2021 Real Social Skills

In a disability context, “institution” means something like “an organization that keeps disabled folks separate from mainstream society and under the control of others”.

It used to be fairly common practice for families (under great pressure from doctors and state authorities) to send their disabled children to residential institutions and then have no further relationship with them. That’s fallen out of favor in the past couple of decades, but a lot of the underlying power dynamics remain in service providers in other settings.

For instance, group homes are often referred to as being “living in the community” rather than “institutions”, but they also often have identical power dynamics.

Similarly, some places will say that they are not institutions but are rather “intentional communities” or some sort of utopian village because they are farms and cottages rather than big harshly lit buildings. But again, they have the same power dynamics.

The power dynamics can be hard to spot if you don’t know how to look for them, because a lot of institutions will go out of their way to pretend they’re doing something fundamentally different.

Some thoughts on working for friends

August 15, 2013June 14, 2021 Real Social Skills

Working for friends can destroy the friendship really easily. It can work out well, but it is risky. It’s important to not just assume that it will work out fine because you like each other.

An equal friendship is a very different type of relationship than employer-employee. Having both relationships with someone is complicated.

There are three major things I know of that can happen:

The boss uses their position as an employer to pressure their friends into doing things that aren’t work-related, or aren’t within the employee’s actual duties.

eg: getting a friend to plan the office Christmas party and cook all the food
getting a friend to cover lots of shifts that other people flake on

The worker relies on the friendship to get away with things that aren’t normally acceptable from an employee.

eg: stealing stuff from the office
talking down to other workers
bossing around coworkers inappropriately
or having a much better work schedule than everyone else
or showing up late all the time
or, more generally speaking, using friendship to avoid criticism
including taking it personally when the boss-friend says they’re doing something wrong

If you’re working for a friend, or employing a friend, make sure you can handle the different power relationship that goes along with employment. And that you can keep track of which things are work contexts, and which things are friendship contexts.

A question about playing games with ‘special needs teenagers’

July 31, 2013June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

secondxxsux asked:

What are some good, simple games you could play with a bunch of 14-18 years old special needs teenagers?

That depends entirely on what they like and what their needs are. I can’t really tell you good games without knowing the teenagers in question. All “special needs” tells me is that someone decided that these teenagers should be in a segregated program rather than integrated with non-disabled peers.

You should take into account the very real possibility that kids that age might not be especially interested in playing simple games. A good percentage of teenagers aren’t, and being classed as “special needs” doesn’t necessarily change that.

There are tons of websites that have suggestions for games to play with people of various ages. (Including adults. Don’t ignore suggestions meant for adults). I’d say look those up, see if there are any that seem like the folks you work with might enjoy, and try them. And then, if that doesn’t work, do something else.

But also, ask them. If they’re people who have expressive language, ask them if they know any good games, or what else they’d like to do. If not, make suggestions and see how they react. Respect their communication and preferences.

No one that age should ever have to play a game they don’t want to play.

Some things I think I know about dirty jokes

July 24, 2013June 20, 2021 Real Social Skills

This post I think is not quite right. It’s something I know a bit about, but there are parts I don’t understand too. Anyway, here are some things I think I know about dirty jokes.

Jokes about the following subjects are usually considered dirty (some of these jokes are relatively innocuous):

Sex
Masturbation
Genitals
Breasts
Defecation
Urination
Vomiting
Drinking alcohol
Doing drugs
These jokes can be good or bad, it depends on the joke, and the context in which it is told.

Rude jokes that are dirty because they deal with impolite subject matter can be ok to tell in some circumstances, but not others:

There are three basic situations in which these jokes are usually ok:

People who are social equals and have an equal friendship, and both like telling rude jokes to one another, or:
People in a profession that deals with impolite areas, making trade-related jokes to colleagues (eg: people who work concert security making jokes to one another about bodily functions and weird things people do at shows)
When someone is doing a comedy routine and other people are listening to it on purpose

It’s almost always a bad idea to tell rude jokes to people you have power over:

Partly this is because it’s not ok to tell rude jokes to people who dislike rude jokes. And people you have power over might not feel comfortable or safe telling you to stop.
It’s also threatening in a few ways that go beyond this.
Telling rude jokes is a sign that you regard someone as a social equal, and emphatically expect that they share that view
This can be a sign that you aren’t willing to acknowledge the power you have over them. That’s threatening.
It can also be sexually threatening. The rules about dirty jokes are part of the rules about sexual boundaries. Telling a dirty joke in an inappropriate contexts is often the first step a sexual predator takes in testing someone’s willingness to enforce sexual boundaries. Even if you have no such intent, telling a rude joke, especially a sexual rude joke, can be seen this way.
That’s especially true if when someone objects to the joke, you tell them to lighten up because it was just a joke.

There’s also another kind of dirty joke: the hate joke. Hate jokes are about hurting people. Hate jokes say bad things about other groups, or express violent desires, then make somewhat more socially acceptable by phrasing it as a joke:

Jokes that contain slur words are usually, but not always, hate jokes
Jokes that rely on asserting that stereotypes are true are usually hate jokes
For instance, dumb blonde jokes.
Or “ironic” racism (eg: telling a racist joke, where the joke is that it’s so hilarious that someone who is so not-racist would say such a thing)
Some hate jokes are explicitly violent.
That kind of joke normalizes violence. The violent abuser in that joke is the sympathetic character.

Hate jokes are only ok when it’s actually ok to hate the people the joke is about. That’s almost never the case. But sometimes hate jokes about an abuser, or general hate jokes about rapists, can be ok jokes to make.
There’s a difference between telling hate jokes with the intent of harming members of the target group, and telling hate jokes without active ill intent because you think they’re funny. But it’s a difference of degree, not kind.
Sometimes members of target groups tell hate jokes as a form of self-hatred. That’s also a difference of degree
Sometimes members of the target groups tell hate jokes as a way of mocking the way people hate them. This is a difference of kind, not degree.

Basically, the bottom line is that it still matters what you’re saying if you’re making a joke while you’re saying it.

Complicated power relationships in a work context

June 23, 2013June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Someone contracting with you to do something is like a boss, but it’s a different relationship; such a person is a client and a client is more like a customer. It’s your job to do what the customer wants but the customer isn’t in charge of the business. Or maybe I’m off base. Of course, if the disabled woman didn’t hire and can’t fire this person, the person’s working for the parents, then, aren’t they?

I think the power relationships between assistants/PAs/whatever and folks with disabilities are a lot more complicated than that.

Even with a direct hire, it’s more complicated than other types of employment. For instance, hiring someone to write a webpage for you is really different than hiring someone to do things you need in order to survive.

Especially, given that when people murder folks who are disabled enough to need extensive care, they often get away with it.

And there are all kinds of complications I don’t understand well.

I don’t know more to say about this, though. Do any of y’all?

Acknowledging power

June 23, 2013June 20, 2021 Real Social Skills

When you have power over someone, it’s important to acknowledge it. If you don’t acknowledge that you have power, it’s hard to examine your use of it. If you’re not paying attention to how you’re using your power, you will come to abuse it, and you won’t notice.

Sometimes, when people are uncomfortable having power over others, they deal with this by telling jokes about it. These jokes are about either denying that they have power, or denying that they’d ever be capable of abusing it. For instance:

Jokes about how people who they have power over are really in charge (eg: “Sometimes I say my secretary is *my* boss”, “I’m the teacher, but the kids are really running the show”.
Jokes about how they could abuse power. (“Next thing you know, I’ll be having you interns fetch my dry cleaning and babysitting my kids.”)
Jokes about how people could overthrow them. (“I see you three gossiping. Plotting a revolt?”)
Jokes about being an oppressive boss (“I’m such a big mean ogre.”)
Pretend unreasonable orders (“We all have to work until midnight… haha just kidding, go enjoy your family”)

These jokes are especially bad when they’re told by a powerful person to someone they outrank. They’re basically the humor equivilent of saying, “You’d better tell me that I don’t actually have power over you and that I never misuse it.”

Getting people to tell you that you’re a good person doesn’t help you to treat others well. Acknowledging your power, thinking about how you use it, and soliciting and listening to actual feedback does.

Something about privilege

April 20, 2013June 20, 2021 Real Social Skills

Some people have way more power over others than they should.

Having too much power over another person is always harmful to that person. Even if you’re good. Even if you’d never intentionally misuse it.

Sometimes this plays out between groups. For instance, if you’re white, you virtually always have a kind of power over people who aren’t that no one should ever have over another human being. That’s not always the most important power dynamic in a given interaction, because real situations are complicated and there are a lot of different privileges (as well as power dynamics that aren’t reducible to privilege). But it’s still always *there*. (Some other dynamics that are also always there: male/not male, cisgendered/trans*, disabled/not disabled, intellectually disabled/not, poor/not poor. These are examples. It is not an exhaustive list. There are many dynamics like this, and many of them have not yet been named.)

And the power dynamic is long-term, it’s been that way for generations. And there are deep-running wounds that are going to take many generations of concerted effort to heal. You can’t make that go away by your good intentions.

You can be good to others; you can and should learn how to treat people well. But you can’t, on your own, fully undo the power dynamic and the harm it does. And part of the way to be good to people involves understanding the position you’re in, and being aware of the power you have and the obligations being in that position creates.

If you ignore the power you have, or pretend you can make it go away by being a good person, you will harm people in ways you could otherwise avoid. (One instance of this is constantly talking about how you’re checking your privilege – it doesn’t actually work that way. That tends to turn into flaunting unjust power, even when it’s done with the best of intentions.)

If you want people to treat people right, you have to understand and be willing to face the consequences of the power you have.