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Callout culture and bullying
Oct. 25th, 2012 03:04 pmSo, there's a whole lot of discussion online at the moment about whether some forms of privilege-checking are actually just bullying. The post that started the discussion is here, and there are thoughtful responses here , here and here.
The thrust of the original article (which was also reprinted in the Guardian) is that, in an online culture which encourages people to speak up if they consider someone else's behaviour or language to be marginalising an oppressed group, some people are using this as an excuse to show off how righteous they are and pounce on every mistake. The author describes this as "performance art privilege checking" and argues that it's essentially bullying and doesn't actually further the cause of social justice so much as it boosts that person's ego, by giving them a chance to shout "I'm right and you're wrong!" in a public place.
I don't want to get too much into the motivations of people who shout at other people on the internet. I think part of the problem with this article is that the author is trying to second-guess what people's intentions might be. As a moderator/editor, she has to make judgments about which comments to allow and which to delete, and she might feel that some are not conducive to the kind of discussion she wants to encourage, and choose to delete them. Perhaps she feels better doing that if she believes the person was only engaging in "performance art" anyway - but the fact is she doesn't know that. It's better to own your reasons for making a choice than to try to excuse it by just making assumptions about other people's motivations.
What I think it is important to acknowledge is the effects these kinds of interactions have. Often in these conversations, everyone involved is marginalised in some way, everyone has experienced being shouted down and told they are not allowed to speak. And if the way you get someone to be quiet is by tapping into their own vulnerabilities by reproducing the behaviour of their oppressors - well, maybe your anger is justified, but so is theirs. Often people argue that being called out on your privilege may be hard, but it's nowhere near as hard as being oppressed. But if the manner of calling someone out looks suspiciously similar to abusive behaviour they've experienced in other contexts, who's to say that isn't just as bad as whatever they have said or done to provoke it? It isn't always possible to compartmentalise your identity, so that you can put your own marginalisation to one side. My own experiences of marginalisation don't stop being part of my identity just because they aren't the topic under discussion.
( Trigger warning - discussion of verbal abuse )
I wrote a post here a couple of years ago when I was struggling to get to grips with the "rules" of anti-oppression spaces. The post is about the difficulty of not knowing which side of the privileged/oppressed line I'm on, and therefore not knowing what role I'm allowed to play in the conversation. Like I said in that post, I'm not trying to get other people to change the way they run their safe spaces, if that's what works for them. But some of the generally accepted ideas about how we should go about discussing oppression and privilege mean that those discussions are not safe spaces for me. I don't know what the answer is, I don't want to silence anyone's valid anger either. I guess it bothers me when tone arguments are presented as though they always come from a place of privilege, as though the experience of getting yelled at for showing your privileged can never, in itself, be as bad as the experience of feeling angry enough to yell at someone who is being privileged. It seems like there is such a desire to talk in absolutes about who is right and who is wrong, and the reality is always more complex.
The thrust of the original article (which was also reprinted in the Guardian) is that, in an online culture which encourages people to speak up if they consider someone else's behaviour or language to be marginalising an oppressed group, some people are using this as an excuse to show off how righteous they are and pounce on every mistake. The author describes this as "performance art privilege checking" and argues that it's essentially bullying and doesn't actually further the cause of social justice so much as it boosts that person's ego, by giving them a chance to shout "I'm right and you're wrong!" in a public place.
I don't want to get too much into the motivations of people who shout at other people on the internet. I think part of the problem with this article is that the author is trying to second-guess what people's intentions might be. As a moderator/editor, she has to make judgments about which comments to allow and which to delete, and she might feel that some are not conducive to the kind of discussion she wants to encourage, and choose to delete them. Perhaps she feels better doing that if she believes the person was only engaging in "performance art" anyway - but the fact is she doesn't know that. It's better to own your reasons for making a choice than to try to excuse it by just making assumptions about other people's motivations.
What I think it is important to acknowledge is the effects these kinds of interactions have. Often in these conversations, everyone involved is marginalised in some way, everyone has experienced being shouted down and told they are not allowed to speak. And if the way you get someone to be quiet is by tapping into their own vulnerabilities by reproducing the behaviour of their oppressors - well, maybe your anger is justified, but so is theirs. Often people argue that being called out on your privilege may be hard, but it's nowhere near as hard as being oppressed. But if the manner of calling someone out looks suspiciously similar to abusive behaviour they've experienced in other contexts, who's to say that isn't just as bad as whatever they have said or done to provoke it? It isn't always possible to compartmentalise your identity, so that you can put your own marginalisation to one side. My own experiences of marginalisation don't stop being part of my identity just because they aren't the topic under discussion.
( Trigger warning - discussion of verbal abuse )
I wrote a post here a couple of years ago when I was struggling to get to grips with the "rules" of anti-oppression spaces. The post is about the difficulty of not knowing which side of the privileged/oppressed line I'm on, and therefore not knowing what role I'm allowed to play in the conversation. Like I said in that post, I'm not trying to get other people to change the way they run their safe spaces, if that's what works for them. But some of the generally accepted ideas about how we should go about discussing oppression and privilege mean that those discussions are not safe spaces for me. I don't know what the answer is, I don't want to silence anyone's valid anger either. I guess it bothers me when tone arguments are presented as though they always come from a place of privilege, as though the experience of getting yelled at for showing your privileged can never, in itself, be as bad as the experience of feeling angry enough to yell at someone who is being privileged. It seems like there is such a desire to talk in absolutes about who is right and who is wrong, and the reality is always more complex.
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