A Criticism of of a Certain Type of Defensiveness

[unspeakablehorror]

When people say they're not racist, homophobic, etc., that immediately sets my hackles on edge because this kind of statement is most frequently used by people who are currently being exactly that. 

To clarify:

Fine: A person saying that a specific  thing they said or did that actually isn't racist, homophobic, etc... isn't one of those things.  Not everything that someone says is bad is actually bad.  In order to avoid triggering unpleasant flashbacks in people affected by these issues, it may be a good idea for the accused person to address the issue in a non-defensive way and make it about the behavior, and not about them as an individual.

A Problem: A person claiming that they, categorically and as a whole, are not racist, homophobic, etc.  People in general exist on a spectrum.  Sure there are a few way out on the extreme edges of that spectrum, but mostly, people say and do some combination of racist things and non-racist things and some combination of homophobic or non-homophobic things.  And so on.  Also, these things look different when coming from different ideologies, but there is no ideology that makes people completely immune from perpetuating  these issues.  Self examination is always necessary.

What's even more mind boggling is when people who say they aren't, for example, homophobic, immediately go and prove themselves wrong by then, say, equating the situation of fans making the absolutely boatload of characters who are straight in canon gay in fic with fans making the handful of characters who are gay in canon straight in fic.  Like, notwithstanding the question of how much we should focus on fictional representation to begin with and what constitutes 'good' representation, these two situations do not have the same context at all and equating them shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how society works.

And yet this sort of thing is so common it could practically be a copypasta where one could simply sub in the words racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc.

Comments

[rugessnome]

hypothesis: this is the same issue as "I'm a good person/we're a good group, so categorically all things I/we do are good"

although oof that example (recall that a common tactic of exclusionary or should I even say existentially-denialist people is to equate ace-ness or bi-ness or even trans-ness with straightness) reminds me of a) book* canon Dumbledore reads very ace to me, and is generally considered very bad gay representation, yet... (but you can be both of those. to elaborate, I was in an ignorant place (even about asexuality) when that announcement came out but/and it kind of hurt to say this person who feels like you ~isn't like you) b) people fighting over Aziraphale's orientation and gender this year

"a fundamental lack of understanding of how society works" yes. which is a place of ignorance, not necessarily malice. I think reducing incidence may involve not compounding one categorically-bad classification with another, and illuminating ignorance as a waypoint, rather than a damnation.

(btw this topic raises *my* hackles bc my parsing of how it's frequently discussed feels much the same as the "we're all sinners BUT *'Jesus He Knows Me' pastor voice* I actually know what God wants and am FAR more righteous than you, SINNER" in my past. i.e. A superficial acknowledgment that people's respective sets of viewpoints+actions exist over your spectrum while putting oneself in an unassailable position of authority over who's actually good.** Which I realize is a human tendency. That doesn't make it helpful.)

even how that example interacts with assumed heteronormativity and bi- and trans-phobia...

ANYWAY, for all that it makes things way more complicated, that similarity would bring in theory of morality to the table, both as a tool and for meta-analysis...

*although I'm a weirdo who never has read Deathly Hallows, which I understand is the one HP text canon that even suggests it.

**huh I'm pretty sure that's NOT the way the Garden of Eden story is meant, but it is curious to think about how positing that one knows the difference definitely has injured humans historically.

[unspeakablehorror]

I think the issue definitely stems from a very binarist view of good and evil, like you said. And many people, if operating from this viewpoint, will naturally assign themselves as good, and anyone disagreeing with them as wrong.

Dumbledore’s sexuality was erased by J.K. Rowling before it could have been by anyone else, lol. None of Rowling’s books specify it. I feel like she only said that to earn brownie points, nothing more. Kudos to all the fan writers who took her up on that statement, though! I do think some people focus on this representation question too much and ascribe it overmuch moral weight. My position on it is that a fan making a gay character straight (to take a more legitimate example than Dumbledore, let’s consider Sinjir Rath Velus from the Star Wars Aftermath trilogy) in a fanwork, while insensitive, doesn’t to me constitute the ultimate crime. I do think it’s not a great thing to do, but I think it’s ultimately much less harmful than the canon works depicting everyone as straight, which is itself considerably less harmful than the many other forms of homophobia that gay and lesbian people face. Not every bad thing is equally bad.

I also think taking a straight character and making them say, ace instead of gay in one’s own fanwork is just exploring a different set of non-normative experiences and isn’t akin to making a gay character straight at all. It’s much akin to how taking a white character and making them Native American isn’t being dismissive of black people or vice versa. Both of those examples are just taking a normative experience and transforming it into a non-normative one.

You do bring up an interesting point about the way, for example, the category of ace is often treated as equivalent to straight. This is done both by straight people and unfortunately by a significant segment of people in the LGBT+ community. Sometimes people who do this will say, “but of course ace lesbians or ace gays or bi aces or ace trans people are welcome in our community, just not cishet aces,” which fundamentally misunderstands aceness as something made up or somehow normative (how?) or something equivalent to straight simply because some segment of ace people are, also, straight (not to mention these people rarely if ever even acknowledge the existence of aroace people or try to come to terms with what it means for a person not to be attracted to any gender—it makes no sense to categorize aroace people as straight since they are not attracted to the opposite gender, but they are also obviously not gay so I think these people maybe just...can’t even imagine their existence?) .

But it goes beyond that, because even the gay or bi or trans aces are often given acceptance only on the condition that they don’t talk about any problems they face as an ace person or suggest that our society does not treat ace people as normative. If they do, such people may actively revoke their acceptance of them, despite the fact that they still face homophobic or transphobic violence from society. Obviously this only further exposes those ace people to such violence.

This very much mirrors bi acceptance by some as being conditional based on who they date or marry and whether they are willing to avoid talking about problems that are specific to bi people (like jealousy by their exes regarding the gender of whatever person they choose to date next or by harassment from straight couples who want them to be available for threesomes or for people making assumptions about them being sexually promiscuous) and not only related to how their oppression overlaps with homophobia.

It also does have commonality with the way trans people are often treated as ‘making their identity up’ because I do think some segment of these people think that aceness is ‘something made up’.

Ahem, but I digress.

“which is a place of ignorance, not necessarily malice.” This is true, but to me I think it’s also more complicated than this. When I judge an action, I do not judge it primarily by the intent behind it, but by the results. Where intent can be useful is determining how to best remedy harmful results, but even then, I don’t pretend to know the intent behind most of the things people say or do. I think it’s helpful to mostly not assume either way and to act according to one’s ability. For example, if I am feeling up to explaining something to someone I obviously disagree with, I will do so. But if I don’t, I will not invest time in such things simply because they could provide some benefit theoretically. I realize that I cannot necessarily distinguish between people acting in malice and people acting out of ignorance and even if I was explaining everything perfectly to a person with no real malice behind their actions, there is no guarantee they will listen to a word I say. That said, I’m also not going to harass a person merely for not adopting my perspective. But I’m not going to give them special attention for that either. I don’t know any of the fancy philosophical words for any of these positions, but that’s my personal philosophy.

The issues surrounding social justice in general are very frequently discussed, well, badly. I think one problem in the way these discussions play out is that they end up being more a game of ‘who blinks first’, that is, who is more confident in their position than they are of determining what is right. I feel that a big part of this is the overreliance on using ‘I’m X, so that means I am the final authority on X’ and ‘Well these other X’s (who I like better than you) said something else so I’m going to go with what they say’. Both of these rhetorical strategies position arbitrary individuals as the ultimate authority on right and wrong rather than relying on some sort of
(at the least) internally consistent philosophy.

[rugessnome]

yeah, I kept thinking of scenarios where making a gay character [act] straight (heteronormativity.) isn't quite as rude as it might appear at first blush:

• exploring closeted emotions or denial
• what if the character were bi, or slightly bi (i.e. gay with an exception who maybe-plot twist-turns out to be trans or two)?
• exploring intimate relationships that might lie outside the well-explored landscape for media, e.g. "i don't want the white picket fence Gay Marriage™ and [open] marriage to my Best! Friend! is just. advantageous for taxes and legal stuff and budget etc."
• "thought I was gay. actually: trans and straight" is a thing that happens, even though it's far from the only story.
• etc...

In my readings about economics I've come across the concept of substitutable (not sure that's the actual word) goods--to many people (maybe not an eager child or a picky still-life artist) it doesn't matter exactly which particular e.g. apple they receive/have. It might not matter which particular variety it is, either, it might just be any apple that "is a cooking apple" or "doesn't crumble or taste terrible". Some might not even care about the quality or type of apple (maybe they are throwing the apples for an activity, or want to extract something in quantity from them, or have an unpicky apple-eating animal.)

But every particular apple might be subtlety different in shape, size, weight, taste, texture...

I bring this up, because I think stories and representation in stories (and many other things. but apparently not electrons!) are kinda like those apples, and even though aggregating over all apples or types of apples tells you something, removing from consideration the info about what sort of apple, or even what particular apple it is (transient things though apples are), can reduce the apple eaters'/users' potential happiness.

Sometimes actually gay people dislike the way slash fic or media is approached. Sometimes the perfect fic someone really appreciates isn't well quantified by metrics. (supposedly Einstein remarked that not all that can be counted matters and not all that matters can be counted)

---

And it sounds like we are in good agreement on much of this; I brought up ignorance mostly because I am woefully used to un-adult very judgemental and binary discussions and I want to steer people away from judging/writing off a person as Absolutely No Good, Should Be Condemned.

Yes, there are certainly pragmatic reasons for various people why someone who is ignorant and/or malicious should be avoided (and not allowed to amass power), but I almost get the sense sometimes that some people would (or at least think they would), based on an opinion or two, a careless comment, just {leave someone, if injured, to die/cheer on their torture}, and think it good.

(For actively harmful people I do see this as a thorny quandary ethically, and even if it's like "this person beats up but never kills people", I don't think assisting them and doing nothing about their continued behavior OR doing nothing whatsoever is absolutely morally neutral.)

I don't even think it's Good*, per se, (possibly not Bad either), to inflict a harmless physical injury on someone who expresses (or repeats) bigoted opinions but doesn't injure, make plans to injure, or encourage others to injure people. (even though in some regards the remarks themselves may cause injury to the psyche... *sigh*)

I suppose I'd say practical ethics is like the depession-y part of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas": we'll just have to muddle through, somehow.

*as in something to morally aspire to

[chamerion]

It’s my personal soapbox, but this is a significant part of what I mean when I say that othering evil is one of the most morally dangerous things human beings can do. If only Evil Monsters do terrible things, and we consider ourselves to be human, then we have far less incentive to critically examine our own behavior and beliefs because categorically none of them can possibly be that terrible.

Likewise if people think of racism, homophobia, etc as an intrinsic quality of character as opposed to an action, they tend to get hyper defensive and double down in the face of criticism as opposed to just pausing to consider that maybe a particular thing they did wasn’t great and they’ll avoid doing it in the future.