Why can't we all just be nice?

[sqbr]

So, we have group X. They have a cause (sexism, racism, the environment etc). You support this cause in principle, but don't like the way they pursue it. That's fine, but there are certain arguments which result from this situation which come up again and again and I thought I'd address them here. I've been pondering it for a while but this was a big "inspiration" :/

Note that if you do have a problem with that cause then that's a different thing, though then you still have to be careful not to conflate the medium with the message so the arguments below are still problematic. In fact a lot of the time I think people use these arguments (especially the last) to mask the fact that they don't want to support group X, but aren't willing to say that due to peer pressure or not having any rational argument beyond "It's hard" or "it makes me uncomfortable".


They're just not nice

"Nice" (or "polite" or whatever) is a very subjective thing, and different people have different standards. I've been deliberately vague in this post about what I mean by "nice" so that my argument is more general, but you have to think about what you're expecting here: basic decency? Non violence? Or perfect etiquette?

Beyond that, if someone says "You need to stop perpetuating racism/creating greenhouse gases etc" you're going to have an immediate feeling of guilt/fear and unfortunately 99% of people's (including mine) kneejerk reaction to that is anger. You FEEL like you've been insulted by the very fact of what is being said (You, personally, are complicit in racism/the destruction of the climate!), regardless of how nicely it is said. When we look back at past activists they seem reasonable because the things they were asking for seem reasonable now, but at the time they were all seen as dangerous trouble makers. Being angry and determined and sticking up for what's right is not rude, it is necessary.

A lot of the time people say "Group X is rude/violent etc" when that group is actually polite and reasonable in it's official face, and 99% of it's members behave decently. ANY large group of people is going to have some hot-heads. And people from group X being snarky and rude about others in a group X space is a totally different thing: then they're not worrying about PR, but venting, motiviating each other etc. If it hurts your feelings, get out of their space.

EDIT: Since I didn't make this clear: much of the time, when you(*) feel like someone is being rude for telling you off, the ONLY "rude" thing they are doing is telling you off, and there's no way for them to criticise you without coming across as rude. So by saying "be nice" what you're really saying is "Stop pointing out my bad behaviour". This all goes double if the criticism attacks stuff like race privilege etc, like I said above people get veeery defensive, see the links at the end.

(*)"You"=most people. Possibly not you the reader, if you're a better person than I and 99% percent of the population and don't take any criticism as an insult.

It's in their own best interests to be nice

I agree. Up to a point. Obviously, it's bad PR to be completely obnoxious.

But if you see someone from group X being (in your opinion) too rude or whatever then that doesn't mean you necessarily have a right to ignore them, discount them, or rant at them about how ineffective their methods are. The medium is not the message. You can point out flaws in the medium, like spelling mistakes etc, and there are situations where "I think your language is too aggressive" etc is a valid piece of constructive criticism, but there's a difference between genuinely trying to help someone with their cause and taking potshots/nit-picking. And as we all know, responding to someone's criticism of your behaviour by critiquing their spelling is not a winning strategy.

And sometimes being polite and non-confrontational doesn't get the job done. Aggression and even violence have at times been effective for a group getting their way. I'm not saying that makes them right (that's the next section :)) but that's not what we're arguing here. Yes, the effectiveness of more extreme/violent etc protest is a very controversial topic, and where the line should be drawn very subjective. But it's certainly not a given that the most effective way to pursue a cause is to be as nice as possible.

For example, I have yet to find a feminist discussion which is both comfortable and friendly and calls people on their racist/classist assumptions. I'm not sure you CAN have both: either you poke at everything people say and sometimes hurt their feelings, or you let them get away with saying prejudiced crap. Compare and contrast feminist and shangy_feminism.

EDIT (Not sure about this paragraph, still thinking it through): Now sometimes an extremist subfaction of group X does things that are totally untenable (terrorism as an extreme example) and this really does damage their reputation as a whole. But often there's not a lot the non-extremists can do, and if they spend all their time on the defensive doing PR to cover for those guys they won't have the chance to actually pursue their agenda. Also, in-fighting and factionalism is the bane of every large group, and sometimes you have to ignore very strong differences to get anything done.


They have a moral obligation to be nice

No they don't. Like all human beings, they have a moral obligation to behave with human decency (although, again, this is all very subjective), but if they're oppressed etc they have more justification for being angry and rude, not less. If someone gets really angry at you for what seems like a minor thing, keep in mind that they are going to have seen/experienced that "minor" thing over and over again. I've certainly seen this with sexism: lots of stuff which seems harmless to men is incredibly frustrating to me, and sometimes this makes me narky.

If someone is being so incredibly nasty to you or others that you think they're not behaving with human decency then yes you have a right to complain and maybe refuse to deal with that individual. But that doesn't necessarily make them incorrect, nor does it give you a right to ignore other, decent people with the same message (see next point)

People often say the previous statement when they mean this one ie "They shouldn't be so rude, it'll piss people off" = "They have hurt my feelings and this is bad".



If they're not nice I'm justified in ignoring their cause, maybe even actively opposing it

Ok, if "they" are terrorists and "their cause" is a free trip to Barbados then yes. But in general, you don't just get to be moral when it's easy and the person you're being moral towards is nice. That's like saying "I only support animal rights for the cute animals". And you certainly don't get to take one person's actions as justification for mistreating/ignoring an entire group of people.

This gets taken to a particularly bad extreme when people decide it's ok to ignore a cause because of it's supporters when they're not even the ones who benefit. Like saying "I would be vegetarian but PETA are too violent" or "I'd work against global warming but Greenpeace gets on my nerves". The earth did not elect those people as representatives, and taking a stand against smug environmentalists won't save you from flooding.

You can refuse to support a particular organisation, but that's different. And even if you don't 100% agree with an organisation's tactics you have to weigh that up against the good they do, noone is perfect.


Links
This post grew from one on racism, so here's some racism links I collected, on the whole I think they translate pretty well to other group Xs.
Mine:

• How to get involved with race discussions online without totally messing it up I think a lot of the time when people accuse activists of being "mean" it's the result of engaging with them in the wrong way.
  

Other peoples:

• Musings on fandom and racism A white fan talking about her similar experience to mine of slowly getting over defensive anger
  
• Anger doesn't equal hate
  
• The Privilege of Politeness
  
• Tone: Let's approach this from the other direction unsuccessful call for examples of when a nice "tone" actually worked, very interesting discussion
  

EDIT: and some I happened across just now!

• Protesting Prop 8 is like being in the KKK and my new word of the day Concern Troll
  

Comments

[grahame.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I can't agree with much of your post. I've been mulling this over for a bit, and it seems to me that you're making excuses for bad behaviour because said behaviour is motivated by an ideology, specifically an ideology you judge to be worthwhile.

But if you see someone from group X being (in your opinion) too rude or whatever then that doesn't mean you necessarily have a right to ignore them, discount them, or rant at them about how ineffective their methods are.

.. of course it gives you the right to ignore them, discount them and/or point out that they communicate poorly. The thing I think you're missing is that the 1% of people espousing a particular viewpoint poorly (rudely, violently, ...) are the ones that get 99% of the publicity. That might be in some ways effective, but I still don't condone such methods.

It's a hard point to make without sounding like an -ism denier, but a fair few people wandering around calling people on things are looking for the worst possible meaning in the words of others. I tend to question the motivation of people doing that, especially those who communicate poorly while doing so.

[alias_sqbr]

Actually, no, I think we just have different attitudes to rude people in general.

Criticising how someone communicates is one thing, and yes, if someone is really rude you do have a right to go "Hey, that's rude! Stop it!". I wasn't clear, but what I was complaining about was people who rather than going "You being so nasty has annoyed me", or "you personally are too annoying for me to want to listen to", instead passive aggressively concern troll and expect to be thanked for it, or say "Since you are rude, you are clearly wrong", or take ONE person being rude about something as an excuse to ignore any later polite complaints.

But discounting/ignoring is a different thing. Just because someone is rude doesn't mean they're wrong. Are you saying you'd rather continue being wrong than take advice from someone who's rude? I mean there are certain kinds of behaviour which so strongly correlate with not being worth listening to that you're justified in ignoring people who use them (Unbelievably bad spelling, all caps flames, yelled from a car etc) but that's to save yourself effort/pain, not to punish them or because it's impossible that people communicating that way are wrong.

I don't know, am I the only person who has a huge gap between "More rude than I think is justified" and "So rude they're not worth engaging with"? There are LOTS of times where I think "that person is being unbelievably rude, and I don't like them for it, but I'll still try to figure out what they're saying and see if they have a point".

You've got me pondering a post to ask about other people's attitudes now. Can you give me some examples of hypothetical situations (preferably not about racism etc since I think the fact we have different attitudes about that could muddy things) where you'd feel justified in completely ignoring what someone was saying just because they were rude, but would listen if they were not? (It doesn't count if what they're saying is so crazy that you'd ignore it even they were polite) Cause I can't think of any situations where I'd do that beyond something like a 2 page expletive filled screed that hurt to read and had no clear message in the first sentence or so, or where even if they were right it was such a minor thing that it didn't matter compared to how rude they were being. (And I can't even think of an actual example of that) And come to think of it, I tend to ignore *polite* unreadable 2 page screeds that don't have any clear message in the first sentence or so.

I'm not denying that some people who say they're interested in fighting various isms are trouble making and nasty, though I have a feeling I would classify a lot less people that way than you (I certainly wouldn't describe anyone I know that way, just some people I've encountered online) But even they are right from time to time.

EDIT: That said, I will pay *more* attention to someone who is polite, someone who's rude has to try harder to convince me. But I won't ignore them *completely*.

[grahame.livejournal.com]

I've decided to ignore a few people on these sort of issues recently, mostly because they've consistently criticised me for things I've said in a non-constructive manner, or taken the worst possible, completely irrational view of something I've said in order to accuse me of an -ism. That's just not worth buying into, so those people get ignored.

Of course, that's really quite rare.

[alias_sqbr]

Isn't that more about the content of what they're saying (and the context of how often they've said similar things) than how they're saying it though?

EDIT: Unpacking that a bit, wouldn't it have to be one of:
1) The accusations are incorrect
2) The accusations are correct, but petty compared to how narky they get
3) The accusations are correct and serious

Now in (1) it's the content that's the issue and it makes sense not to pay much attention any more, and in (3) you're the one at fault, but 2 is more ambiguous. Still, I think I personally would still take the criticisms on board if they're correct, I'd just not be very gracious about it, the same way I react when Cam rudely corrects my grammar. The fact he's being rude doesn't change the fact that my grammar is wrong. And racism is much more harmful than bad grammar!

Also, you still didn't answer my question :P

[grahame.livejournal.com]

A mix of (1) and (2) I guess. I'm probably being more than a little intolerant (of the criticism), but such is my way :-)

What was the question again?! :)

[grahame.livejournal.com]

Okay, so now I'm not at work and can respond properly!

At some point I switch off when a person is being rude to me and just stop caring what their message is. I'm surprised you don't! Once switched off, it's hard to know whether I'm actually doing the wrong thing or not...

I've made and will continue to make sexist and racist comments. Hopefully inadvertently and without much meaning behind them, but I don't mind people calling me on it. I guess it's the way people call me on it that can bug me; if I say something that's probably just thoughtless but without any real intent then I'd rather people just say, hey, that actually means this you know, and that's not good.

There was the time I called someone a rice boy for hotting up his car, completely thoughtlessly failing to realise what the term means! Someone told me, and I immediately went and apologised to the person. I guess the term existed in my head with a meaning of ('person that spends too much time hotting up cars') and I'd never realised a racial meaning to it.

I guess if I get the feeling that people aren't pointing out actually problems like that, and are instead sniping and looking for the worst meaning in things I say - kind of looking about for a racist or sexist meaning in any comment, then I'm most likely going to switch off. It starts feeling like a bit of a witch hunt.

(God, is witch hunt a bad term?!)

[grahame.livejournal.com]

Argh, should also have said that while I make such comments, I don't intend to. Inadvertent comments!

[alias_sqbr]

I think if you were to define my personality with two traits then "Dislikes conflict, wants to be (morally and factually) right" would be pretty close :) So if there's ANY chance that I may be wrong then I am ALWAYS open to being corrected(*). This is one of the major motivations for me continuing to learn more about racism: I keep hitting things I do that are racist and can't stand thinking that there's more I haven't realised yet. And several of these I was made aware of by being told off quite rudely.

I may not agree with the way I'm corrected, but that's a different thing. I mean dafwarg's rudeness annoyed the heck out of me when I first met him(**), and I certainly didn't take any advice he gave graciously, but much as it pained me some of what he said was correct :D (I was of course joyously smug any time he turned out to be wrong)

(*)Though once I've listened to and dismissed an argument it may be a while before I'm willing to listen to it again, so I still make my fair share of stubborn mistakes.
(**)We are both much more mature, easy going folk now :)