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I've been meaning to post some coherent thoughts on niceness for a while but I think I need to post some incoherent ones first to get my thoughts in order :)
So: I'm a "nice" person, in that I'm friendly, and polite, and non-threatening, and passive (and that's what I'm going to mean by "nice" in this post. I realise that's not the only definition). I used to feel rather smug about this, and wish other people were more like me(*). But the older I get the more I realise that not only is this "niceness" harmful to me (as I get all repressed and ignored) but it can also be harmful to those around me, and stems largely from entirely selfish motivations.
Disclaimers like whoa, I'm definitely just stream-of-consciousnessing here. And have a headache :)
EDIT: This is a bunch of thoughts about the flaws of niceness, mainly as it relates to me and my behaviour. Niceness has a lot of benefits too, I just didn't go into them. Also people make some good points in the comments.
I do not deal well with conflict. If I'm afraid, or angry, or embarrassed, my brain shuts down and I freak out, either I freeze and can't think of what to say, or I burst into tears, or say something really really stupid. Often all three.
Now I've been working on this and don't freak out as much as I used to, but the main coping technique I've developed over the past 3 decades or so is to be really good at avoiding conflict. If everyone likes me, and I never say or do anything aggressive or uncomfortable, and only ever ask for things in a passive indirect way, noone will ever get angry at me, or decide to pick on me, or whatever. This is accentuated by the way women are in general socialised to be "nice", and coming from a "nice" emotionally repressed, passive aggressive family.
And this works. But it means I end up keeping silent on things that upset me, and not disagreeing with people who I know won't take it well, and overall not getting what I want and being emotionally repressed. This led to Much Badness with my ex boyfriend taking advantage of my "niceness" and since then (1998! I am so old) I've been working towards expressing my anger with people, and overall saying what I think and what I want.
Now some of my primary values are honesty, truth, non-hypocrisy etc. I've always felt that if everyone is calm and logical and polite then it's much easier to get to the truth and avoid all the confusing emotional crap and intimidation that goes along with conflict and rudeness.
But, again around 1998, I started meeting guys(**) in unisfa who in a lot of ways had similar values to me, but felt that politeness meant lying about what you really feel, and that the best way to get to the truth was to avoid all the polite fictions and speak the honest unvarnished truth. (This is probably a gross misrepresentation of their ideals. It's just the impression I got ten years ago!)
Of course it doesn't work that way for me: once people start yelling at me, I can't think, so there's no way for me to express my opinion. But it occurred to me: what if they (or other people) couldn't express themselves as well in my sort of argument? What makes mine inherently better?
And as time's gone on I've seen a lot of examples of calm, "rational" people passive aggressively silencing their critics/opponents by insisting on a "polite" discourse which subtly favours their POV. One of the big ones is to act as if some horrible, hurtful, but "politely" expressed opinion deserves a calm rational, carefully cited refutation, and that anyone who gets angry about it is being rude, and that that rudeness is a much more serious offense. Once someone has been "rude" you can then throw your hands in the air and dismiss everyone who disagrees with you as aggressive and overemotional. And a lot of the time of course the definition of "rudeness" is applied inconsistently, and really means "anyone who tells me I am wrong, or gives the impression of having been made angry by my words".
Once you start limiting the boundaries of "acceptable" debate, it's not too hard to use it as an excuse for excluding people you don't like. It's also an excuse to derail a conversation by being a concern troll. One of the common arguments is "You shouldn't do anything that hurts other people's feelings" while completely ignoring (or glossing over) the fact that these "hurtful" actions are in self defense in response to earlier hurtful actions.
Passive aggression is still aggression, it's just sneakier and easier to deny.
Little white lies done for politeness's sake are still lies. If I'm "nice" to someone to their face but complain about them behind their back, that's actually not very "nice".
And if someone is treating someone else like crap in front of me, but I don't call them on it to avoid conflict? Then I am complicit. If I call them on it but am nice to them later? Well, I may still be being complicit (I'm still thinking about that one)
On the other hand, I do NOT like the free-for-all 4-chan-esque approach of everyone being as aggressive and offensive as they like. Not just because it doesn't suit me personally, but because, like overly narrow "politeness", it asymmetrically silences those with less power in the conversation and supports the status quo. Aggression has much more effect if you have more power behind it (ie you're big guy vs a little guy, or a man vs a woman, or a white person vs a black person, etc) and so I still think that too much of it is harmful.
I guess, in short: do not mistake "niceness" for moral superiority.
And that's the end of my incoherent ramble :)
Some links (many of these grew from discussions of racism, but I've seen the same techniques in everything from shipping wars to my grandma bullying my mum about who pays for dinner)
(*)A lot of people assume my "nice" demeanor indicates a humble spirit, but apart from a few typical geek issues with self esteem I am egotistical as heck :D
(**)And again we hit the different ways men and women are socialised. Obviously it's not always that simple, my dad is a lot like me for example. But I think the female dominatedness of fanfic fandom is one reason the whole "tone" thing can get really out of hand.
So: I'm a "nice" person, in that I'm friendly, and polite, and non-threatening, and passive (and that's what I'm going to mean by "nice" in this post. I realise that's not the only definition). I used to feel rather smug about this, and wish other people were more like me(*). But the older I get the more I realise that not only is this "niceness" harmful to me (as I get all repressed and ignored) but it can also be harmful to those around me, and stems largely from entirely selfish motivations.
Disclaimers like whoa, I'm definitely just stream-of-consciousnessing here. And have a headache :)
EDIT: This is a bunch of thoughts about the flaws of niceness, mainly as it relates to me and my behaviour. Niceness has a lot of benefits too, I just didn't go into them. Also people make some good points in the comments.
I do not deal well with conflict. If I'm afraid, or angry, or embarrassed, my brain shuts down and I freak out, either I freeze and can't think of what to say, or I burst into tears, or say something really really stupid. Often all three.
Now I've been working on this and don't freak out as much as I used to, but the main coping technique I've developed over the past 3 decades or so is to be really good at avoiding conflict. If everyone likes me, and I never say or do anything aggressive or uncomfortable, and only ever ask for things in a passive indirect way, noone will ever get angry at me, or decide to pick on me, or whatever. This is accentuated by the way women are in general socialised to be "nice", and coming from a "nice" emotionally repressed, passive aggressive family.
And this works. But it means I end up keeping silent on things that upset me, and not disagreeing with people who I know won't take it well, and overall not getting what I want and being emotionally repressed. This led to Much Badness with my ex boyfriend taking advantage of my "niceness" and since then (1998! I am so old) I've been working towards expressing my anger with people, and overall saying what I think and what I want.
Now some of my primary values are honesty, truth, non-hypocrisy etc. I've always felt that if everyone is calm and logical and polite then it's much easier to get to the truth and avoid all the confusing emotional crap and intimidation that goes along with conflict and rudeness.
But, again around 1998, I started meeting guys(**) in unisfa who in a lot of ways had similar values to me, but felt that politeness meant lying about what you really feel, and that the best way to get to the truth was to avoid all the polite fictions and speak the honest unvarnished truth. (This is probably a gross misrepresentation of their ideals. It's just the impression I got ten years ago!)
Of course it doesn't work that way for me: once people start yelling at me, I can't think, so there's no way for me to express my opinion. But it occurred to me: what if they (or other people) couldn't express themselves as well in my sort of argument? What makes mine inherently better?
And as time's gone on I've seen a lot of examples of calm, "rational" people passive aggressively silencing their critics/opponents by insisting on a "polite" discourse which subtly favours their POV. One of the big ones is to act as if some horrible, hurtful, but "politely" expressed opinion deserves a calm rational, carefully cited refutation, and that anyone who gets angry about it is being rude, and that that rudeness is a much more serious offense. Once someone has been "rude" you can then throw your hands in the air and dismiss everyone who disagrees with you as aggressive and overemotional. And a lot of the time of course the definition of "rudeness" is applied inconsistently, and really means "anyone who tells me I am wrong, or gives the impression of having been made angry by my words".
Once you start limiting the boundaries of "acceptable" debate, it's not too hard to use it as an excuse for excluding people you don't like. It's also an excuse to derail a conversation by being a concern troll. One of the common arguments is "You shouldn't do anything that hurts other people's feelings" while completely ignoring (or glossing over) the fact that these "hurtful" actions are in self defense in response to earlier hurtful actions.
Passive aggression is still aggression, it's just sneakier and easier to deny.
Little white lies done for politeness's sake are still lies. If I'm "nice" to someone to their face but complain about them behind their back, that's actually not very "nice".
And if someone is treating someone else like crap in front of me, but I don't call them on it to avoid conflict? Then I am complicit. If I call them on it but am nice to them later? Well, I may still be being complicit (I'm still thinking about that one)
On the other hand, I do NOT like the free-for-all 4-chan-esque approach of everyone being as aggressive and offensive as they like. Not just because it doesn't suit me personally, but because, like overly narrow "politeness", it asymmetrically silences those with less power in the conversation and supports the status quo. Aggression has much more effect if you have more power behind it (ie you're big guy vs a little guy, or a man vs a woman, or a white person vs a black person, etc) and so I still think that too much of it is harmful.
I guess, in short: do not mistake "niceness" for moral superiority.
And that's the end of my incoherent ramble :)
Some links (many of these grew from discussions of racism, but I've seen the same techniques in everything from shipping wars to my grandma bullying my mum about who pays for dinner)
- The five geek fallacies EVERY GEEK NEEDS TO READ THIS.
- No More Mr. Nice Guy how "nice guys" actually aren't that nice
- How to Not Sound Racist (if you don't listen very hard) 5 techniques white people use to mask their racism, I found it very compelling.
- cofax7: links, and some meta on rhetoric "Anger is often a more effective tactic than courtesy in getting people to challenge their assumptions"
- I am not the moderator About "nice" white people coming into discussions of racism and thinking they can be the "objective voice of reason".
- Why can't we all be nice in which I rant about the "tone" argument, has more links at the bottom
(*)A lot of people assume my "nice" demeanor indicates a humble spirit, but apart from a few typical geek issues with self esteem I am egotistical as heck :D
(**)And again we hit the different ways men and women are socialised. Obviously it's not always that simple, my dad is a lot like me for example. But I think the female dominatedness of fanfic fandom is one reason the whole "tone" thing can get really out of hand.
Niceness is phatic
I think that this problem is evident in the way that you express yourself on this blog. You often commence with several disclaimers, continue with constant qualifications, and conclude with apology and self-deprecation. You have to write those words, and we have to read them.
I wouldn't get hung up about it, as to a large extent it's a beneficial practice. You have tended to write about sensitive subjects of late, which deserve extra care. But perhaps it can be taken too far. It can make your arguments less compelling by clouding them in pusillanimousness, needlessly weakening the authority of what could perhaps be condensed to more striking propositions.
My challenge: write your next post on race / gender / class without any framing niceness. That would include avoiding any mention that you're not being nice for once, or any reference to this post.
*wishes I'd gotten around to making that teal dear icon*
The thing is, both my overwordiness and "niceness" are both coping mechanisms to deal with other flaws, namely the fact that I'm really bad at telling the difference between what's obvious to other people and what's only obvious to me, and the fact that I deal really badly with conflict. (nb this is an oversimplification)
If I write succinct posts (and I have tried this) people will misunderstand me, and I'll spend significantly more words clarifying than I would have if I'd just been a bit wordier in the first place, and the conversation will be spent figuring out what I meant to say rather than actually discussing it. If I'm not "nice" people will get angry and I will Freak The Hell Out. I'm not sure my post gets across just how much conflict freaks me out.
So I'm working on the way I deal with communication and conflict, and then every now and then trying out being a bit more succinct and curt etc and seeing what happens (as well as coming up with stuff like the disclaimers post which at least gets it out of the way), but the solution is not to rip the bandaid off without making sure the wound is healed. *resists the urge to soften that statement*
Also, for the last few months I've been trying to get a grip on life with my new, much stupider brain. My current level of "normal" is what I used to consider "Too stupid and tactless to be allowed on the internet", and it's caused me quite a few misunderstandings (not so much on my lj as elsewhere) which makes me extra cautious.
And hey, at least I use cut tags :P