Derailing by numbers

[sqbr]

EDIT: People keep linking to this, as far as I can tell with the assumption that my meandering and ridiculously complex attempt to translate social justice concepts into something my mathematician's brain can understand is a set of rules I expect other people to follow, unless they want me and my fellow scary social justice types to come dogpile them or something. I am deliberately poking at ambiguous situations in order to understand them, not giving examples of blatant Fail! Overall I rather regret this post, it's so full of edits and addendums my original point is mostly lost :/

So, I've been thinking about the mechanics of derailing. I've developed a mental model and am curious to know what other people think. Note: My opinions are definitely not representative of anyone else's, and may well change after people comment and point out I'm wrong!

EDIT: Something that really doesn't seem to be clear: I am not trying to criticise other people's posts so much as figure out a set of mental rules to avoid derailing stuff myself. And while I think derailing as an overall effect is bad, some posts which contribute to a derail are valid despite this negative effect. In general this post has been edited here and there quite a bit.

The context: The ethics of off-topic posting on your own journal during a large scale discussion in your internet community about a social justice issue. The community under discussion is lj-centered metafandom-reading fanworks fandom.

Assumed context for this post (chosen for brevity not completeness, more at the end):
My thoughts from last June: The difference or lack thereof between a change of direction and a derail
Comment repost: How is posting to my own journal derailing

The way I see it there are two parts to a derail:
1)Avoidance: the motivation to shift the conversation away from oppression one is complicit in to a less confronting topic.
2)Direction change:the effect of the off topic post to shift the conversation away from the voices of the particular marginalised group currently under discussion.

Afaict a "derail" is defined to be any post/comment etc with both of these. But the way I see it we should avoid both, whether or not they happen simultaneously.

Imagine the following vastly simplified discussion:

Poster1: I just read this Bones fic "Someone loses an eye" and it's really ableist.
Poster2: I just read this great post by Poster1, it got me thinking about the portrayal of disability in Bones fic, and fic in general.
Poster3: I agree that disability is portrayed really badly in fic, but I think you can't judge "Someone loses an eye" without reading the prequel "Fun and Games".
Poster4a: (locked) These posts about disability got me thinking about how being overweight is portrayed in fic. I don't want to derail from the existing conversation, but also wanted to get my thoughts down.
Poster4b: (unlocked) These posts about disability got me thinking about how being overweight is portrayed in fic. I don't want to derail from the existing conversation, but also wanted to get my thoughts down.
Poster4c: (unlocked) I'd like to talk about the portrayal of overweight people in fic.
Poster5(has read previous posts and doesn't want to think about it): Who do people prefer, Bones/Booth or Bones/Angela?
Poster6: All these posts about disability are making me feel silenced. Don't they realise how that hurts my feelings as a woman? Our voices NEVER get to be heard, and now these oversensitive disabled people are telling ME what I can and cannot write! Helen Keller would be ashamed.
Poster7: So, apparently, it's impossible to be both disabled and a woman! You learn something new every day.
Poster8: (has been reading all the previous posts) I think it's really important that we focus on the way women's voices are silenced.
Poster9: (Has only read poster8) There's been some recent discussion of the way women's voices are silenced...

The way I see it:

Posters 1,2,3 and 7 are trying to have a conversation about disability in fanfic. You could argue that Poster3 is being ableist (depending on the nature of these hypothetical fics :)) but they're not derailing.

Posters 4,5,6 and 8 are knowingly not engaging with the topic. EDIT: It's plausible that they may be doing this to talk about something which places them at the centre and doesn't confront them, but they may have other motives.

Posters 6,8 and 9 are shifting the topic away from disability and onto gender.

The derailing is Posters 6 and 8.

So we should definitely try not to be Poster 6. Yes? Anyone disagree with that?

I think Posters 4a and 5 might want to question why they felt the need to talk about something else, but they're not actually doing any harm and maybe they really don't have anything to add to the conversation or whatever. EDIT: I am not saying these posts are inherently bad! They are examples of non derailing posts which are still tangential to the discussion they were inspired by.

I think Poster9 can't be held responsible for contributing to the derail, but that doesn't mean they didn't help inadvertently.

Where I think there's some ambiguity and disagreement is Posters 8, 4b and 4c.

Personally I think Poster 8 is knowingly contributing to the silencing of disabled fans, and unless they have a strong reason for commenting beyond supporting Poster 6 should not have made their post. EDIT: Even though it's an entirely valid topic! And if someone actually was trying to silence women in this conversation it would be on topic. But in this particular example, noone is. Where I think Poster 8 gets less ambiguous is when they say passive aggressive stuff that makes it clear they're talking about Poster 1 vs Poster 6 to anyone who's been paying attention.

I'm really ambivalent about 4b or 4c, and which of them is preferable, but I can see arguments for both sides.

I disagree with the idea that avoiding derailing is always easy or unambiguous. However that doesn't remove the harm done, or the responsibility to avoid that harm where possible, and it doesn't make the people pointing that harm out wrong or overly demanding. Doing the right thing usually is difficult and ambiguous.

Appendix 1: Valid digressions and intersectionality

Poster10: *discusses disability in fanfic in a way which DOES try to silence women's voices*
Poster11: I am in total agreement with the people criticising the portrayal of disability in fic. But I would like to take a moment to criticise the minority who are doing so in a sexist way.
Poster12: From what I've seen, Bones fans may write ableist fic but Castle fans never do, because we are just that awesome and they suck. So if you care about disabled people, watch Castle!
Poster13: Castle fans are not any better than Bones fans!

So, in my opinion:

P10 is being sexist, but not derailing.
P11 is making a valid and necessary criticism. This may end up helping the ongoing shift from disability to gender, but that's P10's fault for being sexist.
P12 is being derailing
P13...I really don't know.

And once people are talking about (say) gender rather than disability, is it wrong to engage in that topic and not try to shift things back if you know the history? I also really don't know, I think it depends a lot on the situation. I think it's worth considering at least.

Appendix 2: The boundaries of "the conversation"

The point of this post is for me (and those in a similar boat to me) to figure out how I can avoid derailing. There is no ambiguity about me being in lj/metafandom/fanwork fandom since I read metafandom and linkspam and am on the flist/dwircles of mods for both. Thus I have not addressed the ambiguity of whether or not someone is "in the conversation"

But it is a valid question, and I think people who are not as unambiguously jacked into the matrix as me might legitimately protest at their posts being labelled as derailing when they had no idea there was a rail in the first place.

Further discussion:
Reaction against an early version of these ideas: comment thread, and post "Meta: Derailing, Linking, Labelling, and the Internet"

(nb I used disability and gender as the examples because I am a disabled woman. I don't feel comfortable making up examples using oppressions I don't suffer from!)

Also note! I will consider anyone who focusses on the ambiguities without acknowledging the less ambiguous issues with Poster 6 to be derailing :P

Oh! And please don't link this on metafandom. I am spoon deficient and couldn't cope with the comments.

Comments

[cofax7]

Erm. You were linked on Metafandom. You may want to drop a note to the mods.

[schemingreader]

Here via metafandom.

It seems a lot easier to define derailing when it's happening in an in-person conversation, or even in comments to the same journal entry. I don't think I would have such an easy time figuring out whether I was derailing a conversation occurring elsewhere in fandom (or on the web in general.) But I get to witness in-person derailing all the time--much easier to spot, even before I had a name for it.

I guess for me, the litmus test is always whether someone is turning a discussion of a systemic problem, like discrimination, into a discussion of something personal and individual. That negates the analysis that what a person is experiencing is part of something larger and social. I'm not sure whether Poster #4 in your example is doing that--I guess I would have to read the post.

[ex_peasant441]

OK, ignore the previous reply because I've now had time to think about it.

You ask how you can avoid derailing. There is only one answer - say nothing at all. That is the only sure-fire way. In all other instances it will be a matter of judgement: Is what I am about to say relevant to the discussion, does it say something new, is it liable to distract from the argument, is the discussion otherwise over, is the discussion as it stands less important than what I am about to say? Only you can make that judgement and only you can judge if you got it right.

This issue does though go to the heart of the fundamental issue where you and I disagree. The whole concept of 'derailing' depends on the belief that the powerful have nothing to contribute to the discussion other than entirely on the non-powerful's terms. You believe that, I don't. (Unless I have grossly misunderstood you for a while now.) So for you, any input from someone in a position of power is suspect unless it is essentially echoing what the non-powerful have already said, otherwise it may will be derailing. For me, it is virtually impossible to derail a discussion because any input is valuable and that of the powerful especially so since they are most likely to know what will have an actual impact. So if a powerful person says something then it has value providing it gets the job done, even if it seems irrelevant or even dismissive to the non-powerful. (Somewhere in the links you gave is an example centring around a power station and snakes. That illustrates what I am saying nicely.)

So for me the only test I require of myself is 'is this helpful' helpful being as defined by me, since I believe my perspectives are of value regardless of whether I have the power or not. For you, the test is 'does this echo what the non-powerful are saying', since you believe only the perspective of the non-powerful is relevant.

I'm sure you, and most of the others reading this, disagree thoroughly with my beliefs - lets take that as said and not waste time going over our underlying beliefs again - but maybe by laying out my reasoning and showing how I believe yours varies from it, it will help clarify your ideas about how you can avoid derailing in your own terms. I am happy to serve as the man who is always wrong in your eyes :)


And carried over from my earlier thoughts, you can also help avoid derailing in others by always giving a clear context, and by not setting up targets on sore subjects that people are bound to get distracted by (the #10 poster in your examples, JennyO's Welsh!Fail as a real example).

[sqbr]

Yep, all fixed. But thanks!

[sqbr]

I definitely understand that situation, because I've been there. Obviously you can question yourself into never saying anything ever, but you also can't just say whatever you feel like without thinking about the effect it will have on others, there's a balance.

One of the things I was thinking of when I wrote 8 was some of the posts during RaceFail where (as I recall, it was a while ago) someone would make vague allusions to internet bullying or the issues around pseudonyms when they or their friends had JUST been involved in a big argument about that elsewhere, accusing anyone who complained about racism of being a bully or hiding behind pseudonyms. And of course when accused of derailing they could say "You're being paranoid and defensive! I just think it's an important topic!"

But I couldn't see any way to get across all the possible issues with this sort of post in a single sentence.

[sqbr]

Well, this icon doesn't help :) (Made after someone assumed my nick was a roman reference and I thought "Hey, that's true, it does look similar!")

[sqbr]

First off: I don't know adelheid so this is not a commentary on her, just the general situation.

The fifty hypothetical people berating her would be doing so because they thought she was being racist, and maybe they'd be right. There is some heckling in these discussions, but I think most people are expressing genuine hurt, and there's no dynamic that doesn't silence someone: either the person writing the half thought out post doesn't get to work through their issues publically, or the people hurt by it don't express that hurt. There is no way for everyone to express themselves freely and without conflict.

The problem with making thinking out loud posts where you work through your issues is you can very easily either say something which is genuinely prejudiced because it hasn't occurred to you how wrong it is, or just express yourself badly and come across that way, and the people commenting aren't psychic so will react as if you mean every word.

See for example: this post. It came across to you as being part of the "gay men vs m/m writing women" debate, and so you criticised it on that score. I didn't mean it that way, but you're not psychic nor do you know me very well, and couldn't be expected to assume the best of me. Lots of other people are criticising me for implications I either didn't mean to make or hadn't thought through and now realise are wrong.

On the other hand, there was no way for me to work through these ideas without discussing it with a bunch of people. I knew any post on this subject was going to get lots of defensive people taking what I said personally, and I hate conflict, and if it had not been for the post quoting me from a comment I had already decided was wrong I wouldn't have made it. So while your actions are justified, they are also part of the dynamic silencing me.

And this all gets much more fraught when it comes to the kyriarchy. Two recent examples where I've been on both sides.

I wrote a post working though my thoughts around being mostly straight, and it was very wrongheaded and hurtful to my bisexual friends (it is now heavily edited). But I've been thinking about this subject for years and probably couldn't work through it without saying some stupid stuff.

Several times friends recently have linked to posts/stories etc that I found really hurtful and angry making. I said so and they got all sadface and defensive that this thing they loved was flawed in ways they had trouble understanding. This hurt my feelings, and has made me very reluctant to criticise things friends link to, which is making me feel quite depressed and silenced.

There's no easy way around this problem afaict. All you can do is try to minimise the hurt you cause without totally martyring yourself to others.

[sqbr]

I may be thinking too literally.

I think you may :)

(Also, um...could you not use an icon using the word "retard"? It makes me feel..skeevy having it on my journal)

[sqbr]

Thankyou. As it happens my dreams were really weird, but they were at least interesting :) (Also your icon is very cute)

[sqbr]

That last paragraph is an argument for being poster eight, but not for being poster 6. Not being interested in discussing one topic and discussing another instead is one thing (and often perfectly justified), accusing the people discussing the other topic of oppressing you by asking you not to hurt them is something quite different.

[sqbr]

Oh yes, it's a lot easier to judge in those situations, which is why I don't need to make a long rambly post trying to figure out out :)

I guess for me, the litmus test is always whether someone is turning a discussion of a systemic problem, like discrimination, into a discussion of something personal and individual. That negates the analysis that what a person is experiencing is part of something larger and social.

I think what you're talking about is a subset of what I meant by "avoidance" rather than what most people mean by derailing. Poster 6 is talking about sexism, which is in and of itself just as important and systemic as ableism, yet is a classic derailer imo. And whatever they are saying Poster 4 in a locked post is not derailing the conversation because they are not fully a part of it.

[sqbr]

The powerful have nothing to contribute to the discussion other than entirely on the non-powerful's terms

No, though I can see how it might seem that way. In fact I think "Is this helpful?" is a good measure, though you and I would define "helpful" differently I think. I'm going to explain with some examples of majority POV I don't think are derailing.

I think the powerful in general should try to work within the terms/framing etc of the less powerful, and that is a difference between us.

But they can still offer something new and important to the conversation.

First off, sometimes they have relevant information which is coincidental, or at least not directly connected to their powerfulness.
The snake example is actually perfect for this: the white outsider snake expert's advice was helpful not because he was a white outsider, but because he was a snake expert. A white outsider who was not a snake expert probably couldn't have helped, and while a non-white/POC local would be less likely to become a snake expert if they did they'd be just as helpful if not more so.

And in situations where most of a certain type of information is held by powerful people then those powerful people do have something unique and important to bring to the conversation..but should not overstep the bounds of their expertise and think they are thus the best people to decide everything.

And the majority POV is worth listening to a bit, the main issue is that everyone has heard it already, and the people with this POV act like it's the only one that matters. If this is somehow genuinely not the case then it's worth bringing up. See for example Femslash and the Lesbian Experience. Which Is Clearly Not My Experience. in part about being a straight male femslasher: not powerless, but such a small and specific minority that you don't hear this POV much.

And sometimes powerful people simply have something interesting to add because they are interesting people! I think they should be careful not to talk over everyone else, but especially in a small conversation sometimes they will have thought of something genuinely new.

[legionseagle]

And, with regard to JennyO's WelshFail (probably) and RTD's "nine hysterical women" comment, certainly, not cynically take advantage the context to make a bigoted attack on a group who will be inhibited (to a greater or lesser degree) by the original framing of the debate and by their own fear of derailing and by respect to the original argument from responding. It doesn't have to happen often for the fear of its happening to turn the debate into a deeply different thing.

[jonquil]

I did my best to frame the comments on the gay/slash debate with "to take my own issues"; I was attempting to illustrate a recent case of intersectionality, not to criticize you for your (hypothetical) position in that debate, which I don't know.

"The fifty hypothetical people berating her would be doing so because they thought she was being racist, and maybe they'd be right"

You're only addressing half the case. The other half is equally important. Suppose that Adelheid says something she thinks is intelligent and interesting, it is linked to from metaquotes with a dismissive note (say Warning:Privilege), and the hypothetical fifty strangers show up to yell *even though the post was in fact intelligent and interesting.*

That's a genuine loss. False positives are as bad as false negatives.

"I knew any post on this subject was going to get lots of defensive people taking what I said personally"

Your original post, before you edited it, was a general statement not about your own personal behavior but about right behavior in the context of the ongoing social-justice debate. When you make a general statement and people say "I don't think this is actually correct", they aren't necessarily being defensive -- they are addressing a categorical imperative.

Finally, as to this: " So while your actions are justified, they are also part of the dynamic silencing me. "

I don't see how I can be silencing you when you specifically asked for feedback. If you meant "I want to hear what other people think of these ideas", then you aren't being silenced if people disagree, surely?

I'm sorry you're out of spoons; I'll happily stop commenting if it distresses you. Sometimes the best thing one can do for one's own sanity is to snail-shell.

[ex_peasant441]

Oh, OK. I hadn't really taken in that part. In that case I agree, #6 is unambiguously a twat. (I plead spoon shortage m'lud.)

[sqbr]

Oh man, I was totally interrogating you from the wrong perspective, sorry :(

I'm at the point with this thing where I can't tell what's legitimate annoyance at what people are saying and generally being annoyed at everything (which I kind of was already before the conversation started) so am taking a break until my brain simmers down. My apologies for snapping at you, I was pretty much at the point of snapping in general and you were an innocent bystander who happened to be in the way :/

[schemingreader]

I had further thoughts, days and days later!

The problem with Poster 6 isn't that she's talking about sexism. It's that she's saying, "my oppression trumps your oppression in the oppression Olympics." She's also doing something else really interesting, which is excluding targets of sexism when they are also targets of able-ism, which I've seen happen a lot around racism discussions. "Oh, such and such a form of discrimination happens to POC? Well it also happens to women,"--leaving the original speaker looking down at herself and thinking, and I'm what, a loaf of bread?

Which isn't avoidance in the same sense as the poster 4 versions you put forward. It's derailing because it's saying, "I can't understand things that happen to you unless and until I compare them to things that happen to me, because my experience counts more than yours." Where Poster 4 could potentially be saying something else, something like, "understanding more about what happens to you has given me new insights about how this whole thing works."

I think I would be interested in some of the spin-off conversations that might originally look like avoidance, since they could be directed back to the original analysis. Comparing oppressions always seems like a bad idea, but what strikes me is, in in-person conversations, derailing is competitive in the guise of being comparative.

[pekover]

I'm a bit late to this, but I wanted to drop a note and thank you for posting this. I'm not sure I agree with all of it (I'm not sure I don't, either), but I am sure that I appreciate reading the thoughts of someone who is legitimately concerned about the issue, is debating ideas in good faith, and doesn't think that s/he has it all figured out from the start.

I think this issue is WAY too complicated for anyone to have the absolute answer to it, and it's nice to see someone admitting that and looking for a genuine discussion. I think that approach has been lamentably absent from a lot of recent posts on the matter.

[sqbr]

I've kind of run out of smarts on this topic, but I think you make some good points.

[sqbr]

Hmm. I may be misunderstanding your point, but:

On the one hand I can definitely see some people using the idea of derailing as an excuse to silence legitimate intersectional etc complaints, because if a criticism has any weight someone will always apply it unfairly to silence their critics. But, well..that's true of any criticism that has any weight. The fact that some people will accuse anyone who says "You know, this hurts women" of being sexist for noticing what gender people are isn't all that relevant to discussions of what is or is not sexism, and the fact that some people may say "That's derailing" when someone calls them on their crap doesn't have much relevance to discussions of what is or is not derailing.

[sqbr]

I'm coming at this from a different perspective than most people, I think. Everyone else seems to be either criticising derailing from the POV of the derailed, or criticising the idea of derailing from the POV of those accused of derailing. While I've never had a multi-journal-wide conversation I was strongly invested in be derailed or been accused of derailing.

I can imagine that if it was a topic of personal painful experience I wouldn't be so undecided and dispassionate!

[sqbr]

Oh, understood, I know All About spoon shortage getting the way of comprehension/communication :/

[legionseagle]

Those are good points but the point I was making was somewhat different, to be fair. In the course of the Torchwood discussion JennyO made a remark which was bigoted, nasty and stupid. To some extent she was protected from the consequences of having made such a remark because, in the context of the overall race debate, calling her on her bigotry towards the Welsh would have had a derailing effect (since this wasn't what the initial discussion had been about) and as a result she took advantage of other people's fear of derailing.

And now I try to reply to what you actually said

[sqbr]

So: again, sorry for misunderstanding where you were coming from with the m/m slash discussion. Let us relegate my comments on that topic to an example of how one can mean well yet say stupid crap in the process of figuring out what you think. (See also: this post)

Suppose that Adelheid says something she thinks is intelligent and interesting, it is linked to from metaquotes with a dismissive note (say Warning:Privilege), and the hypothetical fifty strangers show up to yell *even though the post was in fact intelligent and interesting.*

That would be a terrible thing, and I do think that it's important to consider the "sending my angry hordes to do my bidding" consequences of linking to posts you don't like (on a personal journal or community) even if your reasons for disliking it are legitimate. I have written a post touching on the subject if you're interested. I have mixed feelings about dog-piling, it's generally not my modus operandi, I consider it much more constructive to criticise people nobody else has criticised since they're more likely to learn something from it and less likely to go "ARGH I CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE". But in my experience every large pile-on is a mix of legitimate complaints and bandwagon jumping, and I see no way to entirely separate the two.

Taking your comment as a specific references to linkspam, however (since I can't think of any other recent examples of someone linking to specific posts they think are derailing): I find myself less likely to go into "This person is wrong I must correct them!" mode if I am forewarned that I may feel that way. But I don't know what effect their warnings will have on others. I hope people don't use it as an excuse to find someone to yell at but given how many people do that with fandom_wank even though it's explicitly against their rules I'm sure some will :(

Sorry for dragging you into my example, my comment was a muddled mess. On the one hand I wanted to discuss the subject with people, on the other I didn't feel up to criticism, which is a bad place to post from on a controversial subject. But a legitimate worry which has unfortunately come true is my muddled mess of a post being held up as an example of What These Anti-Derailing People Think.

Thankyou for being patient in the face of my defensive flailyness, it thankfully seems to have worked it's way out of my system! (I'm not feeling much smarter though)

[sqbr]

Ahhhh. *has another go*

I wasn't really in that discussion (I hadn't seen Torchwood yet so was avoiding spoilers) but my interpretation (as an Australian) was that it was more an issue with the British POV being overwhelmed by the superior numbers of the American POV. Afaict very few Americans know or care much about Wales.

Anyway, in general: I agree that people should not be so stifled by the fear of derailing that they prevent themselves from making legitimate criticisms of the arguments people are making. After Jonquil pointed out that my post makes it look like they should I added Appendix 1.