Tag: social justice

I’m personally less interested in what tactics feel most emotionally satisfying, and morally right, and more interested in using what works.

I think sometimes we tend to seek an absolute justice that ends up defeating our practical goals, the moral absolutism of youth tends to see the compromise of adults as utterly unforgivable, and while I can see their point, sometimes you have to compromise what is morally perfect to get what is in practical terms better than this.

Not that better than this is good enough, but it’s a start.

The Power Of Being Nice

I spent a lot of my life being sure that my being kind and polite and gentle meant I’d never get anything done.  I wasn’t good at yelling or being pushy (things I’ve gotten better at over the years) but I’ve also found that honestly, you can get a fuck of a lot done with nice.

Not passively, quietly, endlessly agreeably nice, but firm, and polite, and calm and basically warm and empathetic.

I’ve had people who generally think my points of view are beyond the pale, totally unreasonable, actually listen to me and conceded points to me, just because I wasn’t yelling at them, and came at them gently and respectfully.

It’s not emotionally satisfying.  Frankly, it’s fucking exhausting to have to bite one’s tongue when dealing with oppressive bullshit, but over the years I’ve found this is the way I actually change viewpoints.

Not by yelling, not by making people defensive, but by being nice.

And it sucks.

It sucks that this is what we have to do to get the point across.

Having to police your own tone so they keep their ears open long enough to hear you fucking sucks, but I haven’t found anything else that works as well as this does.

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten anyone to listen to me with expressed rage, at least not anytime I wasn’t preaching to the choir, whipping up people who already agreed with me, which has its place, and its value, rallying the troops has value too.

But to win converts?  I find the only way is to bite back rage and be nice.  The fact that I have the emotional reserves to do this is something I’m grateful for.

There are times when catharsis is more important than getting heard.  I don’t think all the empathy and sweetness in the world would let me get through to a neo-nazi or an entrenched MRA, but the casual on the fence sexists?  The casual on the fence classists and whorephobes and racists?  Sometimes I can make them listen.

It seems to me a pity that we worry more about correcting language than about correcting material conditions. The kyriarchy is alive and well, goodness knows, but it seems to me the euphemism treadmill is just another way to mask the prejudice and violence that exists rather than changing it. The endless cycle of acceptable terminology also often silences the voices of those least often listened to, which is the opposite of what any attempt at social justice should be aiming for.

That said, being respectful is important, but it’s also why I think jumping down people’s throats for using a term that stopped being fashionable is wrong, just politely correct them

Also Sometimes One Can Be Sneaky About Social Justice

For example, in my husband’s home country of New Zealand, diabetes was a really common health problem for Maori and Pacific Islanders for many many years, but whenever the labor party would try to introduce bills to do health initiatives to deal with this National (New Zealand’s big conservative party) would smack them down as “racist.” (which is bullshit)

So eventually labor got clever, and passed a general diabetes health campaign, which wasn’t specifically for Maori and Pacific Islanders, made access to treatment and prevention a lot easier for everyone, and of course those groups for whom diabetes was a common problem benefitted most from the program, but National couldn’t say shit because “What, do you hate people with diabetes, or are you a racist, do you want a white’s only diabetes program?”

And rates of diabetes and complications from diabetes went down dramatically for Maori and Pacific Islanders and that’s how you sneak crap under the radar.  

Like it’s unquestionably shitty to have to do that, but I think the material good of people not dying of a treatable illness kind of makes it worthwhile to make an effort to do things like this, because it’s effective.

Like, you center an issue that’s primarily an issue for oppressed people, but don’t make it explicitly about oppressed people and you can sometimes manage to manipulate the shitty “equality means treating everyone the same” system (which needs to be changed, but that’s a bigger change than sneaking some crap under the radar which will minimize suffering while we’re working on the big change).

Like doing an anti-domestic violence campaign that was for “all genders” would probably do some useful stuff and get less flack than one just about ladies (but as a whole be more helpful to ladies, because ladies are more likely to be victims of domestic violence).

Many of the most successful affirmative action programs have been non-explicit in their aims, because they don’t create the same resentment and backlash, and while it still sucks that their is resentment and backlash and it’s important to try and change that, it means that the programs get to do the work they’re supposed to do without being at as much risk of being instantly dismantled.