Yes you CAN be an asshole!
Jul. 25th, 2012 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lliiraI just have to rant.
Two people reading this know exactly what's *ahem* triggering this rant. (They're not the ones being assholes, btw.) This post was inspired by a few different people I liked doing stuff in one day, and by my recognizing that I'd sometimes behaved like that in the past. There is overlap here.
If you're called out for being -ist, maybe you really did say something -ist! Even if you're a good person. Even if the person calling you out is being an asshole about it. It is entirely possible for two people on opposing sides to both be assholes. See: Rupert Murdoch's tweets condemning Scientology. Now, I don't think either side is evil. I think that in this case, nearly everyone involved has good intentions. The main problem, as I see it, is that both sides are imputing bad intentions to the other side.
You will never get anywhere doing that, if your goal is actually to get along. If your goal is to vent -- okay. But ranting in a place where there are a lot of people who either don't know what's going on or do know but have a different opinion than you makes me think you don't just want to vent. It makes me think you want something else. Not something bad, mind you; it's not inherently bad to want to convince other people that you're right and your opponents are wrong, or to look for allies, or to get support. However, is it worth the price? This thing has the potential to cause two communities to implode now.
Of course, the fact that the post that made this thing so much worse imputed bad motives to people doesn't help either. Hey, Fred: it's more complicated than that.
There's a conversation to be had about trigger warnings. I think we were doing a pretty good job at having it. But I think it needs to be disentangled from all these hurt feelings and heated emotions and self-righteous indignation. It particularly needs to be had in an atmosphere in which we do not impute bad motivations to people simply because they disagree with us. People on both sides are doing that. And they're catching a lot of other people in the middle. Being in the middle of this particular wankstorm is no fun at all.
Two people reading this know exactly what's *ahem* triggering this rant. (They're not the ones being assholes, btw.) This post was inspired by a few different people I liked doing stuff in one day, and by my recognizing that I'd sometimes behaved like that in the past. There is overlap here.
If you're called out for being -ist, maybe you really did say something -ist! Even if you're a good person. Even if the person calling you out is being an asshole about it. It is entirely possible for two people on opposing sides to both be assholes. See: Rupert Murdoch's tweets condemning Scientology. Now, I don't think either side is evil. I think that in this case, nearly everyone involved has good intentions. The main problem, as I see it, is that both sides are imputing bad intentions to the other side.
You will never get anywhere doing that, if your goal is actually to get along. If your goal is to vent -- okay. But ranting in a place where there are a lot of people who either don't know what's going on or do know but have a different opinion than you makes me think you don't just want to vent. It makes me think you want something else. Not something bad, mind you; it's not inherently bad to want to convince other people that you're right and your opponents are wrong, or to look for allies, or to get support. However, is it worth the price? This thing has the potential to cause two communities to implode now.
Of course, the fact that the post that made this thing so much worse imputed bad motives to people doesn't help either. Hey, Fred: it's more complicated than that.
There's a conversation to be had about trigger warnings. I think we were doing a pretty good job at having it. But I think it needs to be disentangled from all these hurt feelings and heated emotions and self-righteous indignation. It particularly needs to be had in an atmosphere in which we do not impute bad motivations to people simply because they disagree with us. People on both sides are doing that. And they're catching a lot of other people in the middle. Being in the middle of this particular wankstorm is no fun at all.
