In response to Margeaux Feldman’s criticism of London psychotherapist Seerut Chawla
While I’m doubting the wisdom of wading into an online argument, particularly when I’m sure there are things here I’d want to polish and expound upon (but it’s already so long I can’t imagine why more than four people would want to read this), I’m too frustrated not to. This recent Medium article by Margeaux Feldman offers a good example of some of the behaviours and reasonings I have recently described here and here as being problematic in the community of social justice activism. Like, here’s a case study for the broad statements I’ve made about how things go down.
I’m not going to outline all the ways I do agree with Feldman. We seem to agree more about cancel culture than we disagree and we agree about the problems of pathologizing. I appreciate their questions at the end of their essay to offer up real tools to move us along. I relate to their childhood background and admire the work they’ve done in their career and have no animosity toward them. I’m simply quite frustrated with this essay, with everything that I think it misses, and I’m frustrated at how much it exemplifies so much of what I’ve already witnessed over years of reading and engaging with social justice activism. Given how much Feldman and I do agree and how much reading they’ve done by writers to whom I feel aligned, I feel depressed about how much content there is with which I still contend.
Addressing the points which concern me, in order
Firstly, this criticism of Seerut Chawla.
I don’t understand why Feldman leaves out the actual evidence of what they say is Chawla’s transphobia. I read through Chawla’s Twitter feed as far back as December and didn’t see much, if anything, to support all of Feldman’s claims. Which nearly caused me to dismiss this point out-of-hand since Feldman did share evidence of other posts. (Then my girlfriend urged me to do research and I remembered that Google is a many splendored thing and can dig up quite a lot! Sometimes I am a pile of learned helplessness and forget how to do simple things.) But why not include examples in one’s argument? Is the audience just an echo chamber who don’t require the context? Does Feldman not consider there might be folks like me missing the context?
Anyway, thanks to a peer support worker’s Instagram story highlights, and Google’s image results, I was able to see some of the Twitter comments made by Chawla which people condemn. Some are not, like, great. (ETA: Especially the “menstruators” tweet. But I asked her about it and she explained, very credibly to me, that she thought it was funny how a man singing a song to Pretty Woman said this word suddenly. When you take this tweet out of context and put it alongside other tweets about trans people, it appears she is making fun of trans people. But it’s out context. I believe her when she says she would never intend to mock trans people.) Which is frustrating when you admire someone’s mind and content and agree with most of what they say. But it’s only frustrating because we’ve built around ourselves a culture of needing purity of ideology in people and needing it now!
But before I get into specifics, I want to put forward three ideas. I think there are three conflicts at play in this discussion and every similar dispute online. I want to put this before you to keep in mind as you read my response.
- Needing and pressuring people to immediately agree with us and understand everything we understand and interpret in the same way even when our contexts and histories and experiences and knowledges and abilities are different is illogical and cruel. It just is. Facts.
- Communication is interpretation. Many of us wading in these discussions online studied literary criticism in some fashion where we learned about subjectivity and post-structuralism and nuance and where people with very different interpretations of the same passage in the same book could each get A grades because of the credible arguments they’re able to make. And yet when it comes to a tweet online these skills disappear and anyone willing to put their neck out and say something like, “I don’t think this tweet is transphobic and here’s why,” had best prepare for an outraged response. I certainly hope it’s not from the same people who debated hard in English class that the colour of the curtains in the drawing room told us what we needed to know about Johnny’s emotional state.
- Who gets to name what “harm” is? When an accused is not allowed to ask questions or dispute that they created “harm,” how is this not an abusive construct? How is this transformative justice?
A little aside to share my bias and relation
I read all of the tweets of Chawla’s that I could find which people believe are transphobic. I can see an argument for them being so but I can also see another explanation.
I think that Chawla likes to walk a line, pushing buttons because she’s trying to prove her over-arching point that we need a values reset. In every tweet that others are calling out, I can make what I think are credible arguments, using more context, for why their interpretations are not fair or not as black and white as claimed. Here’s an example:
When she says that Elliot Page is brave and should receive adoration and support and also Keira Bell should be as supported because what they did is braver, I don’t think that is transphobia. What is controversial about saying that it’s braver to face criticism from within your community than to face criticism from people whose opinions you never cared about in the first place (transphobes, for Page)? I get that this oversimplifies the obstacles Page faced to come out. It’s a rhetorical device to oversimplify when the point Chawla is making is not about trans identity at all. You could replace the topic or identity with any other and she would be making the same point. How do I know what point she’s making? By reading the rest of her content, which I’ve been doing for about a year. If JK Rowling had made this same comment, I would likely read it differently. But from what I see, Chawla doesn’t have a bone to pick with trans people. She’s saying it’s a problem when there’s only one way to be trans and to support trans people, when there’s only one view to have, when even the trans people with lived experience can’t voice concern about something that affects trans people. I am intimate with trans and queer people who have articulate and sincere concerns about gender who would nevvvvvvver voice them outside of the safe space I provide for them (or hopefully others provide too) because they are not the official talking points in their movement and THAT. IS. A. SERIOUS. PROBLEM. To be scared to speak publicly about your own identity and your own experience and your own concerns lest you be labelled a traitor setting a movement back or be pathologized, within a community that purports to exist for your safety and care, is fucked up. One argument for allowing kids to decide to take hormone blockers is that few end up regretting it and that people like Keira Bell are an anomaly. But if trans people don’t feel safe to speak up and share their experiences without being attacked (and I know people who have this concern), do we really know how many regret it?
(Personally, I have zero opinion on this issue of hormone blockers and the ability to have informed consent because I don’t think it’s for me to have an opinion.)
Now, I could see an argument to be made that it’s inherently transphobic or at least disrespectful to use trans identities and issues to make a point about something else, to wade into a discussion that is so loaded in ways you can’t know enough about and use it as a rhetorical device for some other point you want to make. I am uncomfortable with that, especially when it’s done in arrogance, with a chip on one’s shoulder (and I think Chawla definitely has a chip on her shoulder, which I recognize being someone who has had to get several chip-ectomies). But I’m also sympathetic that Chawla and others are sincere in caring about what we do to each other when only some stories and perspectives are approved for air. I’m even more willing to believe that a therapist, someone with a long history of trauma, cares about the well-being of others and is genuinely concerned with how ideological and therefore harmful the social justice community can be.
How do you place yourself on a spectrum and know how to self-identify when there’s not enough variance of representation? I follow @butchisnotadirtyword on Instagram and have had intimate conversations with multiple butch women who feel like butch identity has been invalidated or is not represented as much anymore, like it’s old fashioned or it’s really a trans identity not brave enough to transition. And I have known a self-identified tomboy who felt afraid of the label “butch” because it seems gross. And I have known soft butches who felt left out of butch identity because they don’t have a bunch of tattoos, rocker jeans, and a sneer. When there are multiple ways to be trans and genderqueer, people can recognize themselves and have options for how they self-represent and self-identify. Right? Isn’t that why we say there’s no wrong way to be trans? When there are only a few ways, people will try hard to fit into an identity that doesn’t suit them, maybe even altering their hormones to see if that’s the answer (and they can’t know how they’ll feel until they do!). For some people it will be the answer and for others it won’t and what a fucking travesty to not transition when it would make you more of the person you are and what a fucking travesty to transition when all you needed was a safe container for who you already were.
That might be Chawla’s concern.
I don’t think that anyone besides me wants to read my literary critical analysis of all of Chawla’s tweets which are being screenshot and held up as self-evidenced sins. There are a couple where I’m like, Oh god, why did you say that, you’re goading people. But I understand the inclination to goad. And I do understand why she feels misrepresented.
I spoke about this to the content creator who has an Instagram stories highlights reel about Chawla. One of their screenshots was about them being upset that Chawla misrepresented what they said about therapy. This person’s words to me: “I didn’t say therapy wasn’t as wise as peer support. I said peer support is […] wiser than therapy.” I replied that this is the exact same thing, so I understood why Chawla thought this person was criticizing therapy. They replied that what they MEANT was [nuanced statement] and that their followers were not misunderstanding them. Ahhhhh, so their followers, who have so much more context about who this person is and what they believe understood the intention of what they said, and Chawla’s followers who have so much context about what Chawla believes understood the intention of what Chawla said, but Chawla is bad and wrong and Peer Support Content Creator is right and good? It’s hypocritical to get angry about one’s words being misunderstood and then be indignant that someone else is getting angry that their words are being misunderstood.
It’s okay to be misunderstood!
It’s okay to not communicate super clearly the first time!
It’s okay to ask people to keep reading more of your content before interpreting and reacting!
You should be allowed the opportunity to clarify and edit your writing without being told what you meant!
I think this community is paranoid that everything is a dog whistle. If someone says something even slightly off-brand, they are really an alt-right in disguise, trying not to be found out and trying to trick us slowly. I experienced this exact same paranoia in the Mormon church. As soon as you start to say, “Well, maybe…” and “But what if…” people stiffen and narrow their eyes, ready to check you with their church-approved doctrine and sound bites.
On to Feldman’s criticisms
- Chawla doesn’t “assume everyone should have this knowledge” of the nervous system and dysregulation. She responds to a community of online activists who talk as though everyone should have the language and foundational knowledge of social justice politics and criticize harshly when they don’t. She’s pointing out some hypocrisy about access to knowledge.
2. I’m deeply troubled when anyone believes that it’s a swell argument against another person to cite the people with whom they’re pleasant. Feldman objects to Chawla “exchanging pleasantries” with Jordan Peterson, proving Chawla’s point (and my own), that members of The Church of Social Justice (which is not all people engaged in social justice activism) monitor who you talk to, who you spend time with, who you follow, and make judgments of your beliefs based on even the slightest bit of humanity you show to people they don’t like. My opinion of Jordan Peterson is that he’s a complicated character who simultaneously offers some ideas of value which have improved many lives and absolutely disgusting garbage ideas which have created harm. And I think part of the reason his garbage ideas have such reach is this pervasive cultural incapacity to manage cognitive dissonance, holding multiple ideas at once as true, and an incapacity to separate ideas from people who espouse them. People who find value in his credible ideas are more likely to be open to his garbage ideas because WE DO NOT KNOW HOW TO CRITICALLY ANALYZE IDEAS! That is the problem. And instead of having a mass education on how to critically analyze and discuss ideas without having existential and faith-based meltdowns, we focus on cancelling the people with the bad ideas lest anyone with a good idea influence readers to accept that person’s bad ideas by association to the good ideas. It is not a problem that Chawla is pleasant to Peterson on Twitter, for crying out loud. I would also be pleasant to Peterson on Twitter as long as we were not debating his garbage ideas; how else would I expect to have any influence on him or his cult followers? Being pleasant with someone doesn’t mean you like them. It doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say.
It is a problem that Feldman employs logical fallacies to attack a woman whose opinions and ideas deserve some serious consideration by virtue of her profession as a psychotherapist and her experience as an Indian woman who has experienced capital-T trauma. If such a woman is calling cancel culture into question, repeatedly making bold and interesting connections, rejecting an entire culture that wants to endow her with a platform to centre her voice as a woman of colour, perhaps that’s a cue to listen and offer her more respect than Feldman does in this piece. Does Feldman honestly mean to imply that by being “pleasant” with Jordan Peterson that this strong-minded woman is a wolf in sheep’s clothing who agrees with Peterson’s statement that men are violent and mowing down protestors because they don’t have wives and that society needs to fix this?
4. To state that a person holds alt-right views and not cite them is dangerous and irresponsible. If Chawla is spouting alt-right views on Twitter, then they should be easy to cite. I’ve combed through weeks of content and don’t see it. I do see some views which might be co-held by alt-right people but that doesn’t make them alt-right views. In fact, the more people who hold a view despite being on different ends of a political spectrum, the more likely that idea is to have some merit! But maybe readers of Feldman’s don’t care to have evidence of these alt-right views. Feldman signals by use of language that they are one of the Good Guys, so perhaps they can trust their judgment and characterization implicitly? (The same thing happens on that website to which Feldman links, calling out Jay Manicom. At one point, one of the charges against them is that they oversexualize people. The evidence? They say they do. What’s the difference between “sexualize” and “oversexualize”? I don’t know but we’re meant to just trust this person’s opinion because they’re on our team.)
I suspect that they’re talking about Chawla dispensing with some of the ways we ask white people to de-platform themselves, and with how we intersectionally analyze identities. But Chawla’s intersectional identities inform an entirely different meaning than if she was an alt-right angry white man. You can’t selectively decide when someone’s identity is relevant to their point of view in identity politics. When Chawla sounds pro-white, it’s not the same thing as when a white person sounds pro-white. “I don’t hate you or think your opinion is less valid than mine,” contributes something different coming from an Indian woman than, “You shouldn’t hate me and deplatform me,” contributes coming from an angry white man. Calling her a white supremacist is like being in your first month of study getting your degree in gender studies. It’s understanding some of the concepts but not understanding how to apply them with nuance.
And giving a woman of colour a platform only when she’s saying what you are willing to co-sponsor and not when she’s disputing some of your theory for reasons she can articulate is to tokenize her and pit some people of colour against others.
5. Feldman says,
When others shared Sonny’s stories, Chawla went on to criticize their investment in transformative justice (TJ) by saying, “Not a single person from this group has ever actually bothered to reach out to me for a conversation before participating in this hate campaign.” Maybe that’s because they do not feel safe enough to do so? Maybe that’s because you have a history of not being accountable to the harm you’ve caused?
I feel much more comfortable reaching out to someone who rejects cancel culture to tell them I’m hurt by or concerned with something they said than I feel reaching out to someone who embraces cancel culture and has learned to address conflict by publicly writing about it and then rallying friends and allies to signal boost what they’ve written. People do that. I also question that Chawla has a history of not being accountable to the harm she’s caused when I believe I’ve witnessed her doing that. I don’t know if she reached out to Nicole LePera to apologize for her call outs, but I do know she has adamantly owned her behaviour as wrong and harmful and deleted the original content.
Perhaps the issue at hand here is that, 1. one group of people want to be able to declare when something is harm even if they had to interpret content a certain way in order to feel harmed, and 2. believe they have the right to hold someone “accountable” in the manner they see fit, on their timeline. “Answer our DMs, all of them, when we’ve written to you, no matter how we speak to you, agree with our interpretations, and apologize.” Maybe Chawla doesn’t feel safe with how people are coming at her? Maybe this pile-on manner of “addressing harm” doesn’t work? Maybe it’s not the only way to address issues and so if it isn’t working and it’s not the most loving and beautiful manner of addressing issues that we can imagine, it’s time to admit that it’s part of the problem and give it up?
I’m also not convinced that not feeling safe to reach out to someone directly entitles a person by default to reach out via an online campaign. What a convenient excuse to engage in behaviours that can cause enormous harm to the lives of others. Especially when you pair this with the “I feel harmed by how I interpret your words and impact matters more than intention” doctrine, you have a situation where some people are granted moral approval to shame and harass others online. (Which is not to say that all call outs are this.)
6. To this point that the people rejecting cancelling are people who have been cancelled: This is much the same as anything in life. People who show empathy towards folks addicted to substances are either people who have themselves been addicted or been close to someone who has. This argument is structurally identical to, “You just support abortion and women’s right to choose because you had an abortion.” To refute Feldman’s point that anti-cancellers have been cancelled themselves, I have not been “cancelled” online. Not yet! But I have been squeamish about my own behaviour engaging in cancel culture, recognizing it as being similar to my experience as a Mormon. (I was cancelled within Mormonism after I rejected it, so I guess there’s that.)
Feldman’s point seems to me like another way of saying, “Those of us who are cancelling people aren’t worried about being on the other end of this behaviour because 1. we don’t think we’ll ever be bad or wrong enough to wind up there, and 2. we haven’t considered how devastating and damaging it is to the recipient of this treatment.”
7. Feldman also uses the language of “call out” instead of “debate” because a “call out” is a moral tool for which there is a good response and a bad response. They quote Amanda Aguilar Shank making the fair point that it is not the burden of people harmed to reach out to those who harmed them. Chawla responds to say,
True restorative justice does not include perpetuating power dynamics- you harass, misrepresent, stalk, and defame me and then justify your horrible behaviour by calling it ‘accountability.’
Feldman responds,
Harassment, misrepresentation, and stalking are serious claims, but what Chawla is referring to is none of these things. Reading through and sharing posts from a public twitter page is not harassment, misrepresentation, or stalking. This collapsing of terms is just another strategy for placing the blame on others while failing to take any accountability yourself.
And, fair point: reading through and sharing posts from a public Twitter page is not harassment, misrepresentation, or stalking. But do you see what’s happening here? Feldman is possibly diluting meaning, reducing what’s happening to the vaguest descriptions. I found one Instagram account where the person’s first highlight button is devoted entirely to Seerut Chawla. That’s not nothing. I see how that’s an argument for harassment, even if the owner of that content seems sweet and conflicted and well-intentioned.
How many people are sharing these posts? Where? With what language? How often? Feldman’s asserting that they get to define the terms “call out,” “harassment,” “misrepresentation,” and “stalking.” If you read through Chawla’s Twitter and Instagram accounts, it’s impossible to get the impression that she has a problem with people merely “reading and sharing” her posts. So, if this intelligent professional and woman of colour is making claims that she is being stalked and harassed, perhaps Feldman would do well to get curious and ask for Chawla to explain what she thinks amounts to this abusive behaviour, how she is feeling this impact? Chawla is saying she’s a victim of abuse, and Feldman, a white person, is saying flatly, “No, you’re just using the language of abuse. I say you’re just collapsing terms.” Ah, the “no, that’s not true because I said so” argument.
8. Feldman then accuses Chawla of hypocrisy by citing her own intersectional oppression though she has criticized identity politics. I fail to see how someone as intelligent as Feldman, someone with a PhD in English literature, really can’t parse that Chawla, in doing this, is pointing out the hypocrisy of these social justice activists and speaking their language. This is not a hard one to figure out. Chawla cited the irony of multiple white overprivileged people misrepresenting and bullying her, and Feldman defends this by citing the identity of one person as not being overprivileged. Addressing only a portion of Chawla’s accusation isn’t a good argument.
I emphasize that because I can’t help but think that when someone so accomplished, intelligent, and earnestly active in social justice writes such a poor quality argument against a woman of colour whose life experience is practically the poster child for Vulnerable Identities Needing Advocacy, that something psychologically complicated is going on.
And this is why the Oppression Olympics takes place. There’s no room for civil and calm debate of these theories and applications of theories, because to say something which even slightly intimates a threat to the central ideology (even if it doesn’t actually threaten it!) is to be cancelled. When have I ever, in one of these online conflicts, witnessed someone say, “Whoa. Those are big charges. What do you mean by harassment and stalking? I don’t think I’m doing that and I don’t want to be impacting you that way. Can you tell me more about your perspective and interpretation?” Never is how many times. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t happen. Just that I haven’t seen it. Instead, people compete with their marginalized identities to have a valid enough opinion about something and get signal boosted by their fellow church members and whomever is loudest and uses the most theory terminology to back their arguments wins. I guess?
If Feldman were to tell me that I harmed them, that I was harassing or abusing them, I would not be allowed to argue back that I was, in fact, not doing that. I would likely be called out for my argument by multiple people (even though Feldman has more social and economic power than I do, because these pile-ons are often so not about power and victimization), for arguing about my intent when “impact matters more” and when “the victim gets to say what the impact was.” And yet, Chawla, a woman of colour, is saying she is being harassed and abused… and Feldman, a white non-binary person is saying… no, you’re not.
*looks around, incredulously wondering if anyone else saw what I just saw*
Tell me: Who gets to name abuse? Who gets to assert that impact matters more than intent? Who is allowed to feel traumatized and then respond emotionally in public with compassion from a community who understand that a traumatized emotional response is what’s happening?
According to Feldman in this piece, the answer is not Seerut Chawla. Because hers was the first sin and every other sin (disputed) is a response to her sin. But Chawla’s sin (disputed) is a response to the sins of the wider community. Which are a response to the original sins of white supremacy, capitalism, and all the hegemonies.
*sigh*
9. Feldman writes,
“Saying that you’re limited by 280 characters is an excuse for not being accountable. You made a choice to use that character limitation to make commentary on trans identity. That was your choice.”
Excellent point and one I think we’d all do well to lock down in our minds as a good life lesson: Don’t use mediums which are ill equipped to talk about matters which need more space and care, especially if you care about people’s feelings or your profession infers that you do.
Feldman says,
To label transphobic ideas as “uncomfortable ideas” is gaslighting.
I mean, in response I could say that to label misrepresentation and harassment as an accountability campaign is gaslighting.
Again, I ask, who gets to name what things are? Why aren’t we slowing down conversations to discuss definitions of what is happening? Feldman wrote an essay in large part about Chawla, flatly asserted Chawla was transphobic, but cited none of the transphobia. No links, no images. Is that responsible? Or is it libel?
10. Feldman says,
Saying ‘I will not be told what to think’ is another form of fundamentalism.
Huh? Wha? No, it isn’t. That’s a really bold claim to plop down without any explanation. It’s the “begging the claim” logical fallacy. “I will not be told what to think,” is not the same thing as, “I will not listen to others or be persuaded or consider how I might be wrong.” It is an assertion of basic human rights to have the freedom to think and process and know for one’s self. The idea that it’s fundamentalism for one to have the freedom to think and work through ideas with integrity and vulnerability rather than just believing what one is told to think… is… *speechless* the most staggeringly bananas idea I’ve heard an intelligent person imply… maybe ever? How many people edited this essay and didn’t flag that? Are there people alive who actually think it’s more morally pure or something to not think for one’s self? I am alarmed and disturbed! I am hoping and guessing that Feldman just didn’t flesh this thought out, their interpretation of what “I will not be told what to think” even means. Perhaps they’re reading it as, “I will not listen to what anyone else has to say,” but what a disingenuous reading, especially of Chawla who clearly believes things and engages with other people’s ideas.
11. I’m also alarmed by Feldman’s investigative work in noting who follows whom on social media. I don’t follow Lindsay Lockett and I wouldn’t follow based on the cherry-picked Instagram posts Feldman shares but I do follow Clementine Morrigan as of a couple of weeks ago. I’m unaware of all the context Feldman cites but I am frequently impressed at Morrigan’s ability to succinctly put a finger on some dynamics not frequently discussed and to acknowledge nuance between two ideas. But that doesn’t mean that I am willing to sponsor every single thing Morrigan writes. I would follow Margeaux Feldman on Instagram and like any posts of content I agree with, or just like their cute ginger hair, but as you can see, I disagree with a lot of which they’ve written! Liking some posts doesn’t confer approval or co-signing necessarily. It could confer acknowledgment and respect. Those of us who don’t agree with how cancel culture is widely being applied disagree on some nuances, but because we reject most of cancel culture we’re not afraid to follow each other and imply agreement because it’s only under the rules of cancel culture that agreement is implied simply by a follow or by engagement!
12. Here’s something Feldman says which I do agree with:
“Policing and abuse are able to happen precisely because cops and abusers hold power — power that is state sanctioned and embedded in the legal system’s privileging of white cis straight men. Canceling occurs precisely because the person doing the canceling is lacking in power or is facing a major power differential. […] To me this is argument leans disconcertingly close to claims of reverse racism.”
Yes! Agreement! That’s the origins and that’s the concept that works.
But also… so much of the shitty-shitty-bang-bang cancel culture behaviour I’ve witnessed is just lateral violence. Or, worse, it’s perpetrated against people who are already marginalized. After I wrote I left the Church of Social Justice for the same reasons I left Mormonism, more than 120 people followed me on Instagram in response and nearly all of them were people of colour, trans, or queer. Many appeared to be social justice activists and cutie smarty pants 20-somethings. Several wrote me and they were people of colour. One person was an Indigenous man who appeared, as far as I could tell looking at his Instagram account, to be doing good activist work around decolonization. He told me that he was cancelled and when I asked why the reason he gave was not justification for that behaviour and yet totally believable that it happened. (Leaving out details so he’s not identified.)
So… young people… who are the demographic we deem most likely to be fundamentalist and emotional… who are people of colour… and trans… are rejecting cancel culture. And white folks… are standing up for cancel culture… for the benefit of… the marginalized. And writing a long essay that partly take down a woman of colour without acknowledging any of her points or experiences of treatments of her as valid.
Something feels off. Something feels disingenuous. I’m very uncomfortable.
Maybe what we are seeing is more variance of opinion in the BIPOC demographic because these are people who feel more able to voice their disputations without being attacked by white people? I don’t know.
13. Feldman argues,
Referring to those who participate in call outs and canceling as traumatized human (aren’t we all?) who are making choices in a dysregulated state exists on a continuum with diagnosing them as psychopathic, narcissists, or those with TIV. Yes, trauma impact how we show up in the world, absolutely. But it is not the root cause of call outs and canceling. Systemic oppression is.
I definitely don’t agree that pointing out how often these behaviours stem from people being dysregulated and not grounding themselves first and taking a break before reacting is a diagnosis that exists on a continuum with psychopathy and narcissism. Come on. Is this a continuum containing… like… all psychologically upset states of being, in effect being an almost meaningless continuum for categorization purposes? Pointing out that people engaging in lateral violence by way of cancel culture behaviours are often acting from trauma and dysregulation sounds compassionate to me. I see trauma as being more akin to grieving than fucking psychopathy.
14. Feldman asks us to ask ourselves the question, “When told that I’ve caused hurt or harm, do I shut down, fawn, or get defensive?”
But it can’t be the case that as soon as a person is told that they have caused hurt or harm that they must immediately agree, believe it, apologize, and not seek to understand or dispute. That’s a situation ripe for abuse. In fact, it might be the very source of cancel culture abuse and dispute. It’s illogical and it results in volleying back and forth a ball labelled “harm.” And this happens! I have seen it happen where someone is just wanting to understand and doesn’t agree with how their words are being understood and characterized and they’re bullied into agreeing with the apparent fact that they caused harm. (And those volleying the harm ball to them might even be English grads or otherwise studied subjectivity and literary criticism! Ha!) I’ve witnessed people who would willingly meet their accusers half-way or even all the way if they just understood and who want the ability to understand and want their apology to have the meaning of sincerity that can only come from actually understanding and agreeing! But their questions aren’t tolerated in good faith.
“You caused harm with your statement about queer people.”
“No, you’re causing me harm by addressing me in public this way and calling on all your friends to agree and pile on because I never meant what you’re saying I said.”
“No, you’re causing harm by not acknowledging the original harm you caused and now by deflecting and being defensive. Maybe you didn’t mean what we heard but that was the impact, so own it and apologize for causing harm.”
!!
We have to be willing to engage in discussion about subjectivity, perception, responsibility for our own projections and interpretations. This step cannot be missed and it is the step that is being missed. I understand why it’s being missed. Smooth talking abusers want the opportunity to gaslight. I get it. But forcing someone to own something they don’t even understand is also abusive and the pendulum does not need to swing this far in order to mete out social justice and find accountability. I believe that intelligent and sincere grown-ass adults are capable of finding other signals to differentiate between abusers who want to gaslight and sincere folks who want to understand how their words have impacted others. We should be pausing to get clarity. Even when you think you’re clear on what someone meant, PAUSE ANYWAY AND GET CLARITY. We all have our own biases clouding our interpretations.
I’m putting forward that I think people need more skills in the arena of pausing an emotional reaction and conflict to get understanding of what is being said and how words and intentions are being understood. Yes, I know this puts work on the people who are more likely to be reactive because of trauma and that’s unfair. But because we don’t know what anyone else is going through and whose traumas are worse and because we all have trauma and shouldn’t have to talk about them in public in order to be deemed worthy of care, we just need to stop competing to be the most traumatized and therefore worthy of care and just ALL DO THE WORK.
