An unfortunate cultural reality
Sastra reminded us today of Freddie deBoer and I’m wondering why I haven’t been reading him all along. From August: Prologue to an Anti-Therapeutic, Anti-Affirmation Movement. I like it already – I’m beyond tired of the constant demands for “affirmation” of utter bullshit.
Dude has a way with words.
It frequently seems like canceling has run out of steam, as a disciplinary tactic; you watch people on social media trying to get somebody canceled, these days, and it sometimes feels like watching them trying and failing to get a pull-cord lawnmower started.
I need to watch the people he’s watching, because the ones I see have all too much success – but I love the punchline.
I’m not predicting a major social change writ large so much as I am predicting a new or newly invigorated response to a preexisting cultural reality, an unfortunate one. I think there’s gathering dissatisfaction with a common set of tropes regarding personal agency and mental health. In particular, I think that the dominance of the therapeutic assumption in American life, and the role of affirmation within it, will be challenged. Currently, an inescapable American cultural mode, particularly among the educated, is one of mandatory therapeutic maximalism and an attendant tyranny of affirmation.
Yes but only for some. Mandatory therapeutic maximalism for some, and brutal shouting and shunning for others. Tyranny of affirmation for some, and loud insistent ceaseless negation for others. But, again, “tyranny of affirmation” is top-notch.
The therapeutic/affirmational mode assumes
- Wanting and not getting is disordered and a kind of identity crime
- Human life is meant to be spent in a ceaseless state of feeling “valid,” which is to say, affirmed and respected and paid attention to and liked; any deviation from this state is pathological and a vestige of injustice
For the chosen recipients. Not everyone; just the Truly Madly Deeply marginalized, like for instance trans women, and trans women, and trans women. Women are most definitely not meant to be in a ceaseless state of feeling “valid” (not, admittedly, that I would want to).
- Good people spend a great deal of their time categorically and uncritically affirming others – telling friends and strangers alike that their desires are all legitimate, their instincts always correct, their perceptions of their own needs never mistaken or misguided, their self-conception compelling
- Correspondingly, we should all assume that anyone who is not affirming us is necessarily doing so out of a particular kind of politicized wickedness, that they are likely motivated by racism, sexism, homophobia, or other kinds of bigotry, and if these specific accusations are not plausible, then by simple evil
Again, for the chosen few, and not for others. Trans women yes, women absolutely not are you out of your mind.
We do the best for others by affirming what they already believe and validating what they already want; people are happiest and healthiest when they are encouraged to think that vulnerability is more valuable than resilience and that their pain is more beautiful than their strength.
Which is interesting because it means women are the winners here after all. Who would want to be babied and cooed over the way trans women are? Who would want to be treated as fragile invalids the way they are? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Rebel energy yes, whining malingering fragility a thousand times NO.
There’s the old cliche about artists suffering for their (whether it be deriving something creative out of the suffering itself, or suffering due to a refusal to sell out or give up while persuing a particular vision). It seems this bunch wants recognition for suffering alone with the definition of “suffering” changed to “not getting (or being given) what I want.” They want reward and acclaim for simply existing, rather than actual accomplishment.
TiMs who win in women’s sport identify as having acheived something, but this is just theft. Unfortunately “the love of the sport” loses its lustre when it’s not capped with victory. They would never medal in mens’ events, and when it is suggested to them that they should be competing in their own sex’s division rather than against women, they make it sound as if they are not only being banned from sports altogether, but deprived of food, water, and air as well, if they are denied the chance to
cheatcompete on a team that “aligns” with their “gender identity,” (that is, the sex they claim to be, but are not). They sure don’t mind conflating sex with gender when it works in their favour, but are quick to point out how “everybody knows they’re not the same!” when they are rightly accused of making that exact conflation.Freddie is quite infuriating to read – his takes on mental health are usually deeply incisive, but he has a bunch of huge blind spots and one of them is trans issues. My impression is that deep down he does see the absolute applicability to trans issues of the “tyranny of affirmation” that he writes about here, but he stops dead before he takes that last logical step and backs away muttering some thought-terminating cliches to himself to protect him from wrongthink. He’s known for banning discussions of trans issues from his comments, too. But yeah, the dude can write, and he has brought out some great points about how disability and mental illness are treated. He’s a good read but not always an easy one.
I was a little taken aback with his inclusion of Chasio in his piece about the Good White Man roster, and I suppose he’s being polite by referring to Chasio as (he/him), and it’s a criticism after all, but I don’t think he’s fooled any more than any of us are. Still, it comes off as apologetic. Chasio is a scourge.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-good-white-man-roster
The inclusion of Jason Stanley in all his idiocy makes up for it though.
Golly, amazing that he writes so well about the tyranny of affirmation but steers around the trans issue. Or maybe not amazing but self-preserving?
He does seem a bit blind about the whole concept that women are people, and that women are treated, and expected to behave, differently from men.
Maybe that explains why I haven’t been reading him all this time. I used to at some point back at the dawn of time, and then stopped for reasons, but I don’t remember what the reasons were.
My employers sent round an anonymous questionnaire about what we thought of them – not as employers with pay and conditions (which are good) but did we feel respected? Valued? There was also a section on how Diverse and Inclusive they are. I wasn’t going to answer the questionnaire, but after reading The Identity Trap with its message to resist this kind of stuff where you can, I did answer. One question – Can you bring your authentic self to work? I made a few jibes about that – but I am sorry I didn’t say what has just occurred to me. The high-ups who are in a position to push this crap are not high-ups via being their authentic selves. For good or for ill, they have a professional persona. They haven’t got to where they are by telling a difficult demanding client, that they are a pain in the arse – they leave that to muttered asides (and sometimes indiscreet emails) to their colleagues.
Similarly – and this is for good – they have not said to one of their underlings who has screwed up – “You are as thick as two short planks, and you don’t pay attention to instructions.” No, no, they say, “There seems to have been some confusion here.” They are social beings. They have codes of public behaviour, just as Jane Austen’s characters do. Social life could not survive among people being authentic selves.
The only people who are authentic selves are yer old time rock stars who trashed hotel rooms, shagged groupies and were rude to everyone. Of course there were ones that were well-behaved and polite – which was probably their authentic self.
Caligula was his authentic self. Donald Trump is his authentic self. Neither of them are a pretty sight.
My main reason for not reading de Boer regularly is that I find he’s very much like a stopped clock. He rants, admittedly amusingly, about a wide variety of subjects. Once in a while one comes to my attention that I agree with and I enjoy it, because who doesn’t enjoy a good rant that agrees with one’s own view? But whenever I look at his work more generally, I find a bunch of rants that I don’t find entertaining. That, of course, is not a reason not to read someone. But the fact that those rants I disagree with never make me think “well, he’s got a point there” or “not sure how to respond to that” means they don’t have a lot of value for me.
I will also note, for those who aren’t aware, that in 2017 de Boer got into an internet fight with the writer Malcolm Harris, and invented accusations of rape and sexual harassment of women by Harris. This isn’t in dispute — de Boer has admitted he made them up out of whole cloth, during a mental health episode that he has written about.
I’m not saying that’s a reason not to read him. Mental health issues are real, forgiveness is a thing, etc. But I can’t help but feel a little uneasy that de Boer, after taking time away from the internet for treatment, is back not just posting his opinions, but being pretty sharp-elbowed and nasty to people he disagrees with, publishing his little lists of enemies and such. He’s also taken down the apology he posted to Harris, on the grounds that “it’s pretty much exclusively shared in bad faith by anonymous accounts looking to dunk or whatever.” Which no doubt is what he would say I’m doing here. But that’s kind of my point: people are entitled to know the history here and form their own judgments, and deleting your own apology because it isn’t being universally accepted seems to run counter to the whole notion of contrition. Damnit, I followed all the steps in the Internet Rehabilitation Tour Public Relations Manual, you’re all required to let it go now! Let’s not bicker and argue over who defamed who….
Yikes. Thanks for the information. I’m less puzzled about why I stopped reading him.
I think he’s still worth reading; he writes well, is on point so many times, and is interesting when saying things I don’t agree with. I can’t say I’ve read a lot by him, however.
I’d noticed that he didn’t speak much about trans issues, though he’d include people being condemned for gender critical views in his lists of unfair cancellations. Like ChainRing, I’m frustrated at how close he comes to bringing it up without going there. In a recent essay deBoer even emphasized the massive effect the adolescent-angst soaked social media platform Tumblr has had on today’s mainstream discourse and beliefs without acknowledging that it was a hot incubator for trans identities. I’m wondering if he has a friend or relative who identifies as trans and is thus reluctant to hurt their feelings directly, making his point clear enough if you read between the lines.
Here’s that post. It rightly calls out those who dismiss problems as marginal and silly and say they should be ignored until they go mainstream, upon which they’ve always believed that. I’ve seen this happen on forums I was in for many years.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-cant-just-say-oh-that-doesnt
Interesting piece. I’d forgotten about Boys Don’t Cry.
I must say, I wish he would do a better job of proofreading his posts. This one and another I read earlier were a mess in places.
I read the article linked to nodding along, and read a few that he linked to with some enjoyment as I can’t stand affirming self-absorption though I don’t know how dominant it is in the culture. There was that slogan “if you don’t love me at my worst you don’t deserve me at my best” which set my teeth on edge. When I’m torturing kittens? Kicking away beggars’ cups? Shouting at waiters? My best must be to the power of infinity if it’s weighed up against that.
After reading a few articles though in which he went on about how life is hard and disappointing and unhappy most of the time I got fed up with him. Go for a walk. Do some gardening. Read Jane Austen. Visit a museum. You’ll forget about “life” and its miseries – you’ll just live it.
It would be nice if it were that easy.