When reading is not complicity
I don’t read exclusively things I already agree with. I read a range of things. I read some things I disagree with. I read some things I strongly disagree with.
Reading things one disagrees with isn’t the same thing as complicity with those things one disagrees with. Reading something ≠ complicity.
There are so many reasons for reading – they might even be infinite. One reads for information – for ideas – for inspiration – for pleasure – out of curiosity – for understanding – for getting a sense of different views on a subject.
That’s only a fraction of possible reasons for reading.
There’s something oddly cargo-cultish about thinking reading something is complicity with that something.
I read that site about Christian domestic discipline. That’s not complicity with goddy violence. I read stuff the Duggars write; that’s not complicity with the Duggars. I read press releases by IS; that’s not complicity with IS.
I hope that’s clear enough.
Quite clear. Anyone who thinks reading something equals agreeing with it or supporting it or being in cahoots with it is ignorant. And it’s unbelievable that there actually exist people who think reading something equals agreeing with it.
They are incorrect.
A bit evasive. Reading some site and participating in the conversation there are different things.
Thank you. I love being called a liar. I haven’t had enough of that lately.
John Morales @2, let’s just go ahead and say you are correct.
Now.
You have officially participated in a conversation on Ophelia’s site. Please elaborate on what that says about you. That you agree with everything Ophelia says? If she’s a TERF, that you are by extension also a TERF? Are you as complicit as she is in all her sins because you have participated in a conversation here? On the FB site, are you maybe half as complicit because you are one person removed from the conversation in which she participated?
Please, specify the implications. I need to understand just how tainted Ophelia has made all of us because we have participated on her comment threads.
Ophelia, I am most certainly not calling you a liar, nor (to be explicit) do I think you’ve lied.
—
TonyInBatavia, “let’s just go ahead and say you are correct”?
I am correct, so there is no need to suppose that arguendo, unless you really dispute that observation and participation are different things. FWTW, I don’t think participation in a partisan topic-specific forum entails endorsement of that forum’s position on the topic, either.
Specifically, the justification for the accusation of Ophelia was her documented participation in a supposedly known trans-antagonistic forum, not merely her reading and opining about it. Obviously, those who referred to that participation and adduced screencaps etc were themselves reading the site, so unless one imagines they were hypocrites, it was not the reading per se that they considered an endorsement of that forum.
So, my implication specifically is that this post does not address the actual accusation, if that was its intent.
“I am correct, so there is no need to suppose that arguendo”
It’s nice to see you finally explicitly type what you merely strongly imply in every other comment I’ve ever seen you write.
Tedious and insufferable no matter what the blog… at least you’re consistent, John.
John Morales, I will allow that your pedantry is often useful in pointing out flaws in a conversation. But you’re slacking on your self-pedantry. Participating in a discussion is not the same as being complicitous in someone ELSE’s contribution to that discussion. As I just said elsewhere: “Feeling” complicit when you’re actually not makes no sense and is a worthless emotion. It also appears to be the source [or a convenient excuse] for condemnation campaigns.
Jennifer,
I concur. Perhaps I should have written “I don’t think participation in a partisan topic-specific forum entails endorsement of that forum’s position [or other posters’ position] on the topic”.
To be charitable, it’s an untenable justification, but at least it’s a justification. ;)
That’s why I said excuse, and not justification.
Again we concur, Jennifer; at the time, I called it motivated reasoning (AKA confirmation bias driven by emotion).
(To be pedantic, I think of it as a rationalisation rather than an excuse, because the accusers consider themselves to be righteous)
John – regarding excuse versus rationalization, fair enough. I’ll revise my word usage accordingly.
Having been called pedantic from time to time by my nearest and dearest, I stand in awe of almost any conversation involving you John :-) To be fair it does sometimes nudge a conversation onto a more rigorous path.
Getting back to the OP, reading is obviously not complicity. How can you refute or even seek to modify an argument if you don’t read it in the first place (I assume we are beyond actually having to hear the spoken word and do not rely on someone else’s recounting of a quote (we saw enough repeated mangling of quotes a few weeks ago).
Reading is essentially passive though. It all becomes a bit fuzzy when you engage in a conversation that includes objectionable ideas. At this point, I’ll apologise to Ophelia, by using the facebook group and the slyme pit as examples, simply because they are close to the top of peoples minds today. Ophelia, if you find the following distressing please feel free to remove or edit this post.
Taking part in a multi-threaded conversation in which someone states objectionable ideas, and where you agree with them, is clearly problematic. It says something directly about you. Examples would be agreeing with trans haters about their hatred of or exclusion of trans women from womans toilets for example, or even that trans women could even be included under the label ‘woman’. It would also include the hur hur attitude in the pit regarding whatever the latest photoshit of the day happens to be.
However, taking part in exactly the same conversation to refute the stance taken is clearly not complicity. yet, unless you already know all the arguments to be refuted, and have come simply to argue, you are going to have to first engage in the conversation to gather information. In the course of that conversation you may agree on some points, disagree on others and remain silent or non-committal on more. What this says about you surely depends on the total context of your part of the conversation, not simply one part of it. Your stance or part of the conversation may well change over time as well, becoming less (or more) complicit in the problematic ideas as the conversation develops.
You might even remain as essentially a lurker, interjecting from time to time with minor comments of little real import one way or the other leaving little certainty as to what your stance actually is. In that case I guess we have to make a judgement call based on a persons body of work, how it changes and develops and how those who know them best and are regarded as friends behave themselves.
I’ve visited the pit enough to know that I did not find anything of value, and certainly nothing that outweighed the execrable shit. I would view any regular participant there with great suspicion. I don’t do facebook so only have screen grabs of the group that shall not be named to go by. I do have several years worth of thought provoking blogging to judge Ophelia by though. I’m still here, reading and participating, which I guess makes me nearly as complicit as Ophelia is for better or worse.
Sorry, that turned into a bit of a ramble. It’s late, I’m still at work and I’m probably not in the right frame of mind for nuance at the moment. You’re all bright, I’m sure you’ve figured out what I said above already.
Morales @ 5 –
Nonsense. There have been an array of “justifications”; they’re all over the map; they touch on everything and nothing; some of them cancel each other out. There is no one “justification” and there is no one accusation, there’s a ragbag of mess and shouting.
If, indeed. You’re not a mind-reader. Also, as I said, there is no single “actual accusation” so I can’t possibly have been addressing it.
Oh come on. We all know Christians who frequent atheist blogs and discussion boards as regulars and participate on multiple threads. Does anyone think that makes them complicit in the ideas of atheists?
As long as one doesn’t post in agreement with specific ideas can one be said to be complicit with them? I suppose in some cases online socialization with promoters of ideas or ways of behavior (eg the photoshopping culture of the slymepit) might raise suspicion of complicity, but still it would be a matter to be determined case-by-case.
I do think Rob has a good point about making a judgment call based on knowledge of a person’s body of work. Much of what I have seen unfold appears to be a divide between people giving you the benefit of the doubt, versus people reading your words and actions uncharitably. And of course, being in one of those camps I am biased — but I really think the other camp is extremely biased and refuses to keep that bias in check.
The same people who have already decided you’re “problematic” are primed to see a nefarious intent or attitude behind every move you make. I think if they learned you were merely lurking silently at that website of ill repute, they would simply shift their accusation and say that you were lurking their to study up on anti-trans arguments. I think I have actually seen people say that already.
So I think Rob has made good points, but I don’t know that he’s accounting for what I believe is an extreme and aggressive filter through which people have passed everything.
Rob #12, ramble or not, I liked your comment very much.
In one of the previous threads there was the following comment (strictly on topic, so I will quote it here):
I’m going to discuss (2) only, as what someone *wants* is no concern of mine. If we are not joining the place in order to criticize “the crap” (I assume we are allowed to do this), do we have an unconditional moral obligation to shun it? My answer:
(*) In general, NO.
(**) There are special cases where we should (moral sense) stay away, but we would better ascertain that these cases are VERY SPECIAL!
My take on (*): I see it as a case of a moral conflict, where different values can legitimately compete. Whether or not you are a social activist, you are also a human being. Your values – as I gather – comprise stuff like: knowledge, friendship, love, beauty, joy.
As a human being, you are not immune to such attractions, are you? Well, neither am I.
On this list, knowledge is – as I gather – the least problematic. As Ophelia wrote, you might go there “for ideas – for inspiration […] out of curiosity – for understanding – for getting a sense of different views on a subject.”. Indeed, mere curiosity could be your reason to join such a place. Maybe you don’t have this sort of folk in your vicinity and you just want to know what they are really like? (Incidentally, it was one of my main motivations to join FtB some years ago – sorry people, but initially you looked rather exotic to me. That’s a fact.) Maybe you want to understand what it is like to be “one of them”? Alternatively, maybe they are discussing the topics unpopular almost anywhere else and you want to broaden your horizons? In such a situation, you decide to prioritize knowledge over other values. And yeah, I think that often enough we have a moral right to such decisions.
But how about the other values on my list – friendship and so on? (Caveat: no connection to Ophelia’s situation that I know of.) How can you allow yourself to find friends in a place with a lot of crap? Wouldn’t it be the really problematic part?
Special cases apart, no, I don’t think so. This is not at least how I function, nor can I see any reason to change it. Some years ago I joined a Catholic forum (yeah, mainly to quarrel). Horrendous views. Sexism. Homophobia. Woo. All of this in abundance. And … some very nice, likeable and valuable people over there. Just to be clear: yes, I still consider Catholicism generally harmful. Nevertheless, I ended up in friendly relations with some Catholics. In effect, I didn’t want to be harsh to them and finally I prioritized such friendships over other values. Not an ideological choice, but a human one, I would say. I still do consider it a good decision; I think also that in such situations we have the right to be driven by different values and to prioritize them differently, without immediate accusations of “complicity”.
My take on (**): yes, I would definitely stay away from a Khmer Rouge internet forum. There are exceptions, sure. However, the problem arises when exceptions are turned into a norm – when people accuse you of being “complicit” whenever you start being even moderately friendly with people in a place which contains (choose just one):
– homophobic comments,
– sexist comments,
– libertarian comments,
– pro-right wing comments,
– anti-Muslim comments,
– anti-abortion comments,
– pro-Catholic comments
…
in short, almost all sort of comments which do not fit your own cherished version of the leftist political standpoint. I’m strongly against such ideological restrictions imposed on relations between people. To repeat: yes, there are exceptions, but I wouldn’t want to live in a world with such a norm.
Jennifer @ 15 –
Well yes, and the odd thing in this case (it seems odd to me at least) is that the loudest and most venomous of the people who’ve decided I’m “problematic” have some acquaintance with my body of work and were fine with it – then suddenly all in a minute they were horrified by it.
Reading is not complicity, nor is participating in a discussion per se.
After that we go into a territory of nuance. One of the problem with rape jokes is that the one rapist in the group hears the other guys laughing, or at least not protesting, and thinks “they’re all like me, they’d all do the same if they dared”. So where does that start? How horrible does something someone says or writes have to be before we have an obligation to express disagreement, leave the conversation, or at any rate not give positive reinforcement? There are studies that show that in an environment where sexist jokes are tolerated, people act more sexist, though they do not hold more sexist views. Not because the environment makes them so, but because the social signals show them such behaviour is tolerated or even expected in the group.
My understanding is that many people took issue with your joining in conversations lightheartedly (e.g. with a joke) which had included clearly transphobic things like “Do not claim to be a woman” or “Do not claim that we have to pretend you are a woman” (in all caps). You may not have even seen that part of the conversation, you responded to something else. Still the impression given is that you are OK with this kind of statement.
It might have helped if you had responded to this being pointed out by saying “Ugh that’s horrible, I didn’t see that”. But then again it might not. Right now, I think it’s pretty much a hopeless situation: when people are cataloguing all your transgressions, they are no longer interested in dialogue, just in condemning you. I’m sorry, that must suck.
They were never interested in dialogue – they were interested in prosecution and shunning.
Jennifer @15
No, I have not accounted for that in my post above. Neither have I accounted for the inverse (people blindly accepting their favourite person as perfect).
As I suspect most of us here would, I’ve assumed that personal filters aside people will carry out a fair minded and intelligent parsing of the available data to reach their conclusions. Sadly, it’s not an ideal world and instead we have people increasingly taking polarised positions on almost everything.
I’m still trying to process why this is and I don’t think it is simple. I have certainly noticed a change in public discourse both in my local community and around the world over the last 35 years (my politically active life). In part we have the rise of the new right, who tend to (want to) see things in black and white. this has reduced one side of the debate to slogans. The right has also used 30 years of ascendency to increasingly de-fund science and education and to make the economic and social position of much of the middle class perilous. That is corrosive on two grounds. It saps the energy and time available to those who would combat them. It also leads to a reduction in the intellectual toolbox available to future generations. Frankly the left isn’t much better. unions and political parties tended to try to protect outmoded styles of activism that had ossified into special interests, while belief in post modernist woo fed into an anti-intellectual stance that is simply not equipped to defeat the more cohesive right. throw in a solid dose of the kind of devour your allies mind set and it’s hardly surprising that the bulk of the western worlds population are individually progressive but collectively governed by conservatives.
The above is really only a crude summary of a few of the issues. It’s also meta to the current discussion and would need it’s own thread or threads to explore further.
tl;dr: Ignorance and ant-intellectualism is destroying our culture and society.
But why? Is the kick of self-righteousness so high? Do they really believe splintering into tinier and tinier groups is the way to social justice? (Die heretic!)
If you can’t even talk about a disagreement with people whom you agree with 99% of the time, how do want to address society at large? I just don’t get it. To me this is a no-brainer, but the social justice mob doesn’t get it. They don’t need to agree with you. They don’t have to approve of everything you do. You can agree to disagree. Civilised people do it all. the. time.
Oh I don’t think anyone has any illusions that I’m perfect. I mention some of my faults too often for that, for one thing, and my faults are obvious, for another thing.
I’m not their favorite person, either. Their favorite blogger, some of them, possibly, but person, of course not.
Delft @ 21 – I don’t know. It’s something special about trans issues, that makes it for some reason necessary to treat every tiny deviation as Horrible Crime, but what the something special is, what the reason is, I don’t know.
Ophelia @23 Is it really only the one subject? If so it may be because the ground is so insecure (we really know so little about it), so it needs to be defended with particular ferociousness.
Delft, yes I think so. I’ve seen it happen to many other people – usually feminist women, so there’s no problem with that then, sigh – and it certainly happened to me. People who had been friends went rabid in a matter of seconds. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Mind you, many of them have a tendency to simplistic, yes-or-no thinking…But still, it was (and is) bizarre.
Some of it may be fear – they don’t want to get the marked stone themselves, so they foam at the mouth at the latest Designated Enemy to be sure no one points at them next.
Ophelia, I wasn’t being entirely clear, my head’s a bit of a muddle at the moment and I was swapping between the specific (but sort of general case – the overly aggressive filtering) to a general case (the uncritical examination of the favourite).
In fact, one of the things that I noted during the whole meltdown was that the preponderance f the attacks on you did appear to be through an overly aggressive filter or unquestioning acceptance of the stance of people who used an overly aggressive filter. By contrast the vast majority of your supporters seemed to me to be taking the stance that while isolated statements could be read badly, that seemed out of character for what we know of you and the rest of your body of work. A number of commentators who openly supported you did (and in some cases have continued) to express some reservations about specific instances.
In large part I think you are sadly just collateral damage in the larger culture war I allude to @20 above. Individuals may have nuance. Mobs do not.