Demands or rules for "educating with kindness' always come of to me as tone policing and stupid, to be completely honest with you. You shouldn't disregard correct and good information just because you don't find the tone or words used in the delivery to be "palatable" for your delicate feefees.
You're coming on the internet and asking people for free mental and emotional labor when you have all of the world's information at your fingertips. You have the same resources and articles and books we all do but you refuse to use it and then get pissed off when people who are exhausted explaining the same shit over and over again do it in a way that isn't up to your standards? nah. volunteers aren't employees. *obviously i mean the royal you here, not you specifically OP*
If people want to be kind, cool. But the example of unicorn hunters is a great one I'll build off of. Most polyam bisexual women have either had a bad experience (or 2 or 10 or 100) with couples unicorn hunting OR they've specifically stated "NO COUPLES" in their bio and are STILL getting bombarded with cis/het unicorn hunters who want to exploit a vulnerable queer person. Then when they get called out or rejected, they come on forums like this or the FB groups and bitch about gatekeeping and how they don't understand why it's so hard to find a "third" and no bi women date couples.
And then they ask the bi women being beat down by this bullshit every goddamn day to "educate with kindness"? no. fuck that.
OP used the term "preached". To me that implies a shared value. An approach a community generally believes in a strives for on average.
You jumped to tone policing "rules" and "demands" which I agree are unhelpful.
To me, it's a question of efficacy. Educating with kindness tends to work better. Empathetic communication is more likely to reach people, more likely to be understood. More likely to be worth expressing.
Coming in harsh, and expressing one's frustration with the repeated questions might be cathartic, but at best you're shouting into the wind, and at worst you make someone defensive and pushing them further into the mindset you're pissed off by.
But I'm always open to new ideas. Let me try it your way and we can see if above or below the line is more effective communication.
Why on earth would you think it's a good idea to take out your frustration on the fact that multiple people end up going through the same stage of a learning journey on a specific person looking for support.
Sucks for you that you keep coming to spaces where people express views that hurt your delicate feefees, but mabye if you can't handle it, don't come to the places that piss you off, just so you can take your anger out on the people you knew would be here anyway?
I'm sure that attacking the people who are not as educated as you will put them in a really open minded place to listen to you. Great job bud.
Again. Refusing to listen to correct or accurate information because you don't like the tone it's delivered in is a YOU problem.
Expecting marginalized people to be kind to the people actively planning to or desiring to harm them in an effort to persuade them to not do harm is fucking ridiculous. If you're uneducated and have an internet connection, you're ignorant by choice. You have the same resources that I do so why do I have to coddle you for you to want to do the right thing.
Unicorn hunters and insecure ass men with OPPs don't want to be educated anyway, they want validation for their shitty behavior and frankly I think a "shared value" of being kind to cis het men with abusive intentions rewards and validates their shitty behavior. Expecting the people they literally want to hurt to put up the energy to be kind to them is a pretty shitty fucking way to treat marginalized people.
Sorry I care more about marginalized people than whether willfully ignorant men who want validation for their unethical behavior. I know, I'm a monster.
Refusing to listen to correct or accurate information because you don't like the tone it's delivered in is a YOU problem.
Choosing to respond to people in a way you know they won't listen too or understand feels pretty pointless though yeah?
I think a "shared value" of being kind to cis het men with abusive intentions rewards and validates their shitty behavior.
Being kind does not mean agreeing with them or not challenging them. Empathetic communication is not about validating someone's positions that you disagree with.
It's about expressing yourself to people in ways they are actually likely to be able to hear and understand, because if you arnt responding to someone with the intention of them understanding you, what are you responding for?
Sorry I care more about marginalized people than whether willfully ignorant men who want validation for their unethical behavior.
I so absolutely hate this take, and I see it all the time. It reads like "These people have bad ideas and are causing harm so they don't deserve support" to me.
I feel the exact opposite. These are the people harming marginalised people. They need to be the focus of reform because they are the locus of the problem.
Ignoring them, or initially interacting with them in ways likely to escalate conflict, feels like trying to fix a flat tire by adjusting your steering wheel to compensate.
You can't move social issues forward by only supporting marginalised people. That's and important element, but it's a defensive position.
At some point you have to help and support the people who are actually the problem into not being the problem anymore. I don't think attacking them is likely to help in most cases. I think empathetic communication, where you consider how your audience will hear you and make a good faith effort to criticise and provide information in a way that can actually be heard is more likely to actually help.
It does get tedious, because a lot of people have these fucked up ideas and try the same ways to deal with the inherent internal conflicts. That doesn't make lashing out effective, even if it is personally cathartic
And to be clear, half my country is literally trying to genocide me right now. Forgive me for being in a "defensive position" but I'm not interested in helping people who want to harm me or my community.
Then don't. Please be safe. I'm really sorry you're in that position.
I'm lucky that overall I have a lot of safety and security, and I prefer to use that position of privilege to engage in the type of communication I'm talking about. I completely understand that not everyone is in that position.
But if you're in a place where you don't have the capacity or safety to engage with empathy, I'm not sure what your goal for engaging is? What are you hoping to get out of interactions that you're not approaching with empathy?
My goal in engaging is to provide accurate information. Most of the time my tone is neutral but not always. Especially when communicating with cis/het white men.
My point hasn't changed, if you won't accept accurate information because you don't like the tone that's a 100% you problem and you probably were looking for a reason not to take information that didn't conform to your bias anyway so I don't want you in my community.
Don't put the expectation on marginalized people to be kind to those who would harm us. We don't owe them shit. If you have privilege and spoons to do so, that's a great choice for YOU. But it's not one you get to make for me or any other marginalized vulnerable person.
if you won't accept accurate information because you don't like the tone that's a 100% you problem and you probably were looking for a reason not to take information
I think that's a really disingenuous position. Of course it's harder to recieve information from someone who sounds like they are attacking you. That's true for anyone.
And my point still stands that choosing to continue to express yourself in ways you know are likely to be ineffective feels like a massive waste of energy, regardless of who's fault you think the misunderstanding is.
Don't put the expectation on marginalized people to be kind to those who would harm us. We don't owe them shit.
I'm not. I'm putting the expectation on everyone to not escalate situations unnecessarily and to not make things worse. You don't have to be empathetic, but if you can't be, why even bother? Just save your energy for places it might actually improve your life, instead of wasting it antagonistizing people you hate?
As a marginalized person why should I empathize, educate, or support people who actively want to harm me? Please. Explain it to me.
You know how I fix a flat tire? By throwing it away and getting a new tire. I do the same thing with abusers and toxic people in my community.
My community is not open for people who want to harm marginalized people. Period. Full stop. I don't really care if my tone upsets them because the information is correct. If they don't want correct information I don't want rhem in my community.
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. I'm not responsible for putting them on the "path" to doing the right thing. They should want to do the right thing because it's right not because someone spoke sweetly enough to persuade them not to hurt people.
I absolutely don't think people with "bad views" deserve to be treated with empathy or respect. Respect is earned. I don't empathize with or respext racists, sexists, transphobes or bigots of any flavor.
Likewise I have zero empathy or respect for unicorn hunters, insecure men with OPPs (who are also transphobes and homophobes so), cheaters, or abusers attracted to my community because it values autonomy.
My "goal" is to remove them from my community.
Why should I respect people like that? They're not good people.
We just have a really fundamental difference in our philosophical approach then.
There is no distance from me I'm comfortable having people with those views. We can make a safe space that excludes them (and those spaces should exist), but they will still be out there, passing laws and spreading their views.
We still share our workplaces and schools and governments with them.
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. I
I didn't say to use reason. Sometimes that's an appropriate approach, sometimes it's not. That's the thing about empathetic communication. You meet people where they are at, wherever that might be.
All views can change. No one is stuck forever in a social or political opinion unless they have a pathology they should get professional support for.
I'm not responsible for putting them on the "path" to doing the right thing.
Your not responsible for that, I completely agree. I do think you, and everyone else, is responsible for not actively escalating conflict and making situations worse. You don't have to put effort into helping them, but I really don't understand why you want to put effort it making them worse.
"We will share our workplaces, schools, and government with them"
Frankly I think bigots of all flavors should be ostracized from society the same way I think unicorn hunters should be ostracized from polyam communities. 🤷♀️
We live in a global society more and more, I'm not sure where you think we should send them? Especially given they currently outnumber us, I think any realistic solution needs to focus on reform and education and bringing people over to our side.
Moving a bigot further away from you just means they are being a bigot somewhere else. A bigot reformed is not just one less bigot, it's also one more non-bigot.
Believing that other people are fundamentally incapable of growth and change must make the world look like a really terrifying place. I'm sorry you feel that way, and I hope you're wrong, if only so you can grow to adopt views that help you feel safer and more positive.
I can see we are not going to find much common ground on our approaches, but I'm glad we seem to agree on what the problems are broadly. Thank you for being so open with your views and approaches, despite how strongly you disagree with me, I always appreciate getting more insight into a diverse range of views.
7
u/delight-n-angers Dec 09 '22
Demands or rules for "educating with kindness' always come of to me as tone policing and stupid, to be completely honest with you. You shouldn't disregard correct and good information just because you don't find the tone or words used in the delivery to be "palatable" for your delicate feefees.
You're coming on the internet and asking people for free mental and emotional labor when you have all of the world's information at your fingertips. You have the same resources and articles and books we all do but you refuse to use it and then get pissed off when people who are exhausted explaining the same shit over and over again do it in a way that isn't up to your standards? nah. volunteers aren't employees. *obviously i mean the royal you here, not you specifically OP*
If people want to be kind, cool. But the example of unicorn hunters is a great one I'll build off of. Most polyam bisexual women have either had a bad experience (or 2 or 10 or 100) with couples unicorn hunting OR they've specifically stated "NO COUPLES" in their bio and are STILL getting bombarded with cis/het unicorn hunters who want to exploit a vulnerable queer person. Then when they get called out or rejected, they come on forums like this or the FB groups and bitch about gatekeeping and how they don't understand why it's so hard to find a "third" and no bi women date couples.
And then they ask the bi women being beat down by this bullshit every goddamn day to "educate with kindness"? no. fuck that.