If I could ban the phrase “go educate yourself” from the world I would.
The argument “the oppressed should not have to explain their oppression to their oppressors” is stupid. Sure, but (some of) the people who know that the oppression is happening certainly need to explain that it’s happening to people who don’t. Otherwise how will the people know? Well, they’re supposed to ‘educate themselves.’ Occasionally the suggestion that they Google it will be provided.
Even beyond the recursion here (I mean, someone had to explain it at some point for the information to be available on Google), how the fuck is someone who has no idea supposed to figure out which people are sensible and which people are full of shit? Hell, I encounter this problem in educating myself about race all the time. Is my “that’s bullshit” reaction towards, say, “mohawks are cultural appropriation!” because I’m a white person and therefore kinda racist, or because it is actually bullshit?
(Sometimes I wonder how certain sections of Tumblr expect that people learning about oppression is going to work, given that they are against marginalized people having to explain things, but also against privileged people taking the leadership/spokesperson roles you get for being really really good at explaining things.)
Look, you don’t HAVE to educate people. There’s such a thing as comparative advantage. For some people, their comparative advantage lies in explaining Social Justice 101 to people. For other people, their comparative advantage lies in organizing, volunteering, going to protests, fundraising, donating money, doing research, developing theory, or just generally being good people.
Even if you’ve decided you want to educate people, you don’t have to educate everyone. Everyone needs time off and you are hardly a failure at social justice if you’re like “nope, don’t have the energy to explain why this person is wrong” (and it is incredibly entitled of people to expect you to do so). Personally, although I quite enjoy explaining social justicey things to people, I only do so via blog post or one-on-one face-to-face conversation with people I know are engaging in good faith and whom I can learn from in return; other forms of argument, I’ve found, tend to make people angry more than they make people agree with me or make me question my beliefs.
A corollary of the “education has to happen but not everyone has to educate people” belief is that not all blogs are about educating people. In fact, I can observe about four categories of social justice blogs. Most of the categories aren’t pure, and nearly every blog is in two or three. Still, I put representative examples (which I do not necessarily endorse) in parentheses:
1) 101 spaces, intended to teach people the basics of social justice theory (i.e. Finally a Feminism 101 Blog)
2) Spaces to develop theory, discuss research, or argue about implications, nuances, and consequences of current theory (i.e. Radical TransFeminist)
3) News aggregation services that tell social justice types about news stories they need to know about (i.e. Shakesville)
4) Entertainment/comedy sites (i.e. Manboobz)
Most sites are combinations of a couple different types: for instance, The Pervocracy has some 101 stuff, some new theory, and some pure entertainment. The problem is that three of the four types are really not open to educating people. For news aggregation and entertainment sites, educating people is kind of a derail from their actual purpose. Many of the readers neither want to educate people nor are they good at it. While “does rape culture mean all men are evil?” is a new and interesting question for many of the people first learning about feminism, to most of the readers of and commenters on these sites it’s been discussed to death. And even worse many questions may be asked both by honestly curious people and by people whose goal is to explain to the feminists why they are WRONG, dead WRONG, about X thing that feminists are actually right about. That means that honest questioners get hit with a burst of hatred.
Theory sites are, if possible, even more hostile, because educating people runs directly counter to their actual purpose. It is extremely difficult to have a conversation about, say, whether good consent best practices are actually protection against abusers, given the history of some abusers of using them to pressure people to have sex, if you continually have to stop to have the conversation about whether good consent should be practiced in the first place. In fact, there are several conversations– off the top of my head, the “there is abuse in the BDSM community” conversation and the “porn is sometimes kyriarchal” conversation– that have been delayed for decades because people were so busy with the “BDSM is not abuse” and the “porn should not be banned” conversations. ETA: In the comments, Zhinxy says this is not actually true. Sorry everyone!
Of course then we get into the problem that most of the sites that do 101 also do theory and news and entertainment stuff, and “where does education happen?” becomes a serious problem.
Honestly I think the best thing people can do, if they have honest questions and don’t know how to answer them, is email/Tweet/otherwise contact not in blog comments feminists that seem open to answering questions and explaining things. (Hi! Here I am! I am really much nicer when I’m not moderating!)
About ozyfrantz
I think people have a moral imperative to educate others. Teaching—the transmission of knowledge—is the reason we have the world as it exists today. Any technology more advanced than the wheel, any language, any code of ethics wouldn’t exist if people hadn’t been willing to educate others.
That doesn’t mean that people have to explain anything all the time. The invention of information storage (scrolls, books, internet) allows people to educate themselves (or more accurately, one person to educate many in a non-simultaneous manner). I get where the “Go educate yourself.” people come from; somebody else has already explained things better than they probably could. But if you are not educating somebody, the least you could do to fulfill your duty to education is expedite their learning process and give them a link.
So, long story short, the solution to this problem is to provide people with links instead of “Go educate yourself.” Also, I need to write shorter comments.
Sure, But as Ozy points out, a lot of the hostility is not from the 398,204th instance of getting “Hey, I don’t understand [thing] and I’m a little clueless about where to start, help me out?” but “I actually know exactly what you mean by [thing] and what I think of [thing], but I’m going to pretend I’m a newbie so that I can waste your time and attack your explanations. BITCH.” So much of the latter happens that people (unfortunately) tend to assume that’s what the former really is.
In other words, concern trolls. And the problem with dubbing someone a concern troll is that it requires knowing someone’s intentions, which is always dicey. Since, as far as I know, feminists aren’t psychic, assuming one or the other out of the gate is a bad call.
And there’s nothing wrong with attacking explanations if one honestly sees flaws in those explanations. In fact, it’s basically the Socratic method. When more reasoned objections or questions meet the exact same sort of hostility, the problem is not on the end of the person asking the questions.
I have a solution to part of this problem: avoid the social justice pit of tumblr at all costs. Hive of scum, villainy, and irrationality if I ever saw one.
Also, I’m still struck by the fact that you still keep linking to manboobz, but also claim to be against virginity/body shaming, which both the site and the name deal very heavily in. It performs a valuable service, but surely there’s a way to take the high road here.
Yeah. Tumblr social justice is a mess. THere are some very, very good parts. (Is This Feminist, and Opppressed Brown Girls Doing THigns!) among others, but you get too much of “What do you mean my identity doesn’t make sense with objective fact” and a fair amount of “How dare you have any ideas about me without being me” as well as appropriation, possibly bullshit anti-appropriation, people who refuse to explain whether or not something is appropriation, and a lot of subversivism/recentering.
but you get … a fair amount of “How dare you have any ideas about me without being me”
If I reframe this as “How dare you be sure that your ideas about me are far superior to my ideas about me without being me?” would it irritate you a little less?
I disagree that Shakesville is the best example of a news aggregator site: I think the best example of that kind of site is pretty clearly Feministing. Shakesville often does news, but it just as often has plenty of commentary and discussion on not-necessarily-even-recent things as well. It’s closer to Feministe than Feministing.
Fair. I have *never* read Feministing and have no idea what it’s on about.
Good post.
I have to say that recently I’ve felt more and more disinclined to join in on feminist discussions (on social networks mostly) because if I profess ignorance of a particular term, make some attempt to try and catch up or question some aspect of how a theory is being applied, I get politely accused of either privilege (I think unfairly) , “you wouldn’t understand” or get tossed some link about the general issue in an abstract way that doesn’t necessarily relate directly to the topic in discussion.
Which has the knock on affect of turning me away from the particular discussion altogether. Though it is irrational, it also taints my opinion of the speakers and thereby emotionally shuts me off from their opinion in the future as well.
While it make sense to me that feminists need #2 spaces but then posting into public social media spaces blurs the lines between all 4 types at least for readers like me.
I think the whole, “I’m not here to educate you” bit is just passive-aggressive BS.
[PERSON 1] How dare you say that! You are obviously a rape apologist/misogynist/whatever.
[PERSON 2] What do you mean? What did I do wrong?
[PERSON 1] I”m not here to educate you!
Seriously, it’s like a scene from my first marriage.
This is why I explain the quick-and-dirty basics of things my debate opponents are ignorant of, then give links to related references so they can read more.
I may not have time to thoroughly explain everything, but I can damn well make sure people have an opportunity to actually LEARN something instead of just a condescending “Just Google it.”
I’ve never heard “check your privilege” or “this isn’t feminism 101″ or “educate yourself” on a social justice/feminist site in a context in which it didn’t directly translate to, “shut up and don’t come back until you agree with me.”
It isn’t about education at all, except to the extent that it reveals the belief that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to agree with what the writer/commenter berating you is saying.
Of course, the only people it’s acceptable to learn from on said issue is someone with the correct slot in the Oppression Olympics for the particular discussion. That’s usually (conveniently) the person telling you to shut up. And they’re not doing any teaching, so … umm … shut up and don’t come back until you agree with me.
This is my experience as well, though to be fair after it happened twice I gave up on feminist-labeled sites as a whole. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “education” sites are even worse about it, since they’ve actually gone to the trouble of setting up all those 101 pages and have plenty of link-ammo to shoot you with.
This has been my direct experience, as well. It seems to fold into the same “Derailing for Dummies” approach to discourse. “Derailing for Dummies” is an attempt to bend the laws of Formal Logic to better suit a particular point of view, and this is the same sort of off-hand conversation stopper that is employed far too often to just shut up any and all opposing views.
Thank you for saying that the best way to ask honest questions is to email/tweet/etc but not in comments. Honestly, each person thinks they are the first one to ask an honest question in the comments, but even if everyone is well-meaning, having to answer “what does cis mean?” “why do black women hate when their hair is touched?” etc etc is just plain freaking EXHAUSTING if it happens every day. Which it totally does, if your blog gets enough traffic. Sometimes you just want to have a conversation with people who already know all the 101. There are few enough safe internet spaces as it is.
Excellent article. The problem is endemic on the internet and I think nobody has any idea how to fix it.
Being a tumblr girl who sticks herself firmly into the fandom section of the site, I’d like to rec fuckyeahsocialjusticesally – a meme blog with pictures like this > http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4jexxnxdH1rp5jfvo1_400.jpg. It is so very amusing also when the Sallies themselves reblog with (actual quote) – “OMG I CAN’T EVEN – check your privilege!”
off the top of my head, the “there is abuse in the BDSM community” conversation and the “porn is sometimes kyriarchal” conversation– that have been delayed for decades because people were so busy with the “BDSM is not abuse” and the “porn should not be banned” conversations.
- This is just not the case. I know you’re very active in the community and embrace it with enthusiasm, but please consider that you’re still relatively new and by definition green when it comes to these things. Discussions of abuse in the community and kyriarchy in porn from the bdsm and pro – porn / pro sex work communities have been going on for decades. I’d be happy to point you in the direction of that history.
I’d be happy to read about it, and I’m sorry that I made an error.
I just wrote out a long-ish (and thoughtful, IMO) comment and TGMP just auto-reloaded and wiped it out before I could do my final checkover and post it. Could someone _please_ tell TGMP to disable auto-reload on their entire site. It is not a helpful feature, and causes nothing but inconvenience. If someone wishes to reload the page, they can do it themselves. It is not difficult!
*sigh*
Okay, long post abridged:
@Ozy:
I agree with your post.
Also, four stages of learning:
1. You don’t know that you don’t know.
2. You know that you don’t know.
3. You know that you know.
4. You don’t know that you know (e.g. implicit knowledge, like being fluent in a language, you don’t think about it).
When someone is still in stage #1, something has to make them aware of their ignorance and move them into stage #2 before they can even decide to educate themselves.
Also, there are tons of important issues in the world (sexism, racism, classism, political corruption, environmental issues, animal abuse, human trafficking, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.). People have to be selective about the depth to which they educate themselves about any given issue or set of issues, lest they not have any time to live their life.
Also, “What did I do wrong?” “You should know what you did wrong!!!!” I used to do that as a kid. Some people still do it as adults. It’s totally stupid, childish, counter-productive, etc. People shouldn’t do that. However, when it’s not just one person doing something wrong, but instead is something that a multitude of people are doing wrong, it can be exhausting and unreasonable to educate people on a individual basis, and I think that’s where the “educate yourself” meme comes from.
But I agree that there then needs to be accessable resources with which people can educate themselves. It can also be difficult to educate oneself given that e.g. even educated people often disagree about things (e.g. feminism is not a monolith), so who does one choose to listen to? At some point a person has to make up their own mind, and that will guaranteedly conflict with some people.
I don’t disagree with any of this, and have often pondered how education–which everyone agrees is good–can happen without those who are knowledgeable taking the time to educate. And I think that if someone communicates their lack of understanding in a respectful way, at BARE MINIMUM they should get a polite direction elsewhere, rather than being chided or treated aggressively.
That said.
I think there is a good reason some people are quick to throw out the “it’s not my job to educate you” line. It’s exhausting, and in the context of privilege and power it shifts the responsibility for the oppressor’s bigotry/etc. to the oppressed person in a really icky way. So I am all for individuals and communities having the right to refuse 101ing it up pretty much any time they want.
I mostly agree with this.
I did see some people who decided they were going to refuse to educate. But their idea was more along the lines of ‘no need for allies. We will do it alone’. Doubt that would work but they had made the actual decision.
Along with this, one of the most annoying SJS things is use of the “there is no reverse racism” trope to take away any and all language and silence a white (but what shade of white?) person’s attempt to complain about prejudice. You could just say that nobody who’s white has your suffering and probably be correct, but instead people invalidate complaints and take away descriptive language.
I do understand that for some people there is this feeling like educating people is just yet another burden to add on to being black/asian/queer/female/ect, that just adds to their frustration.
But *someone* has to be a teacher. It took me 1/2 an hour to find out what a “kitchen” is. Try coming up with google search parameters for something that shares a name with something else when you have no idea what that thing actually IS. It’s like telling a kid if they want to know how to learn how to spell “psychology” they should look it up in the dictionary…
Just to illustrate my point I’m not going o ell you what it means either.
One person’s “burden” is another’s opportunity.
It’s amazing how many people who consider themselves free thinkers who have de-programmed themselves from so many societal cues and biases feel neither responsibility to help others achieve their feat nor any excitement about sharing outside their particular demographic pigeonhole.
If everybody else walks around in such a fog about how things *really* are except for you and a few of your favorite bloggers, wouldn’t you want to share your clear-eyed genius with the world? Even if that world includes people who don’t share your particular oppressions and afflictions?
One thing that always pisses me off is when feminists tell me I’m privileged as a male, check your privilege, male privilege, whatever privilege, but they never follow up with specific examples of how I’m privileged. All I’ve ever gotten was “wage gap” which has been refuted to death, and “It’s like…life is like this videogame right. And you’re playing on the easiest setting.”
I would love to hear what kind of advantages I’m getting in life just by being male. If nothing else, just so I won’t feel like I’m getting completely screwed over.
I mean… what kind of response do you expect when you frame the question this way? “male privilege” is a pretty abstract thing, there is no guarantee that you can break it down to your individual level and see that it is helping you out in this or that specific way. Personally, speaking as a woman, I think I would find it advantageous not to have my body sexualized in non-sexual contexts, to be able to speak forcefully without being considered a total harpy bitch, and not to get gender policed every time I cut my hair short. But do those read as “advantages” to you? I have no way of knowing. For all I know you feel like shit because you aren’t sufficiently appreciated as a sexual being, you notice people acting like you’re some kind of threat every time you raise your voice, and you would catch just as much crap for wearing your hair long as I do for wearing mine short.
It’s the kind of thing one could argue all day. So it’s an argument that I avoid. Honestly as long as you are seriously interested in exploring women’s experiences, who gives a shit what you think of male privilege? Not me…
You can find more information about male privilege here. It’s flawed but a good introduction. Be sure to look at the citations/further discussion, too.
Alright thanks! I’m looking into it.
That list has been read, discused and debunked.
Chiefly among the things debunked is the rape discussion, where amp first cuts out the prison population. Cutting out this part of the male population proves that not being raped is not something that every male is free from. The second argument is that not being raped is not an unjustly obtained luxury. It is a basic human right.
Yeah I hear you on this. It’s a really tough road, both trying to educate ourselves, and trying to educate.
One thing I wish we would all get into our heads, is that not knowing can be OK. There is neither a burning need to cuss someone out for not being in on the terminology, nor a burning need to ask every single question we have about someone’s view RIGHT NOW!!! and demand a ton of explanations.
Really, nobody starts out understanding what the term “rape culture” means or what the nuances of white privilege might be. It can take a long damn time to internalize lessons that the wider culture is actively preventing us from learning. Just sitting and listening is OK, it’s what I do on blogs like NSWATM most of the time. Some male concerns still seem like they are coming from a world away and like I’ll never really get it, but other things, I do feel like I have learned and truly understood.
Also, arguments and misunderstandings happen. This is just one of those things that’s unavoidable when you step into the arena of trying to understand prejudice and injustice. Both the teacher and the learner have got to factor that into the situation.
Of course, none of this takes trolling into account. I don’t even know what to do about people who come in WANTING an argument and not caring to understand anything. Liberal use of the banhammer I suppose.
Derailing for Dummies was, as far as I can tell, the worst thing to ever happen to social justice work online. It gave the megalomaniacs who had joined to get a cheap power trip an easy means of controlling the discussion. All they had to do was catch a dissenter (or even someone who was agreeing with them!) using the wrong word, and BAM! Instant KO! Not only that, but because their bullying was couched in righteous language, they got to have hordes of followers who were eager to do the right thing, who saw them as confident leaders. It got to the point where I realizes that there was not a single way I could voice a disagreement without ending up at the bottom of a dogpile led by one of those stock phrases.
Thank you for using your position to speak out against one of the worst of them. I withdrew altogether because, being a man, all of my criticisms of “educate yourself” would be instantly dismissed.
Finally Feminism 101 is a bad idea unless they are supposed to be non-representative of feminism (and then what use are they as a 101 site?).
This is the site the brought such gems as female privilege doesn’t (and cannot exist).
And that sexism against men cannot exist, because sexism is always a Marxist ideal of Group A oppressing Group B, and women cannot oppress men.
Never mind that sexism is System vs Group A and B, nothing as simple as Group A vs Group B (this only works when either group is numerically outnumbered, women certainly are not). With everyone complicit to a degree or another in the System in question.
But saying that on Feministe gets me tarred as an evil misogynist MRA.
I’m just saying that without fixing the system itself, we’re going nowhere, (and this means fixing both male and female issues, not just one side), and I get told that “men should do their own activism, not have feminists do it for them” (for say, DV shelters). As if there were no male feminists, no non-male advocates for men and other forgotten victims, and if no one helped feminists pass their advocacy (let alone patriarchy itself helped it pass – since it values the protection of women).
It’s not like VAWA got passed only by women. The gendered part of it is also patriarchy.
Let’s not forget the different standards for judging what is a privilege. A male privilege is taken at face value, a potential female privilege is dismissed due to some moral underpining.