The title of this post is not a dirty joke in binary, it’s just the best a very tired man can do. It has recently become apparent to me that 101 essays such as ours, while helpful and no doubt useful to many people, are not quite sufficient.
Here the 101 analogy is useful. It refers to the traditional class-numbering system at American universities, where, for example, Literature 101 teaches you the basics you’ll need to take Lit 205, Lit 314, and eventually “What do you mean there are no jobs for a literature major?”
Thing is, it’s still college-level work. Lit 101 assumes that you know what a narrative point of view means, just like Bio 101 assumes you know what cells are. Unfortunately, in the past generation, many American universities have had to add pre-101 classes, such as Writing 075 (“This is a comma.”) or Biology 080 (“Evolution was not made up by liberals to trick you.”) or Math 045 (“It’s fucking long division, people.”).
In this same spirit, I feel like I should write a few words on the intellectual prerequisites for Social Justice 101.
We are, alas, a solipsistic species. Each of us is permanently trapped in our own head, in our own experience, our own opinions. Sometimes it seems like a majority of the cognitive biases that keep us stupid all boil down to “Everything is basically like I already think it is, and if it isn’t, it should be.” This is not a sin or a failure, it’s just the lousy OS our brains came pre-loaded with, and we all have to deal with it.
This, then, is the prerequisite I’m talking about, the thing that’s very hard to learn and that school didn’t teach you: Other people’s experiences of the world are not less real than your own.
No, seriously. I know they seem less real; they’re different from your own experience, which means they contradict 100% of the data you’ve got to work with. But (and this is, no joking intended, the tricky part) the world is not all about you.
That is a legitimately difficult idea to absorb. For each of us, all of the experience we have of the world has been all about us. In my personal experience, everything that’s ever happened in human history is measured by its impact on me personally. The importance of the First World War is whether I can use it in a screenplay, and to a lesser extent how it shaped the 20th-century history that led to my watching Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors when I was eight. When someone tells me how they developed a severe drug addiction in college, I have to mentally check the urge to tell the story about that one party that got totally out of control. This isn’t because I’m an asshole, it’s because I’m human. My being an asshole is an unrelated issue.
Some of you right now are taking a deep breath to loudly insist that you don’t do that, in which case congratulations, you have somehow acquired more empathy than any human being in history. Or, more likely, you’ve never really noticed how much you do, in fact, do that. Everyone does. We can’t help it. So if you say you never dismiss other people’s experiences or find a way to make them all about you, that tells me that you’re probably doing it a lot more than someone who is aware of the tendency and tries to correct for it.
Most Social Justice 101 writing assumes that you’ve absorbed this idea and are making the necessary corrections to your natural egocentrism. That’s an unfair assumption, I often think. Just because that insight came easily to some people doesn’t mean that others don’t struggle with it. Some folks make that mental leap as children, others have to wait longer. Some folks never do, they just go on believing that other people’s experiences should match up to their own existing notions.
It is particularly hard for straight white cis guys, in this culture, to get past that. We are constantly implicitly reassured that looking like us is normal, standard, what everyone is supposed to do. We’re at the center of almost every fictional narrative (It’s not Hermione Granger and the Deathly Hallows, is it?) and it’s generally much, much easier for us to never fully grasp that other people’s experiences are real. That’s not a moral failing or a weakness of character on our parts, it’s just how the rules of the game are set up right now.
So yeah, I’m asking you to make the leap that Stan made at the end of “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson”:
Stan: [comes to a certain realization] Wait a minute. That’s it! I don’t get it.
Kyle: …Huh?
Stan: Don’t you see, Kyle?? I don’t get it! [smiles, then walks up to Token] Token, I get it now. I don’t get it. I’ve been trying to say that I understand how you feel, but, I’ll never understand. I’ll never really get how it feels for a black person to have somebody use the N word. I don’t get it.
Token: Now you get it, Stan. [smiles]
Stan: [smiles] Yeah. I totally don’t get it.
Yes, this is setting the bar on the floor. To get Social Justice 101, you have to be at least as progressive and enlightened as a fucking South Park episode. Of course, you also have to be able to generalize the principle being expressed in that bit, and understand that one must take other people’s word about their experiences in contexts other than American race relations. Which may be setting the bar a bit higher, and means we can look forward to a long wank about the N-word in comments.
As a final note, not to go all Carly Simon on you, but if you’re offended because you think that this post is about you personally, let me assure you: it wasn’t, but by definition it is now.
@ Toysoldier
“Toss out that worldview, and all one sees is that all people, including white men, are harmed by various social structures.”
Except for our reptilian overlords.
@skidd: ahem, I used to have a major problem when making posts. I used to write several thousand word essays to ensure that the point I was making came across clearly. Of course this meant that people never read them (or more likely that your opponent challenges one minor detail rather than what the post is actually about). I’ve learnt to keep my posts short, but this has forced me to make assumptions regarding how others will read my posts. Of course the gender of the people who created a field has no bearing on the validity of said field.… Read more »
I do not think it is another axis of disprivilege. I think it comes purely from the need to prove that some other group has it worse than white men in order to protect those people’s worldview. Toss out that worldview, and all one sees is that all people, including white men, are harmed by various social structures. No one group is immune to this.
Two random late things as I’m clearing out my Read It Later and finally got to this: I find that women and men are roughly equal at the end goal. But men sometimes get stuck at understanding that not everyone else experiences the same thing as they do and sometimes get stuck thinking “Well, yeah, it’s different for women, but by looking around and maybe talking to other men, I can tell what it’s like to be a woman.” Women, on the other hand (at least the ones who get stuck) pretty much all seem to get stuck thinking “Well,… Read more »
noahbrand, “It’s not even about forms of oppression, it literally is just about understanding that other people are real. That’s hard for everyone, and even harder if you’ve been subtly told your whole life that other people aren’t as real as you, which straight cis white guys observably have.” If your life has actually been like this, bully for you. I’m a white, straight, cisgender man who’s been told his whole life that his personality, his desires, his thought processes, his nature- everything he is- are actually either a. lies he tells to maliciously deprive his family and other people… Read more »
@ Skidd “I agree with you completely, Typhon — I am mostly suggesting that when some groups use that same “cis white straight man” they actually mean this fictional idealized life free of any and every sort of ill, this imaginary, fictional “Mark Poppins”. And that’s not cool with me.” Maybe that’s another axis of disprivilege for cis white straight men. That they’re seen as having the prototypical ‘life free of worry.’ Not only are they not allowed to have needs least they loose their gender identity in the process(old skool), they’re also held up as the gold standard of… Read more »
Skidd: “The painting of every cis white straight guy as never having any problems and having the most sunshiny life ever, as being the fictional Mark Poppins… well, it’s absolute fiction and something the people of this website should be helping to prevent.” Unfortunatly, they’re not doing a very good job of it, based on the SR article and this whole “Straight White CIS Male” thing. Noah: “I didn’t say that, or any variant on that. Your determined incomprehension of that is not something I can help you with, I’m sorry. And no, if you are incapable of seeing beyond… Read more »
I agree with you completely, Typhon — I am mostly suggesting that when some groups use that same “cis white straight man” they actually mean this fictional idealized life free of any and every sort of ill, this imaginary, fictional “Mark Poppins”. And that’s not cool with me. I don’t care who you are; you have some sort of problem. Maybe you’re a white cis het guy with hemophilia, which means you literally can’t stop bleeding — a disease that is 99.99% male. Or have been the 1 in the 1in6. Or anything. Anything at all, where you were made… Read more »
“Mark Poppins is The Guy.” Has Mark Poppins been raped by a woman and experienced disbelief and a complete lack of legal recourse? Has he been raped by a woman and made financially responsible for the resultant child? Has he been raped by a woman, made financially responsible for the resultant child, and has no legal rights to custody for the resultant child? Has Mark Poppins been divorced and relegated to every other weekend and wednesdays? Or no contact entirely with his children? Has Mark Poppins been abused by his wife? Has he dealt with the disbelief and complete lack… Read more »
Okay, people can feel free to skip over this post — it’s longwinded and stream-of-consciousness-y. But I’ll try and break it up a little here… “It also reminds me of that branch of philosophy; formulated primarily by cis straight white guys.” Quickly: >Theory of mind first discussed in autistic children by a woman named Uta Frith. >Big names in Philosophy of Mind include Patricia Churchland, who has been a professor of the subject for 25 years. The fallacy of association and Skidd’s concept of Mark Poppins I don’t know if you’re a troll, Adiabat, but you’re throwing around the worst… Read more »
“Yet, there are no resources for being bullied by girls compared to when boys bully you. At worst, your experiences get dismissed as an anomoly with little to zero acknowledgement.”
I had no recourse for when bullied by anyone. I was told to stop annoying them.
Debaser71, i dont want to do the boys vs girl thingy, but usually I find men more empathic than women. But thats just a personal observation, not in any way a attempt to ruin the topik. Perhaps its wrong claiming that cis white males are less empathic as a class ( i dont belive in group or class categoritations) while more correct form would be some are more/less empathic than others. But this is a universal feature that goes through all classes and groups (i use this form for definition only for commodity). There are no people who are more… Read more »
Noah. a little friendly advice, if tons of users claim they dont understand your points, and they feel offended, perhaps, just perhaps it doesent mean they are not trying to “troll”; perhaps it means, you should be more clear when you write something?
IMHO the group of people who are least likely to be kind and empathetic are … college aged white females. They IMO have the most work to do. “Most Social Justice 101 writing assumes that you’ve absorbed this idea and are making the necessary corrections to your natural egocentrism. That’s an unfair assumption, I often think. Just because that insight came easily to some people doesn’t mean that others don’t struggle with it. Some folks make that mental leap as children, others have to wait longer. Some folks never do, they just go on believing that other people’s experiences should… Read more »
Noah: “@Noah: “Some of them will make the leap sooner or later and understand, as I did far too late in life, that it really isn’t all about them. Then they will, like me and like most folks, ruefully shake their heads and think “Boy, I said some pretty ridiculous things when I didn’t understand the issue.” Ahem. “It is particularly hard for straight white cis guys, in this culture, to get past that. We are constantly implicitly reassured that looking like us is normal, standard, what everyone is supposed to do. We’re at the center of almost every fictional… Read more »
@Noah: “Actually, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s not even about forms of oppression, it literally is just about understanding that other people are real.” Oh you mean Einfulhung (“feeling into,” “empathy”), the first scientific theory of which was formulated by that straight cis white guy, Theodore Lipps? (This was of course introduced into English and coined as “empathy” by another cis white straight guy). @skidd: “…Actually, mentioning autism reminds me of what’s called “Theory of mind” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind ) — the concept that you have the ability to recognize that others think differently than you and have different wants,… Read more »
@Danny: I was thinking about this last night and I’ve come to the conclusion it’s the same thing with Rory from Doctor Who and Ron from Harry Potter. All three of these guys are sweet, flawed, kind and would do anything for the people they love but… they’re normal. Why have Ron when you can have Draco? Why have Rory when there’s the mysterious Doctor? Why have Xander when there’s “sexy” vampires?
Skidd: “It reminds me of my brother all through elementary and middle school being picked on by girls as well as boys. I think the girls were probably harsher when it came to middle school, there were several occasions where he was brought to tears by them, and felt he could do nothing to fight back. As an (undiagnosed) Aspie kid, he wasn’t teased for actually being Asperger’s: Just that he was visibly different, easy to rile up, and an easy target. I tend to think that Asperger’s kids have the worst of it that way; a difference just invisible… Read more »
And now Noah Brand tells me that straight cis white guys are told that other people aren’t as real as they are. I guess that, as a straight cis white guys who’s been told he’s not real all his life, I’m just not real. It reminds me of my brother all through elementary and middle school being picked on by girls as well as boys. I think the girls were probably harsher when it came to middle school, there were several occasions where he was brought to tears by them, and felt he could do nothing to fight back. As… Read more »
Oh and, maggie… you can totally do better then that. 😉 I’ve seen you!
Noah Brand: That’s hard for everyone, and even harder if you’ve been subtly told your whole life that other people aren’t as real as you, which straight cis white guys observably have. When I was a boy who was getting bulied, I was told that explicitly that I had to protect myself. Because I couldn’t, I was nothing. A nulity. Later when I was abused, sometimes violently by my first girlfriend, I was told that domestic violence was “violence against women”. A male victim of female-perpetrated violence against women is an absurdity. A square circle. A unicorn. I have never… Read more »
Cuz it sort of funny this whole line of thought. Cis white het women are supposedly more empathetic then cis white het men and this is because there is… nothing in the cis white het male experience for cis white het females to need to be empathetic about. So what I gather is… the more a group is ‘disenfranchised’ according to your guy’s schema, the more empathetic they are because the less they need to extend empathy to groups that aren’t ‘disenfranchised’. Empathy. Ur doin’ it wrong. Also, AB’s schema has to accomodate for the fact that men who fail… Read more »
@Blackhumor
So you do believe that there is something to the cis het white male experience that people who aren’t cis het white males should be empathetic too?
And that cis het white women aren’t more empathetic then cis het white men?
“Then you also realize that you’re demeaning another person who may not in fact have standard “empathy circuits” for not having them? I’m not inside Eagle’s head, I don’t know, but as an ASD person, it’s possible he DOESN’T have standard theory of mind or the natural ability to “walk a mile in another’s shoes”. ” Not my intention; I mean that he’s missing the point because he’s saying the equivalent of “As a black guy I do too have empathy! I have empathy for black people!” I didn’t consider that he actually might not have (neurotypical levels of) empathy.… Read more »
Skidd: “Apologies if I’ve stepped on toes, Eagle”
No, no, no. No harm done at all.
From what you’ve written, you sound empathetic enough.
That’s the difference. I don’t accuse anyone who isn’t autistic as incapable of empathy towards us, nor do I put our empathy on a pedestal.