Slippery Slopes

One of the very valid criticisms of abortion which rarely gets raised in the public discourse is the intersection between abortion and concerns about disability rights. It’s a conversation that’s happening, but it’s not attracting nearly as much attention as other aspects of the abortion debate, even criticisms of abortion for purposes of gender selection. I think that people within the pro-reproductive rights movement don’t really want to discuss it because it’s an uncomfortable and unpleasant topic, but I can’t understand why people in the anti-reproductive rights movement aren’t bringing it up as a very real and important criticism of abortion practices. (Although a Google search for “abortion and disability” reveals some thought provoking results.)

I am just starting to explore this issue, and I don’t think I’ve really fully started to articulate my ideas yet, so consider this post an exploration and a starting point, rather than a decisive critical essay. I would really be curious to hear the thoughts of my readers (especially people with disabilities), because I’m not really certain what I think yet.

I am pretty sure that I oppose abortion for disability, just as I oppose abortion for gender selection. I have really struggled with this, especially after reading Bitch, PhD’s discussion about how support for abortion rights should mean support across the board. It initially really resonated with  me, but lately I’ve come into a position of respectful disagreement. I do think that certain types of abortions raise some very uncomfortable ethical questions, and I think that there are actually certain cases in which abortion may be morally unacceptable, despite the fact that I do not accord a fetus the same respect that I do a human life. By not addressing or respecting those questions, we are doing the issue a grave disservice.

Abortion for disability is not the same thing as abortion of a fetus with abnormalities which are incompatible with life. Abortion for disability is a conscious decision to end a pregnancy because the baby doesn’t meet the standard of “normal” or “healthy.” Now, I have a read a lot of defenses of abortion for disability which focus on the extremely high expense of raising disabled children, the emotional and physical strain it can entail, and the fact that children with disabilities are largely considered unadoptable, so adoption is not a viable alternative.

But, the thing is, abortion for disability questions the value not of a life, but of a particular type of life. If, for example, an autism gene was recognized and parents could opt for genetic testing to identify it and the decision was made to abort a child with autism, those parents are placing a value judgment on people with autism. Likewise, abortion of a child with, say, Trisomy 21 suggests that life with Trisomy 21 is not worth living, although parents may argue that they are choosing abortion because they do not feel equipped to take care of a child with this condition.

Disability is often framed as “tragedy” and as some sort of “lesser life” and I find both ideas repugnant. Both ideas infantalize people with disabilities, and suggest that there is some sort of “normal” which we should all be aspiring to, that people with disabilities can only hope to get close to the normal, and that they therefore must be living half lives. It’s one thing to abort a child because you feel that you cannot give that child the life ou deserves; it’s another entirely to abort a child because you think that ou can never achieve “normal.”

I think it’s kind of impossible to address this issue without talking about the impact that the American health care system and lack of support for people with disabilities has on decisionmaking for prospective parents. I can see why people feel that they are not ready to raise a child with disabilities if they lack the privilege to access high quality health care and support networks. If you’re a person of color or you’re in the lower classes, you may genuinely not be able to raise a child with disabilities, which raises the spectre of institutionalization and the care of the State, which is not a pleasant picture, given the current way in which people with disabilities are handled by the State. In that case, parents are opting to abort because they feel like they can’t provide the child with the quality of life ou deserves, but this is because the child has disabilities, not necessarily because the parents couldn’t afford to raise a child in the abstract, although the expense of childrearing obviously plays a role in some abortion decisions. Until we have a medical system which provides complete care for everyone, including total support for people with disabilities, it’s going to be challenging to confront the core of the question about whether or not it is acceptable to abort for disability because people can hide behind concerns about expense and quality of care.

For parents who do have the financial ability to care for a disabled child, opting to abort a child with disabilities seems very morally questionable, to me, because it goes beyond the question of quality of life concerns caused by financial/access to care worries and into the realm of a value judgment about the life of a disabled person. And a judgment about the different levels of disability and where people draw the line when it comes to abortion. Trisomy 21? Trisomy 13? Autism? Bipolar disorder? A missing/malformed limb? A carrier gene for a genetic condition?

Many feminists oppose abortion for gender because gender selection involves some explicit, clear-cut value judgments which cannot be masked behind concerns about costs for care and the ability to provide a child with the quality of life he or she deserves (note that I do not assume that disability automatically confers a decreased quality of life). Abortion for disability is a slightly more complex topic, and it’s a tough one to explore in part because it’s so entangled in thorny issues, and in part because there’s so little discussion of disability issues in general in this society.

31 July, 2009 – 10:25 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in disability, Everything, social justice |

Boxy Scapulars

A heavy casualty load for British troops in Afghanistan has led the Britons to call on an American surgical team for assistance; it’s interesting to me that the British situation in Afghanistan is not getting any coverage at all in the news here.

In shocking news, capitalism continues unabated. Also, the sky is still blue. (In all fairness bonuses are usually structured into contracts, so most of these banks would have been breaking faith if they hadn’t paid them, but again I say: when did America go from actually making stuff to letting a few people push money around and earn obscene amounts in the process?)

The vampire trend has become so big that even the New York Times is deigning to explore it; this op-ed talking about the early roots of vampires in the Gothic tradition is pretty interesting.

Noah Shactman was a taser guinea pig, and he would like to report back that it hurts. A lot. He’s also wondering about the situations in which tasers are used, and whether or not tasers are necessarily be used appropriately. If they’re a replacement for guns, why are police using tasers in situations in which a gun would never be used?

A serious environmental situation appears to be emerging in Iraq; hard to keep the fertile crescent fertile without sustainable land use policies, evidently.

Two stories on the craziness that is the California budget and our rapid slide into bankruptcy: one on the role of special interests and creative accounting, another on the fact that the Republicans actually don’t care if California goes bankrupt.

What is it with Britain’s cats and public transit? Casper the cat has apparently been using a bus service “for months.” This tantalizingly short article also has a vaguely postmodern video of Casper in action.

31 July, 2009 – 10:16 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting |

Thursday Night LIFE: Ominous Rumblings Edition

In 1939, the writing may have been on the wall, but LIFE Magazine seemed almost unaware. As always, click on the images for embiggenment and a transcription of the captions if you have trouble reading.

There’s a lavish multiple page spread on the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, for example, in which the article passingly notes that half of the school’s alumni served in the First World War, and 85 died. I’ve pulled some images from it which I think are particularly interesting:

Culver boys play at war, the lighthearted caption tells us, with pictures of cadets practicing on military equipment. I wonder how many of the boys in these images went on to actual war.

"Culver boys play at war," the lighthearted caption tells us, with pictures of cadets practicing on military equipment. I wonder how many of the boys in these images went on to actual war.

Daily life at Culver is depicted in these pictures; the overall tone of the article suggests that the academy and the students arent very serious about military bearing, which is borne out in the caption pointing out that boys feel no shame when they are ordered to walk hours as punishment.

Daily life at Culver is depicted in these pictures; the overall tone of the article suggests that the academy and the students aren't very serious about military bearing, which is borne out in the caption pointing out that boys feel no shame when they are ordered to walk hours as punishment for infractions.

Culvers cavalry unit at practice; interesting to note that mounted warfare was pretty much obsolete by this period, yet members of mounted units were held in positions of high prestige.

Culver's cavalry unit at practice; interesting to note that mounted warfare was pretty much obsolete by this period, yet members of mounted units were held in positions of high prestige. Several million horses were used in the Second World War, primarily by the Russians and the Germans, to make up for lack of other transport options.

Another multiple page spread on an honored visitor and his interactions with the American elite; here’s a single image:

George VI and the Queen Consort made a whirlwind tour of the United States, with a stop at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington to lay a wreath. 382,700 Britons would lose their lives fighting for Britain in the rapidly approaching conflict.

George VI and the Queen Consort made a whirlwind tour of the United States, with a stop at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington to lay a wreath. 382,700 Britons would lose their lives fighting for Britain in the rapidly approaching conflict.

And, finally:

This charming letter to the editor gives you an idea of how Hitlers rhetoric penetrated the United States. While it seems mindboggling, a fair number of Americans definitely shared his racial ideas and continued to do so throughout the war.

This charming letter to the editor gives you an idea of how Hitler's rhetoric penetrated the United States. While it seems mindboggling, a fair number of Americans definitely shared his racial ideas and continued to do so throughout the war.

30 July, 2009 – 5:50 pm | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting, photography | Tagged |

101

We are all stumbling, to various degrees. One of the interesting things about being human is that we keep discovering the same things again and again and being convinced that they are entirely new and that we are the first to  have thought about them. Or, we are introduced to a new concept and we feel like we want to engage with it, to plunge in, and along the way, we do a fair amount of falling into large holes that we could have sworn weren’t there when we started out.

The Internet has definitely enabled our stumbling and explorations; I wouldn’t have gotten involved in size acceptance, at all, for example, without the benefit of websites to read. And I love that when I want to explore something that is new to me, like disability activism, I can find resources at the click of a button. But at the same time, the Internet has created a lot of debates about where the burden and responsibility of education fall. It all revolves around the 101, the basic concepts that everyone assumes that everyone else is familiar with, even though at some point in our lives we didn’t know the 101 either.

At least once a week on various websites I read, someone responds to a post with a comment which displays varying degrees of ignorance, but a genuine desire to learn more, to understand, and that poor soul is rapidly attacked by someone who berates the person for not bothering to Google and for derailing the conversation. No suggestions for additional resources are offered, no support for someone stumbling around with a new ideology, just a nasty dismissal to someone who is taking tentative baby steps in a brave new world.

I don’t think that this attitude is productive, at all. I think that when people ask innocent/stupid questions, no matter how many times they have been asked, that we should be referring them to resources they can use to answer those questions, even if we don’t necessarily answer them ourselves. Because we’ve all been there. If moderators are concerned about derailment of discussion on a blog post, they could edit such comments to turn them into a link, with a note that the commenter asked a 101 question and the link provides an answer, thereby preventing a pull away from the focus of the post. If someone displays a lack of understanding of basic racial issues, for example, it might help to have a link to Womanist Musings, rather than a dismissive comment telling the baby activist that the oppressed are tired of bearing the responsibility of education. I know that it’s unspeakably frustrating to see the same ignorant questions over and over, but when a question comes from genuine ignorance, rather than hatred or an attempt to derail or start shit, I think that the question deserves a genuine answer or a referral to a site which has the answer.

I’ve even fallen into the trap of snapping at commenters here who display a fundamental lack of ability to do research and who ask questions which are often answered on this very site, let alone elsewhere on the Internet. And every single time I do it, I feel like a dick who is perpetuating a really offensive and sometimes elitist attitude. Don’t even try to engage, that attitude says, because you are not as worthy as I. I was born whole and perfect, and have never made innocent mistakes. Whereas when I answer an innocent question with a respectful answer and more resources, I feel like I’ve had a chance to win someone else over or widen someone else’s mind.

At the same time, of course, I do think that people who are exploring new ideas should do some research and thinking. A lot of the derailing questions which get asked could be answered with a simple Google search, for example, and often at websites which deal with progressive issues there are specific links in the sidebar to posts covering basic/101 topics, or links to websites which do. People who are flailing around might not be aware that there are resources like Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog which they could use to get answers to a lot of their questions, and I do think that they need to take some personal responsibility, but for someone who is literally just getting started, and is maybe not familiar with the Internet, I think it helps to be treated with respect.

I think it’s important for people to be willing to answer questions, and to act as educators. People who are exploring unfamiliar ideas and material need to be supported, not quashed, because otherwise they might turn away from the ideas they are exploring altogether. People are delicate and sensitive, and if their only reception is hostility, they’re going to develop hostility in return. How is that productive? Even when you’re tired of ignorant and often offensive questions, if you respond with courtesy, the people asking those questions will be able to understand why the questions were not appropriate, and where they can find resources to help with those questions.

I think that a huge part of being a feminist, or anti racist, or size acceptance activist, or disability activist, or anything else, is to get other people interested in and engaged with your ideas and movement. A lot of these movements are about the promotion of acceptance and the frank discussion of serious issues, and yes, it’s annoying when discourse is interrupted by people who are behind the times, but that doesn’t mean that those people need to be marginalized and silenced. Every ignorant question is a teaching opportunity.

I dislike the attitude that people with privilege can expect people without privilege to be at their beck and call, as seen when cisgendered people leave idiotic comments on transgender websites, or when white people say something incredibly thoughtless on a website run by a person of colour, or when an authority is summoned by someone demanding answers when those answers are found on the authority’s site. But conversely, I think that the belief that stupid questions give people the right to be rude in response is short sighted, and Miss Manners would not approve. After all, there are no stupid questions: only stupid answers.

I also think it’s important to create spaces which do assume a basic level of knowledge. And those sites should state this, explicitly, in their banners and sidebars so that users understand this. Those statements should include links to resources which people can use to answer questions which arise as they navigate the site, so that people can start to explore advanced topics, and the commenting policy should clearly indicate that 101 questions will not be tolerated, with suggestions on how people can get answers to those questions elsewhere.

We were all ignorant once.

Most of us still are.

30 July, 2009 – 10:56 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in disability, Everything, race, social justice, technology |

Wavering Tulips

Curious about the representation of the LGBQT community on television? I’ve got some delicious, delicious statistics for you! (Hint: HBO leads the pack.)

Oakland is taking a new approach to juvenile justice which focuses on actually giving offenders a chance to improve, rather than just tossing them in prison and letting them rot.

Is anyone surprised to learn that people are already coming up with new ways to try and beat the stock market? What happened to actually producing things in the United States, instead of just allowing a small group of people to generate huge profits by doing absolutely nothing of value?

So, EA did a monumentally unwise and extraordinarily offensive promotion at Comic-Con which involved inviting attendees to “commit acts of lust” with booth babes to compete to win “a night with the hottest girl at Comic-Con.” And then, randomly, something good happened: gaygamer.net entered the competition with a photo of a booth bear, and was picked as a runner-up (probably a public relations move once EA fully realized the depths of their insanity with this promotion).

The history of swimsuits is actually pretty interesting.

Ergh. The activities of the famous Dutch “abortion ship” have been curtailed…by the usually liberal Dutch governnment!

30 July, 2009 – 10:07 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting |

Operation Normative

Operation Beautiful has been getting a great deal of press in the feminist community lately, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I’ve read a lot of comments arguing that it’s empowering and revolutionary and awesome, but I haven’t read a lot of criticism about it, let alone criticism which addresses my mixed feelings.

The idea behind the concept is that women should write affirmative notes and leave them in public places for others. Women are supposed to encounter these notes and feel loved or affirmed or what have you. And while I think that the goal is admirable, I’m not sure that it always turns out as intended, but that might have more to do with my own thinking about beauty and perception than it does about the project itself.

The major criticism I’ve seen is from women who have pointed out that random notes can come across as creepy and stalkerish, depending on how they are framed and where they are presented. That’s why there’s a specific focus on public places, with the goal of preventing a feeling of creepiness; the notes are supposed to be left in dressing rooms and on light posts and so forth rather than on cars and in mail slots. Another criticism is that the project will inevitably be taken up and commercialized, as seems to happen with all good ideas these days.

My question, though, is why we need to be reinforcing the beauty norm. Yes, the site specifically says that “You are enough…just the way you are!,” but I’ve always found that phrase to be a tool used by people who are trying to console other people for not being beautiful or beautiful enough, and it just ends up reinforcing the beauty norm by suggesting to women that they need to be beautiful. Why, I ask, should beauty be a goal to which we are supposed to aspire? Why do we need to be told that we are beautiful to feel valued? Why is beauty, in other words, so fucking important? Especially when so many works of famous art feature “ugly” women, I say ugliness is a value all its own to aspire to as well.

As I said above, I think that my reaction really says more about me than it does about the project. I find it a little creepy and weird and offputting because beauty is not an important value to me. Oh, I appreciate it in an aesthetic sense, although my standards of beauty are definitely different than those of the rest of society, but it’s not really a priority for me, so I have trouble understanding why it’s so important to other people. And I find it deeply troubling that “beauty” is used as an affirmation for women and girls, when it’s definitely not for men and boys.

Reading the notes that people have posted, a lot of people seem to equate being beautiful with being “amazing” and “wonderful” or even “powerful.” (Admittedly, there is a very clear connection between power and beauty, especially for women; women who are perceived as conventionally beautiful are definitely in a position of power over others, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing.) Why does someone of any gender need to be beautiful to be amazing or wonderful? How, specifically, is being told that one is “beautiful” affirming?

I don’t really know where, exactly, I am going with this. I like the subversive idea of anonymous woman to woman communications which are intended to empower women, I just wish that beauty could be taken out of the equation. Like anonymous notes that say “you are awesome” or “you are amazing” or “you are wonderful” without needing to bring up physical appearance.

I find it intriguing that a lot of activities like this involve women who are conventionally attractive, who are used to hearing affirmations that they are beautiful, and who are used to the idea that beauty is an important value and that women need to hear that they are beautiful to feel valued. They want to “spread the beauty” because they have been culturally indoctrinated into the belief that beauty is important and because they have been trained to feel good when they are told that they are beautiful. And for people who are viewed as conventionally beautiful, I think that it might be hard to understand why people who are not beautiful hear things “beauty comes from the inside” and “you are perfect just the way you are” and hear empty, sometimes almost apologetic, platitudes. I know that it’s not meant to come across that way, but it almost feels like a sly insult.

The creator’s intent was totally laudable, but I guess my response just goes to show you how differently people can read something. At the very least, Caitlin definitely sparked some thoughts for me, and a lot of conversations about beauty and cultural values which might not have happened otherwise, so I’ve got to thank her for that.

29 July, 2009 – 10:55 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, social justice |

Throbbing Fish

The media persists in using the wrong pronouns and in picking heinously offensive terms when talking about transgendered people. Which I could kind of get, out of sheer ignorance, except that transgender advocates are being consulted about the appropriate language to use and the media is still getting it wrong. That seems to cross the line from ignorance and bad reporting right into value judgments and transhatred.

A rape at an exclusive country club in Florida ended up opening a huge can of worms which can never be contained.

Samantha Orobator, the Briton who was almost executed for a drug offense in Laos before having her sentence commuted to life in prison, is being transferred to a prison in Britain to serve out the duration of her sentence.

Tanning beds: not only kinda lame, but pretty much totally cancerous!

There’s a midwifery revolution going on in Afghanistan right now, which is good, because Afghanistan has one of the crappiest maternal/infant mortality rates in the world.

In shocking news, a report on immigration detention centers indicates that they “routinely” fail to meet standards.

29 July, 2009 – 10:00 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting |

Goodness on Six Feet Under

After my discussion about content on Six Feet Under which kind of startled and upset me, I thought that it would only be fair to talk about content which pleased and excited me, because it really is a great series, even if I disliked some of the content. After all, the bits that irritated me were a tiny fraction of the whole, and it wouldn’t be entirely fair to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There’s a reason the show won numerous accolades and awards, after all. (People who haven’t seen the show should be aware that there are ample spoilers in this post!)

One of the things that I really loved about the show was the depiction of natural burial and the realities of the funeral business. I loved the scene in which Nate performed a renegade natural burial for Lisa, against the wishes of her family, and Nate’s burial is an equally powerful moment in the show. The whole concept of natural burial was pretty unfamiliar for viewers when the show was airing (and probably still is for many people), and it was nice to see it portrayed in a positive way, especially on a show about death and burial which revolved around a funeral home, with a funeral director opting for a natural burial when he dies.

The show wasn’t really intended to provide educational information about the funeral industry, so I can’t get too angry about the fact that they didn’t really disclose the realities of embalming, or talk about the Funeral Rule, or show viewers how they could pursue natural burial and educate themselves about funerals. But I did like that they referenced the corporate takeover of the funeral business, which is an ongoing and serious problem; very few funeral homes are family owned these days, which means that SCI basically get to dictate the cost of burial, and that cost is climbing ever upwards. I like to think that Jessica Mitford would have approved. (And I loved the hat tip to Stiff, one of my all time favourite books, which also incidentally would have provided viewers with more information if they chose to seek it out.)

I also really appreciated the portrayal of adult sexuality, by which I mean the sexuality of older adults. Alan Ball in fact specifically said that he wanted to include the sexuality of older adults in the series, and that it was an important aspect of the show for him. From everything else on television, you might think that no one over 25 has sex, but on Six Feet Under, we saw Ruth’s sexual needs, and other depictions of older adults having sex and enjoying it, in addition to wanting sexuality and intimacy, and being interested in exploring new things. I thought that was a really positive aspect of the show, and it’s a note that also fit in well with the themes of repression in the show; seeing Ruth trying to deal with her sexuality, for example, was an integral part of the story, and the discomfort at viewers at the frank depiction of the sexuality of older adults forced a lot of people to do some thinking they might not have done otherwise.

Six Feet Under also explored mental illness in some interesting ways.

Billy, of course, is the flagship crazy character on the show, and I really appreciated that Ball highlighted the struggles artists experience with medications used to manage mental illness. Billy feels useless, unproductive, and uncreative when he’s on his medications, choosing periodically to go off them, risking the consequences, so that he can feel and do art. I think that’s a situation that is not uncommon among artists with mental illness, and even for non-artists who are trying to balance the need to manage their conditions with the desire to live. Medications which address mental illness are fundamentally altering brain chemistry, and sometimes that means that they have unintended consequences. It’s not as simple as “just take your meds,” and people need to see that.

Brenda’s mental illness was also interesting to explore. We see her as highly manipulative and deeply troubled pretty much throughout the show, and it was fascinating to see her struggle with relationships and her own sexuality. I could (and probably will) write a whole post about Brenda, so I don’t want to get too in-depth here, but there’s a lot of material there to ponder.

David and Keith’s relationship is another awesome part of the show. Complex openly gay relationships on television are pretty rare; I think that viewers feel less threatened by lesbians, but gay men unnerve them, which is why most same-sex TV couples are lesbians. And to have a relationship in which David and Keith were struggling with anger management issues, negotiating the terms of an open relationship, and adopting…it was pretty groundbreaking and very intense. I loved that Ball didn’t sugercoat their relationship and turn them into nice pet gay men whom viewers can feel comfortable with, instead really forcing people to confront issues and their own biases. As David struggles with his closeted identity, sometimes I feel like he’s talking directly to the viewers. I did think that some of the portrayal of homosexuality in the show was highly stereotyped, which was unfortunate, but the depiction of David and Keith struck a lot of great notes.

I also thought that Ball slipped in a sly slap in the face to “homosexuality is a lifestyle choice” people by showing that both David and Keith struggled in heterosexual relationships (although Keith seems more bi than gay, illustrating that sexuality is a spectrum), and showing Claire trying to explore lesbian sexuality, and feeling profoundly uncomfortable and unhappy with it.

Of course, you can’t talk about Six Feet Under without mentioning the hallucinatory/fugue states experienced by the characters. They were pretty much a hallmark of the show, and they were one of the things that made it so powerful. In a show all about repression, of course the thoughts of the characters need to bubble over somehow, and it was fascinating to see how different characters dealt with their issues in their hallucinations, from David’s musical theatre interlude as he agonizes over using a surrogate to Claire’s periodic hangout sessions with her father. Stylistically, I think that it was a great choice; how many of us have fantasized about the things we want to say in a conversation, the conversations we wish we could have with dead people, the ability to process and work through something in such a literal way?

The show explored a lot of really interesting topics and issues in a way which managed to stay dynamic and engaging. It’s hard to stay totally flawless over the course of five seasons, but Six Feet Under comes pretty darn close.

28 July, 2009 – 10:53 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, reviews, television | Tagged , , |

Soughing Cellos

Chris Potter of the Pittsburgh City Paper has hit the nail on the head in his article discussing debate over global warming: because this society has a very short attention span, getting people to pay attention to long term issues and trends is extremely difficult.

In China, an interesting situation has emerged when the transcripts of some students have gone missing; without the physical transcript, people are losing out on job opportunities because they can’t provide a demonstration of their competence and proof that they graduated.

Sports drinks are all the rage, but how necessary are they, really?

Feminist coloring books! How exciting. Those of you with ethics which lean towards the feminism and young ‘uns who are into the coloring, you should definitely check out Girls Are Not Chicks.

An author who had a cover whitewashed talks about the fact that authors often do not get input into the cover design of their books, which is an important thing to keep in mind when judging a book by its cover!

Having trouble wrapping your mind about the concept of one trillion dollars? Here’s a visualization, which also happens to include some very eye-opening information about how far on trillion dollars will do.

28 July, 2009 – 10:21 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting |

A Pocket Guide to Thoughtful Disagreement

So, when I got linked on Whedonesque last week, my first thought was “woo hoo! I’ve achieved one of my life goals!” No, I jest. But I was pretty excited. And then I read the first comment, which started “Wow, I hugely disagree…” and my heart fell. But then, I actually read the rest of it, and the comment thread as it unfolded, and I was impressed with something: a lot of Whedonesque viewers disagreed with me, pretty strongly, but they weren’t assholes about it.

On the Internet, that’s kind of a huge deal.

In fact, all of the comments about how I was “stupid” or “on a different planet” or “totally missed the point” or “mostly annoying” showed up on my website, not Whedonesque, which either means that those people didn’t have Whedonesque memberships, or they were just afraid of commenting there. (I admit that I’ve been a member for a while and I’ve rarely commented or submitted because well established Internet communities can sometimes be intimidating, although I waded into the fray when they linked to me and was actually given a very friendly welcome.)

The Whedonesque thread actually got really interesting; I know I got a lot out of it. People came up with really thoughtful, well-formulated dissent, challenging my logical inconsistencies and reading of the show, and for the most part, they did so in a really respectful way which focused on criticism of the content, not the author. And some really fascinating discussion started happening towards the bottom, even among people who strongly disagreed. A lot of people helped me better formulate and solidify my ideas by responding so thoughtfully, and the kind of reactive, knee-jerk “someone thinks something other than me so I must hammer them down” response was pretty much absent. Similar conversations happened here, with a lot of dissenting commenters adding to the discussion in a really great way (the nasty comments never made it through moderation).

I’ve actually noticed that, as a general rule, Whedonesque threads are pretty mannerly, and it’s one of the reasons I like the site, but it also brings up an important issue: why is it that most people on the Internet can’t disagree thoughtfully and respectfully? And why are we, as a collective society, losing the ability to engage in thoughtful debate? And what are we losing in the process? And why is it that women, in particular, tend to experience especially vicious criticism on the Internet?

People seem to be living under the impression that when someone disagrees with them or challenges their beliefs or threatens something important to them, that some sort of personal attack is being made, and that they must therefore respond reactively and decisively. And that makes it really, really challenging to engage in discussion with people, because you can’t be frank with them and you can’t challenge them, or the entire conversation totally shuts down. People seem to be actively seeking an echo chamber effect, in which they only hear views which support, promote, or justify their own.

By contrast, when people are able to set themselves aside and focus on the material, they can have really fruitful, productive discussions. They might not necessarily change minds, but they do generate more food for thought, more opportunity for future discussion, and more inspiration. Once I got over my initial sensitivity to people who shredded my work (in a very elegant and nonhostile way) and started engaging with them, I think that we all learned something. I think also that I got a little bit overwhelmed and stressed out around day two of being hammered with pretty horrible comments, but once I dropped off the front page and the commentary came from people who were genuinely willing to engage, I started to enjoy myself.

In a way, I think that the Internet has made it difficult to have thoughtful discourse, because the days of arguing in coffeehouses are being supplanted by arguments in text. And as I often discover to my chagrin, tone and meaning are sometimes obscured in text, and disagreements can erupt over comments which wouldn’t have been made in real life, or would have been interpreted properly in a face to face discussion. It’s really hard to formulate ideas in text, and honestly, I’m only really happy with the content in about one in every 12 posts I write, let alone in the comments I make on other websites.

The loss of the politely argumentative spirit online appears to be contributing to the decline of thoughtful conversation offline, and I think that’s an immense loss for society as a whole; I know that I benefit when people disagree with me and challenge me because it forces me to better articulate and back up my points, and sometimes it even forces me to change my mind or adjust my point. Why post deliberately provocative content, after all, if you don’t want to talk about it?

And why is it that thoughtful dissent is so rare? How do people effectively create a climate in which it can occur? Draconian moderation policies seem to be the order of the day, but why is it necessary to police people to have a rational discussion?

27 July, 2009 – 10:34 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, technology |