Bad Faith, the Hellmouth, and Puritanical Standards · 7:42pm Jan 11th, 2019
One of my challenges first as a progressive and now as a vague leftist individualist who has serious debates on mutualism vs. marxist-leninism vs. syndicalism is explaining to people that I don't want to take their shit.
I really don't. Let that stick in your mind now, and forever. Your shit is your shit. I don't want to take it. Whether I think wealth should be distributed more equally or housing should be a right and substantially de-commodified or my favorite trading card game is being ruined because of free market capitalism has no real direct bearing on you. Unless you are one of the most disproportionately wealthy people in the world- in which case hi, George Soros, please fund me I'll be an excellent plant - your shit is not what I'm primarily interested in discussing.
The other big problem I have as a progressive leftist plant of the feminist agenda to cuck the white race is that whenever I discuss inequality, representation, or the morality of stories, the general response I get is twofold in nature: I'm criticized either for trying to take things away from someone - again, not what I want - but also for trying to censor or blame problems on individuals. And again, that's really not what I'm about.
Now, some of these responses come from people who have very specific reasons for objecting to anything that smells vaguely progressive. I'm not here today to dignify fascists of any variety by deigning to entertain them as a reasonable debate partner, and I'm really not here to dignify misogynists or transphobes. Bigotry is an inherently unreasonable position that seeks any justification to reach the ends it requires, not - as some claim - the true "rational" response to the world around us. These people can be mostly ignored. I'm not here to talk to them, or about them.
I am here to talk about everyone who doesn't fall neatly into one of those boxes who quotes that kind of line at me, because I think it's an interesting kind of categorically wrong response. From my perspective it's like making a relatively neutral statement - say, "Employees at fast food restaurants are underpaid relative to the value their labor produces" - and getting told "How dare you criticize me for liking McDonalds!". Whether or not you as an individual like McDonalds wasn't the point, and by giving that response the other person has shifted the conversation from talking about a wider problem to their own, personal moral standing.
How did we end up here?
1. Bad Faith, and Misunderstandings Thereof
In online discussions the term "bad faith" is something of a bugbear. It can often seem to outside observers like a categorical way to ignore someone's arguments by trying to poison the well, essentially choosing who gets to debate. From a classical liberal perspective - in other words the perspective most mainline liberal and conservative positions hold in common - that feels like something of an affront, a form of censorship. Speculating about people's motives in presenting arguments leads only to the dissolution of discussion itself.
Other people have constructed more broad, systemic arguments against the assumptions this idea is built on, but right now I want to let it stand by pointing out that to say an argument is approached in "bad faith" is not necessarily an indictment of the person making it. It may not even be a direct response to the argument.
To argue in "bad faith" is not to enter an argument with the intent to deceive or lie about your beliefs (though it can be). The term "bad faith" describes a particular approach to an argument. In classical discourse - think modernism and enlightenment and Thomas Aquinas - the purpose of debate is to illuminate truth. Let me illustrate:
Two people come in with opposing points of view and peacefully discuss those points. They strive to understand each other's point of view, and end the discussion by reaching a consensus: either one point of view proves closer to the truth and is ultimately adopted by both parties, or both parties agree that a conclusion cannot be reached because of the nature of the subject, or they reach a third conclusion that is a synthesis of the starting positions. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
In this context, an argument made in bad faith is an argument made that does not seek to move both parties closer to an understanding of the truth. Bad faith arguments can be simple logical fallacies - ad hominem, goalpost shifting, and the like - but they can just as easily be a simple result of one party entering the discussion with no intention of changing their own position or substantially engaging with someone else's. In that sense, most arguments on the internet are being made in bad faith, to some degree.
Looking at the "how dare you say I'm not a good person!" response to progressive/leftist critiques as a form of bad faith argument can help illuminate its nature, and why otherwise reasonable people may default to it. The argument of "your critique is invalid because it implies that I, a person who participates in the system, am racist/homophobic/transphobic/misogynist/what have you" is an argument made based on two key presumptions: that the person making the systemic critique believes you are a racist or sexist or bad for liking The Wrong Porn, and that you are not any of those things. They begin with those points and then progress through their objections believing them to be true without ever asking the person making the critique in the first place what their thoughts are.
It's rarely phrased as a question - "wait, do you mean that I'm a bad person for liking The Wrong Porn?" - unless that question is meant as a rhetorical one. The goal of these objections is not to facilitate discussion or offer counterpoints or learn anything. Instead it is meant to end the discussion by dismissing the systemic critique on the basis of its failure to account for the fact that the individual objecting is not a bad person. #NotAllMen.
You begin to see why this particular brand of counter-argument can become exhausting if you spend any amount of time or energy writing about systemic problems.
2. The Nature of Systemic Critique
Centrists, certain liberals, and conservatives in general tend to have less understanding of the nature of systemic critiques. Even progressives, whose entire worldview is inspired by them, tend to only understand systemic critique intuitively in many cases. This is part of what leads certain progressives to apply post-colonial philosophy badly or in the wrong contexts, or to various radical feminists of the not-good variety arguing that men should be removed from positions of power because all men are infected by patriarchy.
Assuming I still have any of the people who tend to make the "but I'm a good person!" argument still reading, I feel like I should explain this for their benefit, because it should go a long way towards making them feel more comfortable with the kind of things I like to discuss.
Systemic critiques are called that because they focus on the impact of systems on individuals, not the other way around. This means they tend to be less concerned with individual morality, and more concerned with social impact of larger trends. The moral state of an individual actor within the system is beyond their scope, because they're examining a situation from the top-down and not from the bottom up. It's the difference between saying "capitalism is a coercive and unfair system that devalues individual labor in the name of profit" and "capitalists are bad". One of these statements is describing the impact of a larger system of thought and arguing that its impacts are deleterious. The other statement isn't very helpful because it bypasses the system altogether to say a group of people are bad.
Leftists and progressives as a rule tend to be way more concerned with talking about the badness inherent in our society, not the badness of individuals. In fact, several critiques of capitalist consumer culture explicitly assume that talking about individual morality under capitalism is not a helpful form of discussion. For instance, the argument that "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism", a common response to the liberal assertion to "vote with your dollar", assumes that living in a capitalist system to some extent negates the impact of individual moral choices.
This argument applies to discussions about economics, but it can be just as important when discussing literary theory, the impact of trends in media, or forms of social oppression. From the leftist point of view, the real villain isn't the individual consumer, it's the culture that created what is being consumed. While it can be useful to focus on individual works of art when discussing media, a leftist systemic critique will always use them as examples of trends in media rather than trying to explain that people are good or bad for liking them. The goal is to discuss the context of the works, not necessarily their quality or the individual morality of people writing or enjoying them.
This is part of why the "but I'm a good person!" objection to the systemic critique can be so frustrating for progressives. Whether you are good or bad wasn't ever something the critique was meant to discuss - it's explicitly outside of its framework.
Let's return to my earlier example about fast food wages. When I make the statement "Employees at fast-food restaurants are underpaid in relation to the value their labor produces", there are a number of possible objections someone might raise. You could ask what my sources on the relative pay of fast-food workers are, you could debate what actually constitutes a fair wage, you could argue about the value labor creates, and all of those would be, even if they were wrong, examples of arguments that actually further the discussion. Objecting on the basis of you, personally, liking McDonalds and you, personally, not being a bad person fundamentally shifts that discussion from being about a system to being about an individual - in this case, you.
This is bad enough when it pops up in discussions of economics, but it's even worse when you want to make systemic critiques of media from a feminist or queer perspective. If I'm here discussing whether larger trends in media have an impact on women or queer folk or minorities of any kind, my points are all being made in relation to a larger cultural context. The least helpful objection someone can make in this situation is "I'm not a bad person/not all men are bad people!". What they've just done is taken a discussion about the rights, representation, and status of minorities and made that discussion all about them.
This is why "#NotAllMen" is a recognizable enough joke among leftists and progressives that I used it earlier. It's a response that, from a progressive/leftist perspective, is so wildly off-topic that it's almost nonsensical. We're here to talk media criticism, not your personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
3. Puritanical Morality and Evangelical Christianity
Youtuber and political writer Ian Danskin says this in his five-part series "Why Are You So Angry?", which discussed gamergate's relationship to individuals he referred to as "Angry Jack".
It's understandable that Jack has this intense fear of being judged, because his entire notion of right and wrong is centered around casting judgments. It's, for lack of a better word, Puritanical
Think about that word, "Puritanical". I'll get to that in a moment.
As an avowed kinky pervert girl, a lot of the systemic critiques I make have to do with erotica and porn. In fact, I workshopped a recent piece on fimfiction's erotic state written by MrNumbers, which you've definitely already read but I'm going to link anyway. And yes, that's the hellmouth the title of this post is referring to. We're going to largely ignore the post in question, what I've wanted to say about it I've largely already said. Instead I want to focus on a particular misconception that ran through many of the comments: specifically, that the post was in some way anti-porn or anti-sex.
First and most obviously, the post is very much pro-porn and links to multiple authors who've either written porn or written about porn, myself included. The author even includes a whole tangent on his own recently-uploaded porn, itself popular enough to feature for a time during the post's existence. I think it's safe to say that whether the people writing the post were in favor of porn is not a subject that's up for debate.
Second and more relevant to the current topic of discussion, the people making that misconception tended to frame their objections as being to a Puritanical, censoring form of feminism . Their apparent fear was that the post was arguing for a world in which their favorite porn authors and stories would not be allowed to exist, and would be vilified. There was a strong undercurrent of them seeing themselves as freethinkers objecting to an irrational, authoritarian opponent who wishes to curb their sexual urges.
This is interesting to me because the mentality they intend to critique seems to be at least in part a mentality they have internalized.
It may seem strange to argue that the people vigorously defending their right to wank to whatever they want are being puritanical, given the word's association with a particularly sex-negative theology. That involves a certain level of misconception about what Puritan and Evangelical morality is actually based on, though. Certainly the ends of evangelicals and porn-lovers are different, but the way they view individuals and themselves are strikingly similar.
Puritanism in the US is often understood, for better or worse, in the context of American fundamentalist evangelicalism. Evangelical Christianity, as it was born in the US and shaped by the work of men like Billy Graham, is fundamentally concerned with moral doctrines as they apply to individuals, rather than to societies. There's a reason Billy Graham liked to talk about someone's "personal relationship with Jesus". Even when Billy Graham pursued social justice, he always did so with the larger goal of using it to convince individual people to form this "personal relationship".
In the years leading up to Graham's passing, Evangelicalism in the US began to sever most or all of its ties with social justice even as a means to preach to people. Major evangelical leaders have claimed that the biggest problems with our society lie not in systemic racism or sexism but in individual moral failings. This can often seem from the outside to be a shallow justification for leaders like Franklin Graham or Jerry Falwell to claim a moral high ground for their sexism, racism, homophobia, and general nastiness. Mostly because it is.
The porn-defenders of fimfic may not agree with Jerry Falwell or Franklin Graham about the morality of pemarital sex, the existence of God, or even their views on women or queer people or [T H E J E W S], but they do seem to approach morality from a similar perspective. From their point of view, all critiques are fundamentally best understood from the point of view of whether or not they, as individuals, are good people doing good things. And they can only understand critiques of the culture they live in as critiques of themselves.
Again, to quote Danskin:
Jack hates this line of thinking. Anita Sarkeesian is like Copernicus, telling him he's not the center of his moral universe. That sounds like I'm calling him selfish (and I basically am), but a lot of us are raised to be selfish in precisely this way: to treat morality as being about saving yourself, to treat the real world value of your actions as what these things say about you, and what you meant to do.
I can't really fault people for falling into this line of thinking - it's frustrating, but understandable. What I can do is fault them for willful use of this type of thinking as a shield.
4. Conclusion
If you made it to the end of this piece and actually read the whole thing, first of all, thank you - especially if you're one of the people I've described. This is a special message I have for you, if you are that person:
I don't hate you.
When I talk about any system, I don't want to just call out the people living within it. Frankly, even if you've taken actions in the past to prop it up, you're not the core of the problem. No one individual can be. We are all part of this system, together, and we ignore it at their peril. The most I ask of you is that you listen to my words as I intend them and hopefully find levels on which we can express solidarity with each other. I don't want to call you out for reading The Wrong Porn, full disclosure I do too from time to time. I don't want to make you feel bad for that one time you said something sexist, or for laughing at that racist joke, or for not being perfect. Nobody is.
This isn't about that. This is about something we're all part of. And if we can find common ground, hopefully, we can all be part of the solution, together. I don't want to marginalize you. I'm marginalized myself in many ways. I want you to be my comrade, not to be my enemy. And even if you choose not to do that, even if you want to fight with me tooth and nail all the way down, even if you disagree categorically with each critique i make, I at least want to be able to discuss things with you from a place of mutual understanding and respect.
And until we can all learn to move past this tendency of thinking that discussing systemic issues is the same thing as passing moral judgments on individuals, having that respect is going to be difficult.
Thank you.
Note: This post has been edited for the sake of clarity - I initially wrote "after Graham's passing" evangelical readers cut out social justice, which is simply not true. That process was ongoing during Graham's own lifetime and through the many decades between the peak of his ministry and death. The new language of the post better reflects this.
I often wish there was writing on the nature of systemic critique that was this coherent and clear, because often the entire point and nature of it is so obscured. This was a very good one.
Good read! the offer of card art is still open if you ever decide to design your own card game, 'cause I think said game would turn out very fun!
I'd rather have gone on talking about saws, but that's just a personal fondness for power tools.
What would you say to the people that say "This is a site for fanfiction for a little children's show"? Those that are trying to claim the moral high ground by saying being so vested in critiques on a site like this is fruitless at best and pathetic whining at worst?
4995410
This is kind of not entirely on topic with my main point of discussion, since it doesn't have anything to do directly with systemic critique. That kind of response is about shifting discussions not toward individuals, but toward categorically denying that certain kinds of systemic critique are even worth making. If their entire basis is just the provided assumption that "this is about a kid's show, don't take it so seriously", then they have opted out of the discussion altogether and dismissed it as being relevant. It's hard to have a dialogue with someone who doesn't want to talk to you.
People making this kind of comment are often also being opportunistic and using it to shut down particular discussions, which is itself a whole thing.
The tl;dr is I don't take comments like that seriously, but for slightly different reasons that don't tie into my main thesis in this post.
Thank you for this.
4995418
Thank you.
Basically, I'm totally on board for sections one and two, and mostly on board for the third section. But then in the fourth section, you say this:
But aren't you? If you aren't, then how are you expecting to create change? Surely you need people to change their minds so that they can help you change the system that you're critiquing? If all you're doing is saying that the system is bad, but not critiquing people in it, and not suggesting a course for change, then what good are you doing? Surely you're at least implying that the people supporting the system should do otherwise, right? And by suggesting that they should be doing otherwise, you're saying that what they're currently doing is bad compared to what they should be doing, yeah?
It just feels like a bit of a cop out to claim that you're definitely not criticizing the people in the system at all, when it really does come across that way, even to someone that agrees with what you're saying otherwise.
You always write so eloquently. Nice blog post.
4995439
My larger point with that is that moving the emphasis of the critique to the individual and individual bad stuff we've done isn't helpful, not that we shouldn't worry about being bad at all. The purpose of that bit was to make the point that even if you've done bad things, my goal in systemic criticism isn't to expose them or make you feel bad for having done them because all of us have done things we'll someday regret.
In fact I also say this:
Implicit there, at least to me, is that I'm not saying "what you didn't wasn't bad" - it's me saying "I'm not better than you and this isn't about trying to cast a personal judgment on you, it's about trying to show you that the system is incorrect and we need to fix it together."
That's also why I led into the statement you quoted with the above passage. I'm not absolving people of ever having done anything wrong so much as I am trying to help people understand that this isn't meant as an inquisition, but as an eye-opener, and that they have some form of common ground with the people making systemic critiques whether they realize it or not.
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/841690/loathsome-rage-a-response-to-mrnumbers-from-the-erotic-writing-community
I think several good arguments about the MrNumbers situation were made in the post I linked. Just a personal opinion. But I feel it's a good, informative read. Much like your own post. ^^
4995505
Cool, but, and I apologize for the coarseness
I actually don't give a fuck ^^
I've already expressed my thoughts on Numbers's post previously and I don't really have the time or energy to deal with the entire subject twice in a row. You know what's fun? Someone mistaking Numbers for me in the comments and saying I'm mentally deficient as a trans lesbian. And God knows what else.
I appreciate you're trying to be nice here but me referencing the post in relation to another topic isn't an invitation to discuss the larger themes of that post that don't relate to the one I just made here.
If people want to make comments on the subject and it gets out of hand, I will begin scorching the earth.
EDIT: And on scrolling through that blog, oh look! It's the guy whose fans brigaded my blog's comments featured as an author, and arguments that are entirely about viewing social critiques from the perspective of sovereign individuals!
No that's great, that's fucking fine I just it's fine.
4995505
gotta say, I'm sure we all appreciate that you folks over on that blog post haven't let that discussion spill over to this comment section! This blog post is only like, tangentially related to whats going on over there anyway so that'd be rather rude.
4995530
I apologize. I didn't intend to cause you any grief. I read the two not long apart, and simply thought it was something related that people would find somewhat interesting. I wasn't at all trying to cause any trouble, and I'm sorry if it seemed that way.
4995548
I know you weren't, hon, but I posted that for the benefit of future readers, to give them an idea what to expect.
4995439
It depends on what you mean by 'bad'. It's one of the stupid things about the English language (and possibly others, I am a tool at languages) that words like 'bad' and 'wrong' mean 'incorrect', but they also mean 'evil'. It's wrong to say 10 + 10 = 35, but it's not wrong in the way it's wrong to stab someone. So people often get the two confused, and think they're being accused of evil when someone says their actions were simply incorrect.
You can be incorrect - you can cause harm, even - without being evil; what's really twisted about societal-level problems is that large groups of people can cause huge harm without anyone in the group actually being a horrible person, or even doing anything wrong at an individual level.
Say you have a valley of flowers. Some guy picks a single flower to take home to his girlfriend, and it's not a problem at all. Anyone could come and pick a flower and it wouldn't make a difference, but the valley gets stripped clean if everyone picks a flower. The accumulated damage is huge, yet each individual acted in perfect innocence without ever realizing where it was leading.
You can point out that a systemic behaviour is harmful while acknowledging that the individuals in question aren't also evil. Something like "Hey, guys, I know you like picking flowers, but there's so many people doing it that the valley's starting to suffer, so I need to ask you to stop till they've regrown." And it works a lot better than accusing people of either knowingly and gleefully ripping the valley to shreds, or being utter fscking morons for not instantly divining that plucking a single bloom on an idle country stroll would lead to utter desecration. That angers people, and once they're angry they'll think you're wrong about the valley because the Horn Effect is totally a thing, and then they'll keep picking flowers and do it with extra vigour just to spite you.
4995738
Okay straight up thank you for that, because that illuminated a running theme in this post better than I could.
This is a very interesting and informative post and it has attracted some good comments, 4995738’s in particular. Thanks for sharing it.
I’m a fan of some pretty dark porn (as well as lighter fluff), yet at no point in MrNumbers’s post did I feel targeted or blamed, nor did I get the impression he was targeting or blaming anyone else* who liked or published porn, dark or otherwise. I recognized he was critiquing a system, the sum total of its effects and consequences, rather than saying “individuals who write/read dubcon are bad“. It’s such a shame how much howling is happening over what is, essentially, a polite request for people to have some awareness and, maybe, put a little thought into their actions and how they affect others.
* Well, other than his specific and repeated mentions of An Innocent Disguise, which I thought was possibly problematic, since that is an example of criticizing the individual rather than the system. But I’m willing to guess he might just have a grievance with AID for whatever reason, and at any rate it doesn’t negate his overall point.
I think Numbers' biggest mistake was to name specific authors in his blog. I wonder what kind of faith was behind that, because one doesn't do that without expecting those guys to respond, Puritans or not (also, is it still Puritan if someone is British or Polish or whatever? I noticed some Americans tend to assume all the world shares their cultural upbringing, but that's the whole different topic). I have no doubts Numbers tried to help women (though I do wonder how some feminists feel about a dude telling them how they should feel about porn), but with the way he played it, I think there was a bit of a Herostratus in him.
4996028
4995860
I'll make this point now: naming individual authors when making a systemic critique is going to happen. It's incredibly difficult to make a point in the abstract, rather than providing anything concrete people can look at. That's why this post referenced the original blog in the first place.
As for "doing that without someone possibly responding", yeah. We knew. We knew going in that this post was going to be the hellmouth. That doesn't mean it's good that it became the hellmouth. I can't speak for Numbers, the decision to pick AID in particular was on him, but I'd note that the post also quotes Cold in Gardez as an example of an author who exists in the culture bubble and nobody has a problem with that. In fact, CiG showed up in the comments sharing several concerns.
gee it's almost as if it would've been a great idea for him to involve and workshop his points with feminist authors too bad he didn't do that exact thing i described oh wait he did and one of them was me.
People have this weird idea that Numbers just didn't talk to women when writing the blog, or that he didn't have an accurate survey of the site, which.... whatever. (I'll note that the list of responding authors hasn't even found a token woman to speak for them, whereas every woman listed in the blog or who commented threw support behind it. Anecdotal but that's rather a better look if you want to claim you know what women want.)
If I remember my Protestant history right, the Puritans were for the most part originally British. Their mass emigration to the US colonies came during a period when they underwent a dramatic split from the Anglican church, which they regarded as corrupt and too loose in its values. If you want an equivalent in British or European history in general think some of Oliver Cromwell's religious set, except with fewer proto-anarchists fighting in his army because they think he's going to actually abolish the monarchy.
4996045
Well, A British Gentleman managed to tackle the topic in a much more classy way, quoting the story rather than making wild implications about its author, and it ended without a shitstorm we're witnessing now.
As opposed to women who decided to speak elsewhere. Unless you think disagreeing with Numbers somehow makes JumpingShinyFrogs a man. Or Trick Question, who actually provides a possibly most level headed opinion on the topic, without having to resort to shoddy mental gymnastics connecting Cromwell to pony porn, somehow.
4996054
A British Gentleman didn't get noticed by 4chan afaik, which is part of what made The Hellmouth what it was. He's also got a much smaller platform, and isn't publically a shit-stirrer. And while honestly if I'd composed the post I probably wouldn't have name-checked AiD without at least name-checking a few other authors, which would've made the systemic critique stronger, I think the points I made here and elsewhere still largely stand.
Oh my fucking god.
You were asking what a Puritan was, Cromwell wasn't directly related to pony porn, the larger point was about a specific bad argument I saw being made in the comments.
Also I'm aware that some people have showed up in the comments and elsewhere, and I don't think claiming to speak for all women as a universal is something anyone can do. That said, my point was that it's pretty disingenuous for people to continually speak for women without showing any visible signs that any of them consulted women prior to speaking, and then calling out Numbers for doing that when he. Well. Actually fucking bothered.
Also wow, look at the time! It's "this conversation is over o'clock." Scorched earth on the subject of the hellmouth starts now because If you want to argue with Numbers's post, it's still out there, go argue about it there. This post is largely focused on how responding to systemic critique by saying "but I'm a good person!" is a poor argument, which while related to the comments section takes up like less than a third of the total fucking post space.
I already made this clear.
4996063
Well, Puritans weren't related to it either, just like syndicalists, Lenin, Thomas Aquinas and whoever you mentioned in the blog to muddle the issue in pseudo-intelligent banter. And now the mythical 4chan. What's next, Russians?
Now this, I can get behind. Ciao.
4996071
Bye, Felicia.
4996090
Intelligent, rational, on-topic conversation is so hard to maintain.
For some people, anyway.
This was a very well written and on point blog, thank you.
I think something else that may make people take it more personally is that, if they are writers as many of us here are, they much higher and more active in the system that is being critiqued than their readers. Which would seem to make them more responsible (or more 'at fault' looking at it that way) for how things play out.
4996156
I'll even take intelligent, emotional on topic conversation. But that's even harder.
4996495
I'd definitely agree with that, but this is a phenomenon that goes beyond just writers. If this were about being creators, then the fans of those creators wouldn't have felt as personally offended on their behalf- but as we see, they do. This also echoes behavior and commentary made by individuals encountering other forms of social critique for the first time. It's not just the ultra-wealthy who have personal investment in capitalism, it's also people at the bottom of the class ladder who are aspirational.
I think what drives the response more than anything is personal investment in your own identity. The more invested you are in a community, the more you feel like your identity is inseparable from it. So if someone tells you that something is wrong with your community, you cannot perceive that in a way that doesn't also include you.
This isn't particularly helpful.
4996540
I'd definitely agree with that too, and what you said about seeing an attack on your identity as an attack on you. Because, as you said, most people don't think about the effects of a system as separate from the people who make it up. And you you get the tragedy of the commons and climate change and such.
Great post. I wish I had anything to contribute that wouldn't come across as whataboutism/bothsidesism or pointless nitpicking, which isn't really what I intend, so I'll just end with: thanks.
I've been musing on this for a while, and these are some of my working thoughts:
I agree that no one individual is responsible for the behavior of a system...I think. It is convenient for me to say so, so I should be careful (is it a coincidence I think it's true and it absolves me of guilt? Hopefully). But it's unclear to me how separable the analysis of a system is from the analysis of its individual members--if it's possible to comment on one and not the other. For instance, 4995738, picking flowers is a great example of unintentional error. But to save the field we still have to address the individual. I feel like that means something. Also, if we absolve individuals of guilt, will people change for something they don't feel responsible for? Yet isn't it true people will fight to defend their innocence, because we despise admitting guilt. Perhaps it's a fight we can't avoid?
Perhaps this is more about human psychology than whether critiquing a system critiques the individual. It does critique the individual, but individuals are such that moral accusations offend them and turn them against you. So we must logically contradict ourselves and convince them of a fault in the system while saying it isn't their fault in any way, in order that they side with us and fix the system.
Except, how is this not lying to them to manipulate them?
...this is a tough nut. :P
4999712
Sure. We say "we're all at fault for this", not "you're at fault for this". And "this is a bigger issue than your individual behavior. We're not out there to shame you for that one time you picked a flower". Both of which can be true at the same time as we say "Y'all, we need to quit picking flowers".
5000003
Hm, you may be right. I think I see limits though. Should women when critiquing men say "We're all at fault", and vice versa? Is to criticize racism somehow to admit racism? Also, what of critiquing, say, a system of thought, which you don't belong to (say "conservative thought", or "progressive thought")?
I notice too that system-critiques are made by individuals. I wonder if this means anything.
I think it's impossible to totally escape the individual. And I think also it's impossible to totally escape systems. Perhaps this is the quandary.
5000639
That individuals act in response to and both with and against larger systems, themselves aggregates of individuals. Welcome to reality.
This is where things get interesting, because to a certain extent you're right. Not all systemic critique is made from a position where the critic can or should cop to the behavior that they're arguing against. The problem in this case is that you've chosen to focus on racism, misogyny, and broad strokes thought systems as your examples here, where Dodora's example (and mine) largely focused on forms of systemic critique that focus on relatively innocuous behavior that has deleterious effects when carried out on a large scale. No, you don't have to cop to being a TERF yourself to talk about transphobia, nor should you. But by the same token, you don't have to be a primitivist to talk about how we should reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, or a vegan to argue that we should collectively eat less meat.
Even in the case where someone can (and should) feel convicted by reading a systemtic critique, even when moral judgments are being passed, it's also still incredibly wrong-headed to read even ones about misogyny or transphobia from the lens of "am I a good person and are you calling me a bad person". If your response to a description of "XYZ behavior reinforces transphobia" is "That's not true, I do those things and I'M not a transphobe!" then you've completely missed the point and assumed a deeper accusation than the original critique ever made.
Even in the most extreme cases though, the point of a systemic critique is never whether any one individual is a good or bad person, and making them about that does a disservice to the critic and the reader. Sometimes you're going to call out a lot of people for doing bad things, which is the nature of a critique. Sometimes, though, a critique can be about whether something is good or bad for a community without ever being about whether it's good or evil in itself.
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(I'm not disregarding the rest of what you wrote, this simply gets at the heart, I think, of the amorphous mix of disagreement and agreement I've been having)
Here's why I partially disagree. If "XYZ behavior reinforces transphobia" is true, and reinforcing transphobia is morally wrong, then it follows that 1) XYZ ought not be done--the behavior must stop; and 2) If you do XYZ you are reinforcing transphobia, and your actions are immoral.
Now if your actions are bad, you may be a bad person. Can you commit immoral actions and not be an immoral person? Can you steal and not be a thief, or be a thief yet not steal? It's a quandary we have yet to solve. Given the debate is still out, it seems legitimate to answer either yes, no, or give no answer to it.
If you say, yes, what you do=what you are, then it is indeed legitimate to read "XYZ reinforces transphobia" and conclude that the truth of this statement makes you a bad person, if you do XYZ. At the very least, that your actions are bad is certain already, whatever that may mean for you as a good or bad person.
So the accusation is definitely there, in my opinion.
I would say then that responding with "I'm not a bad person/not transphobic" is the wrong rebuttal not because there's no accusation present, but because it's an error in logic.
It seems by responding this way one is trying to negate the premise "XYZ reinforces transphobia" by negating its conclusion "I'm bad if I do XYZ". ("Well, I'm not bad/a transphobe, therefore XYZ must not reinforce transphobia, because if it did I would be bad, and I'm not"). But this isn't good argumentation. You can't debate a premise through its conclusion. It would be better to attack the premise directly ("XYZ doesn't reinforce transphobia") or its moral framework ("transphobia isn't immoral"), or even by saying transphobia doesn't exist.
However, that accusation of individual immorality is there: "Your actions are immoral (and maybe you yourself) if you do XYZ." It's built into the framework. People are right to recognize this, and feel however they wish about it; but the original argument maker is also right to say "Um, you haven't rebutted my argument yet."
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I'm working on a follow-up post to this now because, again, there's two distinct kinds of systemic critique being talked about here that you're conflating (and that I did in the original post). One is of behavior that is not evil in itself but has overall deleterious effects in the long term, which is not a moral issue for the most part. That's covered by Dodora's flowers-in-a-valley analogy, where the act itself is innocuous but the wide practice of it is not. Just because something is a bad idea doesn't mean it's morally wrong, and likewise even actions that reinforce toxic systems can be things that are otherwise morally neutral.
In the case of systemic critique that does explicitly encompass some major moral issue - talking about certain TERF talking points and how the use of them (even by non-TERFs) can be destructive - implies a level of personal change someone might have to make, but isn't itself a moral judgment because that's not what the conversation was about.
I dwell on this in the post and maybe should have focused more, but a big part of the problem is less that people shouldn't ever feel convicted and more that your individual morality isn't the point and that we're not here to judge. Oftentimes (especially with internal critiques of your own community), the general attitude is more "we have a real problem that needs collective action to solve", not "you should feel bad."
Sometimes systemic critiques are, of course, made from the outside looking in. But even then, it's less that the goal is to have a conversation about individuals and more that individuals should probably feel convicted if their behavior is revealed as being shitty by the critique. It's not the point, it's a side effect at best, and juking the conversation into being about whether or not you're a "good person" is still missing the point. I don't care if you're a good person, and if you actually are and your behavior hasn't matched up with that, maybe now is a good time to correct that.
Now for some people - especially, say, committed TERFS/transphobes/bigots/what have you, they may be too far gone in their identities to be pulled out by a critique, no matter how well reasoned. But anyone who isn't fully committed to that as a persona? The critique may judge that this or that behavior or attitude or belief is bad, but it makes no assumption that therefore they are bad people or that they can't walk out and correct their behavior and become part of the solution. The more drastic their behavior, the more drastic the correction will look, of course. But in the case of, say, the issues discussed in "the hellmouth", the problems described in the community weren't even that hard to "fix" - the call to action was just to "be more aware of your surroundings, your actions aren't in a vacuum".
The response was "fuck you, how dare you tell me not to write porn".
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Yeah, I should have added that I was speaking only about the specific analysis/critique "XYZ reinforces transphobia," which, right, isn't the same as the flower picking scenario. I also wasn't commenting on the porn issue that sparked all this. I haven't read anything surrounding that (other than this blog). I haven't had the interest to, honestly. :P
But you do care if I, say, mind my surroundings when writing porn, don't you? You don't care if I'm a good person in general, sure, you simply care in this one very specific way, yes?
Which is fine, by the way. I'm not saying that's a problem. It isn't. It simply means that even though we are talking about a system/group of people, "the individual" is still central, and is being addressed too (so it seems to me). And yeah, I agree responding "I'm a good person" is incorrect, because it's fallacious.
Exactly. Feeling bad is an emotional response. I don't see why judging a behavior has to mean you want them to feel bad about it. Criticizing a bahavior or making a moral judgment on it says nothing about how you ought to feel in response. So a system critique can say "everyone who does this is behaving immorally" without telling them "feel bad about it". We can even say, "Don't."
Some things I want to make it clear I AM saying yes to here :)
We can define and talk about groups/systems of people.
We can identify behaviors that when done only en masse are harmful.
We can identify behaviors that are harmful whether done en masse or not.
Nothing necessitates people feel bad, and we can try to combat this.
And also, for a group to change, its individuals must change. (Do we disagree on this one?)
I mean, we would call the system-critique which didn't cause anyone to change a failure, wouldn't we? And the one which caused the most people to change a success.
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if we define "the individual" is "multiple aggregated individuals" then, yes, sure. But it's a backasswards way of looking out how the critique is framed, literally missing the forest for the trees. Eventually, yes, you hope the message resonates with people on an individual level - but you're describing problems so large that no one individual could ever be responsible for them. Ultimately you are asking for individuals to care about that problem, but by the nature of the critique you really aren't 'blaming' any one individual for problems endemic to a society.
No, but we do disagree on what the ultimate message of systemic critique is, and whether it's right to treat an explanation of societal problems as a personal accusation. I'm not going to get anywhere with anyone if the first thing I do is approach from a position of superiority and explain that society's problems are their fault. I have to explain to them that certain forms of behavior are a problem, first.
Do we even judge it along those lines, though? A critique that doesn't inspire change can be true or false, and I think those things are in the long run more valuable. A success or failure is less important than whether a critique accurately describes problems a community faces. At that point you're examining whether the rhetoric was convincing or engaged people, which aren't necessarily the same thing.
Again, I'm still working on a follow-up post on the matter which will hopefully answer your questions more fully, so feel free to wait on that, but my larger answer to you isn't that you're wrong so much as "you're right in a way that actively misses the point".
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But I'm not saying either of these things.
There's some kinks in the line between us, I think, which is completely normal in a discussion like this. (I also don't always communicate my own position clearly, lol :P). Or, of course, we have some fundamental disagreements (likely both, honestly). I'm not trying to force an agreement however, or to beat a horse, even before it's dead. I'm happy to wait for the upcoming blog. :) I'll keep my eyes open for it, since I don't follow you.
This is a wonderful explanation, and I'm actually thinking I might show this to a friend to help them get where I'm coming from when we talk politics.
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as future (rel. to time when this post was made) reader I want to thank you, for caring about future, and in the future ....