The Absurdity of Engaging Abusers Rationally

Particularly since the 2016 election, op-eds along the lines of "why we must be nice to bigots" have become something of a cottage industry.

Over at Everywhereist, Geraldine shares her account of what happened when she tried to engage her Internet abusers with civility and an open, questioning mind.

In short, it was sort of pointless.

The problem with Internet abusers, you see, is that they are abusive, a trait that often comes with it an unwillingness or inability to show empathy, and deliberate attempt to push buttons and cause pain. Remember, "Many 'trolls' understand that their targets might be feeling upset, sad, angry, or hurt - they just don't care," because the typical profile of an Internet abuser is that he (most often) rates high in psychopathy and sadism and low in empathy.

In my experience dealing with Internet abusers, they adapt their abuse to whatever method I use to engage them: If I ignore or block them, they frame me as a coward. If I directly engage them, they continue and often escalate the abuse, often roping in abusive allies. If I de-construct the nature of their abuse in a blogpost, they frame me as pathetic for writing a blogpost about their abuse. If I show anger, sadness, or fear, they mock me, obviously pleased at getting a reaction.

Geraldine ends her piece:

"There’s a lot of discussion about how we need to reach out and talk to people who disagree with us – how we need to extend an olive branch and find common ground – and that’s a lovely sentiment, but in order for that to work, the other party needs to be … well, not a raging asshole. Insisting that people continue to reach out to their abusers in hopes that they will change suggests that the abuse is somehow in the victim’s hands to control. This puts a ridiculously unfair onus on marginalized groups – in particular, women of color, who are the group most likely to be harassed online."

Indeed.

I note here with a fair amount of cynicism that some of the endless, daily acts of emotional labor that marginalized people engage in both keeps us safer in the world and continues to privilege the feelings of the privileged. It's part of what makes bigotry, and abuse (because they are hopelessly intertwined), so difficult to eradicate.

Think for a second when the last piece scolding you to be nicer to bigots came with it even the barest acknowledgement of the emotional toll that doing so might take on you, or ways to keep your self safe when navigating these conversations, or - hell - an admission that these scold-pieces themselves are, yes, quite absurd but necessary because, in the US, privileged people have a pervasive, infantile notion that if bigotry exists at all, it only exists in its most obvious-to-the-privileged manifestations: the KKK grand wizard, the Westboro Baptist Church, Ann Coulter, and so forth. 

In the US, most people are culturally trained to disregard the feelings, pain, and lived experiences of  those who are not male, not white, not cisgender, not Christian, and not heterosexual.  A refusal to coddle bigots and abusers is so uncomfortable for many people because it de-centers the privileged within the conversation.

At its core, refusing to coddle bigots and abusers sometimes isn't about convincing assholes to be nicer, it's to tell ourselves and everyone else that we fucking deserve better even if the asshole doesn't think so.