I’ve toyed with the idea that one of the major values of social justice is basically empiricism. Social justice contains certain theories, but you can’t just rely on theories. Theories live or die by the whims of empirical reality. In order to figure out the best way to live in a diverse society, we need to rely on observations. In other words, we have to actually listen to people, not just make assumptions.
Of course, I would think that empiricism is a social justice value. I spent a decade involved in skeptical and atheist activism, then departed for more social-justice-oriented waters. It’s natural for me to draw mental connections and decide that actually, both of these things that I have liked are founded upon similar values. Call it a personal pop philosophy. If we’re being serious, I think most skeptics would not have thought to apply empiricism in the particular way that I do; and most social justice advocates would not name empiricism as one of their core values.
But maybe they ought to? I think social justice could benefit from more attentiveness to epistemology.
Rules vs epistemology
Social justice could be understood, derogatorily, as a series of rules. You can’t use this word as a noun, only as an adjective. You can’t use that word, unless you have a certain ethnic identity. Here’s a long list of things that must be marked with trigger warnings. You must include representation of minority groups within any work of fiction, but you’re also not allowed to do that without getting input from the represented group. I think this must feel constraining to people, like they’re not allowed to think and form their own opinion, they’re only allowed to give in to an inconsistent set of demands.
But I definitely want people to think for themselves. You can’t meaningfully engage with social justice if you don’t. If all you did was listen to a set of rules given by a trusted authority, you will be unable to adapt. You will not understand where the rules come from, you will not understand when the rules break down. You will be helpless in the face of any new social issue, of which there is a bottomless supply.
More important than understanding a list of rules, is understanding where the rules come from. And when we understand where they come from, the understanding of them as “rules” starts to break down. They are concerns, thoughts, ideas, theories, based on experience and observation.
An example of putting this in practice, was when I wrote my guide on microlabels. What we call a “microlabel”, is basically an identity term that you are unfamiliar with. If you’re unfamiliar with the word, you are also unfamiliar with the rules around it. If you see social justice as a series of rules, microlabels seem to impose an unreasonable demand that you follow rules you were not aware of, and which were clearly made up. My answer is that you do not need to know all the vocabulary; more important that you adopt the right attitude, the right epistemological posture. A lot of people think, “These words don’t make sense,” so they adopt an aggressive posture. But if you understand that you do not understand, you will understand that uncertainty does not warrant anger, it warrants curiosity.
Let me also give a negative example. There was a time that I was on queer tumblr, and there was a time that certain voices were saying that we should stop using the word “queer”. They believed in certain rules about language. Queer is a reclaimed slur. Reclaimed slurs may only be used by the group that the slur was originally targeted at (examples: the n-word, or “bitch”). Therefore, people who are were not targeted by the slur “queer” could not use the word. And actually, maybe nobody should be using “queer” at all. Instead of “queer”, they would use “q-slur”, then they would attach slap a “trigger warning: q-slur” on everything.
So what I would say to all that is. That’s a nice hypothesis you have about reclaimed slurs. Be a shame if someone were to test it. People extrapolated a set of moral rules from two examples that they didn’t even understand very well, and they didn’t bother to look up any other examples. That’s what happens when people assume the primacy of theory over empiricism.
Anecdotes and lived experience
Now in skepticism, the attitude towards anecdotes is fairly negative. Anecdotes don’t prove anything. Contrast with what I’m calling “empiricism” in social justice, where the basic unit of evidence is lived experience, aka the anecdote.
But this all makes sense. When it comes to proving ghosts and aliens, that demands a certain standard of evidence, which anecdotes do not meet. But in social justice, we’re not making extraordinary claims, we’re just figuring out how to accommodate a large range of people and experiences. If you ever wanted to study social issues as a scientist, you would adopt the methods of social science. Social scientists conduct interviews, they talk to people. That’s how it works.
This is not to elevate the practice of listening people to the level of scientific practice. Nor would I deny the challenges of social science, something we discuss all the time in the journal club I run.
On the contrary, I think it’s very important to understand that anecdotes can lead you astray. For that reason, social justice does not deal with absolutes. For that reason, social justice can come up with mutually inconsistent ideas. For that reason, we might all say one thing, and then a decade later decide that it was actually problematic to say that. The truth is, we do not know things, because knowledge is hard-won.
Incidentally, some of the biggest weaknesses of anecdotes, are basically that they invite theorizing. Lived experiences, those are pretty much just correct, absent lying. The problem is when people theorize about causes (this happened to me because of psychic powers), or generalize (I experienced this, therefore everyone else experiences the same). It’s fair to theorize, but those theories are subject to questions and elaboration.
This is all to say, critical thinking is essential, and I think readers here already get that. Critical thinking is essential in social justice.
what about.. . . .. gender critical thinking?
i kid, i kid. when i was a child i blithely assumed reason and observation held weight, could be used as a way to understand reality. at 16 i was introduced to philosophical doubt and seriously bothered by it, landed on calling myself an agnostic. the second shitler win has reintroduced me to doubt, and I am wondering more than ever if reason is worth anything.
it’s all chaos. maybe social justice as configured in the response to early ’10s reactionaries was always doomed to be the burning effigy that sealed modern fascism in place, because the only real social control anybody has at the end of the day is the power to destroy society. breaking things easy, making things hard. we lost.
i had two phone conversations at work today. one was with a very pleasant federal contractor who lost her job after voting for tvnkp 2. a cheerful leopard-eaten face.
the other was a young lady losing her sight to brain cancer, living in the rural usa, wandering around under the hot sun because there was no cell reception in the metal barnhouse where she lived, trying in vain to get a government website to function for her. she fell down. she never did get into that site, as far as i know.
the roosters crowing and the cows mooing in the background could not bring levity to the scene, just a sense of being mocked by the absurdity of life under fascism.
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@Bébé Mélange
I tend to associate gender crits with all the most anti-empirical social attitudes. Their whole thing is just theorizing about trans folks instead of actually talking to them. I honestly think the q-slur folks were part of some social-justice-to-TERF pipeline.
“the second shitler win has reintroduced me to doubt, and I am wondering more than ever if reason is worth anything.”
Another idea spinning off from the OP, is that critical thinking is great, but hasn’t actually worked out as a community value. A community that espouses the value of critical thinking isn’t necessarily any good at it. And all the critical thinking in the world won’t induce fascists to join on the critical thinking themselves.
i actually do wonder to what extent critical thinking is possible, in the haze of biases we all possess. maybe it can be an aspirational thing taken with an understanding it will never reach a capital T endpoint, like how science is all ultimately subject to change, however unlikely that becomes when a theory is very well-supported. my brother cheated in his formal logic class with a pen wrapped in tiny tiny formulae, in his community college days. did his mensa card mean nothing to him?
Totally agree with this. The first time you hear the definition of something (identity label, etc), there’s no way to know what sort of stance you should have on it- to know that, you need to know how it actually is in the real world. People’s real experiences. For example, maybe the first time someone hears what transgender means, they would wonder if perhaps conversion therapy would be helpful for trans people. There are other circumstances where people have thoughts which feel unpleasant to them, and we treat it as a medical issue and try to get them to stop having those thoughts (like depression)- if it’s your first time hearing about being trans, how could you know if it’s one of those things or not? But when you listen to trans people and find out about their actual experiences, that’s how you know. (But also, trans people shouldn’t be the ones who have to deal with these confused newcomers asking if conversion therapy would be good- allies should field those questions.)
About “rules”- I grew up around a lot of conservatives who viewed “political correctness” like it was just a bunch of meaningless rules. Like “oh, here’s another thing we’re not allowed to say, because someone somewhere might be offended. Oh, here’s another group we have to ‘be inclusive’ of- where does it end???” Then when I started reading feminist blogs, I found out that the reason you’re not supposed to say those “offensive” things is *they are actually not true* and it’s actually harmful when people believe them. But people who are mad about “political correctness” (or I guess we are calling it “woke” now) see it like, these things are true but we’re not allowed to say them. Sometimes people who support the felon president say “he tells the truth” which sounds RIDICULOUS because he lies about everything all the time- but what they mean is, “for so long we weren’t allowed to point out obvious facts about the world, because these facts are ‘not politically correct’, but finally now someone is being real about this.”
And a lot of the “rules” are like, you shouldn’t say xyz because when people say xyz it’s typically associated with some other idea which is harmful- but we can imagine an alternate universe where xyz is *not* associated with that, so then it’s fine to say it. You can’t know this stuff without knowing how it plays out in people’s actual lives and/or knowing the history. (Also why is it bad to say “gay” as a noun, but “lesbian” is fine?)