Miri offers some really good advice on how to sincerely offer support to victims of harassment — it doesn’t involve joking, JAQing off, or trying to minimize the problem. It actually seems to involve listening and respecting, who knew?
(Don’t read the comments, though. They’ve been taken over by a slymepitter JAQing off — he apparently didn’t read the post, or perhaps didn’t give a damn what it said. At least they’re a nice example of Lewis’ Law.)
Also, don’t argue with the commenter. That doesn’t help.
sorry to go offtopic. … Reading that blog, informative, leaves me speechless. What can one say, sympathetically, to the statement that sympathy is offensive and useless? sheesh, me doing it here. me speechless.
anyway…
offtopic: reading that blog; I noted the different structure of the comments, than here, They are more hierarchic than the single thread form here. I know it has been suggested earlier, but I’d like to add another vote to the hierarchic structure.
Is that a deliberate strawman, or an accidental one?
The article brings up a good point about the odd phenomenon where people gauge the moral superiority of a position by the amount of negative response it gets: the more the better. It reminds me of politicians excitedly proclaiming that everyone on the other side is “afraid” of their policies, as if having half the country (rightly or wrongly) believing you’re going to harm them is a good thing.
If you say something and get a lot of negative reactions, it could either mean:
1. You just said something horribly stupid
2. There are a lot of loud, evil people who want to shut you down
The problem is that the speaker always assumes #2 while the people reacting always assume #1. Therefore, the public reaction to an opinion is not really the best gauge of its validity one way or the other.
I see it as shit-stirring to bring up the ideological others without any indication that it is even on their radar. Some people just want to see a fist-fight. They’re the ones who would either be going back and forth egging the combatants on. Or they’d be in the circle making sure neither one of you escape.
@PZ #1
It’s always hard to decide how much to feed/not feed trolls and jerks. Unfortunately once people engage its hard to stop the waterfall affect unless you ban them quickly.
“What can one say, sympathetically, to the statement that sympathy is offensive and useless?”
One of the issues I deal with in listening with respect, is allowing my partner to be, just be as they are and listen without interjecting, without trying to help or define or somehow remove the pain they are expressing. This I find very hard with someone I deeply care for because I do no want them to suffer and I don’t want to be indicted in it either. Feelings threaten me because they bring up old themes where there has been harm done. So listening with respect often means shutting up first and allowing another to express what needs to be felt. This is quite possible when I allow myself to feel too, to endure my own pain as it crops up while allowing my partner to get something out with me. Sympathy can be offered in such a way that it appears as a trump card, an end. Not helpful.
twas brillig:
You’ve been hanging out here long enough to know better. I get the impression you haven’t spent much time listening, focusing more on what you’ll say about any given subject. It’s not as if discussions about sexism, misogyny, harassment, so-called jokes, sexual assault and rape are incredibly rare here.
It’s right there to see, that those of us who have been subjected to to those things ^ aren’t looking for pats on the head, cookies, or useless expressions of sympathy. As Miri said, what does matter is when people let us know we’ve had an impact, when we’ve helped people learn. Expressions of empathy are one thing, but the standard sympathy lines invoke pity more than anything else, and that is not fucking helpful in any way, shape, or form.
If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. If you want to say something, say something on point and helpful, such as “thanks for helping to educate me about these things” or “I didn’t realize ____, your point of view made me much more aware of _____”.
At some point, you need to recognize your penchant for obtuseness in certain subjects, and work very hard to overcome it. Listen more, and try to learn.
One of the things that is hard for well-meaning people to understand is that their preferred way of dealing with an issue is not necessarily the way another person can deal with the same/similar issue. So, a lot of people see someone dealing with an issue and thoughtlessly attempt to force their coping mechanism onto the person they’re trying to help. That sort of helping, the kind that doesn’t help and sometimes harms? Not such a great thing. And if you are genuinely well-meaning, you’ll strive not to do it and not get defensive if you screw up and have it pointed out to you.
And maybe it is easier to understand if the point is made more generally. If you’re doing someone a favor, but in a way that goes against their wishes, are you really helping them out? If I ask you to bring me lunch, and you bring tacos when I asked for a salad, you didn’t really help me out. It isn’t “the thought that counts” if you’re actually being completely thoughtless.
IJoe:
Well said.
Miri actually lays out several strategies for expressing sympathy without giving offense. Why did you miss that part, ’twas brillig?
Thanks for the link PZ.
We cannot understand what people have been through; even if we have been through an identical experience, how you felt, feel and reacted will not align with the experience of that other person. All should show themselves to be compassionate, open to conversation and express a willingness to support.
QFT (from SallyStrange)
Seriously, even on my tiny laptop screen and with that huge text size the page defaults to, the list of suggestions was less than 2, uh, page-downs down.
IJoe
Hear, hear.
re *:
Apologies for my lame, muttering, preamble to the “offtopic” question. You may be right that I completely missed the suggestions of how to show sympathy without being unintentially offensive. All I got was the “better say nothing, than try to make light of it, …”
Just to try to explain where I’m coming from; my experience as a Brain Injury Survivor and experiencing the support group experience… often the group talks about how to communicate and MIScommunicate. The first example is someone greeting a survivor, trying to cheer him with, “Wow, you look great!” The group tries to council on our response, when we feel, “Maybe I look good, but I’m NOT, you may think I show no signs of the damage, BUT you’re WRONG. etc. etc. My takeaway is that it is better to say nothing and just listen. That’s what I was attempting to illustrate with my ineptitude.
TLDR: You’re right. I am sorry for misspeaking.
I’d like to take on part 2 of ’twas brillig’s comment at #2. Personally, I find the “hierarchical” or nested comments and quotes much more difficult to follow than the simply linear, sequentially numbered ones. It’s also easier for me to find the one I wanted to comment on or read again in the sequentially numbered format. Not that my opinion makes any difference; each blogger will choose for themselves.