Who benefits from silence?
Adventures du jour!
I got hit by restlessness last night and went out for a walk to the Most Favored Tree, then had the brilliant idea of calling a friend to talk while I was out there. It was excellent. Afterwards I walked a little further and sang in the dark (Blue Valentines and Knock a Little Harder). Which meant I got to talk on the phone with friends twice yesterday. A wealth.
Yesterday, a friend posted something about the pushback that white people get when they start separating themselves from whiteness; this morning, another friend posted a thing about Christianity being used to control slaves AND an excellent post about how yoga gets turned into a pathway to poisonous conspiracy theories.
They all resonated with me. I almost skipped past them, though. They looked like a pain to engage with.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about methods of control, and the idea of taboos.
There are things that we should not do, it’s true, but not talking about those things–that is, treating them as taboo–doesn’t help anyone but the perpetrators and people invested in maintaining the status quo.
And it’s also true (or at least I’m taking it as a given) that people should have some privacy, that is, a line between “me” and “thee” that ought only be crossed when the behavior on the “me” side of the boundary is such that the person can no longer be trusted to participate in society.
So: talking about racism shouldn’t be taboo. People shouldn’t have to declare whether or not they are racist. But when they behave in racist ways, they should be called out. Their privacy about their racist views ends when their violation of others’ rights begins.
Who benefits from silence about racism? Right, racists.
Who else, though?
People who are scared of being punished for talking about racism.
White people (for one example) are generally scared about talking about racism. Talking too much about racism is seen as tacky at best. Not acceptable as table conversation: because it will stir up That One Uncle into an hour-long harangue about long-disproved studies about whatever the fuck he wants to rant about.–Talking about racism will incur punishment.
The things that we don’t talk about in polite company–sex, politics, and religion–are all tactics for control. If a tactic of control is brought up in front of someone invested in that control (for whatever reason; they could be an abuser or they could be scared and abused or both), then that person will poison the discourse in order to control and silence it.
On social media: trolls are an issue, sure. But silence is an issue, too.
It’s easier to “like” a post that’s a pun, or a joke, or a kitten, or someone’s cute grandkid. It’s easier to “like” a post when others have “liked” it and given you guidance on how to respond. (“Should I ‘like’ this sad post? Or should I ‘cry’ or ‘care’?”)
Here are my rules of thumb for now:
–Read a couple of things every day where I catch my eyes trying to slide past it, for whatever reason.
–Unless the post is some sort of in-joke or a reference to something like a TV show I haven’t seen (or clearly a rant meant to punish the reader for not caring MORE, yeaaaaah), engage with it somehow.
–React (e.g., “like” or “cry”) to any initial comments made by the POSTER, not the content of the post.
–Don’t stir shit on the POSTER’s comment thread, but repost the content on my own timeline with anything particularly controversial.
–If I repost something longish, find the five-second sound bite in the piece, if possible, and add that to my comments for the article, prefaced with “From the article:” or similar, so people can make a quick judgment on whether to dig further.
It’s easy to let the difficult posts slide by. But if I want to support people who have the strength not to look aside, then I have to make myself stop and look, too.
A lot of us have learned how to navigate trolls online and even That One Uncle in person. Maybe now it’s time to learn how to navigate silence.
A minute or so of the jinglebugs (crickets) of Florida playing their fool legs off while I talk about not being afraid of the dark.
There were lots of bees around these flowers. They just wouldn’t hold still for me. They say hi, though.
I told Midjourney to draw a fractal set for me. This isn’t what I meant, but I’m not mad, either.