Do let us know when it is no longer ‘appropriate’ for men to dress in suits - not only are we asserting social and financial superiority, just dressing in men’s clothing is ‘aggressive’ because of all the nasty things men have ever done is represented by our clothing.
I guess we’ll all soon be required to wear sack-type clothes and walk with our shoulders slumped so we don’t ‘aggressively’ assert our upper body strength.
Microaggressions as a concept are valid.
Exerting much of your mental capacity toward discovering new ones and dwelling on others leads to emotionally stunted people who are paralyzed by a victimhood syndrome.
There is another option: shrug away the inconsiderate actions of others and move on with your life. This is what effective adults do.
Colleges used to teach us how to become adults. Now they perpetuate whiny childhood well into the years of early adulthood. Some believe this is more a disservice than any sort of great social enlightenment.
Yes, but having hundreds of them happen daily/weekly/whatever might just start to take some small toll on people. Not everyone is hugely strong and resistant, and some may actually be adversely affected, even in some small way, by tons of microaggressions.
Just try to imagine two groups of people, whose experiences are otherwise identical on average – one group is subtly and mostly inadvertently insulted about 100 times per day, and the other group is not… would it be that surprising if the insulted group is a little bit (or more) behind in various things due to some sort of psychological effect, however small it is?
Just a small, non-aggressive note:
I am NOT responsible for YOUR conclusions.
‘Do not take offense when none is intended’.
Trust me on this one: If I want to give offense, I am quite capable of giving it.
[quote=“usedtobe, post:24, topic:739495”]
Just a small, non-aggressive note:
‘Do not take offense when none is intended’.[/rQUOTE]
Ugh. Sometimes it’s the implied belief behind the words/actions that are what’s hurtful or offensive and not so much the actions or words themselves. I get asked if I need help for every god damn thing I do in public. 24/7, 365.
Now, I’m confident the person who comes up to me when I’m sitting at a bench in a mall and asks me if I need some help was not intending, in any way, to be hurtful or offensive. But it is the implied belief, usually an automatic belief, that led this person to ask me if I needed any help that is what is most hurtful and offensive.
That automatic belief (it’s a term meaning a belief that is just so ingrained and subconscious that the person holding it doesn’t even think about it, it’s just there) is basically that anyone who is in a wheelchair and alone is in need, or at least could use, some help.
So coming from that perspective, the person offering the help is doing nothing but a positive thing and how on earth could this disabled person not be appreciative?
ETA: yeah, and multiply this by about 500,000 and how do you think the person on the receiving end feels about elements of society?
Again, it’s not about YOU. It’s not about whether or not someone is a bigot, or at least, that’s the secondary concern. It’a about whether some people live in a world where all damn day they are reminded that they are different and that lots and lots of people assume they are inferior or defective in certain ways. Out of this, people seem to be thinking that the key thing, the most important thing is “Yeah, but you need to shrug that shit off, because most of it wasn’t intentional and some of that genuinely wasn’t what you thought it was, and it may not be possible to do anything about it. For you to walk away from a random encounter thinking someone said something was hurtful and bigoted when it wasn’t --for you to walk away thinking someone was a bigot when they weren’t–that would be horrible. Tragic. It might even be me. ME. And that wouldn’t be fair.”
I’m sure I’ve said hurtful things to people that I didn’t recognize because of my relatively privileged position. I’m sure sometimes it’s been because I was making assumptions based on bigotry, and I’m sure sometimes it’s been a total misunderstanding based on different frames of reference and coincidence. People have, I am sure, unjustly accused me of bigotry in their hearts. And this is unfair to me. But it is an unfairness of such incredible insignifcance that it just really doesn’t matter.
It’s like we can’t talk about how this sort of thing might affect people, teach people how to better deal with it, raise awareness to help other people stop doing it, because we can’t get past other people feeling so tragically misused and their character maligned. It’s just not about that.
I really don’t get why this concept is so hard for some people to get.
Microaggressions often happen because we lack rules of etiquette in certain situations. We are taught social graces not because we are naturally rude, but because social graces help to smooth over miscommunications between strangers. When people fail to follow basic etiquette, offense may arise. I’m guessing the folks complaining about the pointlessness of microaggression have (at least once in their lives) taken offense at someone who failed to say “thank you”. Of course the appropriate response is to shrug it off. But that doesn’t mean you don’t ever walk away thinking, “Man, what a rude douchebag! Was he raised in a barn?”
But communication is so vast and complex that it is impossible to have a script for every situation. People think it’s good manners to automatically ask a person in a wheelchair if they need help because they think that that’s what nice people do. People think it is complimentary to tell black people they are a testament to their race because no one has ever told them that compliments like that are condescending as fuck. People think it’s perfectly okay to touch pregnant women on the stomach because no one has ever told them pregnant women have boundaries just like everyone else. People think it’s perfectly okay to assume the casually dressed Latino is the contractor rather than the homeowner and treat him accordingly because they don’t see anything wrong forming such a generalization as long it saves them a few precious seconds.
People also aren’t taught that their actions are never occurring in a vacuum. We are just repeating what we see others do. So you aren’t the only one touching a pregnant woman on the stomach or asking the guy in a wheelchair if he needs help. In isolation, these wouldn’t a micro anything. But anyone would be annoyed if they had to experience these things all the time.
By talking about microaggressions, perhaps people will think twice before making these kind of faux pas. By automatically dismissing them as “silly”, you guarantee that they will continue to happen and that minorities will continue to have it worse than non-minorities.
No one is marching in the streets over microaggressions. No one is advocating changing laws to prevent microaggressions. There’s no reason to get your hackles up over this concept unless you know you’re a regular offender and you simply don’t want to change.
And what group is there that is not?
There may be something to this idea, but I’m not convinced that we aren’t all subjected to these microaggressions in different ways and at different times.
I thought the idea of this thread was that these small unfairnesses do matter. The message of this thread seems to be “you think you’re being friendly and helpful, but you’re actually an asshole (and too stupid to realize it).” Is that not also a microaggression?
But not with the same frequency, and not in ways that are as damaging to our essential sense of ourselves.
It’s in no way proportional. The message of the thread is “people are being hurt and having their sense of self eroded on a regular basis but they are supposed to suck it up and ignore it because most of the time, probably, no one is doing it on purpose”.
I am confident that I don’t have to deal with as many microaggressions as Ambivalid. I feel this way even though I’m an unmarried, childless middle-aged black woman with Tourette’s Syndrome.
Do you think you have to deal with hundreds of little reminders of your minority status on a daily/weekly/monthly basis?
Not everyone deals with sexism, racism, ageism, abelism, lookism, or classicism. So why should we assume that everyone deals with microaggressions? We all deal with rudeness and awkward encounters, but microaggressions are a specific subset of these.
How about this?
“You think you’re being friendly and helpful, but you’re annoying the hell out of me.” I save “asshole” for people who are being intentionally insulting. But anyone can be annoying.
Maybe being called (or thought to be) a racist doesn’t bother MandaJo all that much because she knows her own heart and she knows that most times, people will give her the benefit of the doubt about her intentions. Maybe getting called a “racist” doesn’t happen every day or every week, which gives her time to recover from each insult.
We’re probably all subject to different amounts, yes. What’s the acceptable level?
I’m with you up through “regular basis”, but who is saying “suck it up” apart from Stringbean (not an exact quote)? I don’t agree that that’s the consensus opinion in this thread.
Not the question. The question is “Given that some people are subject to an extraordinary degree of this, how can we help them deal productively with it? Is there any way we can shift the social norms (as monstro mentions) to avoid these?”
I think a lot of people are basically saying “It’s not me, it’s not my problem, it’s mostly in their heads, anyway”, which to me is “suck it up”.
All of these seem to me to be taking the attitude that the vital issue with “microaggressions” is whether you can blame the aggressor, and are making the claim, implicit or explicit, that if it wasn’t intentional–or even POSSIBLY wasn’t intentional–it’s an overreaction and inappropriate to be be offended. That it’s manufactured outrage.
I think it is. Whenever this topic comes up, the majority opinion is that the whole concept is stupid and that people need to “suck it up” and stop seeing offense where there was none meant.
Well, so what’s your point, then?
I guess I read those a little differently. It’s not a surprise that some people would express denial, but people can get over their initial reactions to new ideas. And it’s hard to get people to change things that they’re not even aware are happening.
But pointing out that change is difficult is not the same as saying it’s impossible and that the targets need to “suck it up”.
What I said above, along with what I see as irony; that something intended to be helpful can be taken by the recipients as insulting. And the way to make things better isn’t by putting some people on the defensive.
Do you really feel like when usedtobe says “I am NOT responsible for YOUR conclusions.” and “Do not take offense”, he means “This is a new idea and it’s difficult for me to change my thinking on it”? That characterizing victims of microaggressions as saying “It can’t just be that someone was momentarily thoughtless, they must have been out to hurt me” is an example of jz78817 coming to terms with his new understanding of this reality?
It’s not just about “making things better”. I keep saying this. Even if it is impossible to make things better, even if microaggressions are an inherent, immutable fact, there are still things to talk about, still meaning in understanding the experience. But every single time they come up, the potential aggressors want to make the conversation entirely and only about their role, their agency–they want to be the main character of the story. And I think that’s a problem because it marginalizes a bunch of other aspects.
Second, there’s no way to couch this that isn’t going to potentially put people on the defensive . Endless rounds of “Yes, you’re right, but don’t talk about it until you find a way to make it sound NICE” is an effective way to end this conversation permanently.
Who is doing that?
If someone told me, “Hey, asking me if I need help just because you see me in a wheelchair is annoying. Can you please not do that in the future?,” OF COURSE it would be my inclination to say “Buh-buh-but I didn’t mean anything by it! I was just trying to being helpful!”
But what’s the solution? Allow people to keep annoying you just because you don’t want to hurt their feelings? Why should minorities have to swallow all the pain? Aren’t we all in this together?
It always seems like it is white men who have the most hostile reaction to this subject. But anyone can commit a microaggression against someone. It shouldn’t just be white men who find this subject so “silly”, and yet that frequently seems to be the case. Do you have a guess as to why this might be?
My philosophy, which I think would be wise for my fellow straight, white, upright and non-disabled male friends to think about: if someone with different ethnic/racial/religious/gender/orientation/disability/etc. background and experiences than you asks or recommends that you make a very minor and slight change in your behavior to make them feel more comfortable that would cost you nothing, consider making that change. Women told me that greetings from strangers on busy streets and public transportation make them feel uncomfortable, so I stopped. Disabled guy told me that I should leave the handicapped stall free in the bathroom unless there are no other stalls free, so I do that now. No big deal – didn’t cost me anything, so I made very minor changes in my habits and behaviors.
I think it’s certainly fine to ask about it – “I will stop this behavior, but I’d like to learn why it’s problematic” is a good question. But in terms of actions and words, why not just give them the benefit of the doubt, that they really might have some better insight into how people with their backgrounds might perceive a certain action or question or assertion?
It’s really no different than “staring at a girl on the subway train might make her feel uncomfortable” – we probably all (hopefully) understand that that behavior is unkind. There are other, perhaps less instinctively grasped, but similarly problematic behaviors that are commonly engaged in, I think.
I’m curious as to what we are doing here. Why are we trying to convince people that microagressions, or privilege, or profiling exist?
I mean, if you doubt the existence of these concepts, in 2015/2016, I do not think at this point, that any amount of logical persuasion is going to change your mind to accept that they do exist.
I’m frustrated. It makes me sad to live in a country where (some) people are so insensitive. But since logic does not work and insults are not allowed… I am left with little else to say/feel except for sadness and frustration.
Heh. Are you saying that telling a guy about a no-offense-intended microaggression is often – well, not intended as an offense, but taken as a microaggression?