The word, and how people online and in real life use it bother me.
The definition is constituting or presenting a problem or difficulty or a thing that constitutes a problem or difficulty.
That’s fine.
How it is often used is the thing you just said or did has been determined by some unquestioned authority to be wrong and I am letting you know that I know it.
I have no problem with disagreements, if someone is says X and another says that saying X is racist or sexist or even juvenile, that can at least begin a conversation. There the person objecting has stated at least somewhat clearly WHAT they are objecting about.
“Well, that’s problematic”, does fuck all. Worse, it strangely imposes the duty of sifting out what not only offends some random person, but also that it was already unanimously declared inappropriate by polite society.
This is not a rant, clearly shit is wrong and needs to change and talking helps get us somewhere. That word just grates on me and I’d like to know if this is a similar interpretation you guys have seemed to glean from its current usage.
Of course I could ask, I think it’s intentionally vague on purpose. Hence why they didn’t use a more specific term.
Perhaps this just is really a silly minor rant about one dumb word and will be shipped off to another forum.
My point is I suspect it’s not just laziness but some kind of subtle slander tactic that takes no effort to fire off. I think on many levels we’re kind of heading in that direction with our internet discourse anyway.
I see it as annoying too.
I generally think the person using the p-word as really not interested in engaging, what might/could be a real confrontation.
Kinda like checking out before the discussion even starts.
The times I’ve used it, it was because I felt like my opinion might hurt the feelings of the other person.
I have been asked what I meant by saying “that’s problematic”
I had to come clean and just lay my opinion out there. And, sure enough the persons feelings were hurt.
I have a somewhat different experience with encountering “problematic” in the wild. Particularly when used to describe a person rather than an idea, it seems to be a way of softening criticism, of acknowledging the good while voicing some discomfort. Some examples:
I’m a fan of the sex advice columnist Dan Savage, and so are a few of my friends. We were talking about him in a mixed group at a party, and I asked one of the other folks I’d just met if he read the column. He smiled uncomfortably and said something nice about it, but then said, “but he can be problematic on trans issues.” I’ve heard this criticism before and don’t really agree, and two beers in I didn’t feel like getting into it, so I kinda shrug-nodded like “eh maybe so” and we carried on with discussing what we liked. Which would have been harder to do if that person had said, in response to my question, “that transphobic asshole?”
I performed in my law school’s production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues.” In talking with my fellow cast members, who obviously didn’t completely hate the premise of the show, I gradually came around to the perspective some of them had that aspects of the show were problematic. For example, the monologues telling the stories of women of color not only centered around violence, but portrayed it in a way to suggest the violence was perpetrated only by men of their own race. I wouldn’t call the production racist, but…I recommend Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk on “The Danger of a Single Story” for a better explanation than I can give of this broader issue.
I’m sure I can think of more, but this is getting long. Anyway, I agree with @Slash1972 that you can simply ask the person “what’s problematic about it/them?” But if you’re just doing it to shut them up, maybe try a different tone of voice and actually listen to the response they give you.
You can. But as Sitam says, that puts the onus on you to find out what’s problematic. I’d much rather someone just tell me why they have a problem with something rather than just say that it’s problematic.
Edit: And silly me for not seeing this was covered before I posted.
“Problematic” is essentially Corporate-speak. i.e a diplomatic euphemism that through overuse has become a codeword for a much larger grab-bag of ill-considered meaning.
Whether it actually originated in Corporate America vs elsewhere isn’t really the issue. it’s the same motivation in any case. And it has certainly escaped into the wilds of ordinary non-workplace usage.
In the examples the OP gives which are social / political discourse among non-experts it amounts to:
“I think you just dropped a turd in the punchbowl, but I’m signalling that I’m not interested in actually fighting about that now. But I am registering my observation / objection for the rest of our audience to take note. And in a slacktivist way, I’m pushing back at your turdliness.”
Whether any of that is doing either party any good is an open question. At the same time there’s the old saying that all evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing. For many of our social / political ills “good men” have silently done (almost) nothing for decades or centuries. These mild pushbacks are the first tentative baby steps in the direction of doing something. It’ll take a hell of a lot more than that to achieve actual change. But it’s not just zero either.
To directly answer the OP's question, *what* exactly is turdly about the statement objected to is usually blindingly obvious. If people are commonly telling you (any you) that your statements are problematic, it takes a trollish degree of willful ignorance to not identify what's wrong.
And yes, in our current hyper-partisan hyper-noisy culture, different people have radically different ideas of what’s turdly. So the mere assertion something is problematic is not proof positive that the objection is well-founded in any absolute sense.
I haven’t read much of the thread on this but has ‘problematic’ become a dog whistle of the left? It’s usually used when a full takedown isn’t warranted or appropriate, but signals to those in the know that this person, idea or statement is something racist, sexist, or some other -ist.
Everyone knows quite clearly that when someone calls something problematic that they think that thing is “something racist, sexist, or some other -ist”.
I think it does edge on being a dog whistle. It is sometimes, but not always, meant to convey the message of “they just need to be more sensitive” to one audience, while conveying the message of “they’re a bigoted asshole” to another.
And even if there are not multiple audiences, it still has the dogwhistle quality of plausible deniability. Maybe a better term for that use is Motte and bailey, where they imply that “problematic” means something heinously wrong, but when called on it will retreat to the argument of “I’m just saying it raises issues is all”.
I spent yesterday evening with my late 20s niece. At no time were we discussing politics or -isms or any of that. She used “problematic” over and over to describe anything that was inconvenient or had drawbacks.
Her mobile phone’s getting old and the battery charge doesn’t last all day? “That’s problematic.”
Her kid’s growing like a weed and needs new bigger clothes, but shopping is hard during COVID? “That’s problematic.”
etc., etc, etc. With me being primed by this thread it was almost comedic how often she used “problematic.”
As per my earlier post, I agree with politics of the usage the OP is concerned about. But with this post I’m also going to suggest that the term is becoming just another overused stock phrase verbal tic. No different than “utilize” vs “use” or any of another hundred over-complicated and overused trite idioms.
I would say there is a second definition which is synonymous with either “worrying” or “questionable”. It might be used when you can’t or don’t want to tell someone they are wrong, but you really want to let them know they are wrong. Overuse for this purpose may indicate a passive-aggressive tendency. Lo and behold, my dictionary of choice reads:
prob·lem·at·ic 1. Posing a problem; difficult to solve: a repair that proved more problematic than first expected. 2. Open to doubt; debatable: “if you ever get married, which seems to me extremely problematic”(Oscar Wilde). 3. Not settled; unresolved or dubious: a problematic future.