I've been back on Twitter for a little while. I know I said I wouldn't, but for professional reasons, it made sense to have it as a means of communication now I'm on USgamer — I've already managed to get in touch with a number of different devs and write stories thanks to that bloody service.
Twitter remains infuriating, however, because people still don't quite seem to get that 140 characters is not a good amount of space in which to have a discussion. You can spill over into more and more tweets and rant on and on, but as soon as you start spamming like that, people switch off.
The other thing that Twitter encourages is kneejerk, usually furious responses. Sometimes these are justified; other times, all they do is damage the perception of the people who are trying to make otherwise coherent arguments.
By far the most consistently-occurring issues that come up in my Twitter feed are matters relating to any and all of sexism, feminism and transphobia in particular. As I've said on numerous occasions in the past, I support the causes that these people are trying to forward: women are just as awesome as men and should be treated as such; a person is a person, regardless of biological sex and/or gender, and shouldn't be treated as a second-class citizen based on prejudice; most importantly, just don't be a dick.
However, where the people campaigning for these things lose me is in their behaviour when it comes to advancing their causes. I do not and will not believe that the best way to enact change is to get really fucking angry at something, mock people who don't subscribe to your exact viewpoint and then publicly shame people repeatedly until they clam up and don't want to say anything. That shit is viral — if you behave that way, people will see the way you act towards others, and that in turn will make them not want to engage in discussions we should all feel confident and good about having. In trying to further a cause of equality and encouraging oppressed minorities to stand up for themselves, in other words, you're actually silencing people in the process. It doesn't matter whether those people you silence are the "privileged" — usually white men — because all you're doing is… doing what you want people to stop doing. Do you see where the problem is, here?
Most recently, Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade attracted the ire of these particularly vocal people on Twitter by making some ill-advised and ill-informed comments about transgender people. This isn't the first time he's said something stupid, and it probably won't be the last. I honestly believe he's not saying these things from a position of genuine hatred; he's just naturally a jerk towards a lot of people — and, as he notes in an apology on Penny Arcade, the first time these issues raised their heads he wasn't even aware of many of them. To be fair to him for a moment here, I knew absolutely nothing about transgender people at all prior to this year, either; the subject simply hadn't come up, so it's not at all unreasonable to assume that he hadn't come into contact with this particular group of people before and thus didn't know the "appropriate" or "acceptable" ways in which to talk about them.
There's a degree of common sense required here, of course, which Krahulik didn't always display, particularly as the most recent incident was actually the second time he had run headlong into being perceived as "transphobic", but for him to be immediately labelled a "bigot", a "sexist" and outright insulted is, frankly, a little much. People don't teach you these things. (Well, perhaps they do now; it's a long time since I was at school and took a Humanities lesson.) And as such, when people are confronted with unfamiliar things, sometimes mistakes are made; things are said without thinking; sometimes offence is caused. The appropriate response to someone making a mistake is to point out that they made a mistake and then educate them so they don't do it again in the future.
Key point: both the pointing out of the mistake and the education should be done in a calm, respectful manner that acknowledges ignorance isn't the same as bigotry. If your first response to someone saying something that you believe is offensive is to start swearing at and insulting them, then of course they are going to get defensive and start flinging mud back at you rather than attempting to engage with you — particularly if they don't understand what they did wrong in the first place, however silly that might seem to you as someone more well-informed.
It's a natural response; look at how children respond to being yelled at as opposed to having positive behaviour reinforced, or calm explanations as to why the thing they were doing was inappropriate. These reflex behaviours continue well into adulthood for many of us; no-one likes to feel like they did wrong, so the more aggressively people shout and scream, the more the recipient of the ire will dig their heels in and just escalate the whole situation. In Krahulik's case, this happened previously with the "rape culture/dickwolves" incident a while back — people yelled, he got defensive, discussion was shut down before it could begin — and again with this more recent incident.
There are a number of sad things about this whole situation. Krahulik could have had the opportunity to learn about part of culture he's unfamiliar with, but the immediately aggressive response shut down any hope of rational discussion and education and caused him to get defensive. The aggressive response didn't stop, either; it grew and grew into a seething ball of hatred, with people referring to him and his Penny Arcade partner Jerry Holkins (who had remained very quiet throughout this whole debacle — a sign which some saw as tacit approval of Krahulik's actions) as "dicks" and other, far more spiteful terms. People started calling for boycotts of PAX. One indie developer even publicly pulled out of PAX's indie showcase.
None of this had to happen, and it is not solely Krahulik's fault that it did. He's not blameless at all, no, but I place as much blame for the subsequent fallout squarely at the feet of the people who did the aggressive yelling, the swearing, the insults, the death threats as I do at the feet of Krahulik. This could have been an opportunity for everyone involved to grow; instead, it was just yet another sign that people like nothing more than a good fight rather than actually talking and educating one another. And I worry that serious damage has been done on all sides of this issue; there are no winners here.
The really sad thing, I think, is how much this sort of thing erects barriers between people. Every time I see something like this happening, I feel genuinely afraid to open my mouth for fear of saying something that will make everyone hate me; and that little nagging voice in the back of my head says "you're not allowed to have an opinion on this; you're a privileged white male". I have seen how quickly people can turn on someone for one little thing that they said, and no-one will ever back down or attempt to understand or educate. It's just shout, shout shout. It kills discussion. It kills education. And it achieves the absolute opposite of what many of these "social justice" types are supposedly fighting for; instead of promoting inclusivity and harmony, it sows discord and excludes people. We're better than that.
So everyone, try a little harder to get along and understand one another, please.
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That whole thing with Mike really bummed me out. The things he was saying weren't coming from a place of hate, but ignorance. His views aren't too dissimilar from views I would have had a few years ago. I could see myself saying the same thing. I agree with you that what I feel the biggest problem with the whole situation was people's crazy kneejerk reactions. Boycotting PAX? That's the absolute wrong message. You should go and set up a booth educating people on what being transgendered means. Be a force for positivity than simply negativity.
RIGHT. Totally. This is exactly what I'm saying.
When people start yelling at Jenn Frank, of all people, you know that things are just getting unreasonable. I really felt for Jenn yesterday; I don't know if you followed any of it, but it was shameful and heartbreaking to see people whom she obviously considered "friends" tearing into her.
I'd probably get behind your message a lot more if it hadn't been about ten days since the issue had arisen, and Krahulik obviously hadn't availed himself of some of the genuine outreach offered by quite a few people. It's one thing to say "I didn't know" after saying something ignorant, it's quite another to say something ignorant, get called on it, have access to so many people saying "here's information on this issue, please listen", and to then say the same comments over a week later, no modification, no new insight, no progress etc. It's just utterly disappointing. We're constantly told, over and over again by ignorant people "We just didn't know! Tell us!", and yet the same information is out there, readily available, suggested, linked to, offered… and we get a repeat of the same ignorance over and over and over again.
Mike's position at the start of the saga was the kind of understanding that preschoolers have. His position at the end of the saga is… the kind of understanding that preschoolers have. He professes that he will 'treat you as you wish to be treated', but most trans people I know wouldn't wish to be referred to as the sex they were born as. That's not treating people how they'd wish to be treated. And so, it's plain to see that Mike's platitudes are really just handwaving away the problematic mindset that he's chosen to publicly voice.
What this boils down to is that people who face incredible hardship and frustration by constantly running up against the 'ignorance' in society, along with the intolerance, vitriol and rejection that comes along with that, are once again being told that it's not okay to lash out at people who would literally deny you your right to exist as you see fit, it's only reasonable to offer some olive branch of tolerance and understanding time and time again and hope that, maybe this time, it won't be smacked down and rejected and dismissed out of hand. People get sick of that rejection. People react negatively to that rejection. People see that this hasn't been a 'new' issue for DECADES, now, and they see the same tired old 'ignorance' excuse being used to wipe away hurt and pain as if it ever could, and they get sick of it. Trans people don't have infinite patience, and they shouldn't be expected to in the face of infinite ignorance and infinite discrimination.
I agree that Krahulik hasn't handled this all that well and has a history of not handling things well (though he has apologised and made a hefty donation to a relevant organisation today) — but this isn't just about Penny Arcade, transphobia and/or sexism, though; it's a more widespread problem of which the recent debacle was just the most high profile case. Any time there's a "controversy" or someone says something they shouldn't, it immediately gets reacted to in the strongest way possible, and anyone who disagrees or urges caution is somehow an asshole.
I cannot and will not respect someone who sinks to swearing, yelling and insults in an attempt to make their point — particularly when that point centres around inclusivity. And there's too much of that going on. Some people are giving helpful resources, yes, but they get drowned out by the much louder, much more aggressive ones — making their message easily lost.
I also will not respect people who turn on their friends when said friends try and get them to calm down and discuss things rationally, as I saw yesterday. It's completely unacceptable behaviour, regardless of what provoked it, and it's why despite agreeing with a lot of the points these rather vocal people fight for, I want nothing to do with their causes and would rather just keep my mouth shut. Surely that's counter-productive to the causes they're trying to advance?
The problems I see with that argument is that much of the time, concern about the form of a reaction is often used as grounds to dismiss it. Yes, a lot of what was said via twitter to Mike was harsh, some of it was intensely vitriolic, and by any measurement we cannot define the entirety of the responses he received as measured and thoughtful. But Mike then used the vitriolic elements as license to dismiss all responses, civil or otherwise, that were in opposition to his position. This is referred to in some circles as a tone argument; "It's not what you said but how you said it/ you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar etc etc." Tone arguments are used to dismiss valid criticism on the grounds that the delivery is too aggressive, confronting, or argumentative, and they place the onus on the wronged party to conduct themselves in a measured fashion. Often someone who dismisses an argument on the grounds of tone has no intention of 'listening to reason', as it were, and merely uses the aggressive responses as an easy 'out'.
I feel like Mike used this method of dismissing the criticism directed at him, because having gone back to look at the initial comments he made on the 7th, it seems obvious that many of the initial responses to his first claim (that only women had vaginas) were not aggressive in tone. Did this deter him from his position? No, because ten days later he was making the same claims again. This is what I mean when I talk about expecting people to continually offer the olive branch, time and time again. Mike was told why his comments were problematic, and a lot of the comments he got were measured and informative. Yet the only responses he acted on were the vitriolic ones… and they were by no means the majority of the responses made. It's disingenuous to frame the narrative of this as Mike being crushed by an angry wave of protest, while simultaneously ignoring his outright dismissal of so many measured responses.
We have a situation where Mike made several statements that others (including myself) would consider deeply offensive. Stating that transgender people everywhere are members of their assigned birth sex is an oppressive and hurtful comment to make, as it is exactly that attitude which engenders so much hate, discrimination and prejudice directed at trans people. But this is dismissed as a comment made in ignorance (despite addressing the issue a week prior… hmmm). That doesn't preclude it from causing hurt and offense, it's merely an excuse for why the comment was made in the first place. Intent is not a shield that absolves you of the responsibility of having hurt someone. It is, in my opinion, an easy way out for people who make hurtful comments to claim ignorance as an excuse for causing offense. But if you cause offense to someone, you're not entitled to a reasonable, measured and non-confrontational response. Asking a hurt party to only react in ways that are inoffensive is an unreasonable demand. In short, if you offend someone, they may be hurt and to react to that. That's life. It's a pity, but it's human nature.
If Mike claims ignorance of the issues concerned, and his ignorant comments are disputed, surely that's grounds for him to stop commenting on a topic he knows nothing about and to try and learn why people are disputing his comments. It seems foolish to, as he did, double down, maintain his ignorant comments and dismiss any and all responses. It's a shame that it had to turn into a bitter fight before he chose to reconsider his actions. I am glad he said he was wrong and made the donation he has, it speaks of a desire to do better. It's just a shame that this was not his initial response to what started out as a constructive criticism of his comments, which he admits were made in ignorance.
Dude, I am going to tell you this because you're a nice guy, real reasonable, and that is why they will destroy you. You don't have to approve this comment, you just have to read it. What you are saying here reveals the depth of the ignorance of your comments on this topic. I do not say this as an insult but as a warning. What you are doing is what they call a "concern troll". The accusation of concern trolling is when someone makes a reasonable request that debate not include death threats and name calling, they will be accused of trying to shift the debate to the form while evading the substance. Thus, all attempts at civility are framed as being in bad faith and their maker a troll The irony is that this accusation in of itself is used as a method of evading honest debate. So, when you make this sort of argument, you will be seen as the enemy.
That the argument is perfectly legitimate is beside the point, people who use debate to promote their viewpoint rather than find truth find it a useful tool in their toolbox. Krahukik has said that he is a jerk, he has made public the reasons that he is like this and how it makes him react. if you angrily attack him, he will immediately go into a violent offense is the best defense mode, he will clam up to further debate and he will angrily lash out by any means he can. I know this behavior well, because I am the same way for the same reasons, I was heavily bullied as a child.
What I am saying here is, the form of the debate does matter because people come from wildly disparate backgrounds which means that they are receptive to different kinds of arguing. Krahulik isn't going to respond well to angry accusations, it will accomplish the opposite and both sides will come out looking worse. But his accusers don't care, if they wave their pitchforks and torches and an angry beast afraid of light comes thrashing out of the castle, their point is just proven to themselves all the more, the righteousness of their cause confirmed.
I am aware of this phenomenon — it happened to a friend of mine (who has previously been on the more "activist" side of things) so I'm painfully aware of it, so I simply needed to make my displeasure known.
I am now closing comments on this post.
"I do not and will not believe that the best way to enact change is to get really fucking angry at something, mock people who don’t subscribe to your exact viewpoint and then publicly shame people repeatedly until they clam up and don’t want to say anything. That shit is viral – if you behave that way, people will see the way you act towards others, and that in turn will make them not want to engage in discussions we should all feel confident and good about having."
Couldn't agree more about the first part. I guess we're talking here about the way Penny Arcade's dismissive and insulting treatment of rape survivors during the "Dickwolves" blowup led to the creation of Twitter accounts called Dick Wolvington, Team Rape, Team Dickwolves and so on, and the way some fans took it upon themselves to attempt to shame at least one woman publicly by claiming that she lied about her own experience of rape in order to sell T-shirts, right?
However, I'm not sure about the second part. Even in the face of that, many commentators continues to talk about and engage with the situation, even when the response they got from Penny Arcade itself was dismissive and insulting. People I think, are better than you're giving them credit for. And, over time, it seems like that process – of engaging, of making the case, of honestly sharing the hurt they are feeling, of taking principled stands about participating in PAX – is having an positive effect, agonisingly slow and effortful as it may be.