On seven different occasions with five different people in the last fortnight (yes! I’ve talked to five people in a fortnight!) I’ve encountered something which I’m pretty sure everyone does. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I think I’ve started to see it in a new light.
As a generalised principle, let’s call it “getting angry at people for saying stupid, upsetting and/or offensive shit”.
I used to do this a lot. I don’t do it as much anymore. When I did it a lot, it was under the guise of “intolerance of intolerance is justified”, and people operating under that principle have a lot to get angry at. Religious hatred, racism, sexism, homophobia - a lot of people say idiotic things that can be subsumed under categories like these, and the instinct - if you’re any sort of decent person - is to call the intolerant person out for saying the stupid thing in the first place.
I’d stopped doing it nearly as much, and to begin with I thought it was just because I was becoming nice. While I might have more common human decency than a few years back, I still know how to completely savage people (and do, sometimes), so it still doesn’t work.
That’s when I came to this idea of giving people leeway - basically the recognition that the people who say those stupid things are human, and that people are more likely to be idiotic on emotive subjects. It’s something we do on a regular basis. The grieving widow who says that their spouse was a better person than the other mourners at a funeral could ever hope to be isn’t saying such a cruel thing because it’s completely, truly meant. It’s said because they’re understandably upset, and feel like lashing out against the world. It’s why no-one’s going to stand up at that funeral, understandably offended, and mention the deceased’s secret alcoholism, or foul temper, or any other number of reasons why they don’t deserve to be put down as inferior. Because it’d be a shitty thing to do, and there are more important things at hand than airing your personal grievances.
The desire to make our point can be overwhelming sometimes. Anyone who has met me will know that at my worst, I get very keen on getting in the last word (or rather, the last word before someone says “you win, I’m sorry”). Unfortunately, I’m also relatively competent at arguing, so I can often get to that last word point and get no “you win” in return, instead just being greeted with a scowl.
The argumentative stance is a bit desensitised to how people feel. You can still recognise that someone’s upset, sure, but the fact that you’re right (and you might be!) somehow takes precedent over that.
I suspect that’s why you see flame wars so often on the internet. A commenter, or blogger, isn’t putting all of their emotional baggage on the table. The kid who repeatedly vomits vitriol about how all white people need to shut the fuck up and die might have suffered violently at the hands of a gang of white thugs, and suffer bullying from a white majority on a day-to-day basis. As long as they don’t talk about it, though - and if they’re traumatised, they have no obligation to - the online respondent has a tendency to assume that this person is instead perfectly well-adjusted, has never suffered, and is just talking way beyond their station. (It doesn’t help that people like this exist and flourish in the same environment.)
Does the context change how we react in this case? I think it does. There’s a sliding scale, of course - if the aforementioned kid is publicly inciting their huge base of readers to go out and kerbstomp a white person at a particular time on a particular date, then of course they deserve to be shamed for it. Writing “white people suck and I hate them and don’t bother talking to me if you’re white”, just after you’ve had the shit beaten out of you because of your race? Still hurtful, but with an excuse.
We’re fed this myth that if we don’t say what’s on our minds, it bubbles over and eventually explodes. That’s not how people work. Enough distraction and perspective, and the things we’d otherwise recognise as stupid fizzle away. It works on both ends - the best communicators hold their tongues when they’re upset as well as in response to those who are upset, and only say something if it actively makes things better.
