I try to draw a line between criticism and violence.
I do, actually, get online threats of actual violence. This isn’t unusual for bloggers, especially ones who belong to oppressed groups. I tend to get mine because I’m a woman, a feminist and a Jew. If someone receives rape and/or death threats — and people do, far too often, especially if they belong to marginalized groups — I find that horrifying.
However, I also find it clearly distinct from criticism.
Criticism (especially in a social justice context) is often described as assault, a witch hunt, a lynch mob, or a crucifixion. (There are a couple other go-to metaphors, but those are the major ones.) Of these, “witch hunt” and “lynch mob” are the most upsetting. However, they are all attempts to silence criticism by comparing it to a violent, unacceptable act. It is unacceptable to assault someone, ever; therefore, it’s implied, that the criticism is likewise by its very nature unacceptable.
The use of the terms witch hunts and lynch mobs (or mobs in general) also implies that the criticism is not being offered in good faith, and certainly not with thoughtfulness, deliberation or sincerity. Instead, it implies that the criticism is the result of a mass delusion. It implies that there is nothing to criticize at all–that the very nature of what is being criticized is superstition–since witches don’t exist and lynched victims are innocent. It implies that the only goal of criticism is bloodletting, that it will only be satisfied by burning stakes, pressing stones, or hung corpses.
Now, I do not mean to imply that no one who offers criticism is ever an asshole. People are totally assholes. You can easily show me examples of someone criticizing someone else, even taking a position I broadly agree with, and acting like a flaming asshole. And I will look at that and say, “Wow, that person is acting like a flaming asshole.” This happens–it is, in fact, inevitable. Groups of people contain assholes.
I’m down with criticizing assholes for being assholes. But the terms “witch hunt” etc assume that the grounds for criticism are vaporous. When applied to groups, it also implies that no one (or almost no one) in the group is offering good faith or meritorious arguments.
It is sometimes true that a person is, in fact, offering a critique that stems from delusional, bad faith bloodthirstiness. It is sometimes true that groups are doing the same. When a group of people bullies a trans person until they commit suicide, I am comfortable saying that this is the result of delusion (transphobia is based on delusional principles), bad faith (transphobia itself may be something an individual feels in good faith; bullying is not an activity pursued in good faith), and bloodthirstiness (as it ends in death). Bullying exists at an intersection where words can become assault. That intersection *does* exist.
But people are very free with the comparisons of criticism to violence. And I would counsel being, instead, very strict with them.
Be aware of (among other things):
*The stakes. Is physical safety actually on the line? With a bullied gay teenager, it may be. With an adult blogger being criticized by anti-racist bloggers, it’s probably not.
*Whose history you are invoking. Are you defending a person who is (in this argument) privileged by comparing their situation to violence or death that was explicitly directed toward people who were (in the salient situations) oppressed? Are you comparing a person whose speech is being criticized for being racist to someone who was killed by a lynch mob?
*Are you legitimately comfortable saying that the people you’re accusing of participating in a witch hunt would like to see their victims subjected to physical violence? Or, instead, when you fill in the abstraction of “people criticizing this person I’d like to defend” with “Blogger X,” does the metaphor start to make you uncomfortable? When you fill in the actual implications of the metaphor by defamiliarizing the language (instead of “this person is engaged in a witch hunt,” something like “this person experiencing a mass delusion that makes them want to see people die”), does that make the comparison seem apt or appalling?
*(As a complicating factor to the above, are you using the history of the oppressed group against them? Are you using the real, historical deaths of people of color to suggest that criticism from people of color is like murder?)
Just because speech is being criticized doesn’t mean that the criticism is legitimate. People can offer good faith criticisms, even criticisms that are theoretically rooted in correct ideas such as anti-racism, that are still totally wrong. People can be unreasonable assholes, and groups can pursue unreasonable, assholish arguments. As noted, sometimes speech does actually rise to the level of actual assault when violence is involved, either directly (as in threats) or implicitly (as in bullying). But most of the time, even the people who are being unreasonable jerks aren’t actually arguing in bad faith or lusting for blood. They are arguing stupid points and doing it stupidly. Rather than attempting to shut them down by calling their criticism assault (unacceptable in any circumstances) as if it’s the fact of *criticism itself* that is the problem, the best response is usually to explain why their *particular* criticism sucks. Unless their criticism *really is* assault, in which case, please do call it out. Explain why. Be savvy and aware. But don’t just use these terms as short-hand or rhetorical flourish when they’re not really what you mean. They’re silencing, inacccurate, and in some cases offensive.
Real people really died as a result of lynch mobs. It’s particularly insensitive for white Americans to use that as a metaphor for someone being criticized. As a Jew who lost a lot of relatives in the Holocaust, I would be upset if the go-to metaphor was to imply that criticism was like pushing people onto trains that would take them to gas chambers. That’s taking the deaths of my relatives experienced and making them something trivial.
If you find yourself wanting to argue that I’m taking metaphorical language too seriously, then I ask you to really stop and think about the things you care most about, the ones that pinch and hurt, and imagine them being used this way. Try to take it out of the abstract for yourself. Find the places where you are tender. Now really, and in good faith, imagine that everyone presses on those tender places all the time, that they see them as fodder for winning internet arguments, and not actual, painful things. If you’ve done that and you still feel that you want to argue abstractions about language, then all right. I won’t agree with you, but I’ll believe you’ve tried to take my position into account. But please, first go to the place that hurts, and then imagine that being used against you as a way to stop you from arguing the positions you are passionate about.
Yes.
Maybe it’s because I’m in a family of mostly chicks, but I get a little twitchy when people (usually dudes) use the word “rape” incorrectly. I say that, and I’m not really a very PC kinda guy! But when a dude says, “Yeah man, Comcast customer service will really rape you,” I always gotta say something. Rape is a fricken big word for customer service at Comcast. It’s a word that outta be saved for REALLY BIG situations cuz it’s a really big situation kinda word. so yeah, when people mis-use words, like rape or witch hunt or lynching, I think, “cmon people, think about your fricken words before they fall outta your mouth.”
Thank you for writing this. I’ve found that even in the most harmless situations, people are very quick to read criticism as inherently negative and rebellious/violent. So even an innocuous comment on YouTube can get flagged by hardcore fans of a given song or singer and a narrow-minded “positive” (or pro-singer/song) gets a few hundred Likes. Because God forbid we don’t 100% agree with how things are.
I can write an essay/book on what baggage I think people bring to the table even in those small situations and why we’re all so tetchy and apt to overreact.
I think this is a very good post, and a very important counterweight to the post I wrote here a few years back on “Criticism as Punishment”. It’s particularly important because the accusation that certain types of criticism (namely, calling something “racist” or “sexist” or “anti-Semitic”) constitutes a form of “silencing” or “muzzling” is the go-to method for shutting down criticism of that sort — the result being that we effectively lack the space to talk about racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism in any meaningful way.
That being said, I was wondering if you could say more on how you distinguish the concept of “bullying”, which you present as a semi-carve out to your above analysis. Obviously, sometimes bullying is paired with actual tangible physical threats (pushing someone into a locker), and then it’s an easy distinction to make. But I think you’re properly presenting a broader idea of bullying that doesn’t in of itself have a direct relation to physical harm. This seems to be an (accurate) concession that even “purely” discursive attacks, if relentless enough, one-sided enough, mean-spirited enough, or something-else-enough can exhibit real and tangible harms on a persons psyche and dignity that do exhibit real and severely deleterious effects on a persons sense of equal standing and human dignity that go beyond “some people are assholes.”
So what differentiates “bullying” from “(asshole) criticism”? After all, in addition to being called “lynch mobs” or “witch hunts”, feminists, anti-racists, and counter-anti-Semitism activists are all regularly called “bullies” as well by those aggrieved by their campaigns. I gather the bullet points are an attempt to get at this — criticism is no longer just criticism if it comes from a vantage point of power onto someone subordinated, or if it carries with it an implied connotation of violence (even if historical), or if indicates (objectively? subjectively to the target?) that the speaker would at the very least not object if their “criticism” resulted in violence, or if it predictably has the result of inspiring or ratifying other’s violence (regardless of the speakers’ intent), or if it utilizes elements of the targets own historical oppression as indictment against them (as a potential non-exhaustive list).
This isn’t meant as a criticism (ironically enough!), I’m genuinely interested in working through this issue and I think this post does a lot of good work in that regard, so I want to know if we can craft together a conceptual account of “bullying” that recognizes its harmful attributes (even when it is unaccompanied by violence) while still recognizing that shutting down discussion of racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism by referring to those claims as “witch hunts” is not okay.
This stems, I think, from the growing treatment in the liberal academy that “offensive” is akin to “wrong.” Not that this is a new thing, mind you, but it certainly continues to be a growing trend.
Most (though not all) of the labels have an “unjustified” or “because” aspect. Bigotry isn’t prejudice against a group; it’s unjustified prejudice against a group. Antisemitism isn’t simply hatred of Jews; it’s hatred of people because they’re Jews.
The accusation of bullying happens most when people break out the labels as a quick way to win without engaging in the underlying argument. This is common and unsurprising. Bigotry and antisemitism and racism are “wrong” and it’s a heck of a lot simpler to accuse someone of those, than it is to talk about objective or logical proof that an argument is wrong.
This is, also unsurprisingly, an expected consequence of the liberal push towards subjectivism. Too many folks are willing to grant definitional power to others.
If Jews control definitions of antisemitism and Muslims are empowered to define Islamophobia and women are the arbiters of sexism and POC can’t be challenged with regard to racism; and if each person’s claim to offense must be respected, and the offense avoided…. well, seriously, folks: do we think that every minority-group member is some sort of higher being who won’t fall prey to the human-nature foibles and goal-seeking tactics that affect us all?
For example, the scope/extent/moral justification for AA is a discussion which should be open to all U.S. citizens, and on which people can (and should) have a very wide range of opinions. However, I do not think it is generally possible to have that discussion in a liberal setting and take an anti-AA position without being labelled poorly.
Similarly, I do not think it is simple to discuss Israel and take an anti-Israeli position without being called an anti-semite.
Etc.
“If you find yourself wanting to argue that I’m taking metaphorical language too seriously, then I ask you to really stop and think about the things you care most about, the ones that pinch and hurt, and imagine them being used this way. Try to take it out of the abstract for yourself. Find the places where you are tender. Now really, and in good faith, imagine that everyone presses on those tender places all the time, that they see them as fodder for winning internet arguments, and not actual, painful things. If you’ve done that and you still feel that you want to argue abstractions about language, then all right. ”
I did this, and I still object.
They aren’t vague abstractions about language, they are fundamental truths about communication without which you cannot successfully understand the world.
Metaphors are an integral part of human communication. For you to say “this metaphor is not literally true therefore people who use it are wrong” is incorrect.
When people say “It’s a witchhunt” it’s a venerable metaphorical expression that does not reference a literal desire for violence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt#Metaphorical_usage
To say “And if you think I’m wrong to say that you shouldn’t use it metaphorically unless it’s literal, then consider how much it hurts to hear this and how much you would like it on your sore spots” is a distraction from accurate criticism of your position by invoking empathy.
For you to imply that being accurate and attempting to deal with reality in all it’s messy complexity is simply “fodder for winning internet arguments, and not actual, painful things” is to abandon any attempt to do any good in the world because *the truth (and reality) is on the side of the oppressed* – we cannot fight oppression by denying reality, defying empirical rationality or simply being wrong about how metaphors work. All these errors simply add to the confusion and prolong the suffering.
It hurts to hear it, and I don’t like it on my sore spots *but that doesn’t change reality*. And saying that it should just puts everyone back.
@Sarah: but is it a helpful metaphor? Some metaphors shed more heat than light. Some metaphors just allow lazy thinking, and when we put more thought into “what does this metaphor really imply?”, we realize it’s a bad metaphor and it leads to less clear thinking. It leads to a less accurate understanding of the world. I believe that these metaphors, when applied to criticism, encourage people to feel more justified in their defensiveness than they have any right to feel. I don’t see how continuing to use these metaphors is “being accurate and attempting to deal with reality”. And invoking empathy can give us additional information by leading us to consider what the other person’s position is; it’s not universally a distraction.