Yeah, I think the main problem currently seems to be you’re trying to shout louder than the admins. Try to be more rhethorically defined, don’t throw ad hominems, be precise and not overgeneralising. Otherwise you’re just promoting that kind of behaviour as acceptable. Sure, the other side might attack you personally, but this is not a contest who’s first or who has the ultimate truth. Try to stick to the facts. Don’t shoot back, try to disarm.

Oof… you’re touching upon an issue I’ve discussed quite a bit with a group of friends: the tension between effective rhetoric and expressing your true inner feelings. We’ve had these discussions in the context of different types of asymmetrical power relationships, but we often talked about the experience of one of those friends who is gay.

My highschool friend

He grew up being constantly being bullied, including constant jabs from the very same friend-group. Yes, we were regressive, asshole brats; as you may imagine by my tone, this has changed quite a bit. Anyway, the thing is, we changed as a friend-group partly because of the incidentally (or not) inclusive media we consumed. We also changed partly because one of us who went overseas to a hyper-inclusive intentional community would systematically point out micro-aggressions. For example, when someone would say “Oh, he’s such a removed” to mean that someone is weak or fearful, this woke friend would badger them with deliberately nonchalant stuff like “Oh, how could you tell his sexuality based on [that behavior]?” or “Oh, I didn’t know he was into men”. Finally, we were able to change partly because none of us had our identities particularly tied to a regressive expression of a religion or some other ideology (with “ideology” defined in the broadest possible terms).

But that’s not the point. The point is that my friend hated the whole regressive behavior we had. And although he hinted at how he felt by brushing us off with “Alright, alright. Leave me alone”, back then he never expressed his emotions in terms of feeling alone, different, hated, fearful, even disgusting at times… Today he’s able to be more candid with us, and so are we. We can all talk frankly about being fearful of a declining romantic relationship, of having screwed up flirting, of the uncertainties and the shitty certainties aging, of being lost career-wise —you know, the total opposite of stereotypical cisgender men like James Bond.

But I can’t help but wonder whether my friend could’ve changed our regressive views by expressing his awful experience candidly. Honestly, I’m not sure it would’ve worked. We would’ve needed very different schemas to internalize his plight, schemas that we just didn’t have until much later. At the same time, his own experience, expressed strategically, could’ve created those inclusive schemas. But that rhetorical work, which is usually in the hands of capable artists and witty activists, would be too much to ask from a preteen.

My American friend

This is quite a different scenario to another, unrelated, friend. She grew up in a poor, white, and overwhelmingly Evangelical American city. She used to go by the Fox News discourse of the time, of which the most laughably absurd talking point was the whole “Obama, show us your birth certificate”. She ate that up… And her best friend didn’t. Her best friend sat down again and again to talk about these topics, showing her sources, asking critical questions. Eventually, my friend came around and she recognized how absurd her previous point of view was. Today, she’s incredibly grateful at the work her friend put into having her re-think her views.

My neighbors

A last example: my neighbors. They have a dog. It barks all the time. It’s left alone all the time. It’s had no training. The owners themselves told me they don’t like dogs. They have it because their son went overseas and left the dog home. The barking drives me crazy. I try to study and I just can’t think when his barking spouts begin… The law isn’t on my side either: I talked to a lawyer and the most that we can do is get the police to knock on their door and tell them to get their shit together. And so now, my daily life is navigating the tension between (1) wanting to yell in their face about how insensitive they are to leave the dog suffering all day long and how incredibly incompetent they are as owners, and (2) having to approach them with an effective solution. I’ve spent so many hours reading about dog-training, rhetorical tools, how humans change… ugh… it’s been a ride. And, by approaching them strategically, it has improved: now they give the dog walks daily (which is not really a solution to the barking, but at least it makes the dog’s day more interesting) and now they let the dog into the house when they’re not out working. But when they leave the house, so does the dog, and the barking begins…

This whole thing is not so structured, but I’m just trying to let you see where I see the tension between being candid and being strategic. My ideal solution would be to find ways being candid in a rhetorically effective way. But this puts the burden of work on the hands of those who are suffering… and that sucks. Yet I think it’s what I have to continue doing to fix the dog issue, among many other things I’m interested in changing in the world.