What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

john-roman-deactivated20210201 asked: Listen, I don't think that chivalrous behavior / politeness should increase a gender gap. Being well-intended is being well-intended, though. That's all I was saying. And of course everyone has a responsibility to respond appropriately to cues, and I'm not in any way implying that one is entitled to a positive return on their own 'good deeds.' I just think there's a major problem in completely damning a person for doing what they think is nice. Realize a potential for dialogue & understanding.

The presence of good intentions on the part of someone who causes offense doesn’t mean the offended party is obligated to accept them as relevant. If someone is truly well-intentioned, they’ll react to being told they’ve made a mistake by apologising and trying to fix things, not by saying the other person should try to see things their way. To borrow from a recent online drama, if someone who claims to be in favour of equality subsequently does something hideously racist, the former claim neither trumps nor mitigates the latter action if the person reacts to being told there’s a problem by saying everyone else just wasn’t listening properly.

What I’m saying is, niceness isn’t a trump card. I’m pretty much always going to be in favour of dialogue and understanding over the alternative, but I dislike intensely the existence of a social - and, yes, sexist - bias which says women should always be the ones to try and understand men rather than the other way round because women are supposedly better at feelings. I’m not saying that’s your contention: I’m saying that the responsibility for understanding goes two ways. Men who make this error have to make an effort to understand where they went wrong; simply pleading good intentions won’t cut it, and it certainly won’t fix the problem.

  1. fozmeadows posted this