What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

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

Obvious Online Prejudice Isn’t Prejudice, Apparently

Recently, I’ve started to notice a worrying pattern developing:

I get into an argument with someone online about problematic behaviours - usually sexism or racism - and the extent to which they’re both socially institutional and culturally embedded. My interlocutor disagrees, claiming there’s no real evidence that such prejudices are widespread enough to present a problem. In response, I link that person to something that proves my point - a specific page on the publicshaming tumblr, a crowdsourced resource site like Fat, Ugly or Slutty, a demonstrative comment thread, some relevant screengrabs - as a way of showing that not only do many people believe still believe these things, but that they’re not always coy about saying so.

My interlocutor then rules this evidence irrelevant and biased because it comes from the internet, and everyone KNOWS that the internet is full of asshats who say awful things.

It doesn’t count, they say, as though the internet is wholly separate from society; as though making bigoted tweets and leaving sexist comments on the regular somehow means you must occupy a different, parallel culture distinct from our own.

It’s not representative of the whole population, they say, oblivious to the irony of making this claim without any evidence to support it while simultaneously ruling any actual, concrete examples irrelevant. 

You’re just picking examples to suit your case, they say, eliding the fact that, only moments earlier, they claimed such a case was impossible because there was no evidence.

And I just… OK. Not only do I keep having these conversations with people who are otherwise firm believers in the relevance of digital culture - people who talk about the death of traditional print journalism, advocate for video games and webcomics as serious mediums, spend half their lives on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and any number of other forums and social media sites - but I keep having them about digital culture itself. I have literally had people say to me that YouTube comments sections aren’t relevant to discussions of online sexism, that the content of fanpages and fan forums isn’t relevant when analysing the attitude of fans themselves.

And the worst part is, it’s not even because they think these aren’t valid examples of problematic behaviour: quite the opposite. It’s precisely because they’re such obvious examples that they deem them irrelevant - like I’m cheating by even mentioning them, because EVERYONE KNOWS things are bad in those places, so why would I even bring them up? It’s like saying the sky is blue. I’m not allowed to talk about Reddit or YouTube or Kotaku or Urban Dictionary or XBox Live any of those really popular sites with daily traffic in the millions that could otherwise be reasonably said to represent a fair chunk of the population, because that’s the BAD internet, the internet I should know better than to expect better of. No: I must draw my examples only from the REAL internet, which is rather conveniently defined in these instances as “anywhere prejudice isn’t”.

And every time, it makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall, because seriously? Do you not see that if something like the YouTube comments section is so universally understood to be a cesspit of sexism and racism that EVEN YOU, a person who denies the ubiquity of those attitudes, will casually say “But of COURSE YouTube is like that,” then maybe there is an actual fucking problem - and more, that your decision to just cede that entire territory in order to say there ISN’T a problem is itself a part of what perpetuates the problem?

Imagine you have this massive garden, one that’s tended exclusively by your family members. Parts of it are very beautiful and flourishing, but there are also big areas of rot, decay, pestilence and general plant death. Clearly, on the basis of the evidence, not every family member is a great gardener - if they were, the vast majority of the plants would be thriving, and the ones that weren’t would be given extra care, instead of being left to fail and infect the neighbouring patches, whose gardeners have to work double time to try and keep those areas free from the spreading blight. But whenever people point out the problems, you say the garden is fine - just look at the flourishing areas! Never mind the extra work those gardeners have to put in just to keep it that way, because as far as you’re concerned, there’s no relationship between the gardeners themselves and the state of your flowers - not when it comes to the presence of problems, anyway. Some patches of the garden are just inherently bad, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with the people left to tend them. And how dare anyone try to criticise your family, when they’re doing such a good job the rest of the time! If the garden succeeds, it’s because your family is awesome; but if the garden fails, it’s got nothing to do with any of you. And if someone tries to point out the rot, you just say they’re determined to see problems - look at that rose bush over there, the one without any blemishes. How can anyone say the whole garden is rotten when that one bush is fine? People are just being selective in their criticism, deliberately picking the worst-off plants to complain about and trying to blame the gardeners when really, the only problem is their poor attitude.

Do you see how this argument doesn’t make sense? And yet, over and over again, this is the exact argument I run up against when arguing about prejudice online. The level of wilful blindness involved is staggering. 

Some days, there isn’t enough headdesk in the world.

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  15. jenndoesnotcare reblogged this from fozmeadows and added:
    Foz is, as always, extremely relevant and articulate. Tend your gardens, folks.
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    This x10294572097456.
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