Carolyn Hax: Tilting at windmills or worth replying to friend?

[beable]

Dear Carolyn: I donated to an organization that provides wheelchairs to people who can't afford them. I posted about this on Facebook. I wasn't trying to brag, but I wanted to give this organization some attention in case anyone I know would like to support it as well.

A friend of mine posted a comment saying my donation was "foolish," because it would be much more productive to donate to organizations that research cures for disabilities so that no one needs wheelchairs at all. I was taken aback by this, and I'm not sure how to reply. Should I reply at all?

— Charitable

Charitable: Nope. Save yourself for actual discourse.

There will always be people looking to score meaningless points. It costs you nothing (besides a moment’s agitation) to let them think they did — while every moment spent engaging with knuckleheads is a moment gone for good.

I think Carolyn is wrong. I have Opinions that when one is on an axis of privilege in a specific conversation on social media, one has a responsibility for their friends' comments on one's social media page (to the extent that one can safely and healthily do so).

So in this example: The friend is being a knucklehead, but more specifically the friend is being an ablist knucklehead and it would be useful for LW to respond - not because it would change said friend's opinion (it probably won't) but to provide perspective for other readers who may not have realized how friend was being ablist and erasive, and also to provide some solidarity and support to her readers whom these words were targeting.

Comments

[xenacryst]

I'm sort of with you, in that it's good to do that to show support outside of the direct interaction, but sometimes that direct interaction is sufficiently a mix of pointless, confrontationally exhausting, and fairly obvious that I don't think the engagement is worthwhile. I have a friend who has a great way of responding in those times - he just has a few short variants on "I disagree." It's quick, it's not an opening for engagement, it can (depending on how he words it and if he adds any other short verbiage) show a little of that public support. In this case, if I weren't up for the engagement and were following his cue, I'd say, "I disagree, that would ignore the lived reality of people who need wheelchairs."

[beable]

I think this example is an excellent response (and also fyi I consider "confrontationally exhausting" a factor in healthily) even if it's not fully explanatory.

[azurelunatic]

Also "A possible future cure for one of the many conditions that makes people need wheelchairs doesn't help the people who need wheelchairs now."

Like. If friendo wants to make that choice with their own charitable donations, fine. But how dare they shame OP for helping actual people right now.

[rmc28]

I like both of those, and they make the point for any onlookers who haven't thought about it and might be swayed by the first person's comment.

[lilysea]

Like. If friendo wants to make that choice with their own charitable donations, fine. But how dare they shame OP for helping actual people right now.

Also, people need wheelchairs for many, many different conditions, some of which are unlikely to ever be cured because they are "orphan diseases = a rare disease whose rarity means there is a lack of a market large enough to gain support and resources for discovering treatments for it, except by the government granting economically advantageous conditions to creating and selling such treatments."

Also, even for common diseases, it often takes 30 years for good treatments to be developed. People need wheelchairs during that 30 years!

[minoanmiss]

oooh I like that phrasing. *takes notes*

Also poor LW, to have such a tool in their social circle.

[ambyr]

I agree that one has a responsibility for not leaving comments on one's social media page that will serve as microaggressions for other readers, but I would not exercise that responsibility by engaging with the person perpetrating a microaggression--I would just delete the comment.

[cadenzamuse]

+1

[lemonsharks]

That comment would be enough for me to stop being friends with the person in question, tbh.

[minoanmiss]

Me too, but this is one of the reasons I'm not on Facebook -- said 'friend' might be a good friend's spouse or a relative or a coworker, someone one cannot easily get rid of. (I have a whole canned rant about how Facebook collapses all the disparate facets of people's lives.)

[lemonsharks]

To be fair I also ditched at least one friend because she was getting all classist and judgy about my non-big-ten college basketball team playing "rough" against a big ten school. In that case it was a final straw.

[minoanmiss]

Eminently reasonable of you. beams at you

[cereta]

Yeah. Although both my uncle and my younger brother accepted my invitation to unfriend me if they didn't like what I posted. I certainly wouldn't expect others to put up with my problematic relatives.

[tielan]

I have enough spoons to say "You're free to give where you feel it needful, but I see the value in giving here beacause even if a cure was found tomorrow, a whole lot of people are still going to need wheelchairs until such a cure can be found and implemented (if it ever is)."

Obvs not everyone has the emotional or psychological spoons to do this. Sometimes I don't, either.

[untonuggan]

i agree with the addendum at the end of this post; i thought the same thing when i read the post.