minoanmiss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
minoanmiss) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
agonyaunt2021-07-02 11:17 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2021-07-02 11:17 am
Entry tags:
Dear Care & Feeding: The Social Justice Wars Have Come Home
My 16-year-old daughter, like many other teens, spent a lot of her time during the pandemic on social media. She and her friend group have become much more active around social justice issues, following activists on Instagram and organizing protests/actions in our city. In general I’m proud she’s expanding her worldview and taking action. However, it seems that many of the activists she follows are very “pro-canceling” and she’s taken this to heart. We can’t decide on a movie as a family, go shopping at the mall, or go to a park without my daughter railing against a brand/person/company that the rest of the family was excited about—even though (if I’m being honest) she usually hasn’t done the research, and is just repeating what she saw on Instagram.
Recently a movie came out that we were all excited to see. We counted down, sang the songs together, and looked forward to the movie as a bright spot amidst a hard year. We saw it on opening night and really enjoyed the time spent together at the theater—our first time since before the pandemic. We loved it. The next day, my oldest shut us down at the dinner table by saying the director was “canceled” for not casting enough darker-skinned actors in the movie. She said by supporting the movie, we were showing our colorism. My younger daughters were immediately deflated. Now the mood around the house is strained and tense. It seems like my daughter has an extremely, extremely high bar for what can pass her test, and it’s honestly a huge bummer to be constantly tiptoeing around her, unsure whether a celebrity we’re about to praise has actually done something cancel-worthy, and we just didn’t realize it yet.
I am honestly trying to find the line between genuinely enjoying activities and experiences for what they are, versus being honest about what’s problematic in our society. I know this is an important part of my daughter’s identity formation. But sometimes, I just want us all to be able to be into something, you know? Being around someone who’s constantly critical and negative has made it hard to genuinely enjoy my daughter’s company. Am I out of line if I ask her to tone it down? How can I encourage her to continue this developing awareness while still reminding her not to yuck our yum all the time?
—Mom of a New Activist
Dear MoaNA,
Your daughter’s newfound interest in justice will eventually lead her to realize that “cancellation” without any path towards redemption only replicates the carceral logic of the cis white patriarchal system. But until then, yeah, yikes, that sounds incredibly annoying. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by telling her to tone it down. As eye-rolling as her tone might be, you are still obligated to approach these conversations with a saintly amount of patience and open-mindedness. She also might be swayed by the idea that she can enjoy art made by problematic artists as a form of resistance: they shouldn’t be allowed to take their art away from us, on top of everything else.
Putting the fascinating and ever-evolving debate around art, power, and justice aside for a moment, though, I’m wondering whether you might need to adjust your expectations of family time. Your daughter is sixteen! It’s not realistic to expect her to want to watch the same movies or go on the same outings as your younger daughters. She’s growing up, working to differentiate herself from her parents and her siblings, and as you probably remember from your own teen years, this is a phase that’s marked by conflict and strong emotions. Give her space and let her do her own thing, while making sure she knows she has the option to join you for whatever portion of family time that genuinely appeals to her. It might just be easier for her to say a director is canceled than to consciously grapple with the larger issue, which is that she’s on her way out of the nest. Stay open and forgiving, and hopefully she can start hanging out with peers and yuck their yums instead of yours.
no subject
I've also been in a situation in which a friend got...very passionate about a movie she objected to (Frozen, which...) to the point that she actually drove someone out of the RPG we were playing. A polite "please don't go into this on my Facebook" led to all kinds of back-and-forth about when it's appropriate to insist on educating someone about objections to a work of art/entertainment. Some of that was her own inability to read social cues (which she will be the first to tell you is pretty extreme), but some of it is a legitimate question.
I think the idea that it's time to let her decide whether she wants to participate in family time is a good one, although I'm not sure I agree that that's entirely the "larger issue." That said, I don't think it's entirely out of line to ask her to dial it back a bit when she does participate in family events - not refrain altogether, just not dominating the conversation about it. That would be true of any interest/passion. Learning the idea of kairos (reading the time and place of a speech act and acting in the appropriate measure) is a valuable life skill. She's got her online communities to be as passionate as she wants in.
TL;DR: it's complicated.
no subject
Yeah, nuance is a good thing to talk to teenagers about.
no subject
Talking with a close friend about your issues with a film/TV show, sure.
Discussing it in a class or a panel at a convention, sure.
Writing about it on Dreamwidth or Twitter, absolutely.
Writing a film review or an essay, absolutely.
But the arrogant man who dumped a giant bucket of scorn on me and two others at a party when we were all saying how keen we were for Moana to come out - he went on in an incredibly condescending way about all the various criticisms people had of the film as tho only racist ignorant people would want to watch it AND IT WASN'T EVEN OUT IN ANY CINEMAS YET - he was just an arsehole.
If people are all excited about something, it's better not to rain on their parade if you can avoid it.
[Unless what they're excited about is eg Bill Cosby or Roman Polanski or a similar level of harm]
no subject
Yeah, this is a good time to discuss nuances.
no subject
When you see three people WHO ALL HAVE VARYING LEVELS OF SOCIAL ANXIETY AND WERE JUST TRYING TO FEEL THEIR WAY INTO A CONVERSATION ABOUT SOMETHING HAPPY WITH EACH OTHER, you don't rain on their parade!
What makes it worse is that years earlier he had told ME off about a conversation I was having at a party because "it wasn't appropriate to talk about [personal problems] at a party, parties are for talking about happy/upbeat things" (it was a private conversation with a close friend in a multi-room house party, no one except me and the friend had been in the room until he wandered in)
patronising/condescending arsehole!
no subject
He sounds like he likes to eat other people's happiness. I hope you never have to deal with him again and that the fleas of ten thousand camels infest his underwear drawer.
no subject
He's always been patronising/condescending/smug. He acts amused by everyone around him, like he's smoother/better/superior/more polished/more etiquette/better social skills to them. And he has Opinions on other peoples bodies - everyone should have thin, toned, muscular bodies or he will have Opinions.
I wish I could have told him off at the time, and if he'd been white, I would have
but saying to a man of colour [Malaysian]
CAN'T WE JUST HAVE A FUN CONVERSATION ABOUT THIS FILM
felt wrong, like... I wasn't able to tell a man of colour to NOT bring up every grievance everyone had ever written on the internet about Moana before it even came out.
Even tho he wasn't personally connected to the cultures in Moana...
no subject
Oooooh I see the position you were in. There is a thing people sometimes do -- from my POV as a Black woman in the US I often see men of color and White women do this, but anyone can if they want to be enough of an asshole -- when someone disprivileged on one axis uses it to prop up their privilege on other axes/make themselves unassailable when they then exercise their privilege.
So the thing is (SO MUCH easier said than done) is to separate the criticism from the disprivilege via acknowledging the disprivilege. "Yes, made by a major corporation in the West there is no way this movie could be free of racist aspects. One of the challenges we're looking forward to seeing it tackle is how well the filmmakes manage to do at avoiding racist pitfalls."
As for his fatphobia he's straight up privileged there and a simple "different people have different bodies, how about the weather" might work there.
I want to send him the fleas of 20000 camels now.
no subject
no subject
no subject
It's honestly deeply frustrating to me that adults and teens are all having these come-to-jesus moments simultaneously, because adolescent brains are physiologically terrible at nuance.
The adult take I saw: "The ITH movie got criticized for colorism, and LMM's apology, while sincere sounding, ignores the reality that he's damn well aware of colorism in the community and everyone knows it. However, many Latinx Americans, including Afrolatinx people and other dark-skinned folks, say the movie was nonetheless joyful and wonderful for them, and they're extremely glad to have it, while still demanding LMM do better next time."
That's an incredibly difficult take for any adolescent to understand, especially via a medium as nuance-destroying as tiktok or instagram. Combine the medium with the developmental stage, and it's hard to separate a somewhat problematic fave from, like, Louis CK.
Meanwhile even nuanced, thoughtful adults are having trouble coping with loving the work of any deeply problematic fave (cf. JKR). And that's also worsened by the medium. I have lost count of how many adults I've seen pull the "how dare my twitter mutuals also follow [famous or semi-person famous X who undoubtedly has good leftist politics but once said a thing my crowd interpreted as shitty and who disagrees with me about the acceptability of a specific political pathway]."
I miss the days when teens had their sociopolitical takes, adults had theirs, and rarely the twain should meet.
ETA: and it's worse because the adult punditosphere is frankly vastly less nuanced than we expect of any high schooler, and is bad faith almost all the way down. Everything from "someone blogged about snow white so that means the democrats want to cancel walt disney" to "here's a news article about a single whiney tweet that we're framing as someone somewhere did something and people are outraged!"
no subject
Oh is that it? rolls eyes at the conversation
no subject
no subject
i'm wicked uncomfortable with the columnist labeling that the "larger issue." yes, teens are developmentally young, and yes, the range of nuance they can or cannot produce ranges WILDLY from teen to teen, and yes, politics are all over social media -- but politics are real and important, and nobody needs an advice columnist pooh-poohing the importance of politics like that.
no subject
WORD.
no subject
Your friends are making themselves conservative stereotypes of social justice activists by saying they are “cancelling anything, and are missing the context of the terminology, an easy mistake when you haven’t had a chance to study things for a lot of years. So be sure to look up new terms, and at least use wikis to get more context to every issue so you have the history to go with these important issues you are rightly caring about. Remember your friends are just learning too--we all are. Always question, question, question, even your smartest friend."
This is how you encourage her learning to nuance and not walk thoughtlessly in lockstep with any group.
no subject
Oh my wow I want to email this to the LW.
no subject
no subject
Social justice is important. Don't minimize that or brush real outrage as "growing pains." But social justice is not defined as "being a life-ruiner to every single person you meet, because everything is problematic and everyone is complicit.**" Don't allow that redefinition. Maybe start some discussions about punching up (e.g., criticizing movie studios for racist patterns of casting) rather than punching down or sideways (telling people they're not allowed to enjoy anything that you have Canceled For Being Racist, because for some reason you have decided you are the judge, jury, and executioner of their personal joys). Also emphasizing the idea of looking things up and not just outrage-parroting is a good idea. What's real justice? Not something simple, not something you can boil down to a viral soundbyte or a pure/impure divide.
** Everyone *is* complicit and everything *is* problematic, but here we are anyway. Trying to make things and love things and do things, compromised as we are. Does LW's daughter have any room in her worldview for that? For trying, for loving imperfect things, for making things that will inevitably be fucked up but also might be beautiful? It's just so fucking *bleak*, the idea that we have to find total purity or it's all worthless garbage. As an officially depressed person, I literally would not survive that worldview.
IDK maybe I've talked myself around to "maybe what should worry you even more than your daughter being a conversation-dominating downer is the idea that your daughter is setting herself up for an impossible attempt at purity, and the resulting horrifying crash when she finds herself impure as well. maybe you need to talk to her about neg-stimming with All Bad News All The Time and the fundamental human need for joy and start consciously practicing kindness to yourselves as a family, to give your kids better models."
no subject
stands up and applauds
no subject
no subject
no subject
And I'm going to go apologize to my mom.
no subject
Deradicalizing people is long, hard work and you don't make headway on that work without patience and kindness.
(And, well: some disprivileged people would rather allies not try to explain or talk about social justice to other privileged people with the aim of helping them suck less. Other disprivileged people view that very thing as a bare minimum for allyship work.
Because Minorities Are Not A Hivemind and only the very occasional and very broadest topics get broad-scale agreement.)
no subject
no subject
Maybe I'll get the money and distribute it to all of you. :)
And yeah, part of the reason humans have such loooooooooong childhoods is to learn. Teenagers can totally understand nuance if the adults in their lives will teach them.