Ballastexistenz has a post up about the difference between content and style, as it were:
(You should go read the whole thing; I’m quoting chapters in isolation out of a long post.)
At any rate, one of the false overlays it’s possible to read into what I am saying, is a false overlay of harshness. The interesting, and dismaying, thing that I have found, is that a person can say genuinely harsh things (like wanting their child dead), but do so in a way that is covered over with a lot of particular language triggers, and be considered a nice person in the process.
I don’t use those language triggers. I don’t know if there is a word for those things in linguistics. What they appear like to me, is content that is there for the sole purpose of conveying a specific social impression of the person. That impression is supposed to be that the person is kind, compassionate, caring, nice, sweet, good-hearted, etc. What surprises me is that people read those signals more strongly than they read what is being said. To me, those signals stand out in stark contrast to what is being said, much of the time.
To borrow a technique from my EYEBALLS post, in the more extreme version of this, it must look to a lot of people like saying:
I AM A NICE PERSON I want I AM A SWEET-NATURED PERSON to I AM A NICE PERSON kill I WOULD NEVER HURT ANYBODY certain kinds of people I AM A NICE PERSON and have I WOULD NEVER HURT ANYBODY seriously I AM A NICE PERSON thought I AM A SWEET-NATURED PERSON about I AM A NICE PERSON doing I WOULD NEVER HURT ANYBODY exactly that. I AM A NICE PERSON. I AM A GOOD PERSON. I WOULD NEVER HURT ANYBODY. I AM A NICE PERSON. I AM A NICE PERSON.
The civility debates were about a similar problem. People would say things in a format that insisted they were saying something else. Other people would read what they actually were saying rather than what they insisted they were saying. Then the first group of people would get extremely huffy. They would start reading the second group of people for style while refusing to acknowledge the offensive content that started the fight. And, of course, those disjuncts, honest and otherwise, were gendered:
What the signifiers are based on, of course, is incredibly biased by gender, class, culture, etc. And I’ve noticed that a powerful (in terms of existing, “accepted” power structures) person can lack more of the “I am nice” signifiers and get away with it, and a less powerful person can get away much less with leaving those out. Rich people, men, white people, non-disabled people, etc, are often given more leeway. I think much of the “bitter nasty cripple” stereotype is based on merely the absence of constantly smiling, agreeing with the nearest non-disabled person, and making oneself cute, pathetic, and ingratiating. I have heard people write about how (in American mainstream cultures) men are often afraid of women who don’t smile, and white people are often afraid of black people who don’t smile.
With a normative standard so unbalanced, I gotta wonder if the act of communicating itself is enough to stick ballastexistenz’ humble editor in the “harsh” category.
Personal investment also came up in the civility debates. If you aren’t the one with the uterus, it’s nowhere near as difficult to make dispassionate arguments about forcing women to carry children to term. If you are directly implicated by, “I want to kill certain kinds of people,” you will tend to have a harder time responding with,
NO HARD FEELINGS OR ANYTHING but isn’t REALLY I KNOW YOU’RE JUST LOOKING OUT FOR MY BEST INTERESTS HERE that AND WOULD NEVER EVER SAY ANYTHING EVEN SLIGHTLY BIGOTED hateful OR ATTEMPT TO HURT ME and damaging IN ANY WAY to people AND IT’S NOT AS THOUGH THAT STATEMENT YOU JUST MADE COULD EVER APPLY TO ME like me? BECAUSE OF COURSE WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE KTHX
Because what you really want to say is, What the fuck is wrong with you?
Because what you really want to say is, Did you hear what he just said? You all heard that, right? It’s not just me, right? That part about killing people? That was seriously fucked up, right? We can all agree that that was seriously fucked up, right? Right?
Because what you really want to say is, No, really, what the fuck is wrong with you?
This could be my favorite part of the post:
By the way, I have of all things a dog who sends out “I am nice” signals galore. That’s in fact the bulk of her communication to people. “I am nice, I am sweet, I am friendly, I am nice, I am sweet, I am friendly.” I mean, even for a dog, her behavior in this regard is extreme, and many people comment on it.
The change in people’s attitude towards me has been astounding. Suddenly people who used to run away or make snide remarks at the sight of me, in one case someone who has run at me screaming and cussing, are friendly to me. I have not changed at all, but somehow being associated with this dog means her signals rub off on me or something. People gain a very different (and probably equally false) impression of me just based on the fact that I’m walking around next to someone with big eyes, a friendly face, and a constantly-wagging tail.
I have to say that their sudden civility (and before, I did not even have civility from most of these people, I had open hostility or fear) is pleasant. But I also have to say that it shouldn’t take a super-waggy dog for people to be able to realize I’m not an unapproachable, possibly-dangerous monster (and yes, the technical term for people like me used to be “monsters”, just as an odd historical tidbit).