Guest post: ‘Microaggressions’ started out as a legitimate issue
Originally a comment by Freemage on The face of asexuality.
Like many of the progressive concepts that have gotten warped and misappropriated by the identity fringe groups, ‘microaggressions’ started out as a legitimate issue. It wasn’t just, “This small thing that irritates/offends me”, but rather, “this small thing is meant to remind me that I am viewed as sub-human and can be safely targeted by violence at any time.”
Homosexuals, women and racial minorities all face the latter sort of microaggression on a regular basis, and it does extract a real toll on the persons targeted. Hell, much of the trans-speak I would count as micro-aggressions against women. It’s not that the comments themselves are anything more than childish taunts; it’s that those taunts are meant to remind women that hey, we’re actually male and we’re prepared to use violence on you if you don’t shut up.
Essentially, true micro-aggressions can only be defined by context, as it requires historical, societal oppression to serve as a backdrop for the behavior being discussed. Natch, asexuals don’t in fact have that sort of oppressed history to draw upon. They have a bit of being regarded as weird, and sometimes being asked intrusive questions by rude people, but that’s about the extent of it.
That said, I don’t think there’s a huge contradiction in dressing ‘sexy’ while eschewing sex. I suspect that, if anything, people who are asexual are likely to have an outsider’s view of some aspects of social interaction; as such, she has a strong possibility of knowing precisely how much attention she can draw, and how to monetize that attention. She’s selling out, albeit in a way that plays into some very ugly stereotypes about attractive women.
I don’t buy it. “Microaggressions” are poorly defined, and don’t depend on the specific context of the interaction or the intentions of the offender: if someone who considers themselves on the lower end of an Oppressor-Oppressed axis is offended, then it was a microaggression. They’re part of the entire culture of Victimization and over sensitivity to slights, increasing conflict and encouraging those preoccupied with them to magnify offenses, mind-read other people uncharitably, and catastrophize in unhealthy and inaccurate ways.
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathon Haidt sees them as part of what they call ANTI Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Consider “ this small thing is meant to remind me that I am viewed as sub-human and can be safely targeted by violence at any time.” Really? If someone assumes an Hispanic student speaks Spanish, or says that “the most qualified candidate should get the job,” or wears a kimono to prom, that means the targeted minority is being viewed as sub-human and should be in fear of their life? People sure are evil; we’re right to be anxious, depressed, and afraid. Yet the accumulation of small, usually unconscious minor slights does not make a genocide. Concern over “microaggressions” arose in privileged university settings, and not in the Warsaw ghettos of WWII.
So I don’t think an asexual being worried about microaggressions is departing from an otherwise legitimate issue; in my opinion, they’re fitting right in as a normal part of a modern culture that fosters a sense of aggrieved fragility and a demand for attention.
I strongly disagree with Freemage on microaggressions. I think the idea is fundamentally fucked – because of the attitude of taking minor slights as “this small thing is meant to remind me that I am viewed as sub-human and can be safely targeted by violence at any time.”
That really is a “you” problem.
If someone wants to remind you that you’re sub-human and can be safely targeted by violence at any time, they won’t be making snide remarks, they’ll be punching you in the face.
I don’t like the term (not every bad thing has to be some species of violence) but I’ve been on the receiving end of far too many little bits of social performance designed to remind me of my place in the class of contemptible persons, to think that they don’t happen, or are so insignificant they should just be laughed off. Like the time in my late teens of early twenties, I was buying a cheap pair of speakers and the smartarse salesman made some gratuitous, smirking remark about what my wife would think. (It was funny because he could “see” I was gay.)
Of course, these were intentional actions. I’m not counting all the times well-meaning (and, of course, not-so-well-meaning) people have simply assumed I was gay (or whatever). Treating the latter as some sort of pathology to be rooted out rather than as a case of humans being imperfectly human is, I don’t doubt, counter-productive. But that doesn’t mean intentional acts of social contempt, however mild or veiled, don’t deserve to be identified and treated with appropriate social disapprobation.
I agree with Francis, here. Micro-aggressions are passive-aggressive digs at people for their protected characteristic, whatever it may be and the aggressor uses them because they know they can feign ignorance if called on it. You know, like the word “cunt.” “Oh, it’s not sexist because I call my mates cunt all the time.”
Yes, the term has been abused as badly as “cultural appropriation.” But the point stands, that it should not be dismissed as oversensitivity out of hand.
It seems to me that if you’re on the receiving end of a microaggression, whether it’s a deliberate dig or just some clueless look or remark, you have a choice: you can choose whether or not to take offense. Keep in mind that if you let it bother you, the other party wins. He wants to hurt your feelings, and with minimal effort, he succeeds.
The Stoic view of rudeness is that you should expect to encounter it every day. Dealing with rude people is an inevitable part of life, therefore if you hate it, you hate life itself.
Also, it’s worth reminding ourselves,
I’d say that thinly veiled contempt like that experienced by Francis Boyle when buying a stereo would qualify as aggression. And I don’t dispute that unconscious bias is often expressed by thoughtless or insensitive assumptions, and it’s perfectly fine to try to point them out and eliminate them. My objection is to the newer, extreme focus on microaggressions and the way it introduces the cognitive distortion of interpreting unintentional bias or even misplaced helpfulness as a form of aggression: impact over intent. We should always care about intent.
If they’re supposed to be reported and the unwary instigator automatically deemed a racist (or sexist or whatever,), it both amplifies the conflict and increases the pain felt by the recipient. The belief that even accidental “misgenderings” are a particularly damaging form of violence and it makes perfect sense to get angry and shame whoever did it does nobody any good — regardless of how we feel about the validity of transgenderism.
I think impact is more important than intent, at least to the extent that the impact is significantly harmful (i.e., not misgendering). I think we do need to take intent into account; just because someone performs a sexist racist, etc, act doesn’t mean they themselves are sexist, racist, etc, to the extent that these are part of the fabric of our society.
I had a friend who was no more sexist than the commenters here; he still occasionally committed what would be called microaggressions without intent. In some cases, they created substantial impact. One of them changed my life for the worse for the remainder of my career. He did not realize what he did because some things are so common in our society that people do them without thinking. For instance, I do not believe it is an intentionally sexist act every time a journalist mentions what a woman in power is wearing; it’s just standard practice. As long as people don’t realize the impact, the intent doesn’t matter for the action, only the actor, if that makes sense.
Unlike most of the activists would, I did not change my perception of my friend. He was who he was, and acted without intention of harming me or anyone else. I did not damn him as a sexist, forever unable to be redeemed. It is possible to recognize these actions as sexist, homophobic, racist, etc without assuming the individual committing them is a sexist, homophobe, racist, etc. Context matters.
Peter N @ #5
Somehow true, but what matters is the repetitive pattern. It’s not as if you can make a case by case analysis (well, you always can do that but the point is really that it often comes back and back, even when mere clueless comment) and decide to be fully benevolent. The repetitiveness can entail some sort of bad mood effect in the end.
Of course the issue of microaggression is that it is always _micro_, it’s fairly insignificant, and completely dismissible when you only get it once in a while. Yet, and it’s a big yet, when it revolves around basic social stereotyping that you experience as reductive and repetitive, my opinion is that it’s too easy to pretend one could simply dismiss it. It’s still part of the bigger pattern and it feels ugly.
The issue is that it’s difficult to draw a line in the continuum in this case, between pure cluelessness (reflecting a lack of empathy or awareness of otherness) and cheap harassment (reflecting truly problematic behaviours).
Um, no, microaggressions were never legitimate. The originator of the term explicitly made whether a particular event, action, of thing of any sort constitutes a microaggression entirely dependent on the perception of the aggrieved party. Facts of the matter are definitionally irrelevant to whether there’s a microaggression, because it’s not a description of the world, but rather a psychological response to stimulus. If I feel that someone or something is impinging on me, that is the only necessary and sufficient condition to determine that I’ve been the “victim” of a microaggression.
Remember how ridiculous the UK police definition of hate crime is? The whole “it’s a hate crime if anyone ever anywhere perceives it to be potentially motivated by hatred” thing? Yeah, that’s what microaggressions are intended to be. When we attribute something halfway reasonable to the term, we’re actually covering for and obscuring pernicious stupidity, just like when “moderate believers” translate the claims of religion into something halfway plausible. Fundies actually mean what they say they mean, whether they’re Christian fundies or Critical fundies.
Hmm. I see what you’re getting at, but at the same time, couldn’t that be said of everything that falls short of measurable physical damage? And wouldn’t that justify bullying and cruelty and everything else that falls short of measurable physical damage?
To some extent, you’re right, in that emotional harms are by their nature subjective and not amenable to measurement. However, the disconnect between reality and perception is more profound in the concept of microaggression than that. When I said that facts don’t matter, I meant that literally. Suppose you do something we’ll call T. We’re going to leave T entirely undefined, because what T is seriously just doesn’t matter. Now suppose that I claim that T is a microaggression. Now, because I’ve made the claim, T is a microaggression, because being a microaggression consists in the claim. (That is, to be a microaggression just is to be claimed to be a microaggression.) This is key: saying that T is a microaggression says precisely nothing about T (or you) because it literally has nothing to do with T. It can’t. We left T undefined, but I’m still completely justified in the claim. Because facts about T, or you, or anything at all, simply don’t matter. T doesn’t even have to have inconvenienced or bothered me (or anyone) at all. Because that would be a fact, you see, and facts don’t matter.
It’s such an extreme, paradigmatic example of social constructivism that it’s hard for most people to grasp, but that kind of hard constructivist view is what Critical Theory is all about. Nowhere more clearly than in TWAW, where reality just is that which is socially constructed. To be a woman is to be thought a woman, and to be thought a woman just is to be a woman. There’s no external fact of the matter, only the social “reality”.
Nota bene: By calling T a microaggression, I make it a microaggression, and T becomes a harm to me, regardless of whether it otherwise is or was. This thereby bootstraps the justification for calling T a microaggression in the first place, resulting in a self-justifying circle.
How does it work? Does the same apply to, say, “That was a snotty remark”? Is it the “micro” that’s the problem? Because if it’s micro you can call absolutely anything a microaggro?
I’m not microaggroing you. I’m interested rather than pugnacious.
Re: if you let it bother you
Sometimes stuff just bothers you. It’s not a matter of “letting” it, it just does. Stuff can bother you regardless, whether you “let” it or not, whether you “want” it to or not. It bothers you, maybe even hurts, and you’re stuck dealing with it. Dealing with the annoyance, the frustration, the time and effort needed to deal with it. Even if you are able to “just ignore it”, that takes time and effort. Time and effort you now don’t have to do other stuff (working, exercising, making dinner, hobbies, etc). And when it happens when you’re busy doing something, it can break concentration, ruin focus, maybe distract you from something you shouldn’t be distracted from. If it happens once in a great while, it’s tolerable. But as the frequency of occurrences increases, it adds up, and the greater the effects. Kind of like doing yard work when mosquitoes are out. One or two occasionally, tolerable, rather easy to deal with. But frequently, several at a time, over a period of time, could get quite intolerable. Mosquito repellent can only do so much.
It works pretty much the same way as calling something transphobic.
– The claimant need not justify the claim.
– To ask for justification (or sometimes even explanation) is itself transphobic.
– There are no actual criteria for transphobia , so the way to know if something is transphobic is to be told.
– The only person who can tell you if something is transphobic is someone who believes it to be transphobic, because anyone who thinks otherwise is blinded by positionality.
The same mechanism works for microaggressions.
So, Nullius, I’m curious. Would some man, for instance, putting his hand on a woman’s knee during a meeting be a microaggression? Or would it be an actual act with harm? Most of the men I know would characterize it a microaggression, something women are getting worked up about for no good reason. HR departments would probably call it a microaggression. And once, like Karen was saying, is annoying and obnoxious, but for a lot of us, we’ve had to deal with it over and over, dodging hands and other body parts that “accidentally” brush against us at the copier, the water cooler, the coffee pot, the counter…at what point then does it become a problem?
I see what you’re saying, and to some extent I agree with it, considering the things some people call microaggressions. Cf the original guest post.
But soon the question becomes how many beans make a heap? How many hairs do you need before you are not bald? At what point would such behaviors impair your ability to function as an employee?
There’s the problem. That point will differ for different people. Some can shrug it off; others cannot, and it is not necessarily a failing of those who cannot.
iknklast, the simple answer, following the definition, to your hypothetical question would be that it’s a microaggression if anyone says it is.
A better answer, analyzing the utility of the term, is that it wouldn’t be a microaggression, because “microaggression” is a bullshit term specifically designed to act as a power play by positioning oneself or another as an aggrieved victim in a completely unfalsifiable and self-justifying way.
I may not have been clear before, but it’s the term “microaggression” that’s the problem, not the idea that interpretations and experiences of concrete events vary subjectively, and certainly not the idea that slights can be slight and accumulate over time into an oppressive or injurious whole. As long as we avoid that term specifically, we’re free to evaluate things by whatever criteria we wish, because that term began terribly and cannot be reformed into something useful.
Thanks for clearing that up, Nullius. Point taken. To be clear, I do not believe a man putting his hand on a woman’s knee or brushing his groin against her backside at the copier is a microaggression. I believe they are aggressive acts meant to undermine her, humiliate her, and maybe sexually assault her. They are performed for the kicks of the man performing them, but also because they make women uncomfortable and create a hostile work environment for women.
That is hardly microaggression, IMHO. But few of my male friends agree with me. They think it’s just one of those things women get “hysterical” about with little reason.
Like, I can see putting a hand on someone’s knee as being actually innocent, even though invasion of personal space is always suspect. I had a coworker who always put his hands on people’s backs when talking to them at their desks, for instance. It made me uncomfortable, for obvious reasons, but I didn’t attribute ill intent to it, because the dude was probably autistic. On the other hand, it can absolutely be anything but innocent, and there’s no way for a woman (or much less often a man) to know the intent motivating the incoming hand. For some reason, we have yet to evolve the ability to read each other’s thoughts. So we either condemn hands on knees entirely or try to determine which hands on which knees are problematic. The former option is, of course, easier to implement, but as Thomas Sowell says, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs,” and it’s hard to predict what the trade-offs. Chesterton’s Fence and whatnot.
But the crotch-to-backside thing? How could anyone, even a male, not recognize that as sexually aggressive? Nothing could epitomize more perfectly what sexual harassment is than pressing clothed cock against clothed butt. It’s miming the act. It’s a velvet glove, a veiled threat, a transgression with just enough ambiguity to allow plausible deniability. Do these male friends not believe that there are men who actually do that kind of shit? Is the issue the same kind of oblivious theory of mind failure that lets people believe that Putin wouldn’t use nuclear weaponry if Russia were losing a war or that no man would ever dress like a woman just in order to get into women’s intimate spaces?
This is actually one of the reasons I hate “microaggressions”. In order to render the claimant infallible, the concept makes actual harm irrelevant to the claim’s truth. But this means that actual harm is irrelevant to the discussion! Imagined and performative victimhood is put on the same moral footing as actual, genuine, real victimization. Sexual discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault are reduced to mere perceptions and thoughts in your mind. It’s just that your mind makes it “real” in the Matrix-like way of social constructivism.
Further, the “micro” part is really the standpoint epistemology component. The aggression is micro on the sense that those in the oppressor class cannot see it with their own eyes, instead requiring the assistance of someone with the appropriate social positionality to see for them. That is to say, it’s in principle impossible to construct an argument that would allow a man to understand why any particular behavior is harmful to women.
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