Okay, skip this one if you aren’t interested in self-absorbed introspection.
In his latest e-newsletter, Glenn Sacks is quite charitable. Under a heading entitled "Giving the Devil His Due", he writes:
Hugo Schwyzer is many things to many people but whatever one’s opinion of him, he certainly is gracious and a good sport about receiving criticism.
I’m pleased by that. I am well aware that one classic stereotype of feminists and their male allies is of humorlessness. When I speak publicly about feminism, or lead workshops on gender issues, I find that both men and women expect me to be uptight, serious, and entirely devoid of playful good nature. I have a friend who teaches English; when he tells folks at parties what he does for a living, they often get just a bit on edge, making feeble jokes about their own poor grammar. (As if they expect him to interrupt them mid-sentence, crying "Stop! You just split your infinitive!) I run into the same sort of thing all too frequently — people seem to expect someone who works in gender studies to be tiresomely earnest and perpetually grim.
During the debate on Sunday’s show, I made it a point to make regular eye contact with Glenn and Amy, and to smile as often as possible. When we went to a commercial break after one vigorous exchange, I took off my headphones, grinned at them both, and said "That was a good segment, wasn’t it?" I suppose I wanted to make it very clear that being a pro-feminist advocate does not mean that one has to be unpleasant to one’s critics. I was also following an old family script of mine. I was raised to "disagree without being disagreeable." Folks in my family don’t shout. Ever. We try and avoid getting red in the face. We may verbally skewer each other, but when the argument is over, we were all taught to hug (or at least shake hands) and go about the business of life together. In a family that often included Marxists and strict Reform Calvinists at the same dinner table, that kind of "good sportspersonship" was essential to our collective happiness.
But it’s in this area that I also fall short. My own sin is clear: I’m sorry to say that I still tend to view those who personalize political and cultural disagreement as being "less evolved." When I get really nasty hate mail (and boy, do I get a lot of it in my inbox these days), I read it, chuckle, and delete it. I was taught that outer expressions of anger and the accompanying use of profanity was vulgar, and that folks who behaved in such a fashion were not to be emulated, or, for that matter, taken seriously. When I am confronted with a "shouter", my fighting style is to become ever more soft-spoken. I don’t back down, but I confess I do start to patronize my opponent. A big part of me believes that in any disagreement, he or she who first loses emotional control has also lost the argument on its merits. I’ve worked hard to change this about myself, but it isn’t easy. (Is it now becoming obvious why I’ve been divorced three times?)
It’s easy to confuse a commitment to calm and civility with the absence of real convictions. I do have passionate core beliefs, though I freely confess that many of those have changed and shifted over the course of my life. (My family motto is "Often in error, never in doubt.") But as I’ve written before, my belief in politeness and civility is deeper than my political commitments. I long believed that this commitment to good manners was a sign of virtue, but I have begun to wonder if it isn’t simply a rather unpleasant (and passive-aggressive) way of trying to assert dominance. I’m still struggling with that one.
At the same time, I continue to believe it is always and everywhere a good idea to be cordial with one’s opponents. I have to admit, I like Glenn Sacks. I liked Amy Alkon. I think they’re wrong on the issue of Choice 4 Men, and they obviously regard me as deeply misguided. But even profound disagreement ought never trump warmth and affection for God’s immensely loveable creatures.
A big part of me believes that in any disagreement, he or she who loses first loses emotional control has also lost the argument on its merits.
I think a lot of people think this, and I think it’s why a lot of people use “baiting” as an argumentative tactic - saying things that do not break the established rules, but which have as their primary purpose the inciting of opponents to lose emotional control and thereby lose credibility.
This tends to favor those who are less emotionally invested in their arguments. Which, in the case of feminist issues, tends to be men - we have the privilege to treat (most of) these matters as academic if we so choose. (Which isn’t to say that claiming personal offense or a privileged speaking position aren’t other common argument tactics.)
I guess I do think it’s highly problematic. Little boys are trained from infancy to hide their emotions; little girls are trained from infancy to share theirs. And then women grow up and realize that we are routinely discredited for being emotional and routinely dismissed as “hysterical” if we play by the rules into which we were socialized. Your chosen mode of dealing with this, patronizing the “hysteric,” is of course the exact bullshit that women have to deal with all the time anyway.
And Jeff is, of course, right that women are much more likely to take offense during discussions of feminism, because we have much more at stake. In general, when you dismiss people who express emotion, you favor the powerful over the less-powerful. Powerful people can afford to be detached.
That’s exactly why I sense this is so problematic. It’s not that I don’t recognize that my position is rooted in my power — it’s wondering what I can do to effectively change my own responses to other people’s anger, or, perhaps, discover my own.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/sommers200503220754.asp
then again being angry and emotional can have its payoff.
joe: I read the article. Yes, some have received payoffs for anger and emotionalism.
Sally: So are you saying that it is more effective to roll around in the dirt with Mark and his kind, than to maintain civility? And while it is naturally easier to take offense when one is more directly impacted, there is also much more to be gained by keeping it together. Invective never trumps reason in establishing a point, except with mobs. (And many feminist and MRA web sites and blogs are mobs.)
Hugo: I would say to continue doing it the way you have been, keeping an eye out to catch yourself at the patronizing game.
Joe, I would agree that the president of Harvard was being a bit overemotional when he made arguments about something important to him–his belief in male superiority–even though he didn’t have the facts to back himself up. However, I wouldn’t say his emotionalism worked out for him.
I don’t know, Hugo, but I’m sure that being aware of the dynamic is a start.
So are you saying that it is more effective to roll around in the dirt with Mark and his kind, than to maintain civility?
Well, that discussion got a bit heated (unsurprisingly, I guess) over at amp’s blog, and I’m not going to rehash it here. So all I’m saying is that if you routinely shut out opinions and views that are expressed in an emotional style, you will usually end up disproportionately listening to the most powerful and privileged members of society. I don’t think that’s what Hugo aims to do, so I think it’s a bad strategy for him.
Which is why, Sally, I’m trying to “unlearn” so much of this…
There’s nothing wrong with an empassioned discussion. Try coming to one of our family reunions, with all that Scots-Irish passion and humor. ;-)
But vulgarity and denigration are totally uncalled for. It only detracts from the point the person is trying to make and keeps people from paying attention to that person’s POV.
If you are in “profound disagreement” with another, I daresay being “cordial” is impossible. On the one hand, you may be unable to look at yourself in the mirror and see a sincere human being. On the other hand, your graciousness may be misinterpreted for approval. There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. When we must choose sides, manners can take a backseat to convictions.
Bebe, I’d like to (cordially!) disagree. Perhaps it’s the superficiality of my own beliefs, but I cannot imagine letting even serious disagreements spoil a friendship or social relationship. I have friends, for example, who are bigots — they know that I will not put up with certain language from them, but they also know that I don’t believe their racial views disqualify them from being decent people. We simply avoid ever discussing the issue. But perhaps that’s my luxury as a white man… even one with a black fiancee.
Hugo,
If you couldn’t be friends with someone because you strongly disagreed with them about something, there probably wouldn’t be many people with whom any of us could be friends.
Amen, sister.
Hugo,
I do have passionate core beliefs, though I freely confess that many of those have changed and shifted over the course of my life.
I can’t see how any reasonable person would want to be otherwise.
my belief in politeness and civility is deeper than my political commitments.
Maybe politics is about what we do, and civility is about who we are.
but I have begun to wonder if it isn’t simply a rather unpleasant (and passive-aggressive) way of trying to assert dominance.
I would hang on to the civility, regardless of where it might have come from. It’s a rare enough thing; I’d hate to see you trade it for something more common.
That’s very kind, Tom; thank you.
And while it is naturally easier to take offense when one is more directly impacted, there is also much more to be gained by keeping it together.
I don’t think “rolling around in the dirt” and “keeping it together” are the only options. I’m fond of angrily stomping off, ideally but not always with a parting explanation of why I’m too angry to keep talking. There’s nothing to be gained from pretending that it’s okay to dangle civilly-phrased flamebait, or that poo can be rendered unstinky by a sufficiently stubborn application of calmness!
Miss Manners doesn’t stomp, of course, but otherwise I think she’d back me up on this.
Overcoming this bias isn’t easy, especially in academia.
Part of the problem is, as Sally mentioned, when it comes to discussions such as, say, those about feminism or racism …, these are personal, they move women or people of color, or…in the body, not just the that part of the body–the head. The disagreements are not just intellectual–as in the frontal lobe–but bodily, given that our entire body is a memory and thinking system, not just our frontal lobe. The oppressions that folks face for a variety of reasons are not just remembered in the head and are not just debated in the head–the entire person is involved, including the emotions.
Unfortunately, much of academia, I’ve discovered, tends to associate a certain disassociativeness and flattened emotional response with objectivity, and this “objectivity” often masks all kinds of assumptions and emotions toward a particular subject or persons, which only come out when a professor is really pushed in an area of disagreement
–and I’ve seen that turn really nasty a couple of times when rather male-chauvinist middle-of-the-road to liberal theologians were confronted by women in their classrooms for their comments and lack of really having thought through some of their points-of-view. Of course, these professors dismissed the women’s thoughts because of the women’s visceral reactions and emotions, but once pushed into showing their own feelings, the professors’ ability to claim the higher ground fell away. Their “objectivity” and “rational thinking” covered over an array of hostile and condescending feelings.
The problem I see in this is that the persons who respond emotionally are not interested in listening to what anyone else has to say. They are angry because they believe they know “the truth” and that those who disagree are their enemies, with whom they are engaging as enemies. Responding in kind does not do any good.
My approach is to acknowledge the legitimacy of their anger. This can be hard to do without being patronizing if you truly do not believe their anger to be legitimate. Coming from the locked-in position of “I know I am right and I know you are wrong” gets no one anywhere.
Everyone needs to know that they are being heard. Hear them - REALLY hear them - and chances are they will be willing to hear you. Not always, of course. There are stuck ideologues out there. I try hard not to be among them.
Not only are women penalized by being emotional, crying and shouting, see the latin or greek roots for hysterical, but so are ethnic and racial minorities who don’t buy the emotional blankness favored by the Northern European ethnicities. I will never forget watching my roommate’s mother calmly discussing my roommate’s adulterous relationship (married boyfriend), crushing poverty, lack of job, and health problems as calmly as if she were discussing the price of tomatoes in the market. Any self-respect Jewish or Mexican mother among my relations would have been crying or screaming, wringing hands, and writing a check or peeling off some bills. Not to mention any self-respecting Jewish or Mexican daughter would not have a married boyfriend and certainly would not admit it to her mother. I don’t see the benefit to self-controlled attitude. It felt very cold watch my roommate and her mom. I have seen more animated discussions over tamale recipes.
Are you kidding about being divorced 3-times. You don’t look over 40?
Correction: I try hard not to be ONE OF THEM. I actually sometimes enjoy being AMONG them.
Rainbow, my husband was divorced FOUR times by the time he was 40. He’s stuck this time. ;-)
I’m sorry that some people find impassioned comments offensive. __ I would rather see a passionate reaction to an issue than passive disinterest. I won’t apologize for my reaction to Amy Alkin’s promiscuity. Although I liked her personality, I disagree with her morality. I do apologize to Amy if she was offended by my comment about ’socking it to her.’ (This was just an expression of the way I might have reacted if I had been able to speak to her.) Maybe it’s a good thing I never got on the air, because I don’t hold back!
I think that it’s difficult to smile and look at a person in the eye when they are always angry. Especially when you don’t know why they are angry in the first place.
Hugo, it sounds to me like you are always in control. You are so civilized! Good for you!
The problem I see in this is that the persons who respond emotionally are not interested in listening to what anyone else has to say.
This is a projection, and may or may not be true of the person in question. I know several people who are able to express their emotions in response to what is happening and who are still able to stay present and listen. Some of them can do it all the time. Some of them can do it sometimes, and are able to take a time out in the discussion when the emotion is getting in the way.
It seems to me that the assertion that once someone is emoting, they are uninterested in listening is at best unfair until it has been verified with the emoting person in question. At worst, it’s a way of discounting people whose way of engaging in discourse does not match the calm, objective manner which Hugo discusses.
Can I just say, once again, that this entire post was written more in a spirit of self-criticism than self-defense?
It seems to me that the assertion that once someone is emoting, they are uninterested in listening is at best unfair until it has been verified with the emoting person in question.
But when a person is so involved in getting his/her own point across that they talk over others, yell, denigrate, etc due to their emotions, they aren’t *able* to listen to anyone else. There’s a huge difference between highly emotional discussings and discussions that have one person doing things to make the other(s) in the discussion feel inferior/guilty/etc.
I guess it’s difficult to generalize about things like this. There are many ways that emotion can be displayed in a discussion, and there is no single appropriate response.
Also, there are many different motives for entering a discussion in the first place, and the motive makes a difference in how one engages. For example, one may post on a blog for personal amusement, to sharpen ones rhetorical skills, to promote a cherished viewpoint, to attack a detested viewpoint, or combinations of different things. All of these factors come into play, weaving various subtleties into the the fabric of the discussion. There is no “right” way to be, though the moderator may decide that the fabric itself is being harmed by some contributions, and decide to act to protect it.
I personally feel that I am an ambassador for a viewpoint that is widely discredited today, and often clumsily defended. I feel a responsibility to represent this viewpoint with integrity and graciousness - and I know that I often fail in this. Thus, my demeanor is vitally important to what I am trying to accomplish.
And Hugo, I understand that you were self-criticizing here, but from my point of view, very few “mea culpas” are needed from you in this regard - if any.
While listening to Hugo on the radio show, I thought his sentimental belief in female virtue and innocence really showed how non-sexist he is.
And although he may take offense at the notion that women are less sexual or aggressive than men, he is also happy to insist that any sexual disagreement is automatically a man’s responsibility.
I love this guy. Without a hint of favoritism, he’ll always know exactly who to blame… no matter how many times he may contradicts himself in other areas. (^_^)
I agree that some people who are emoting are unable to listen. I also agree that some people who are emoting are using it as a tool to avoid having to listen. I just don’t think that it’s fair or helpful to decide that all emoters are either incapable or uninterested in listening without inquiry to determine if that is the case.
Both emoting and refusing to emote in discussion can be used to shut other people down or out. And lacking affect in the discussion doesn’t actually mean that there may not be sufficient emotion going on inside to cloud the ability of the non-emoter to hear, either.
Hugo,
Your frequent discussions and various works show your commitment to the issues you believe in. I have never considered you less passionate because you don’t personalize the issues and resort to insults. In fact, it is one of the things that I most respect about you.
I’ve given Conflict Resolution Seminars to young adults and one of the key points is that being emotional about an issue isn’t a problem, but attacking another person is. Attacking the person diverts attention away from the issue so very little (if anything) truly gets resolved.
Like it or not, we all bring our whole self into any discussion, including our cultural scripts. And it can be difficult to communicate with someone whose default cultural script is markedly different! Part of why I enjoy this blog is the “mix” of people who come here, and that conversation doesn’t tend to degenerate into a third-grade obscenity contest. I can’t help but think that coming here and jumping in the mix will teach me something, and perhaps help make me a more effective communicator.
I am in whole-hearted agreement with SorchaRei; that not all people who are emotive are unwilling to listen, and that assuming such is projection. I also think that our more calm, cool and collected brothers and sisters are sometimes given to taking things a bit too personally in that regard; true, the emoter may be getting heated, but that doesn’t necessarily have to do with you, or the discussion at hand. A whole ‘nother life is still going on in the background, and if your compadre in a discussion is upset, it could have to do with something completely unrelated to the discussion at hand. Some people are better at “compartmentalizing” than others, and that’s cultural too!
Also, more blog-specific: the printed word is a much colder medium than the spoken word, especially the spoken word up-close-and-personal. True to stereotype, I rely heavily on nonverbal communication, and find myself somewhat straitjacketed in this format. Modulating nonverbal cues are nonexistant here, and that can easily lead to miscommunication. I think I “sound” much “harder” in print than I do in public. That’s also an adjustment some folks, ’specially us emotive types, have to hurdle over.
Meantime, like Hugo, I try to remind myself to bound over those cultural barriers too; that not all nonemotive people are cold, unfeeling cyborgs, nor are all of them passive-aggressive headhunters with a backstabbing agenda. ;-) (see? we can see “the other side” as being the “lesser evolved” also!)
Little boys are trained from infancy to hide their emotions; little girls are trained from infancy to share theirs.
No, little boys and girls are both trained to admit to only particular emotions. It’s OK for little boys to be angry, not so for little girls; it’s OK for little girls to be sad, but not little boys.
Others have explained well that the appropriateness of emoting depends upon how it is done. In my experience, it is useful in private contexts where there is an underlying sympathy (say, Mother and Son) between the participants in the discussion. in those cases, there is a shared context for the emoting that makes it a useful style of communication. In public contexts, however, it is less appropriate because it often leads to quick polarization. It is useful in enforcing taboos, but beyond that, I can’t think of a particular advantage to “emoting” in a deiscussion between strangers or adversaries.
I would like to suggest a method of honoring emotive expression in a non-condesending way, active listening. Many people are aware of this technique, it has been widely trained. I admit it is not applicable in every case, because it can be time intensive, but it is remarkable how civil things can become when used correctly. I stumbled on this, before being actually trained in the technique, when I became the unofficial customer service rep. in our office. People would start the conversation very worked up and not particularly polite because they felt they needed the power it gave them to demonstrate their depth of feeling. They were also expecting me to either reply in kind or turn a deaf ear to their concerns. When I was able to show them that I understood their problem/opinion and how strongly they felt about it, the conversation almost instantly became more civil. I think we do a disservice to others when we treat emotion as a barrier to communication and not part of the message; I also think that by not being defensive we can encourage others to demonstrate their emotions in a respecful manner. I agree that in honest communication the communicator should own their emotion and not resort to attack. Most people do want to be heard, even indirect or baiting language can often be curtailed when the implied message is dealt with directly. It is not a panacea, but it works a higher percentage of the time than almost anything else. Key to this all is of course intention. Anything can be used as a weapon, even civility and active listening. I will say, however, I’m new to the blog world, so I am still learning how social rules play out here.
I can’t think of a particular advantage to “emoting” in a deiscussion between strangers or adversaries.
I heard an interesting discussion between two women about 20 years ago. One was a professor whose vocabulary and sentence structure demonstrated that she had spent most of her life reading voraciously (I also knew her parents, and they also possessed huge spoken usage vocabularies and a penchant to speak in periods). The other was an high school dropout who was so busy trying to survive that she had almost no time to engage in the sort of activities that develop a comfort in using a large vocabulary.
After about 10 minutes of increasing frustration, the less-educated woman said, “You know, I can’t understand half of what you say. If you want this to work, you will need to tone down the fancy words.” After another 10 minutes, the more educated woman said, “Wow. This is hard for me. I don’t really know what vocabulary is appropriate, and thinking about it is tying me up in knots.” Which I understood to be her admission that outside her comfort zone of communication parameters, she felt less able to say what she really meant.
I wonder if something like that is going on here, too. People whose culture/gender/whatever have combined to train them to be comfortable with a low-affect mode of discourse can’t see any advantage to emoting during a discussion. Those whose experience has trained them to emote as part of discussions may be silenced when people say things like “I can’t see any use for that behavior, so please stop it” (which I know is not what the quotation above says).
Which is along way of saying that it may not be about “advantage”. It may be about “this is the way in which I am able to converse most effectively in most circumstances”.
I’ve learned over the years to be reasonably comfortable with a wider range of discourse styles than I was originally socialized to display (in my family, neither men nor women were expected to verbalize or demonstrate anger — EVER). What helped me the most was realizing that when I am cool, calm, collected during a discussion, I am often being dishonest. That is, if I feel strongly and I don’t communicate that clearly, then I have not been entirely forthcoming.
The other thing that helped was recognizing my valuing of calm discourse (and the tendency to think of emoters as “doing it wrong” or “being out of control”) actually covered up fear — fear that this would get out of hand and I would not know how to handle it.
I think it’s possible to be cordial while being honest about my feelings and (sometimes) even displaying those feelings during the conversation.
SorchaRei,
Your point about emotion and honesty is well taken. Still, I think that this seems more appropriate in private settings or at least in public settings where a level of affection and sympathy can be assumed between the conversants. In more anonymous kinds of public settings, it still seems counterproductive, however. This is because, I think, that public discourse is usually better served by appeals to reasoned persuasion rather than emotion. Of course, some people are more comfortable communicating via emotion. many times, it is effective in getting what you want, but it rarely convinces anyone. Like the discussion of manners in an earlier thread, it seems to me that it is incumbent upon the speaker to communicate in a way that makes their audience receptive and comfortable. Unless, that is, the object is to get what you want by making people feel intimidated or irritated.