forewarning: I use the royal "you" a lot throughout this post, and that is not aimed at anyone in particular. I noticed it by the end of my writing, and I am too lazy to go back and try to correct it to make sure I don't offend anyone. So if you think any of the "yous" are directed at you, you can just go wank off.
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One thing that gets lost in a lot of rhetoric surrounding outrage and offense is the question, "What is the point of all your noise?"
What it really comes down to is this:
- Are you trying to educate and inform people in a way that will help them see your point of view and perhaps lead to a greater mutual understanding?
- OR
- Are you trying to score a rhetorical point and rally all of your like-minded groupies in huge, mutual-appreciation orgy?
I think about 95% of people who argue on the internet are trying to accomplish the second. From this we get terms like "toxic masculinity" and "white fragility."
The people who think that all that is masculine is bad just eat that up: "Burn! You totally nailed those patriarchical neanderthals!" (offensive to northern Europeans who have
substantial Neaderthal DNA, by the way). But as a man, of course I am going to take offense to that. Why isn't there toxic feminimity? Is it really possible that all in this world that is male is bad, and all that is female is good? Why not just "toxic behavior" or "toxic aggression"? The main things my father taught me about being a man were working hard, caring for your family above all else, and to never hit girls (not even my sister when she was being a brat). So yeah, that term rankles.
But if someone tried to engage in a more rationale discussion of negative, aggressive behaviors often exhibited by young males, the source of those behaviors, and things that could be done to curb them, I would absolutely listen. Are you trying to inform and persuade, or just score your point?
Likewise, being inundated with the terms "white privilege", and the newest one, "
white fragility" (demonstrated by those who don't like being label as privileged or racist) does very little to get me to examine the systemic barriers that
@FRANAMANIAC has mentioned or my own preconceptions. But how about sitting down with me and explaining how your life and worldview are different from mine (essentially, doing what
@FRANAMANIAC is doing)? Okay, I am all ears. I would love to hear things from your perspective. But as soon some person starts labeling me and lumping all sorts of bad shit onto my identity (be that gender identity, race identity, college sports team affiliation identity, etc.) I am going to stop listening because that person is being a hypocritical douche and applying the exact same indentity-based value judgements that they claim they are trying to combat. And I get it, power-structure and all that, and it is not the same for a black person to be called king kong vs. a white person. But are you trying to inform and persuade, or do you just get off so much on outrage that you want to label, demonize, and rally your troops?
Let's all hug this out and agree that The UI Athletics Admins are a bunch of bumbling idiots.
