Good faith vs Bad faith

hahah -- ok sorry for day job-posting

xpost hai Skylar

???

Kinder's quote is from Breaking Bad I think........or very similar

yeah sorry sarah! In Breaking Bad {{{spoiler alert}}}

Skylar avoids getting done for tax fraud or something by acting the ditz

ohhhhhhhh i need to rewatch that show

Getting threads locked where arguments are happening and genuine issues as to your behavior are being raised doesn’t seem like good faith imho

I can see why someone who feels entitled to set the terms of every conversation they are involved in would feel entitled to end those conversations too

There’s actually an easier way of ending the conversation though which is leaving

Which is what I was gonna do until we went around asking mods to lock a thread as soon as someone points out that we are being a dick

But as previously mentioned I’m a big idiot not earth’s most advanced thinker

So... lock this one too?

I dunno man!!!!

You tell me, the notorious dumbass

you could just move the argument to another thread if you want to continue discussing it ...

i mean, this is ILX, you can even appropriate a dormant sub-board for your purposes!

silbs, here ya go:
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=74

What’s wrong with this thread tbh

i suppose, nothing, tbh -- just, y'know, I Love Computers could be yours if you have the ambition

I hate computers tho

I was hoping for the summarise Cerebus thread tbh

aardvark, surrealism, misogyny, profit?

ugh I did not know about the misogyny. Led Zeppelin? ugh maybe we should just move to I Love Computers.

wasn't that a major critique of Dave Sim/Cerebus -- the misogyny? I haven't read it in like 25 years

tbf I am pretty sure the “I Love Computers” board was named as such in bad faith

i realize i have an entrepreneurial spirit which is oft associated with capitalism and i apologize for suggesting silbs expand his domain to the dormant subboard of I Love Computers

the profit decreased sharply with the advent of the misogyny

my brief googling seems to agree. I didn't know before. I was just making a joke which has obviously failed terribly.

ha joke was fine

Sara Ahmed - "Rolling eyes is feminist pedagogy".

This got missed at the time. I'll have to read this in context to see what it is - but something here about the role of non-verbal communication. That which is communicated intentionally, and that which is elicited as reaction. Watching debates in foreign languages is interesting to see, because the dynamics are familar. Even if the topic is alien and unknown the positions of the protagonists are guessable

Answering the original question I don't know that responding to good faith and potentially bad faith actors in different ways really leads anywhere

Here’s the original essay, Anvil:

https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/12/05/complaint/

Thanks, I was confused by this at first because its a reversal of roles from what I was thinking (right wing guest says something like racism doesn't exist, with at least partial intent of eliciting an eye roll). The principal difference being that seems to be done with the intent of goading, whereas the ones in the piece are defensive responses. But in both cases a form of moving from the verbal to the non-verbal.

The racism isnt real guy they'll role out on the BBC is equally likely to eye roll himself or goad the guest into it, the end result is the similar (us vs them, we are enemies) but the path there isn't. The elicited or goaded eye roll is meant to diminish the roller by separating from audience, the intended roll to bond with audience. But thats a level of performativity not present in a domestic situation (at least not on same level)

body language so important!

But this is also the problem with body language - there really isn't such a thing as a universal gesture, that always means the same in every case? How body language is read depends so much on who is performing it, and in what context.

That the eyeroll of performative white supremacy, is different from the eyeroll of feminist solidarity. And it matters who is making the gesture, and with what intent. (Intent is not always clear, depending on the viewer's subjective position to the gesturer.)

And so much of good faith / bad faith is about intent. And intent, like eye-rolls, looks different from where one is sitting.

Absolutely, body language a language like any other. In some ways the most performative, but also the most involuntary and unconscious.

I was struck in the piece by where the author says about being judged before you even say anything (but also in any exchange we can be as liable to do the same). Which leads to exchanges where everyone has already decided and judged others before, not after, they have spoken. Viewed through this lens I want to back away from the idea of bad faith, at least on practical terms (even when I know it to be true, to try and not take that shortcut and let go of pattern recognition)

That's why I thought you would appreciate the piece - that she writes about that pre-judgement, of judging before the speech act has even happened. In some ways, the speech act doesn't even *need* to happen, it has been pre-determined.

I've read this intensely valuable / frustrating book recently, by Sarah Schulman, called Conflict Is Not Abuse, and I think it's both hugely important to this discussion (but also so inherently flawed by her own 'OK boomer'-ism that any reccommendation would have to come with a million caveats that she is trapped in her own generation's ways of thinking) - how she talks about the same actions (eye-rolling, fragility) can come from either place, from a place of Supremacy Ideology OR from a place of fragiligy-from-having-been-abused, and still look and function and behave in the same ways. It's not always clear which is which, especially to the person having the fragility-reaction, let alone to onlookers.

I really want to discuss the book somewhere, because there's so much *deeply wrong* with it, and also so much *deeply right* about it, often at the same time, that she is almost an example of the Thing She Is Trying To Describe.

I don't know that ILX is that place, tho.

I think there are some ways around the pre-determining! Depending on the context. One thing I notice is she talks about how it doesn't matter how you deliver the critique/content/answer. Whether its 'shrill' or 'pleasant' doesn't really matter (and associated questions of tone policing etc which is sort of a red herring)

This is well covered ground, but I think misses something crucial. These are all variants of delivering Answers (to people who don't want to hear them?). The style and format may change but the mechanism is the same. Leading with answers is really tough and generally doesn't work! I think you have to lead with Questions where possible, open questions with interest in the answer. This is how guards are dropped, where the 'ins' are. That you have to show you're listening to someone else, before expecting they're going to listen to you

I was thinking about the guy that wrote the Trump Train song there was an interesting piece on him, will try find it

I really want to discuss the book somewhere, because there's so much *deeply wrong* with it, and also so much *deeply right* about it, often at the same time, that she is almost an example of the Thing She Is Trying To Describe.

I read an article about the author and the book recently, and I actually have been meaning to get the book and read it. ... I must have been on a sociological bender that day because it also reminds me of that thing I read that people were sharing about "ask culture" vs. "guess culture" -- which definitely plays a role in conflict and assertions/assumptions of abuse

Couldn't work out why I'd also read that piece - someone linked it on the I May Destroy You thread
Sounds interesting!

This one, yeah? https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/sarah-schulman-conflict-is-not-abuse.html

It ended up on a couple of ILX threads (I thought it was posted on this one, but I guess not).

I was really expecting to enjoy it, because we've read a lot of Sarah Schulman in queer theory reading groups, and she's generally very smart. But reading this book was such a frustrating experience - I got out a pencil and started arguing with her in the margains. Just skip the first chapter, it is *terrible*, but there is a lot to be gained out of the rest of it, but what you can get out of it is generally better absorbed (for someone of Gen X or below) by reading Captain Awkward and living the maxim of "Use Your Words". (pretty sure Ask Culture vs Guess Culture is also something that came out of Captain Awkward, and super useful as a way of understanding or avoiding conflict.)

1) Her insane Boomer insistence that telephone calls are 'real' and 'authentic' and 'totally unmediated' but emails, texts, chat, blogging, etc. are somehow 'inauthentic' and 'over-mediated' and ~inherently problematic~. Please understand how people communicate today, rather than blanket dismissing any technology that arrived after you turned 35.
2) She flat-out accepts without interrogating in any way, the shitty right wing boomer assertion that 'triggered' means 'mildly upset, annoyed or uncomfortable' in a way that totally diminishes the impact of the more proper and specific psychological usage of 'triggered' in a PTSD sense. In a book about overcoming collective trauma, this kind of mis-use of terminology *MATTERS*.
3) Because of number 2, of course she doesn't understand what Trigger Warnings are, or what they're for. No, they don't mean that students can refuse to read things they find 'upsetting' - it means you provide context and warning, so that people with trauma backgrounds can choose when and how and in what state to interact with material that may cause damage if they are blindsided by it.
4) The level of accountability and authenticity that she demands from even casual friends sounds, frankly, exhausting! No; a person who has cancelled a lunch date during a busy trip does NOT owe you a 20-minute FEELINGSCONVERSATION via telephone. She seems to think that boundaries are something bad, used to punish people, in a way that often sounds... wow, Sarah Schulman seems like a small doses friend.
5) Her repeated insistence on privileging spoken speech acts over written speech acts is... really, super autistic unfriendly. Not everyone is neurotypical, Sarah!
6) just reproducing verbatim arguments that people had on your Facebook wall is a lazy bad way of rounding out a chapter. Ugh.

And it's a shame, because she is actually getting at the core of something important - *dealing* with collective trauma, among marginalised people, and explaining the mechanics of the victim-bully switch, how people who have been frequently bullied, traumatised and victimised, *DO* often turn around to lash out at others. This is a real and genuine psychological phenomenon - however, the psychological term for this phenomenon is not 'Triggering', it is a form of 'Projection'.

People who have a history of being traumatised or abused *are* often lacking in the psychological tools necessary to handle normal conflict. When your life has been one long series of events of being unjustly attacked, any kind of conflict *does* start to look like an attack. And learning to use your words, ask questions, go back and re-read (and I *do* mean re-read, it's much easier to get distance and re-read written text, than it is to ask someone to please re-state what you just misheard.) is a big part of recovery from trauma, and learning skills to discern Conflict from Abuse (good faith from bad faith, in the context of this thread) is a neccessary skill to learn.

The chapter on domestic abuse (what is abuse? it is "power over") is great. The chapter on the abusive dynamics that can develop in queer and specifically lesbian relationships, is phenomenal - in a way that heterosexual advice paradigms just do not fit. Her reflections on collective shunning as a form of abuse are absolutely on point, and reflect a lot on ILX during the Suggest Ban era. Her comments, as a Jewish woman, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seem, to a total outsider, really astute, and show a complex and nuanced understanding of the issues.

But you have to read through so much lazy-bad ok boomer assumption to get to those points that... well, I do wish that someone else I know and trust would read this and see if they had the same problems I did.

speaking of bad faith when this book came out i'd read rumblings that schulman had, in the past, been accused of abuse by a partner but of course i can't find anything about that anymore because every google variation of "sarah schulman + abuse" just brings up shit about her popular book

am i allowed to put that out into the world without proof and then leave this thread forever or did i just become a bad faith actor myself? discuss

The entire book is a series of representations of many-sided conflicts, and how in complex relationships - especially in queer relationships where there is not an obvious power asymmetry - where both parties have both victim-and-aggressor roles, accusations of abuse can *become* another form of abuse. Schulman is pretty obvious, that she has been in multiple situations where she was cast as the abuser, but felt the situation was far more complex.

But, it's so hard to discuss this, without lapsing into victim-blaming.

There is a lot of this book that does read like "*I* was falsely accused of abuse, in a situation that was about mutual conflict" - maybe in a sense of defensiveness, and maybe in a sense of trying to set the record straight. But she doesn't seem like she's trying to justify or exonerate herself, it sounds like she's trying to teach herself/others how to negotiate conflict situations, without either lapsing into abuse, or using abuse accusations as a method of punishing an equally conflicted partner?

I found it a good description of queer relationships *I have been in* where there wasn't always a clear-cut "power over" dynamic, there were complex, interlocking sets of traumatised people re-traumatising each other.

But these descriptions rarely translate well into heterosexual relationships where there usually *is* a very clearcut divide between which kinds of people almost exclusively have the financial, societal, legal, physical power over the other. This book does not cover the "Why Does He Do That" situations at all. It covers the kinds of situations that Schulman and her peers have been in. She tries to generalise it, but it's not a situation that *can* be generalised.

Thanks for that, branwell. The verbal vs written thing would wind me up no end so good to anticipate!

I would not have made it past the first chapter, unless I was warned it was bad beforehand & assured the rest of the book was worth it. surely someone must have questioned that stuff before it went to print

So it's not just me, that first chapter is just genuinely tone deaf and terrible and "learn what a soft No is, Schulman!!!"

(But I suppose some books do need warnings - like, everyone always tells people, "Read The Gift of Fear, but skip the chapter on domestic abuse")

However, there are enough good insights in the rest of it, that it's worth battling through the bad bits.

And it's a shame, because she is actually getting at the core of something important - *dealing* with collective trauma, among marginalised people, and explaining the mechanics of the victim-bully switch, how people who have been frequently bullied, traumatised and victimised, *DO* often turn around to lash out at others. This is a real and genuine psychological phenomenon - however, the psychological term for this phenomenon is not 'Triggering', it is a form of 'Projection'.

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

yeah that is like the #1 thing i struggle with - i am really acutely aware of collective trauma and i am really acutely aware that i struggle with personal trauma and i work my ass off to deal with the personal trauma but the collective trauma is bigger than i can handle and it's kicking my ass

and a lot of times i try to reach out and it always turns into a big fight, and i don't know if it's because i can't keep my personal trauma out of it or if it's because where other people are at they can't allow themselves to admit to the collective trauma or because they just conceive of the collective trauma differently, for them it's a different problem with a different solution

and dividing the world into Abusers and Victims doesn't really work well for me either, it's important to me that i've been both, that i'm capable of both depending, i see it more as a cycle of abuse, my tendency is to act in accordance with the behaviors that were and are modeled for me, and a lot of those behaviors were and are pretty fucking awful

Whitney Phillips is so absolutely great on this stuff:

http://bostonreview.net/gender-sexuality/whitney-phillips-whose-anger-counts

She's honestly one of the best people out there studying the internet at the moment, including the darker corners thereof.

Re: Schulman, she should stick to fiction— her theoretical writings, with the exception of her strident take on pinkwashing in Israel, are mostly awful, liberal garbage, afaict.

I was once attacked during a question-and-answer period during a roundtable discussion that involved her and some other queer reformist types because they basically were going on tirades against people who shop at chain stores— this was when Gentrification of the Mind had just come out— and I raised the point that a lot of people don't have access to the capital and resources that allow them to shop at many smaller, mom-and-pop shops, and people acted as if I'd shit in their breakfast. Schulman included! It was the most classist, tone-deaf shit I've ever experienced in that sort of environment.

I haven't read Conflict because of that experience. TBH, other than 'Rat Bohemia,' I kind of think she sucks!

I raised the point that a lot of people don't have access to the capital and resources that allow them to shop at many smaller, mom-and-pop shops,

it's tricky! Because poor people don't all live in the same type of places. Like, you used to live in West Oakland ... how many chain stores were even there? You probably remember when they put in a Subway sandwiches on 7th St .... that kept getting robbed. I was telling a colleague the other day, about when a Quizno's opened near the DIY space I ran (this was back in 2002), and I was able to walk to get a vegetarian sandwich on a Saturday afternoon, which was very exciting at the time. A few years back a Walgreens opened in deep East Oakland (around 78th and International iirc) and people were stoked! ... Like, in certain areas, the only stores you have are mom-and-pop shops, because of poverty and disinvestment, but these are probably not the types of stores your fellow panelists regularly patronize.

Like are they saying, the virtuous thing to do is eat cereal, nutter butters, and canned goods from the corner store vs. buying healthy groceries from Wal-Mart?