Read on Twitter
Yep yep, I don’t debate on the internet anymore. I don’t enjoy debating and I dislike the idea that 1. It’s a sign of true intelligence to be willing to joust at any moment 2. It’s the only way to understand other perspectives 3. You actually learn from debating people’s humanity https://twitter.com/millicentsomer/status/1281414271692234753
It’s fun when the stakes are low. Is korv stroganoff edible (it is not), pigeons or seagulls (both, and I refuse to choose), is dip a soup (it is, fight me). It is not helpful to treat people’s lives as an abstraction, especially when, as Lili says, you see the bad take coming.
I’ve learned more about the experiences and needs of marginalized people on this hellsite just by reading tweets and threads. People’s experiences don’t need to be crash-tested with robust bad-faith (and frankly, flimsy) arguments with privileged fuckos to be considered valid.
I guess it’s a sign of my being extremely online for decades, but also being a bigmouth who has wasted a lot of time and energy standing my ground with bad-faith fuckos where the way I “lose” the debate I didn’t ask for is to refuse to accept the lie of “just asking questions”
Living in Sweden during COVID-19 has also shown me it’s truly impossible to even have a discussion with someone who repeats the same statements over and over while you do all the intellectual work to come up with new ways to argue your point. This is how the “debate” has gone.
But one reason it’s such a THING in the Anglophone world is that insufferable university debating societies at some point decided their rituals were the only demonstration of intellect. Student governments, where the status quo holds the floor and whose members end up in politics
It’s one thing to argue over what brand of toilet paper to buy, but now in order to be recognized as basically human, people are asked to put their experiences on trial and be cross-examined by people whose power is threatened by it. On their terms. That’s how we get the fash.
I still think it’s important to call stuff out, add context, etc, but meeting supporters of the status quo on their turf is a losing battle because it demands people with less power earn their right to be heard but pretend it isn’t the case.
It’s one reason why Wash Your Legs Twitter was so much fun. It had all the elements of getting other people’s perspectives, even when views are entrenched, without debating anyone’s humanity, demanding people change to earn their rights, or centering a status quo.
I’ve spent so much time debating my own humanity or being exposed to others debating it that I’m exhausted. The only thing I’ve learned, for example, from citizens publicly debating immigration, is that they assume we’re all criminals and don’t want us to have basic rights.
The only thing I’ve learned watching people forcing debate on marginalized twitter users is how tired they are of trying to convince privileged people they have value. So for the marginalized, your worth becomes about how well you tolerate abuse. Fuck that.
I used to do radio “debates” sometimes, where I was supposed to be The Feminist, and where defending the humanity of women was the controversial perspective. Even when it felt like I “won” the argument, it still didn’t do much to help, and I was always exhausted.
I always overprepared, and I had all kinds of strategies so I didn’t lose my footing when I got talked over and well, actually’d. But the others would roll in with no notes, trot out the same shite, and get paid huge salaries while I got like a €25 appearance fee.
