Internets and Sensitivity: Lions and Trollers and Bears Oh My

*use of the r word*
I’ll start by saying that I follow and comment on a host of progressive, mostly feminist, blogs and websites. I like engaging about identity issues and marginalization. I like it too much; my comments are turning into novels. I should probably blog about it, but the idea brings up issues I have with my selective sensitivity.

I used to hang out on 4chan and it made me an ugly and callous person. I try to limit my time on SomethingAwful because I could start to see it seep into the way I think after I’m there for a few hours in a row. I’m a big believer of being aware of what can inform your perspectives or attitudes. It can be insidious. I remember having a light switch go off when I watched this short (it’s 17 minutes long, watch it) film on black models and read this article supposing what it would be like if black women were white women. I didn’t find black women particularly attractive, or thought about what I expected them to look like to be considered attractive, and I viewed that as a personal quirk. I’m kicking myself about it now, because of course for centuries European features were viewed as beautiful and the media I consumed would probably reflect that. Hell, when I lived in Peru I knew all the models and actresses where probably all plucked from Miraflores and looked nothing like the people around me. I mean, I always knew that the media sold a particular kind of beauty but I didn’t think of it in racial terms, at least, I didn’t think of how it would apply to black women. I realize now how profoundly ignorant that is, and how cultural forces got under my skin without my realizing it. I also realize how the incredulity I feel is part of my privilege, that I am allowed to not be conscious of the situation of other groups of people and I can feel surprised at bigotry.

So I’m trying to reclaim a degree of control on how I perceive and react to things. Specifically, I want to control my sensitivity to things. I got off /b/ because I realized it blunted my empathy. Partially I got into social justice blogs in an attempt to be more aware of others’ suffering. It’s maybe a weird transformation that I used to call myself a /b/tard and now I cringe to even see that word. One day I walked around on campus and I found out that a word I had used myself and that I wasn’t particularly aware of before -retard- became pointed and jarring to my ears. I developed an acuity to it by listening to those that are hurt by the word, including some real life and internet friends, and deciding to listen for it and imagining how it might feel. So now automatically I twinge a bit at its public use.

*trigger warning this paragraph for gore*
But! I also deliberately sought out gory images for a while because I thought I might work in the health field and I wanted to get used to seeing such things so I wouldn’t fall to pieces. My aunt is a doctor, and she worked in an emergency room in South Africa for a time, where she saw a lot more stab and gunshot wounds than she was used to seeing in Canada. She showed me a video of a young man who had an six-inch knife sunk to the hilt into his eye, and showed the doctors having to use a hardware hammer to chip it out. I had numbed myself to his physical pain (and I think he had too; my aunt told me there was no anesthesia but the man didn’t cry out and his eyes were glazed over with what looked like shock) but if anyone had made a cruel remark on his social situation or race I would feel a twinge.

To be a good doctor, you have to strike a weird balance of sensitivity and insensitivity. A good doctor couldn’t freak out or become overwhelmed by the extreme pain of others, yet she should be aware of it. She should seek to minimize and understand her patients’ pain, but not to flinch from inflicting necessary pain. You have to be Dorothy, empathetic yet strong. To me, a lot of social justice bloggers have a similar job. They have to be conscious of, and expose, the subtler forms of oppression. It’s also probably best that they not only recognize the oppression, but feel a little stab of soreness at its recognition, so that they can inject passion into their writing and advocacy. Like how I feel about the aforementioned “retard”. But somehow, even when doing the work of feeling empathy at the little things, you must also be strong enough to handle overtly bigoted trolls. Periodically, one of the bloggers will show us a glimpse of the backstage of their blogs, and it is plenty heinous. Renee will show us her hate mail I’ll hear about people starting up parallel hate blogs. Sometimes it will cross over into real life stalkers and phone calls. The amazing Sady Doyle and Amanda Hess write about the sorts of issues that lady bloggers particularly can face. So I guess my question/source of contention is “How do you develop a thick skin to all the harassment and trollery while still being necessarily sensitive to subtler forms of oppression?” Maybe, like doctors, and the way I’ve developed my own sensitivities and numbnesses, it is just a question of practice. Just going out and doing the work, day after day until you’re inured and responsive to the appropriate things. My practice of deconstructing social issues only in safe spaces with like minded people (that know all the jargon) has made me sensitive to trollery. Beyond that it has blunted my debating skills. I have become a bit mystified with how the other side thinks so I can’t engage with them so well on certain issue. I’ve probably become too dependent on moderators to shield me from the worst of it with their own minds and bodies. Because, seriously, they are amazing and I don’t know how they do it. I don’t want to become a full time dedicated ISSUES BLOGGER OF GREAT PITH AND MOMENT, but these things cross my mind and I’d like to be able to talk about them.

I have an idea kicking around that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Maybe I’ll go ahead and write up a post and see how that goes. The proposed topic is homophobia, and I’m actually fairly practiced at shutting down objections to that, so I feel I can do it. I’m pretty small, so I think unless a big antagonistic website links to unleash their hordes upon me, I’ll be okay. That seems to be a big source of the swarms of gnats that’ll plague a site from time to time. Some hostile big blogger will link to you and essentially say “Fly my pretties, fly! Get them and their little dogs too!” But you guys stop them and fight them off! So, here’s to the Dorothys of the world. You are good and brave and true.