Weaponised good faith

[kaberett]

A few years back, CN Lester gave a talk at the University of Oxford on trans histories,[0] containing the first reading from their excellent book Trans Like Me.[1][2]

During that talk, as you'll see if you watch it, they demonstrated the technique of assuming good faith almost ad absurdum -- well past the point at which any reasonable person might conclude that their interlocutor was hostile or indeed malicious, they maintain openness and curiosity and inquiry.

Since then I have taken a number of Very Deep Calming Breaths and done a bunch more learning about effective ways to engage in Debate should one wish, out of a sense of pragmatism, to Change Hearts And Minds, and this is one of the best tools I have.

I dither, still, over whether I'm comfortable describing something I'm consciously weaponising as "good faith"; over whether it still counts as "engaging in good faith" if I'm really very sure that the other party is in fact prejudiced, or bigoted, or wrong; if in fact the "show of good faith" is not about being open to having my mind changed, but about it being the most effective way to change theirs. Over and over I'm coming down on the side of "yes, more or less", because if nothing else I'm keeping hold of the idea that people might, that people can, change; that people are not condemned to be for ever their worst selves. I dither, but this is where I land.

And sometimes, just occasionally, the result is incremental change. At the moment -- in a general climate of the most 2018 thing I've heard in at least a week or so -- incremental change is what I'm hanging onto. So: here we are.

---

[0] Content notes for the introductory speech containing misgendering (emphatically corrected by the audience), trans history including 1930s Berlin, and cis audience members asking... questions.

[1] Interestingly reviewed by DRMaciver and subsequently referenced in a discussion of queer life as combat epistemology; relatedly, I've set up drmaciver_feed.

[2] I recently saw an analogy for gendered experience of self and proprioceptive sense of body that was new to me but which feels very compelling: how do you know if you're left- or right-handed? What happens when you try to use the "wrong" hand?

Comments

[kaberett]

Also re [2]: I would link to the OP but I think it was a screencap on Facebook of a tumblr post, so, uh.

[alexwlchan]

Is this the post you were thinking of? https://transgenderteensurvivalguide.tumblr.com/post/171930693875/ive-read-through-a-fair-bit-of-the-faq-on-the

(Found by searching the phrase “site:tumblr.com gendered experience how do you know if you're left- or right-handed? What happens when you try to use the "wrong" hand” – your phrasing plus a few extra context clues to help the Googles.)

[kaberett]

In fact it wasn't -- I'd seen a much pithier version -- but nice find!

[recessional]

Also: it may or may not be "good faith" to the person you're actually speaking with, but it is good faith to those in the audience who may need to have these things broken down to that small a spot, because that's where their knowledge and understanding level is coming from.

...apparently I had Thoughts on "good faith" engagement

[niqaeli]

Oh, I like the notion of queer life as combat epistemology. It feels very, very resonant of my experience as queer and disabled both. (Shockingly, those two things are rather tangled up for me, for all that I knew I was queer much, much younger than I figured out I was disabled.)

I do not think it is at all inaccurate to call the actively weaponised version of this (where when it is a deliberate effort on my part not to allow them to change my mind but for me to have the best chance of changing theirs) good faith still. Because I think good faith engagement really fundamentally comes down to the willingness to actively listen -- no promise is actually made, in active listening, of allowing my mind to change in response. I have only promised that I will listen, without attacking. (Even if what I am listening to is functionally an attack on me.)

This is part of why good faith engagement is fucking exhausting work: you may (probably will) be opening yourself up to actively listening to a lot of absolute fucking poison in order to pick through it all and find the common ground and try to drag them ayewards towards your shared humanity. That's still good faith, even if it's something you've arrived at from a cynical place: you're actively doing a great deal of work for very little reward in the attempt to make human connections with someone who is trying very hard to reject that shared connection. The fact that you're attempting to make human connections with them for your own betterment (by changing the world to make yourself legible) as much as for theirs (by making them less hateful and withdrawn) does... not change the quality of your faith. I mean, enlightened self interest is pretty much the entire evolutionary driving basis of all human sociality, so.

Re: ...apparently I had Thoughts on "good faith" engagement

[recessional]

Sufficiently advanced and intelligent self-interest becomes indistinguishable from virtue.

Re: ...apparently I had Thoughts on "good faith" engagement

[the_swarm]

Seconding these thoughts! I try and engage in "good faith" when I can (it's exhausting of course, and having the energy is...yeah...) and I think a real advantage of it is that, well, your ideas are more approachable. And you know what, I have learned and changed my perspective through this, although without bowing to bigotry.

I also try and think about who the audience is. If it's a Twitter sub-sub-thread which is only going to be read by those directly involved, and they're mostly TERFs or trolls or whatever, why bother? But if it's somewhere other people might read or get involved, I sometimes "debate" a little for the sake of external readers - well-meaning but ignorant people who might read the conversation and could be won over by a hateful viewpoint without realising what they're investing in.

So it's also about where is strategic to engage - any time there's a possibility of good faith engagement from the other "side", and times where you're actually speaking to people who don't have a strong fixed view, even if they're not ostensibly the person you're directly corresponding with.

[cadenzamuse]

This is not necessarily engaging your topic at all, but I feel that talk as revelation.

[kaberett]

ISN'T CN GREAT. <3

edit: like, I included all this stuff because I think it's all interesting and I wanna talk about all of it, and I am delighted to be introducing more people to CN's work. V v happy to talk about more.

[cadenzamuse]

I think it's especially hitting because I live in a small city and have not managed to figure out where my people are. (You know. Where are my lesbian downstairs neighbors, and my gay D&D GM and his artist boyfriend? Where's my trans labmate? Where are my married queer Episcopal priests? WHERE THE FUCK DID MY PEOPLE GO? <--these were all friends and acquaintances when I lived in ATL). So I especially felt that oomph of "look, they were making the same bad gender jokes 100 years ago, and maybe if cishet people saw that, we wouldn't still have people who believe in conversion therapy." (This is probably why Known Associates is my favorite MCU fic, and why Steve Rogers is even more MINE now that I'm claiming him for demigirl me as well as bisexual me. Because at least in the absence of history, fandom teaches it to each other through our favorite characters.)

[fyreharper]

Thank you for [2]; I may use that. (Have new friend who is ‘but I don’t understand what that would feel like’ about being other-than-cis, and... idek -_-;;;;;; )

[steorra]

It looks like footnote 3 went on holidays.

[kaberett]

Oops, I couldn't make up my mind about 0/1/2 vs 1/2/3, will go fix now.

[azurelunatic]

Were you there when a troll rolled up into #dw and D went "Hi there! The questions you're asking are identical to a focused campaign of trolling we've been experiencing. If you genuinely want to discuss this, come back later, but for now you're being kicked out because of the troll campaign." I was in delighted awe.

[kaberett]

I WAS NOT.

[azurelunatic]

It was so great. Very much a moment intended more for the observers than for the target.

[batrachian]

*reads footnote 2*

*sits down very suddenly*

[kaberett]

... oh sweetheart <3

[batrachian]

Like ofc it's more nuanced than that; binary choice is a trap and portions of physical dysphoria are worse when I nudge towards the other end of the spectra. Still.

(Relevant aside: personal experience as So Very Left Handed. A handful of things have learned to manage with right rather than fight the cultural expectation. Musical instruments f'rex.)


I like this floor. It's not going anywhere.

[kaberett]

Ambidexterity is a thing! Some people don't have hands, or have atypical hands!

like some of why I find this so compelling is that handedness also isn't a binary, right, in occasionally non-obvious ways thaaaaaaaat overlap with disability

[batrachian]

Oh, yes. Definitely a Good Analogy, right down to the enforced attempts to conform to the dominant narrative.

(I am feeling argumentative and don't know why, especially since afaict we are in broad agreement. Which I suspect means I've tripped a personal landmine and am Not Fit Company. Maybe best continued discussion...later.)

[kaberett]

sure thing. <3 regret SURPRISE FEELINGS.

[batrachian]

Having come back to this In The Morning. Not so much SURPRISE as... have been percolating on very related corners of Identity Soup for the last couple of weeks, it hasn't quite gelled into a coherent post.

And then somewhere in this thread I misstepped and it seems like you parsed something slightly different than I intended and I can't figure out what. Which doesn't bode well for putting any of the rest of my brain out into words either.

*sigh*

[kaberett]

Please remember that I am overwrought and sleepy and have just done an international move and was Very Anxious about PhD work yesterday, so misunderstandings on my end are not even remotely impossible <3

[batrachian]

Read, understood, and rolled up to beat woozls with.

[vass]

[1] Interestingly reviewed by DRMaciver and subsequently referenced in a discussion of queer life as combat epistemology;

*reads*

There's a classic (i.e. mid 20th century) saying that "the map is not the territory", meaning that the terms and models we use to describe reality are not the same as the underlying reality they describe. This is true, but Scott's observation is that the map is the tool that those with power will use to reshape the territory, and they will do so by prioritising their need for comprehension over the needs of the people they have power over.

Oh look, a perfect summary of what happened to the NDIS in Australia. I've been summarising it as "disabled people advocated for a national system of funding for support services, then the Disability Industry and the government took it over and crapped it up," but that paragraph above explains how and why.

[kaberett]

isn't it GOOD.

[azurelunatic]

The video up at that site now is not quite 39 minutes long, and has neither introduction nor Q&A. Definitely worth my time, if not illustrative of the principle.

[ludy]

Do (NT) People really have that strong a sense of their handedness? Wow!
(Cross-lateral dyspraxic who only fixed on a hand for writing cos everyone else did and does pretty much everything else with either hand)

[batrachian]

I am, per elsethread discussion, So Very Left-Handed. (Whether or not I'm NT is left as an exercise for the reader. I surely can't tell you...)

As kab points out, though, the fact that there are folks like both you and me is what makes it such an...evocative...analogy.

[jedusor]

I have an extremely conventionally attractive friend who says she's found this a good tool for casual sexual harassment, too. Just repeat "What are you doing?" or "What do you mean by that?" in an earnest tone until they examine their behavior. I personally could never ever take that approach (or the similar one you describe) because it trips my gigantic lying squick, but I can see the value of it.

[katzenfabrik]

I'm sad there's no transcript for CN Lester's talk (unless I missed one?) but thank you for discussing it! I agree that this technique is one of the best for changing minds. I am generally not patient enough to use it, but I will start trying harder again.

Also thanks for setting up the notebook feed. <3

[kaberett]

As far as I can tell Oxford doesn't provide a transcript. :( HOWEVER, it's audiovisual media I've seen before (I'm in the front row-ish, over at the right), so making a transcript is a thing I could do if that would be helpful? And I've sent a message to Oxford saying "yo, transcripts pls".

[katzenfabrik]

It’s very kind of you to offer, but please don’t do that just for me! :) It’s great that you’ve pinged Oxford; thanks for that.

[kaberett]

I am v sure that a. other people would appreciate it and b. CN would publicise it such that they could find it if I did!

[cesy]

Thank you for links and so on, and for DRMaciver feed. Is CN's book available in non-Amazon ebook that you're aware of?

I think of the good faith thing as "pointedly assuming good faith on their part" rather than "taking it in good faith on my part", which helps me with the weaponising thing.

[kaberett]

Yup! Hive has two versions -- one is much cheaper, and as far as I can tell the only difference is the subtitle.

[cesy]

Thanks!

[sfred]

[Catching up on things I bookmarked when I didn't have time...]

I do the thing of assuming benevolence/engaging in good faith, and I think it's OK to do that without really thinking one's own mind will be changed.