On appeals for help

[pseudomonas]

Please, please. It's fine and good for you to promote your cause, and appeal for help. But please don't say¹ things like If you're not taking [action] on [insert cause here] then you're [the problem|a terrible person|why we can't have nice things]. (sometimes seen as If you're [demographic group] and not taking action…).

Three reasons:
1) Salience bias. While you're very upset about X injustice, there are (sadly!) many many many problems in the world, and it's not OK to berate people for working on things that aren't the one that has your attention at the moment. It's definitely OK to hope that people are working/donating/campaigning to make the world a better place, but not to slag strangers off because they're focussing on (say) economic inequality rather than (say) antibiotic resistance².

2) Not everyone is in a position to help. Some people have disabilities, physical and mental. Some people aren't economically placed to give up money or time. Making these people feel bad about it is what is technically known as "a dick move".

3) It's really not a nice look. Yes, this is "the tone argument", aka "concern trolling", well done, you have sussed me out. But it's pretty dispiriting to see people promoting causes I care about by making people feel awful for very little gain. And yes, it's quite likely that the cause is more important than not hurting people's feelings. But one can urge action without gleefully slagging off people who may have very good reasons that they can't get involved

Sadly I've not got a concrete example to hand - but this isn't in reference to a particular thing, but it's something I've seen from time to time and only recently learned not to take as personally as I have in the past.

¹ Or, preferably, share/retweet/reblog/promulgate
² Or vice versa, naturally. I think both of these are pressing concerns for the world.

Comments

[lilysea]

Yes.

Charities are the worst offenders. I once heard a charity collector telling a passerby "there are two types of people in the world - those that HELP people and those that HURT people - which are you?".

Another times, a charity collector from Amnesty rang up and tried to guilt-trip my unemployed, not receiving benefits, massively depressed boyfriend into donating to Syrian refugees by going into great details about their suffering and strongly implying that SO was a horrible person if he didn't donate $$$ or $$$$. Thanks, random Amnesty person, you *INCREASED* the amount of suffering in the world that day, because you made SO's depression SO MUCH WORSE (and I suffered from that as well, so yay, charity collector, you made TWO people suffer with ONE phone call.) Why yes, I am still angry at Amnesty about it, four years later, it took weeks for SO to recover.

[pseudomonas]

And it can be really hard to internalise "no, they actually don't mean you", especially if you're prone to depression and anxiety. And GRRR cos I support Amnesty and employing people who do this kind of shit is horribly counterproductive.

[lilysea]

There was an article recently about how a lot of the major charities pull this shit. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/11/the-life-of-the-charity-cold-caller

Including a cancer charity who told a woman with cancer that having active cancer was no excuse not to donate, because she more than anyone should know how important cancer charity's work was!

I used to support Amnesty, but after they upset SO that badly, I don't see myself EVER donating to them again for the rest of my life.

[pseudomonas]

Yeah, I can't really blame you. That sounds appalling. I hate being phoned by charities. I have got OK at saying "I wish you well in your work, but I don't agree to donations over the phone; please take me off your lists" — but it takes a lot of assertiveness to be able to do that!

[lilysea]

Oh, and I forgot to say - he told the cold caller he wasn't working at all, didn't have any income coming in, and she still kept wanting a $$$ donation.

[pseudomonas]

Oh, that's totally egregious.

[pseudomonas]

I think I remember at least one being "if you're white and not [involved in specific action X against police racist brutality in the United States] then you're the cause of the problem", which I felt bad about for a couple of days even though I'm in the wrong country to be able to take the action recommended; this might have been partly because my mental health wasn't all that brilliant at the time anyway.

[pfy]

Re: point 3, it strikes me that anyone manipulative enough to use "Do what I say or you're a horrible awful problematic person" will also be manipulative enough to use "Pointing out my emotional manipulation is tone policing!"

There's some kind of point (4) in this, along the lines of "Doing this muddies and devalues social justice as a whole, although those willing to do so may consider this an acceptable external cost of getting their way".

[pseudomonas]

I think the stereotype of the view of the people using this device is that this is absolutely an acceptable cost, especially if one has specified that the target is a More Privileged Demographic Group. I don't know whether this is actually the way that they see things.

[pfy]

OK, yes, I'm probably assuming too much self-awareness there.

[pseudomonas]

On the "tone policing" - this is one reason that I'm writing this in a post to itself; there is no argument here that I am liable to be derailing by making my point.

[jack]

I was writing a comment, and then realised it didn't really go anywhere... I realise that if something makes me feel awful, I can't sensibly judge if it's necessary or not -- so I tend to default to assuming it MIGHT be necessary so I shouldn't object. Which may not really help...

[pseudomonas]

I think a lot of people do that, and if challenged, a lot of people writing the thing will say (accurately) "this isn't about your feelings, it's about less privileged group G"; on the other hand I'd contend that (in general)

a) you're writing this for an audience that includes people not in group G and who you don't know about.
b) it would have been possible to write something that was equally effective while causing less emotional collateral damage - and I'm advocating that rather than "saying & doing nothing".