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Comment by westoncb

3 years ago

It's already been said plenty of times that mutual trust is a requirement, this will be my last reply to your comments if you keep straw-manning.

It isn't a straw man, though. It literally happens all the time. Role play a woman in an office. And, I should have stated flat out I can see this style can exist. My discourse is why not to lead in with it. Pretty much anywhere.

  • I think I see what you're saying, and it makes sense. But in a scenario with abusive power dynamics injustice is going to play out the same regardless of preferred conversation style, an outlet will trivially be found.

    • Ok, I grant that going full on abusive is not helpful. Such that I apologize on jumping there immediately. :(

      My concern is more in the ones that aren't quite as stark. Role play that you are talking to someone that doesn't feel safe enough to tell you that they don't feel perfectly safe. Now, how do you know this? If they felt safe, you could ask. But, we have established that they don't, per the role play.

      And this is a large part of why the conversation around "privilege" is so tough. At large, what we call "privilege" can be easily recast to more subtle dynamics of folks that are allowed to give voice without as much interruptions. Note, not none. Just fewer. (Note that there are obviously other aspects to this that don't necessarily make the recasting.)

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  • Oral arguments before the Supreme Court are a fairly formalized interrupt culture in which the justices literally interrupt the attorneys to ask questions, and funny enough, the women justices tend to speak more than the men justices. Clarence Thomas famously speaks the least; he actually would prefer to hear out the attorneys making their case to the court.

    • > Clarence Thomas famously speaks the least; he actually would prefer to hear out the attorneys making their case to the court.

      Eh, my impression is that he's extremely arrogant and doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He's deeply uncurious and consequently relatively ignorant. He rarely engages in good faith with the facts and merits, and frequently misconstrues them to suit his own ideology. These are not the acts of an active listener who wants to learn and be shaped by what they learn. They're the acts of someone who believes they've got it all figured out.

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