#i actually think palestinian people deserve to not be brought up in irrelevant contexts

[magicrainbowkitties]

Anyways the thread I made on this Union Dixie vid is fuckin gold and I feel you all deserve to be graced with it.

And then a mere 20 mins ago (at time of typing) somebody with gigachad as a pfp says this shit

Which. There is so much to unpack here but uh. Honestly I'm just gonna throw away the suitcase bc why would you ever assume someone with a Gigachad pfp is ever to be taken as good faith.

[beesandwasps]

How To Complain More Effectively, With An Example Of How Not To Do It

This is going to kind of long, so I’m putting it below the fold.

A few days back, I made an extended comment on a post about Prohibition (which you can find here). In passing, since I was bringing up the public health crisis which England faced when distilled liquor was introduced, I mentioned for those who don’t know that distilled liquor was invented by Muslim chemists. I felt that this was necessary to mention because a lot of people on Tumblr are young and often don’t know much history, and might appreciate knowing some context. As far as I know, the actual history of alcohol distillation is not a particularly controversial subject — there are well-attested accounts, trustworthy primary sources, the whole nine yards.

So: sometime today (I was away for most of the afternoon) some idiot DMed me claiming that I only mentioned that because I was a brainwashed PC leftist who wanted to… uh… make a dig at the English, I guess? (I’m still not 100% certain what, exactly, was the point they were trying to make.) In the course of some brief conversation, they came out with the following claims:

It doesn’t matter what actually happened, we shouldn’t credit Muslims with this invention (or, it was implied, anything positive at all)

The idiot I was talking to was Palestinian, so they’re automatically right about Muslims and disagreeing with them means condoning genocide of the Palestinians

“Muslim” is a political stance, not a religion, and it’s right-wing (speaking as an atheist: the latter might be debatable as to a statistical majority across the whole world, but it certainly isn’t just flat-out “true”)

Distilled liquor was independently invented by others, look at vodka! (This claim is actually outright false; even the briefest research shows that vodka was allegedly invented centuries later, and by people who already had distilling equipment — which means that they did not invent the process.)

Mohammed had a (political marriage to a) child bride so he must have been a pedophile and therefore admitting that Muslims have ever done anything at all noteworthy is encouraging pedophilia

There was probably more, but I blocked the idiot before it occurred to me to take screenshots so this is all paraphrased from memory. (Tumblr won’t show DMs from somebody who has been blocked, for which I am mostly thankful.)

The first point that should probably be made is: regardless of whether you think the Muslim invention of distillation deserves celebration or not, trying to deny that it exists because you don’t like it, or don’t like Muslims, is wrong. Wanna tear down statues because the subjects are problematic? Fine! As a Person Currently Living Today, you deserve a voice in who and what our society celebrates — and it’s even okay to say “let’s not have statues which honor anybody because we can’t agree who deserves it”! But when it comes to actual history? We should record what actually happened, to the greatest degree we can. Even in the modern era, with video, there can be ambiguity, but that does not mean it is acceptable to deliberately falsify things. We may never reach the ideal, but we should strive for it as much as we can.

Now, given the weird succession of claims, this was pretty obviously a right-wing wackjob, but once again, a lot of people on this site are young and may not know how to not be like this, so as a public service, let me lay down

A few guidelines for more effective complaining

Think seriously in advance about what you want your complaint to accomplish, and make sure you say it. Do you want an apology? (And do you want it privately or publicly?) A published correction and/or retraction? An acknowledgement of the issue with no correction? Is this a public performance to show how angry you are, not really directed at the recipient? Or are you just letting off some emotional steam and the consequences aren’t important? You should make it clear what you want, and depending on what it is, you should adopt a different tone. It is (or at least can be) okay to be angry! But unless you’re just yelling for the sake of yelling, you probably want “angry but collected” rather than “screaming everything that crosses your mind”. My idiot more or less jumped straight to the latter, and although they never actually said what they wanted me to do about it, you may notice that not only am I not issuing a retraction or an apology, I’m using them as an example of what not to do in a whole dedicated post and calling them an idiot. This is probably not the outcome you want.

Consider, as well, the relative importance of the thing you’re complaining about to the person you’re complaining to. Is this a major focus for them? Something they mentioned in passing? Were they sneering, or showing enthusiasm, or just talking about it? Obviously you may have to make a judgement call to some degree, but it’s important to remember that other people’s focus may differ from yours. If the issue isn’t very important to the other person, you probably want to be less demanding. (Once again: “being less demanding” is not the same as “not being angry”! “I demand that you issue an immediate public apology for saying something as terrible as [fill in the blank]” is a different approach from “I understand you only said [fill in the blank] in passing, but that is actually a terrible thing to say, it made me horribly angry to see such a statement even as an aside, and you should apologize unless you really intended to be that offensive”.)

Be careful about assuming hostility. Sadly, even people who try to be deliberate in all their actions fail to actually do so. Equally sadly, having good intent does not guarantee that you do no harm. (And people can even have good intent and be so completely wrong that they do harm while trying to be helpful.) Obviously, there’s a limit to how much slack you cut people when deciding whether they “meant” what they were doing, but there should be some slack if possible. And no, this does not mean “you should be happy to be a human doormat” — but the fact that you are complaining, all by itself, already demonstrates that you are not.

At a minimum, you should check your facts on Wikipedia. Even Wikipedia might not be enough, but if you’re going to make claims in your complaint which any random person with an Internet connection can disprove in 10 seconds, your complaint invalidates itself immediately. My idiot made the vodka claim, and the instant the search results came up for “vodka invention” I knew that this was a person who was not motivated by any kind of concern for the facts.

Don’t pull in irrelevant things. My idiot was probably doomed to fail anyway, but the minute they brought in “I’m a Palestinian” they were fighting a very definite uphill battle — even without the ridiculous claim of “you can’t disagree in the slightest with me, personally, without condoning genocide”, it’s irrelevant to a question of historical fact! The Muslims invented distilled liquor and it became a serious social problem in England whether my idiot is Palestinian or Saudi or Israeli — or English, for that matter. And the weird claim about pedophilia very definitely sank any hopes the idiot might have of convincing me for good. “Irrelevant” has different meanings in different contexts — had I been saying something about Palestinians, particularly something subjective, then it would have been at least slightly relevant that my particular idiot was Palestinian. Context matters, so consider it.

You don’t have to be polite, but it can be useful — and it’s a good idea not to be the first person to be outright rude. At this point, nobody owes Donald Trump civility — but when people express anger at him in public, remaining polite about it emphasizes how much better they are than he is. (And since it’s clear that he’s incapable of anything like a sincere apology, the only reason anybody would complain to him is as theater.) If you’re anti-TERF, then you don’t owe J. K. Rowling civility any more, because she has already made it clear she doesn’t respect you and doesn’t care what you think. But when there’s ambiguity? If the person is sympathetic then being polite may tip the scales, and if they aren’t it gives them one less excuse to dismiss your complaint. You will have to use your judgement, but if you stay calm and polite, no matter what the outcome is, you will have done a better job of maintaining your dignity, and that is always useful. In addition, in the event that the recipient gets angry and does something in retaliation, rudeness might be legally considered provocation, and leave you and not them on the hook.

Remember that your complaint is public if either you or the recipient wants it, and potentially “forever” like the Internet. If your complaint is a public performance, then this may work in your favor — but if not, remember that no matter how private your complaint is, the recipient might choose to make it public. That might be with benign intent — they’re publishing your complaint so they can apologize — but it might be malicious if publication would make you look bad. This is another good reason to remember the previous point and try to stay polite. (There’s also another factor: if your complaint is public, anybody in the future who looks you up on the Internet will probably find it. I hate to admit it, because it’s unfair, but this is a good reason to pick your battles.) (And this is why I’m not giving the account name of my idiot — they may have been awful, but if they want to remain anonymous that’s up to them.)

Make sure you’ve seen/read/heard enough to know what you’re talking about. This is the only point I can think of which my particular idiot did not fail on, but it’s common enough to deserve a mention. Before you issue a complaint, make sure that it’s justified. All of the following are things I have seen happen (or read about happening): (A) an offensive thing is the focus of a drama, and people issue complaints because it is offensive and should not be shown in a positive light — except that the whole point of the drama was to point out how offensive it was; the complainers only saw the name of it in the first sentence of a plot synopsis and assumed the drama must be defending it. (B) an acronym has multiple very distinct meanings; one of these meanings, which became attached to it after the other(s), is objectionable; the acronym shows up in a text where it obviously has the earlier, unoffensive meaning, but people see it and complain assuming it has the offensive meaning even though that would make absolutely no sense in context. (C) a character in a work of fiction does something which is morally offensive; people complain that this character’s existence is an attempt to defend the action, when in fact the action is used to show how terrible the character is. Try not to be the sort of person who does any of these things.