Since everyone is sharing their feminism-and-scrupulosity stories, I figured I’d add mine to the pile. My problems were comparatively mild, and I’m mostly over them now, so this is not a plea for sympathy, just another voice in the chorus speaking out against this stuff.
After reading feminist writings like “Schrodinger’s Rapist”, I too became afraid of talking to female strangers, for fear of hurting them. Let me be clear: I’m straight and female, so this had nothing to do with sexual attraction. I think it just had to do with being socially awkward, and believing that any social mistake I made might traumatize someone.
I mean, feminism isn’t the only thing responsible for my scrupulosity. The scrupulosity began back in sophomore year of college, when I first started to get a grasp on social skills. As I became more aware of nonverbal communication and social norms, I started to realize that a lot of what I said and did was making people uncomfortable. Often when I talked, I was interrupting people or going on long monologues. I was stepping on people’s voices the way an awkward dancer steps on people’s toes. So anyway, I stopped talking nearly as much, and deliberately tried to cultivate shyness as a virtue.
I also spent a lot of time on an IRC channel that explicitly encouraged scrupulosity with an oft-repeated motto “doing things is evil”. So that definitely has a lot to do with my problems.
But reading online feminism definitely didn’t help. Like, before I started reading this stuff, I used to get really worried that all my social mistakes were the worst thing ever. But without the influence of feminism/SJ, I could always calmly remind myself that no, in the grand scheme of things, my little social mistakes were no big deal. Usually, they’d just make people mildly uncomfortable for a few minutes, and then everyone would forget about it. And every social mistake was a learning experience for me, a necessary part of levelling up in social skills. So I shouldn’t stress too much about the error, and in fact, I should be happy that I had learned something. As I told myself, there’s no way to learn social skills except by repeatedly screwing up.
But then I read articles like “Schrodinger’s Rapist”, which say pretty much the opposite thing from what I just wrote. They say that if you make a social error, it could cause serious harm to someone. It won’t just make them feel mildly uncomfortable; it will make them feel like their lives are threatened. Or it could trigger a really painful episode of PTSD, which could put the person into a terrible state for weeks on end, and make their recovery that much more difficult. (I’m a straight female, so I really don’t understand how I internalized the whole Schrodinger’s Rapist thing. I have a lot in common with straight nerdy guys, so maybe I just assume that all messages directed to them apply to me too? Who knows.)
Anyway, as a socially awkward person, I became afraid of talking to people. Particularly strangers who were women, but I also just grew nervous about ever talking to anyone. What if I accidentally said something racist or ableist or offensive to some minority? That would cause serious harm and be the worst thing in the world!
The saner social justice people (e.g. Captain Awkward) will say that everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and if someone calls you “ableist”, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, just that you need to pay more attention to what you’re saying and try to fix it. But it’s hard to internalize that more forgiving perspective, when words like “ableist” are hurled like weapons by Tumblr activists, and everyone emphasizes how much damage improper behavior can cause. It’s much easier to start worrying that everything you say will be flawed, and the only way to avoid hurting people is to never speak at all.
Interestingly, though, social justice hasn’t made me kinder to oppressed minorities. It’s just made me hide in places where sensitive people don’t hang out. I breathe a sigh of relief every time someone makes a racist joke or mocks social justice, because it means I’m in a safe space, where no one is going to be deeply damaged just by me speaking my opinion.
I am mostly over these scrupulosity issues now. I still feel very nervous in SJ spaces, and nervous about speaking my true opinions publicly. But I’m not afraid of talking to strangers anymore. Why? Because a few months ago, I was walking outside my office, and I ran into someone I knew. I was feeling very introverted and didn’t feel like conversing right then, but this person was socially oblivious and ignored all my signals that I didn’t want to talk. Also, it seemed like he really wanted someone to talk to, and was getting a lot out of the conversation. So I just sighed internally and listened to him for another 15 minutes. It was mildly annoying, but no big deal. And then I realized: this was exactly the sort of thing that I’d been afraid of doing to people for so many months. But someone just did it to me, and it was really no big deal! So if I inflicted that same amount of discomfort on people occasionally, it would probably be no big deal either.
So if you’re also suffering from these scrupulosity issues, and are afraid of making people uncomfortable with your social awkwardness, I will tell you: it’s probably not a big deal. Go ahead and make social mistakes and learn from them. Your chances of traumatizing someone are exceedingly low. And being made to feel uncomfortable is far from the worst thing that can happen to someone. (I mean, still don’t approach women in dark alleyways. But if it’s broad daylight, and you’re in a public place, then seriously, don’t worry about it.)
“Interestingly, though, social justice hasn’t made me kinder to oppressed minorities. It’s just made me hide in places where sensitive people don’t hang out. I breathe a sigh of relief every time someone makes a racist joke or mocks social justice, because it means I’m in a safe space, where no one is going to be deeply damaged just by me speaking my opinion."
yep same
I think a lot of SJ messages are harmful to people with social anxiety/fear of offending people (even straight women–like wow I’m sure if I were a straight man this issue would be so many times worse). Yesterday a woman at a party congratulated me on being a woman in computer science, then asked if I’ve been following the articles on women in CS lately and said with an eyeroll that people were "bringing back Pinker, suggesting that women just don’t want to study CS or something.” I responded with a smile and a “Mhm, I know right?” Like really, brain? Not only would it be good to share my opinion on important issues I know a lot about, my anxiety about this stuff just makes it hard to converse with people about things that aren’t superficial.
So I’ve been realizing recently that it’s important to be able to talk about things even when they might offend people (“So, why did you decide to become vegetarian?”), and it’s something I want to work on this year.