Bonus Sample: “CIS White Man” Means So Many Things
This episode follows up on earlier discussions on the podcast about how we manage privilege. Our exploration of cancel culture — specifically that part of it that is really a form of horizontal violence — isn’t motivated by any shift to the right, but by a desire to unpack the rhetoric, jargon, and performative behaviours, that, so often in the reductive rhythm of social media, serve to shut down learning, and polarize progressives that might otherwise work together.Here, Matthew focuses on how a rhetorical device in social justice relates to our project: what it means, in both helpful and unhelpful ways, to be named as or reduced to “cis white men”.Reduction and essentialism are key aspects of the meme-ification of our politics, and potent weapons in the arsenal of conspirituality. None of the influencers we study on this podcast would have gained their social power without labelling and essentializing their opponents in black-and-white terms, without taking black-and-white positions on things like vaccines, big Pharma, and whether or not a person is “awake”.Both conspirituality and social media influence are driven by the tag, the hot take, the keyword, the avatar, and the speed of emotional reactivity. And cults are glued together by intense, non-negotiable emotional demands on participants. So far we’ve shown how all of these elements degrade our chances to evaluate evidence and resist being conned by charismatics or cult leaders. Our hope is that we contribute to a slower and open-ended exploration of how to balance the rhetoric of crucial social change with the nuance of interpersonal empathy.Show NotesContraPoints on Cancelling Robin diAngelo defining “white fragility"“Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege Knapsack“That time I didn’t get shotMinimization as a patriarchal reflexCedric Michael Williams on DiAngelo Daniel Bergner on DiAngelo Tada Hozumi, Selfish ActivistLog the Fuck Off, Jacobin
-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem
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Hello, Matthew here from the Conspirituality podcast team.
The following is a sample of the bonus episode we produce every week for our Patreon subscribers.
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Cis white man means so many things.
*sigh* When I first started working on this podcast with Derek and Julian, someone who was a friend at the time sent me an email that basically said, why are you working with two other cis white men on this project?
The question took me aback.
I froze.
Because, according to certain cultural rules, which are not necessarily the rules of friendship, I couldn't answer this question without being wrong or without appearing to be defensive or fragile.
I had three bad options for answering.
If I said, because they're my friends, then I might be revealing the exclusivity of my social circle, and perhaps my unwillingness to look beyond it.
If I said, they're colleagues who are interested in and skilled in the same subject area, I might be revealing my ignorance of marginalized literature on conspirituality, although it is kind of a new study.
If I said I was scrambling for any kind of work project at the beginning of a pandemic, as my industry was collapsing, and this materialized out of luck and necessity, then I might be proving that I valued money over inclusivity.
I might be revealing my naked opportunism, my complicity in colonial capitalism.
So, I struck an apologetic stance.
I basically said, I know it doesn't look good, but I'll be working on it and using my privilege to share power.
But this felt like a lead balloon.
Not because it was an empty promise.
My commitment to sharing power is really a thing.
But because it didn't seem to answer the underlying assertion of my friend's question, which was, it would have been better if you'd chosen another project with other people.
It was almost like a friend telling me who to be friends with.
Now the fact that this challenge came from a friend was significant.
Was this an unfriendly thing to do?
Or, according to the hard work of checking privilege, was this actually a sign of true friendship?
That the person felt safe enough to challenge me and assumed their challenge wouldn't strain the friendship?
I don't know the answer to that.
Now not long after that, we got similar feedback on social media.
Some of it coming from people who didn't know us, who weren't friends.
And some of the prematurely aggravated comments came from people who clearly hadn't listened to any of the episodes or grasped what the subject was.
And in some cases, these challenges felt disingenuous.
This was white people criticizing other white people for starting a project they didn't start, and pretending like they knew it was overall, and in general, the wrong thing to do.
Then, in a post about an episode about racism in the wellness industry, one person of color posted a comment saying that they didn't have time to listen to white people talk about the issue, and to me that was totally fine.
But the episode featured in that post contained an interview with a person of color talking about the issue.
So clearly the comment was hasty, maybe misinformed, but that didn't stop other commenters, white commenters, from jumping on board to support the person's objection.
And all of this, strangely, served to erase the presence of our guest.
I don't think this happened in bad faith.
I think it happened because everything on social media moves too damned fast and reactively.
The platform seems built for a mixture of provocation and confusion that keeps people engaged for longer.
Facebook wants us to fight, and if it's not over something real, it might as well be over something untrue or meaningless.
In these scrums, I give the same response.
Apologize, and pledge to use privilege ethically.
For some people, this seems sufficient, and others just storm off anyway.
Since then, I've been thinking a lot about this question, and about why certain answers work or don't work, and when, and about the differences between us on the podcast here, and how those differences mesh with our strengths and blind spots.
I've also been thinking about our differences in how we approach the question.
In episode 26, it all came out into the open when, in talking about social justice-oriented online conflict, Derek laid out a boundary he has when engaging in social media threads.
He described a commenter opening or framing a criticism of his work in the same way that my friend had.
The formula is, quote, coming from a white cis man, your opinion or work is not relevant because, and so on, unquote.
I'm going to call this the identitarian gambit.
Derek explained that for him, it doesn't really matter what comes after the identitarian gambit.
He said that when he hears this opening, or reads it, he just stops.
He's a cis white man looking at the words cis white man, and he's not reading any further.
He's being dismissed, and so he's going to dismiss what follows.
I'm a cisgendered white man as well, and I don't stop reading.
My instinct is to try to depersonalize it, to take on the identitarian gambit, to face it fully, and to own it.
I want to be a good activist, feminist, ally.
Or at least my idea of one.
But in this essay I'd like to explore whether I'm doing that because it's moral and effective, or because I'm afraid not to, or because I'm confused about the difference between real life behavior and the theater of being good.
