I’ve been reflecting recently on the way our culture has developed regarding speaking up or speaking back to behaviours that are problematic, unfair or even downright wrong.
We live in strange times where challenging bad behaviour can backfire on a person rather than course correct the person behaving badly. That’s if we can even agree on what ‘bad behaviour’ means in our era of distorted social codes of good and bad, right and wrong.
For example, I was walking past a playground recently where a group of older teenagers were doing their level best to destroy a climbing frame. They looked at me boldly with that expression that says, ‘so what are you going to do about it?’ knowing that anything I tried to do as an older adult in that moment would mean nothing to them and might even result in their destructive behaviour being turned on me. When I was younger, in the area I grew up in, that would not have happened. Anyone caught doing something anti-social would have at the very least, legged it at the first sight of an adult and they would know that their parents would be informed. I grew up in a working class area and the social regulation could be harsh. But the community did regulate itself and everyone I grew up with was clear on what was right and what was wrong, even if we did sometimes dabble in doing something wrong.
Then I think about social media, an unavoidable aspect of our current culture. I see posts made by decent people, therapists, sex educators, medical doctors, doing their best to raise awareness of mental health problems, providing psychoeducation, or even sharing something innocuous or humorous, and the comments on these posts can be vile. From comments on the person’s appearance, especially if they are women, to threats of violence, including sexual violence and death threats, from people who have no positive intention or legitimate aim, only to disrupt, upset and share hate. And if the person being attacked dares to reply, all they get is more vitriol, because the haters are not interested in debate or discussion or learning, they just want to share their nastiness. I know this is not a new thing, but it continues to be a thing that bothers me and upset the people I care about.
We live in strange times where challenging bad behaviour can backfire on a person rather than course correct the person behaving badly.
A move that I have been particularly confounded by is when a person who is very clearly in the wrong pivots attention away from their behaviour by accusing their challenger of doing something wrong. It’s a huge waving red flag for a relationship, be that with a colleague, friend or intimate partner, when raising legitimate concerns with them results in tirade of complaints against you. A refusal to take responsibility and reflect on yourself is at the core of these reactions. This is along the lines of a person falling off a bar stool because they are drunk then suing the bar for selling them alcohol, or a person breaking the speed limit offering as their defence that people were driving faster than them.
Relationship specialist Terry Real and Shame Containment Theory creator Lisa Etherson would see this as a defence against shame. Shame is a pro-social emotion. It works to keep people in line with community values and codes of behaviour. Now, that can be a huge problem when shame is deployed to control others, as it is in many cultures in relation to anyone not fitting the social ‘norms’ of gender, sexuality and relationship preferences. However, people who avoid shame by going ‘one up’, as Terry Real would say, and who contain their shame, in Lisa Etherson’s formulation, by lashing out, being grandiose and going on the attack, or those people who don’t seem to feel any shame at all, … they are the people that worry me. Do they know they are containing their shame or do they believe their own press?
I fear we are in an era of ‘no right to reply’ where it’s safer to say nothing rather than name and challenge bad behaviour. The consequences are too risky. Decent people are being silenced by people who will do anything to avoid facing their own shame and taking responsibility for their own actions.
How do we stay safe in a culture where there is no safe right to reply?
