living in a powder keg

cc-by me

 

every now and then, something happens in my twitter bubble that captures so much attention that it feels like everyone is wondering where everyone else stands on it. sometimes i am silent.  sometimes i am wondering why others are silent.  i've been on both sides of this. i've felt the disappointment when others don't speak out about something i feel strongly about, or am personally affected by.  the idea that sometimes silence can be quite loud is familiar to me, like it is to probably anyone who has been mistreated publicly, or taken a risk in speaking out about private mistreatment, or provided support to others who were taking that often difficult, always deliberate, step. when we hope that someone will be supportive, the palpable lack of support can be disillusioning.

i know that i have sometimes been that disappointing person to others. someone that people expect to speak up, take a position, express their values, who says nothing. i believe it is fair to judge people based on their actions, including what they don't do or say, especially when it is a pattern.  indeed, i hope that people judge me based on my actions (rather than, say, a rumor or stereotype they have about me or a group i belong to). i hope that someone who looks over my public track record of behavior will form an accurate impression - if they decide they don't like me or don't share my values, the best i can hope for is that this decision is based on a real difference, not a misunderstanding.  so it matters a lot to me that my behavior is an accurate representation of my values.

so then why do i sometimes stay silent?  here are some of the reasons, with some examples here and there.

1. sometimes i am consumed by something else. like everyone, i have stuff going on in my life outside of twitter.  sometimes i don't make the effort to follow breaking news on academic twitter. (ok, real talk: this one is rare.  but i am really good at ignoring something when i intentionally decide to do so, so it's possible i decided to ignore a budding controversy, and missed when it turned into a fullblown shitshow. my friends can only be counted on to text me about it 82% of the time.)

2. sometimes i don't think the thing that happened is worth commenting on. for example, when chris chambers made a joke about a paper around halloween in 2019, it didn't strike me as something i needed to have a position on.  the paper had a title that seemed intended to provoke, and chris took the bait.  would i have tweeted what he tweeted?  no.  but did i see anything wrong with what he tweeted?  also no.  on a scale from 1 (i could imagine saying that thing myself) to 10 (i would cut all ties with this person for what they said, and lobby to remove them from any position of influence over others), i would call this a 2.  why not say so publicly?  because chris is high status in our community so doesn't need anyone to defend him (he also expressed remorse later).  no one benefits from me saying that i didn't think chris's tweet was problematic, and saying so could upset people who did find it problematic, which i didn't want to do, because maybe they're right!  i don't know, i wasn't the target of his tweet and it's likely that if i was, i would have seen it differently.

3. i think it's slightly problematic (e.g., a 3 or a 4 on the scale described above), and there is a highly visible campaign of opposition that expresses a position much more extreme than mine. in these situations, i often spend quite a while drafting and deleting drafts of tweets trying to express my position in a way that won't sound like i'm saying the behavior wasn't problematic at all, but doesn't make it easy for people to mistake my position for the more extreme and more popular position. so i usually end up saying nothing, because i don't trust my ability to walk this tightrope. also i often feel that many of the reactions to the initial event are at least as problematic as the initial event itself, so i feel like if i call out the initial event, i'd have to spend lots of time evaluating what else in the same discussion rises to the same level and ought to be called out.  that doesn't seem like a good use of my time, when none of the actions rise above a 3 or 4 on my subjective scale.  a recent example of this was daniel lakens's tweet playing off of an MLK quote, and some of the comments made in the discussions of that tweet.  another was ej's analogy to a father who finds out his family members are trump supporters, to describe his emotions when his friends wrote a paper he felt was misguided and didn't consult him. definitely not things i would have written and i cringed when i read them, but i don't find them as problematic as some people do.  on the other hand, i wasn't in the groups most likely to feel the impact of either of those missteps, so my personal reaction doesn't seem especially worth expressing.

4. sometimes the action is super problematic, but the person doing the action is someone i've already written off.  sometimes i have a personal history with them, other times it's obvious from their public behavior that interacting with them is basically masochism, so as a rule i don't engage with them.  in these cases, my decision not to call them out is selfish - i am protecting my own finely-tuned mental harmony by ignoring them.  if i felt i had to pay attention to them, i would probably just quit twitter instead.  i know some don't have the luxury to ignore them, and for that reason i do everything i can in my leadership roles to limit the opportunities given to demonstrably toxic people to have a platform/influence. (if this seems draconian, i'm talking about opportunities like colloquium or symposium speakers, service on committees, awards, etc. - i'm not trying to get those people fired, i'm trying to not give them extra opportunities to treat people like shit.) another added layer of complexity in these cases is that i think some of these people's problems likely rise to the level of serious mental health challenges.  of course this is a continuum and everyone deserves some level of mercy, so we each have to consider our own principles and conscience when deciding how much shunning is the right balance to strike.  i make my decisions on this privately, and i respect that others may draw the line in different places (e.g., people who have been close friends with the person, or who know more about their mental state, etc.).

5. sometimes i don't think the evidence is clear about what exactly happened.  in cases where the action that people are upset about is public, that's not an issue. but in other situations, things can get tricky.  we all different have priors about whom we are more likely to believe, different kinds of reports we are more likely to give weight to, different levels of confidence we need before publicly speaking out.  if you see me staying silent about an issue where the facts are in question, it's possible i have a different assessment of the facts, or a different certainty threshold for speaking out, than you. having a lot of followers comes with added responsibility to call out some kinds of behaviors, and it also comes with added responsibility to not fuck that up.  just because i don't say anything doesn't mean i don't believe the bad thing happened, but it might mean i'm not sure enough. this is not to say i never speak up when it requires trusting someone's word - i think my track record shows that i do. it's a case-by-case thing for me.

why can't i just say which of these reasons explains my silence in any given case?  in some cases (#1 and #4) i am unaware of or intentionally ignoring the issue or person.  this (sometimes deliberate and precious) state of ignorance makes it hard to explain my silence.  in other cases (#3 and #5, and sometimes #2), my position is more mixed or mild than others' and I very often respect people who have stronger positions.  in those situations, i don't think anyone needs to hear that my position is less clear-cut or less certain, and in fact i think it could do harm to say so.  

i suspect that in cases of #2 and #3, the people who are disappointed in my silence would continue to be disappointed if they knew my exact position on the issue (that is, i don't perceive the issue the way they would like me to).  i am sorry to be a disappointment, but also i accept that i am not who everyone i respect wants me to be.  in the other cases (#1, #4, and #5), i know that i am risking losing esteem in the eyes of people i respect when in fact my private belief is close to what they would hope from me, and i am sad about that.  i hope that all the times that i do state my positions publicly will be enough to outweigh the misperceptions that might stem from when i am silent for one of these reasons.  i hope that overall, my behavior makes it clear where i stand on many issues, such as sexual harassment, bullying, advisors abusing their power over graduate students, ECRs not getting credit for their work, and many more. 

ideally, i think we should judge each other based on our long-run track records of behavior, and show each other some grace when someone's voice is absent from a particular discussion.  if it becomes a pattern, or if any given instance is a dealbreaker for us, then i think it makes sense to update our perception of the person, but it won't always be the case that we can draw a clear conclusion from someone's silence in a given instance. indeed, i am sure the list above is incomplete, and people have many other reasons for not always expressing their views.  i will try to practice this myself - to be gracious and forgiving if people i hope will stand up for me or my students, colleagues, or groups i care about, are silent in any given instance.  and i will continue to strive to make my pattern of behavior a clear reflection of who i am and what is important to me.

 

cc-by alex holcombe