The Rules of Dis-Engagement (on Social Media)

Social media platforms, like nothing before them, expand our networks to include people who, without them, might have remained forgotten remnants from our past.  That girl who peed her pants in grade 2? Found her on Facebook.  That guy who broke your heart when you were 13? He tweets regularly now about his vegan diet.  That person who shared a room with you at the YMCA when you were travelling through Europe? Her drawings are on Tumblr. That cousin you hardly ever see anymore? You can see pictures of his kids on Instagram. Once the initial glow of reconnecting passes, you have to come to terms with the fact that their ‘stuff’ shows up in your newsfeed. And you soon realize that shared childhoods and shared dormitory rooms do not equal shared political views.  In fact, you may be subjected to disturbingly offensive opinions, and find yourself dismayed as you try to reconcile your happy memories of him/her with the person who now seems to be a total red-necked blockhead.  For too long now, I have been a deer in the headlights when it comes to these sorts of situations.  I have felt blindsided by stinging comments from old ‘friends’ when I posted about sponsoring Syrian refugees.  I have felt sucker punched when people I went to high school with (35 years ago) tell me that “#AllLivesMatter”, or that girls who don’t want to be raped should dress modestly.

But I’ve hit a wall.  It is time to cut some people loose.  I am beginning to understand that I have a sphere of influence and that I am obligated – as an awake white woman with privilege- to use it in order to engage on issues of social justice… but I AM allowed to give up on people.  Or as a wise woman once said “Sometimes you just have to vomit and walk away”.  I do not HAVE to educate the uneducable. I AM permitted to shake the dust off my feet: un-friend, un-follow and disengage.  A number of painful interactions on social media in recent months have pushed me to the breaking point and thus I choose to no longer engage with difficult people.

A case in point:  a while back I noticed in my Facebook newsfeed that a guy I went to grade school with had posted a link to a video showing a nanny slapping and punching a toddler.  The story had gone viral and consisted of a woman (captured via the family’s ‘nanny-cam’) beating a child in her care.  The child’s parents had evidently suspected something was not right, and had installed a hidden camera to confirm their suspicions.  The video was difficult to watch and arguably no one could view it without thinking of painful ways to impose justice on that horrible woman.  But here’s the thing….just as I was considering whether or not to comment on the nanny’s evil act, I noticed that the man who’d posted it – my childhood friend- had posted the video with the following introductory remarks:  “Stupid slut! Hope the cow is in jail now!” I was gutted!  Now I was dealing with the double assault on my senses: a child being beaten and a misogynist attacking my gender.  David (I’ll call him that, because that’s his name) was not on the side of the injured child.  He was on the side of women-haters collecting evidence that women are vile and must be kept in check. He would later show himself to be a card-carrying member of that club.

Another time, I posted a link to the Oscar Pistorius trial verdict in which the athlete was given a ridiculously mild sentence for killing his girlfriend.  The eyes of the world had been on the trial in South Africa where the judge was weighing the validity of Pistorius’ claim that he’d thought it was an intruder hiding in his bathroom when he shot multiple times through the locked door.   I provided the link to the story and commented that the verdict was an injustice.  Another childhood friend (also male) responded to my post with a comment that people had the right to own weapons and protect themselves in their own houses.  Huh?!  How could he have distilled that as the central point of the story? I was gobsmacked and could only reply “Seriously? That’s the message you got out of this tragedy?”

Then there is the time, I posted a meme that listed the rules with which female elementary school teachers in Canada were forced to comply 100 years ago.  I can’t remember the exact details, but the list of rules included absurdities such as: “You may not dress in bright colours.” The rules were so absurd that it never occurred to me that anyone would do anything other than laugh or shake their heads when they read them.  I was so wrong.  A member of my own family (yes… a male, can you spot the pattern?) commented that he saw nothing wrong with the list and that society would do well to bring back those kinds of restrictions.  Remember the club I referred to earlier…. the “women-haters collecting evidence that women are vile and must be kept in check” club?  I think he was president.

Lest I be accused of unfairly picking on men, I want to include a few troubling examples that involve social media posts by women.  One involves a twitter post re-tweeted by a woman I follow.  It included a link to an amateur-ish ‘comedy’ video in which South Asian women were portrayed as demeaning stereotypes: gold-diggers, blabber-mouths, nosey-parkers.  The actors were South Asian and the video was clearly intended to resonate with South Asian audiences (read: men).  Never mind that the women in the video were complicit in propagating these stereotypes, I couldn’t believe that the woman who re-tweeted the link (a former neighbor and South Asian herself) had done so with such a glaring lack of critical capacity.  Indeed her 140 characters were consumed by words like “hilarious” and “SO TRUE!”   The video wasn’t even clever or edgy in the style of the “Sh*t Black/White/Asian/Arab/Gay People Say” videos that were so popular a while back on You Tube.

A similar thing happened when a woman I went to high school with (but barely knew… so why did I accept her friend-request?) posted a meme in which a gold-digging woman gets her comeuppance. In the meme, a woman rejects the proposal of a man who tells her that he has no house and no car.  After she snubs him, he explains that he doesn’t have a house and a car but rather, he has a villa and a Ferrari.  The dialogue smacked of Google Translate; the drawings were bad; the meme was just pathetically lame. I mean it was not even remotely share-worthy (unless you belong to the aforementioned ‘club’). It wasn’t insightful.  It wasn’t even a tiny bit funny, and it certainly added nothing – NOTHING – to the discourse on sexual politics.  I re-posted the meme with a derisive comment about people who share such anemic and insidious crap, and gave a rallying call to my Facebook Friends to think about what message they are implicitly agreeing with every time they click on the word “Share”.   Little did I know what a sh*tstorm I was about to unleash.  One male family member jumped all over me…saying that women were hardwired to find a rich man to take care of them.  I hit back, and when my female FB friends backed me up, another male family member entered the foray and wrote that one of my friends was at risk of being called the “C” word!  Yup folks, there it is…my own family.  Public humiliation.  I am a professor.  I have former students, graduate supervisees, and colleagues as FB friends.  Nothing like a public dressing down by one’s Neanderthal cousins to show the world that your family tree was not exactly planted in the most erudite soil.

Another female Facebook friend, who seriously ought to have known better, re-posted a “hilarious” prank video in which a man dressed in stereotypical Arab garb abandons a gym bag near a park bench and calls out “BOOM” to the horror of the passersby.   Sorry…what is the joke exactly?  Pretend Muslims pranking people with pretend bombs!  The woman who posted it is an activist, a woman of faith, a mother, and a victim of stereotyping herself.  How could she not see how damaging that video was? Why would ANY one think that was worth sharing?

I follow an Indigenous woman on Twitter.  She follows me back.  She’s an Indigenous Language activist. I’m an ally. She lives in the U.S. and routinely responds to my #BlackLivesMatter tweets with comments about African Americans being the cause of their own problems with law enforcement.  She is right-wing, anti-Obama and pro-guns. And I don’t know what to do about her.  We are on the same side on Indigenous rights…but on opposite sides in just about every other battle.  Can you fight alongside someone in one battle, and against them in another?  What is my take-away from this?  That women – yes even women who are especially disenfranchised- are capable of critical lapses (at best) and racism (at worst)?

Now back to offenders of the male sort.  I’ve run into them over #BlackLivesMatter (taking issue with my comments about the way African Americans are treated by police in the U.S.), over Syrian refugees (“charity begins at home”) and over feminist objectives (“women can’t ask for special treatment if they’re going to play in the big leagues”).  Take the Republican leadership race. I confess to being utterly baffled how anyone could not see what a loose cannon – and how completely unqualified- Donald Trump is.  I have posted links on social media to stories that underscore his lies, his hubris, his racism and his sexism, naively assuming that anyone who has been in a coma for several months would be grateful for this public service when they awaken.  Am I glutton for punishment?  Once again, I’ve had friends and family members respond by commending Trump for his straight talk and strong leadership.  What do I do with that?

Here is what I have to come to terms with:

• ·         Just because I had a lot of fun playing tetherball at recess with someone when I was seven, does not mean we will have similar political views and certainly doesn’t mean I am obligated to educate him when he behaves like a troll on social media.
• ·         Just because someone shares a common progenitor with me, doesn’t mean I have to tolerate his hateful comments or posts.  Nor does it mean, that I have to explain myself, engage with him, attempt to enlighten him, or treat him any differently than I would any other objectionable person.  A shared bloodline does not make us compatriots.  
• ·         Just because someone shares a passion for the same social justice cause as I do,  doesn’t mean that he or she sees inequities in all the same places that I do.
• ·         Just because someone is a victim of sexism, racism or any other sort of oppression doesn’t mean she is prepared to fight other people’s battles, or even her own.

These are hard lessons to learn and I would not have been forced to learn them if not for social media.  Those difficult cousins? We’d not likely have discussed controversial topics at the three-funerals-per-decade encounters we’d have had otherwise.  Those red-necked childhood and high school friends would have benignly shown me cell phone pics of their kids at occasional school reunions over the years.   We’d have embraced, posed for group photos and returned to our separate lives without ever knowing how disparate our positions on important topics were. 

It’s a tricky thing, and I have been tempted to retreat from social media, deactivate my accounts and surround myself only with like-minded people.  But surely that’s not the answer. I know that I have been nudged, stretched and challenged by the people I engage with social media, and I’d like to think that I’ve had that effect on others as well. But for my own sanity, I’m am going to have to learn the rules of dis-engagement.  My time is a non-renewable resource.