Sanctibullying

As I've mentioned before, I'm in favor of political correctness, at least of its overall influence on the culture. It's a good thing that it's no longer acceptable even for a tell-it-like-it-is conservative to ignore the shared humanity of blacks, gays, Jews, Latinos, etc., when speaking. PC is, in this context, a form of civility that makes it possible for everyone to join in on a conversation.

But the human urge to bully is strong. Where some opt for veiled racism, sexism, etc., others prefer to behave as PC police. This does not, as is commonly assumed, mean silencing those who hold unpopular/provocative right-wing ideas. The preferred targets are liberals, progressives, members of what is ostensibly their own side, because these are precisely the people in whom this kind of bullying will cause a sad. To use a contentious example loosely based on interactions I've had... if you tell someone who favors a Greater Israel and the expulsion of the Palestinians that their views are unfair to the Palestinians, he will answer, 'Fantastic!' But if you tell someone who acknowledges Palestinian nationhood, who favors a two-state solution and splitting Jerusalem, that he clearly hates brown people, well done! He might point out that Jewish Israelis themselves are plenty brown, that reasons X, Y, and Z show that he does in fact consider the plight of the Palestinians, but this will make it all the more enjoyable for the accuser to explain what a racist he is.

In the more refined corners of the Internet, populated by those with liberal-arts degrees under way or under their belts, the vast majority of bullying takes place in the name of a good cause. This is what "your privilege is showing" is about, but as I show with the I-P example, it can extend to virtually any issue.

It occurs to me that there is no term for this form of interaction. I'd heard of something called "concern trolling," but the definitions I found suggest that that's something else. The term I previously gave it, "scrappiness oneupmanship" (no hyphen, oops), doesn't work either, now that I think of it, because the bully rarely spells out his own place in the privilege hierarchy. It's merely implied, via his accusation, that he knows what whichever form of suffering is like, or that if he doesn't, he owns his privilege, just like he may own some properties in St. Tropez. So what do we call this? Sanctibullying?

If pressed on why he chooses to antagonize a fellow pro-tolerance sort, considering all the genuine racism, sexism, and homophobia, etc., that are out there, the sanctibully will explain that it's just that he thinks his interlocutor is someone who could plausibly be brought over to the side of Good. Someone who's already against homophobia is just a nudge away from not assuming in conversation that people come in only two genders. Someone already not for a Greater Israel may come around to seeing that the entire Zionist project was imperialism at its worst.

I find this implausible. For one thing, it's so obviously much more rewarding for the sanctibully to pick on someone who is not an unabashed bigot. But also, these discussions, whether in a dorm, at a party, or online, are not only, as Conor points out, by definition restricted to the privileged, but also not very action-focused. The point is rarely to actually help those lacking a particular form of privilege, typically to embarrass someone for having shown insensitivity towards members of a demographic unlikely to be present.

But who's going to argue against self-awareness? Don't we want rich people knowing that it's rude to assume everyone thinks a $100 dinner-for-two is cheap?

This brings us to another problem with sanctibullying: the fact that the bully is ostensibly trying to help some underdog or another, making it so that the bullied must, before standing up for himself, concede that the Palestinians are indeed suffering, or that gay white cisgender men do have it easier than lesbians of color, must apologize for every possible relevant form of privilege he personally has been accused of being insufficiently self-aware about. The bullied party has to give the bully the benefit of the doubt, to assume that the bully is acting out of good-will, and is simply so passionate in his defense of the downtrodden that he accidentally insulted someone who, after all, has it pretty good in life.

I think it's important to distinguish between sanctibullying and plain old left-wing consciousness-raising sanctimoniousness. The instance of the latter I think of most immediately comes from a poetry class I took as a teenager, in which I referred to the love object in this one girl's poem as "he." I did so, I have to say, because she was always going around all lovey-dovey with her boyfriend, and this being teenage poetry, I assumed her poem was straightforwardly autobiographical. I was, in my mind, picturing the dude. At which point another girl in the class corrected me - the love interest could be a he or a she. Point taken. No bullying. That was that.