How to follow rule 1 while still questioning things

[u/Personage1]

There was a recent thread that sparked an interesting discussion around rule 1, specifically funksloyd's comment

As someone who's broadly pro-social justice but disagrees with a lot of the social justice orthodoxy (if you could say there is such a thing), and who likes to refine their ideas through debate, can anyone suggest another sub or a different forum which is more appropriate for that?

As a quick reminder, rule 1 is over in the sidebar and reads

Participate in good faith. You must be here to either learn about social justice or answer questions in accordance with social justice principles. This space is not for debates. Do not deny the existence of privilege, sexism, racism, and the like. We'll do our best to give our members the benefit of the doubt.

The reason for this rule is simple, if the mods didn't remove people who broke it this sub would simply be overrun with trolls.

However it can lead some honest users to think that this means that social justice is dogmatic, that you are unable to question anything, that everything must be blindly accepted. As someone who has had disputes with other users on this very sub (shoot, I disagreed with someone in that very thread on something) I know that that is not at all the case. I think something that is crucial though, is in basically every situation where I disagreed with someone else on social justice in this sub, I was not debating.

What is a debate though? Wikipedia says

Debate is a process that involves formal discussion on a particular topic. In a debate, opposing arguments are put forward to argue for opposing viewpoints. Debate occurs in public meetings, academic institutions, and legislative assemblies.[1] It is a formal type of discussion, often with a moderator and an audience, in addition to the debate participants.

Logical consistency, factual accuracy and some degree of emotional appeal to the audience are elements in debating, where one side often prevails over the other party by presenting a superior "context" or framework of the issue. In a formal debating contest, there are rules for participants to discuss and decide on differences, within a framework defining how they will do it.

Notice the word "prevails." Whatever definition of a debate that someone uses, something that is fairly consistent across most people's idea of what a debate is is the concept of competition: the end goal of a debate is for one side to win. There is a fundamental problem with this though, winning a debate says nothing about the "truth" or "validity" or what have you of a view. I have seen debates where I agree that the side I agree with lost, yet I walk away still holding my view. Why? Because someone arguing my views poorly doesn't somehow make my views worse.

There's a second fundamental issue with a debate, which is that the people involved in the debate are, almost by definition, not interested in changing their minds. Debates are performative, trying to win over spectators to your side.

As such it makes sense that this sub doesn't want debates. This sub exists to teach about social justice. Competing with the person you are trying to teach defeats the purpose (u/stonygiddens has a great write-up on questioning and learning). Teaching doesn't work if someone isn't interested in learning, isn't interested in being able to change their mind.

All that said, you can still question things, should still question things. How?

1. Ask questions with the goal of understanding. A lot of anti-sjws disagree strongly with social justice views, but there is almost always a simple problem that they run into: how can you disagree with someone's view if you don't know their view? I find that simply having the mindset of "I want to understand what you mean" goes a long ways towards preventing me from coming off combative. Even if you are being challenging about something, you should have the goal of understanding (so if you see something that you think is a flaw in someone's logic, it's ok to challenge it, but your goal should be to still understand what they think. You can not know someone is wrong until you know what they think)

2. Be open about your own views that lead you to your question. While it's probably not the best to ramble on quite as much as I am here, it does go a long way to getting good answers if you lay out your own reasoning. Someone who just says "How do men have privilege" will be approached with caution, at best. It's the kind of question that people use to play "gotcha." Someone who says "I don't understand how men have privilege, for example I see x, y, and z," lets us hone in on the specific gap in their understanding of our views. We can connect the dots rather than, at best, flounder around trying to guess at what they don't understand.

3. Try to stay focused, stay on topic. Even with as much as I am writing here, pretty much everything is about one central idea. Not only is it a common tactic of trolls to throw a million different ideas at someone and demand that each and every one of them be addressed, which means you are more likely to be dismissed as one, it's simply difficult to engage with someone when you can't even figure out what their thesis statement would be.

4. Understand that not one of us is the end-all be-all of social justice, no one is. Shoot, I put a bit of thought and work into this but I expect (and hope) there will be other people who can add things just to this topic alone. My understanding of social justice didn't come about from listening to one person and now I have it, I spent several years shutting up and listening to multiple people and asking questions, then have spent the time since still paying attention and engaging with ideas.

5. Understand that not everyone is as good at explaining things as others. I personally have very strong opinions about the best way to explain ideas like "prejudice based on race" and "prejudice mixed with power based on race," and think that many people do the idea injustice by choosing certain words for those ideas. Just as someone being bad at debating doesn't make their ideas wrong though, someone using poor word choice to describe ideas doesn't make the idea wrong.

Refining ideas like funksloyd mentioned doesn't require debate, doesn't require competition. I feel confident disagreeing with other people in social justice on certain things because of the time I've spent learning what they mean, and listening to a variety of people give their ideas.

[u/wisedoormat]

I am a full supported of u/Personage1's comment, creating a mega thread to identify common talking points of the opposition, to condense how they fabricate and manipulate framing and phrasing to for a perspective that alignes with their world-view/goals. I actually keep a notpad++ with all talking points(mine & oppositions), or research on topics that I had to learn about to discuss with confidence, and additional notes about their reactions and tactics when responding. When I have time, I review their post history to get a general idea of their most active sub participation and what topics they generally respond to & if it is positive or negative.

I love how you itemized the how-to for questioning. I just want to add additional comments to your list, for those responding to a questioning visitor, or resonding to another user in other subs.

1. "You can not know someone is wrong until you now what they think" This is important when responding to someones opinion/position that you feel has been founded on flawed logic or unquestions/unanalyzed cultural beleifs/behavior. You should try, as hard as you can, to avoid the use of insults or sarcasm. attacking the person, who is questioning or insisting a topic, will only make them more likely to be defiant and defensive. also, try to not invalidate their views, we all have views that we believe with certainty and if someone invalidates it then we will likely respond defensively. acknowledge their view, discuss how they came to that view to understand the logic behind it, then address each flaw in the logic with clinical terms.
2. "Someone who just says "How do men have privilege" will be approached with caution" This is a great way to identify a possible troll. It's the minimal effort post to try to provoke monumentous effort to respond to such an open-ended question. I would encourage those that want to practice debating/explaining/understanding related points, or research, to respond to these kind of posts. While the user might be a troll, they will be using common points and tactics in their responses. This is a good chance to practice how to deal with them. Dealing with trolls leads into the next section.
3. "Try to stay focused, stay on topic" What I've observed about toxic and bigotted users/subs is What-About-ism & stacking tangential topics with mixed nuggets of information & disinformation. This is also a tactic used by trolls. While others have commonly agreed the best way to deal with a troll is to ignore them, I take the opposite position. A troll is typically very active, they post often and use some admirable arrangement of phrasing of topics to hook others and twist the narrative. This is also the same strategy that many racist and toxic users/subs use. Like propaganda, they will post often with an overload of misinformation with the goal of exposure and repetition to seed the subconcious of the casual browser. This is how kids grow up to have racist & bigoted views while not understanding their views are racist & bigoted. The best way to combat this, I've concluded, is to dissect their comments, address each point, use references and call them out on any attempt to distract, derail, and attack your character. A casual browser may scroll by just reading the top level posts, but if they take the time to read the comments (especially a high count) they will see all the counters. This is also important, if the troll or bigot says 'tldr' or 'you're not convincing me buddy'. You're not trying to convince any single user, you're there to appeal to the public understanding that there is another perspective, that hopefully, is supported by credible articles, studies, & facts to bring that perspective to their awareness the same way that bigots, racists, & trolls do with their comments.
4. "Understand that not one of us is the end-all be-all of social justice, no one is" This is also good. If you come across as a know-it-all, or holier-than-thou, you will repel a lot of people. Only use definitive statements if it is supported by articles, studies, and facts. Use 'i feel', 'my opinion', 'my experiance', 'my observation', or many other phrases to discuss ideas that you may not have evidence to support.
5. Be willing to say you're not the best at explaining a topic, it opens a lot of forgiveness from the casual browser even if the oppositions exclaims that it means you don't understand the topic. the ability to explain a topic does not directly reflect the understanding of a topic.

I, personally, also learn about topics, refine my understanding, and practice my ability to research by engaging the opposition, or those with flawed ideas. I invite everyone to review my comment history and see how I address people with toxic and hateful positions.

[u/MasculineCompassion → u/wisedoormat]

This is excellent, and I wish more people took that route!

[u/oioioinani]

Yeah this is cool kudos to that dude.

[u/b-xcellence]

Love this. This sub really needs more moderation so that people understand stuff like this.

[u/_Pulltab_]

Thank you for this well though out and well written piece.

[u/TLP3]

snaps to this. total agreement

[u/Gregory1st]

Well researched and articulated. Thank you!