“With a few very specific exceptions (accents, certain disabilities, ), interpretive labor flows up the gradient of status or privilege”
I think things are much more complicated in today’s society, at least in Western countries. There has been a strong push back against this, which has broadened people’s understandings of certain aspect of underprivileged groups (still undoubtedly quite limited). On the other hand, this has reduced many people’s empathy for groups that are considered privileged.
As an example, when the government sold a private street to someone who wanted to try to extract money from the people who lived there, because they were like $300 behind on tax and they weren’t properly notified, I saw so many people who were happy to see these people getting screwed over because they tended to be rich. Moving into more social justice territory, you get expressions like, “male tears” or claims that something is a “privileged” concern, which can be considered a form of negative interpretative labour; that is a refusal to interpret even straightforward claims about those who are considered “privileged”.
“Speaking without thinking is much easier. Like, stupidly easy”—As Scott Alexander said, Beware Trivial Inconveniences. The inevitable effect is that less things will be said, especially when these inconveniences stack. And having to keep these concerns in mind, reduces the amount of working memory available for other tasks. Further, there’s a cognitive bias here as you see the person standing in front of you who is hurt, but not the person who didn’t say something because it was too much effort. I’m not necessarily taking a position on trigger warnings, just pointing out that it isn’t just about people being lazy.
My understanding is that the “male tears” thing originated as a response to a perceived case of a demand for the kind of asymmetric sympathy many of the examples in the post are about, for instance:
Girls are told “snapping your bra means he likes you” and then expected to no longer be mad about it.
Bullied kids are told to forgive and forget because their bully “is trying to say they’re sorry”, even after repeated cycles of faux-apologies and bullying.
Fundamentalist husband expects his wife to know his emotions and correct for them while he actively hides the emotion from himself.
A paraphrased quote from Mothers of Invention: A woman’s house slave has run away, greatly increasing the amount of work she has to do herself. She writes in her diary “Oh, if only she could think of things from my point of view, she never would let me suffer so.”
Poor people are more empathetic than rich people.
I think it’s important to distinguish asymmetric demands for interpretive labor, from complaints about such demands (although it’s not always clear what’s going on without a lot of context, and sometimes the latter transforms into the former in a game of telephone).
How this phrase originated is much less important than how it often functions in effect which is: “I have no duty to make any effort to understand you, in fact, I’m allowed to intentionally or recklessly misinterpret what you say”. I guess the point is that circumventing this requires extra labour, ie. “I’m not saying men have it worse, but..”
I think overtly politicized contexts in which people are responding to a long history of asymmetric demands for interpretive labor are not the right place to start. We’d be better off focusing on mundane examples where people spend most of their time, like school or work or talking with their friends.
While the house example does describe something that works against rather than for the (legibly) privileged, I don’t see how it’s specifically about interpretive labor—can you explain more?
Well, when those people tried to voice their complaints they were dismissed by many commentators. So it’s an example of people being unwilling to expend perform interpretive labour to emphasise with them.
“With a few very specific exceptions (accents, certain disabilities, ), interpretive labor flows up the gradient of status or privilege”
I think things are much more complicated in today’s society, at least in Western countries. There has been a strong push back against this, which has broadened people’s understandings of certain aspect of underprivileged groups (still undoubtedly quite limited). On the other hand, this has reduced many people’s empathy for groups that are considered privileged.
As an example, when the government sold a private street to someone who wanted to try to extract money from the people who lived there, because they were like $300 behind on tax and they weren’t properly notified, I saw so many people who were happy to see these people getting screwed over because they tended to be rich. Moving into more social justice territory, you get expressions like, “male tears” or claims that something is a “privileged” concern, which can be considered a form of negative interpretative labour; that is a refusal to interpret even straightforward claims about those who are considered “privileged”.
“Speaking without thinking is much easier. Like, stupidly easy”—As Scott Alexander said, Beware Trivial Inconveniences. The inevitable effect is that less things will be said, especially when these inconveniences stack. And having to keep these concerns in mind, reduces the amount of working memory available for other tasks. Further, there’s a cognitive bias here as you see the person standing in front of you who is hurt, but not the person who didn’t say something because it was too much effort. I’m not necessarily taking a position on trigger warnings, just pointing out that it isn’t just about people being lazy.
My understanding is that the “male tears” thing originated as a response to a perceived case of a demand for the kind of asymmetric sympathy many of the examples in the post are about, for instance:
I think it’s important to distinguish asymmetric demands for interpretive labor, from complaints about such demands (although it’s not always clear what’s going on without a lot of context, and sometimes the latter transforms into the former in a game of telephone).
How this phrase originated is much less important than how it often functions in effect which is: “I have no duty to make any effort to understand you, in fact, I’m allowed to intentionally or recklessly misinterpret what you say”. I guess the point is that circumventing this requires extra labour, ie. “I’m not saying men have it worse, but..”
I think overtly politicized contexts in which people are responding to a long history of asymmetric demands for interpretive labor are not the right place to start. We’d be better off focusing on mundane examples where people spend most of their time, like school or work or talking with their friends.
While the house example does describe something that works against rather than for the (legibly) privileged, I don’t see how it’s specifically about interpretive labor—can you explain more?
Well, when those people tried to voice their complaints they were dismissed by many commentators. So it’s an example of people being unwilling to expend perform interpretive labour to emphasise with them.
There’s no evidence that the house owners instead empathized with the many commentators, nor would doing so have particularly helped them.