Beware the Privilege of Demanding an Explanation
Photo by steffen Wienberg on Unsplash
Years ago, I was temping at a racial justice nonprofit. I was helping to staff their annual conference on the social determinants of health when a middle-aged white man darted straight towards our table, which was set up in a convention center of a trendy hotel chain. He swung his arms wildly from side to side as he walked up to us and immediately addressed the woman sitting next to me—a Black woman in her early thirties who was a full-time employee for the nonprofit.
“Excuse me, where is the lobbying meeting taking place for the pediatric conference,” he asked abruptly.
For context, that was not our conference, which he would have known if he had bothered to read the large sign draped from our table. The person he was addressing was one of the nonprofit's fellows. She was there to help oversee the speakers for the conference, and at that moment, was taking a short breather at my booth. She had no idea what was going on on the convention center floor because it wasn't her job.
“I am afraid I don’t know, sir,” she responded with all the politeness she could muster at that moment.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” he shot back cooly.
“Sorry, sir. I’m afraid you are at the wrong conference,” I interjected.
“Oh, forget it,” he said before storming off.
The fellow then turned to me, a white person in my young twenties, and said: “Be sure to never be like that.” And I nodded, not knowing what else to say.
I see many privileged people, particularly privileged white people, act like that older man a lot. They demand that people tell them the information they want when they want it, regardless of whether it's convenient for the person they are asking. It’s an expectation so ingrained in them that they don’t even realize that demanding an explanation is not something they are entitled to.
If you are like many people, your first response to this article (maybe even your first response to the title) will be to question the premise. “Isn’t learning a good thing?” you might ask. “Shouldn’t I educate myself about things I do not understand?” And, of course, the answer to all of these questions is yes; you should continue to learn about subjects you do not understand, especially uncomfortable topics such as racism, sexism, and other aspects of bigotry.
The problem is that a large subset of people will assume that because you have a position they do not understand or agree with, you must be willing to explain it to them, usually right there and then. This request is at the center of the online “debate me” culture. It’s common to see men such as Dave Ruben demand that people they disagree with come onto their platform to discuss their objections. If the person refuses, these pundits will label that person a coward. For example, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy implied that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a frightened child because she refused to debate him.
There are countless reasons, though, why someone might not engage with a person in a debate. These causes range from the personal to the political. Maybe they don’t have the time or energy to engage with you at that moment. Maybe they are dealing with an unrelated personal crisis. Maybe they just don’t feel like it. Even if you have the perfect counter to their argument, it’s unreasonable to assume that you are entitled to that person’s time. Dialogue is supposed to be a two-way street. If someone doesn’t want to talk to you, they do not have to, and vice versa.
This issue of “debate me” culture is further complicated because when someone points out behavior that hurts them, the accused tends to get defensive. People sometimes conflate their feelings of guilt and shame over being called out with their feelings of being hurt. They will demand that their victims explain themselves for this imaginary injustice, which leads to a situation where victims have to rationalize their pain to those who have harmed them. As an antiracist educator, Nora Samaran wrote in her fantastic essay about how privileged white people sometimes react negatively when learning about the hard truths of racism and colonialism:
“…we expect that it is somehow normal that we can go on the attack, and expect the people experiencing harm to coddle and apologize to us, rather than being responsible for our own feelings and making ourselves accessible and available to finally come to hear and see things that are happening every day to human beings all around us that our privilege lets us ignore.”
Unsurprisingly, people who hold a marginalized identity stumble into this problem a lot. The mere articulation of their boundaries, and in some cases their very identities, triggers defensiveness. There are countless stories of people telling someone more privileged than them about their reality, only for that story to lead to hostility from the listener. It’s not uncommon for a simple conversation about a trans person’s pronouns to devolve into a “debate” over whether their identity is even valid, or for a Black person’s description of racism they have personally experienced to be used to depict them as difficult, unreasonable, or even racist.
This brittleness translates into marginalized groups often having to do a lot of emotional management. Many marginalized people end up suppressing their own feelings to assuage the egos of “debaters” who cannot recognize the harm they inflict upon others. Many debaters think they are operating in good faith, but really they are dumping their unprocessed feelings about a subject onto a person under the guise of a discussion. A description of a person’s own identity becomes interpreted as a “why won’t you debate me” or “explain this to me,” which depending on the subject matter being discussed, can be exhausting to explain or even downright offensive. In the words of Parker Marie Molloy for Slate about asking questions of trans people:
“While these issues may be very new and interesting to you, the process of explaining them may be exhausting to the trans person you’re asking if they’ve been asked to, in effect, explain themselves 100 times before.”
This reality is why the phrase “Google It” has emerged in activist circles. It’s not because people don’t want you to learn about these issues, but because many are tired of being expected to explain things to someone merely because their opinions or existence makes that person uncomfortable. It’s work many marginalized people are expected to do by default, regardless of their circumstances, and it’s not something a lot of them want to do anymore (and truthfully, never really wanted to do in the first place). However, many privileged people are so used to taking advantage of that forced hospitality that they don’t realize how intrusive their calls for an explanation can be.
Some people have expressly signed up to do that labor — i.e., activists, therapists, educators, etc. — but these people usually are getting paid for their work or willingly donating their time to do it. Just as you wouldn’t go up to a scientist and demand that they explain quantum mechanics to you because you find the subject matter confusing, it’s not fair to demand that a transgender person explain their identity simply because you don’t understand how pronouns work. There is a time and a place for everything, and asking a stranger to justify their existence is not it. Seek out the people who want to do that work, preferably the ones who are getting paid for it.
Sadly, even here, it's not so simple. This situation is further compounded by the fact that not every person who asks for this information is doing so in good faith. Some people have weaponized their privilege to railroad conversations and sabotage movements.
Most people who demand an explanation are not doing so maliciously. This obliviousness doesn’t mean the harm they cause is nonexistent, but it’s generally not intentional. The debate rages on whether that even matters. However, we will sidestep that conversation, for now, to talk about how there is an entire subset of people who do mean to inflict harm. That’s what a “troll” is — someone who purposefully tries to upset people on the Internet — and not all of them are overtly offensive.
Some trolls will use the pretext of wanting to learn more as a way to attack others. For example, the tactic of “sealioning” (a word based on a Wondermark comic) is when a commentator pretends to engage in “good faith” questioning, only to wear their interlocutor down with inane or offensive questions. As Amy Johnson wrote in Harmful Speech Online: “Sealioning is an intentional, combative performance of cluelessness. Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning — often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points — with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate.”
Imagine a six-year-old asking the question “why” over and over again to annoy you, but instead, they are a 34-year old man questioning the validity of your pain. The point isn’t to be informed, but rather to steal away your attention — to make you feel tired and to question your sanity.
Sometimes these trolls can seem sincere in their line of questioning too. There is an entire subset of people called “concern trolls” who pretend to care about a user’s point only to undermine that position secretly. The textbook example of this was in 2006 when a staffer for Republican Charlie Bass created a sock puppet (i.e., a fake account) on a progressive-leaning site to foster distrust in his opponent Democrat Paul Hodes. Blogger Laura Clawson, who co-ran the blog the aid concern trolled on, ultimately deciphered the ruse, leading to the staffer’s resignation. She commented to the press, saying:
“You see this all the time on political blogs, some elaborate act where someone says, ‘Now, I hate to say something against a Democrat, but.’So you develop an eye for it. And this poster definitely tripped all the wires.”
These interactions occurred online, but it’s possible to sealion and concern troll people in real life. For example, Markos Moulitsas wrote in The Hill in 2008 about how then-House Minority Leader John Boehner concern trolled when he claimed that Democrats “miscalculated” over their support of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Amanda Marcotte likewise cautioned Democrats in 2018 not to listen to “concern trolls,” belittling their concerns about Donald Trump’s presidency. Although these tactics are not as easy to use in real life as on a keyboard, it’s definitely possible to lie and manipulate others under the pretext of concern and education.
Now, as a reasonable person, you might not use either of these tactics intentionally. Still, there’s no real accurate way for your interlocutor to know that, especially online, where anonymity eats away at the presentation of good faith. As the YouTuber, Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints fame remarked in her video Canceling about commentators harassing her due to her perceived support of adult film actor and alleged enbyphobe Buck Angel: “How can you tell the difference between a trans-anarcho-socialist with an anime avatar and a nazi pretending to be a trans-anarcho-socialist with an anime avatar? Well, you can’t. Anonymous is anonymous is anonymous. ”
Modern discourse has become so toxic that it’s difficult to tell the difference between an earnest question and an abusive one. There are plenty of commentators who receive so much negative attention that it has closed them off from even the vaguest hint of distrust. That context exists in the background of every conversation, both online and off, especially for marginalized people, and it's one you should be cognizant of before asking a question that might be easily Googleable.
Furthermore, even if a person's questions are in good faith, that doesn’t make their line of questioning any less offensive. As any marginalized person who has had to deal with invasive questioning about their identity can attest to, someone can be genuinely offensive. You can ask and say hurtful things without trying to engage in a duplicitous, bad faith campaign. You can even engage in techniques such as concern trolling or sealioning without being directly conscious of them. A lot of people unload their baggage onto others because they can.
For your conversation to not be viewed as exploitative, it's not enough for you to want to come in good faith. Your questions need to be grounded in consent and mutual respect, or your partner will not believe you.
Those many years ago, the older man who came up to my coworker was most likely not trying to ruin her day. He probably didn’t care about her either way. He had a question he wanted to know the answer to and used her to get that information — used being the operative word. He didn’t treat her with the respect that a person deserves. He saw her as a receptacle of information that he felt entitled to, and that’s not how any conversation should work.
It may sound obvious to some, but it sadly bears repeating: a good conversation must be grounded in consent. Your partner must want to talk to you.
Do you ask the people in your life if it's okay to proceed with a type of questioning or conversation before talking about it?
Have you presented yourself as someone open to criticism?
Are your conversations a give-and-take where you listen to your partner's concerns as well?
You’ll know by the silences in your life if the answer to the above questions is no. Far too many people do none of these things. They spew all of their unprocessed anxiety and rage upon their partners in a seemingly unending, one-sided monologue. They treat their interlocutors as empty vessels, worthy of neither humanity nor respect, and give them nothing in return.
There is a privilege in demanding an explanation. It is a selfish state of affairs built on silence, and many of us need to stop and listen to the quiet trauma we have caused, seething at a whisper.