Tag Archives: tolerance

The myth of live and let live

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We’ve all heard it before when certain topics come up:

“I don’t see color. I see people.”

“I don’t care how you pray. All religions lead to god.”

“I don’t like labels like ‘gay’ or ‘straight.’ We’re all human.”

“When I look at you I don’t see a man or a woman. I see a friend.”

“It doesn’t matter who you vote for. The important thing is to participate.”

They are usually intended as a statement of support for marginalized people. It’s a way to say, “I’m not intolerant!” It sounds so warm, fuzzy, and affirming, right? Obviously if we don’t perceive a person as different, we must perceive them as equal? Right?

Well, not really. I suspect that most everyone reading this felt at least a little bit uncomfortable reading one of those statements. Or at the very least wanted to quibble with one. Which one rubs you the wrong way and why it does will be different from person to person, but the truth is that each of the statements is just as problematic. Even the ones you agree with.

First, let’s talk about labels. The person who ordered blood tests and prescribed medicine for me when I was sick is a doctor. The person who gives me assignments at work is my boss. The man I stood beside and said “I do” about when the officiant asked is my husband. The woman who gave birth to me is my mom. The man who adopted and raised my mother and her sister was my grandpa. We don’t have trouble with labels 99% of the time. Labels are how we communicate and make sense of just about everything in the world.

We only notice labels when those labels are perceived to promote or impede an agenda that we have a vested interest in. We only want to ignore labels when acknowledging them makes us uncomfortable. If, for instance, we benefit from a particular societal preference, acknowledging that difference implies that maybe our success isn’t solely due to our individual merits.

Ignoring labels is an act of denial or dismissal. Race, gender, religion, socio-economic status, sexual orientation are essential ingredients in our identity, whether we acknowledge it or not. Because we are confronted with and shaped by societal expectations from the day we are born. Just look at how outraged a lot of people got a few years ago when one couple tried to raise their baby genderless and refused to tell strangers the child’s sex. Or the many, many studies that have shown are very differently people interact with a baby depending on what gender they’ve been told the child is.

“To overcome racism, one must first take race into account.”
—Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun

The truth is that society discriminates against people based on race, gender, sexual identity, socio-economic status, religion, and many other factors that the people who are most likely to claim they don’t care about labels would agree shouldn’t make one unequal in the eyes of the law. We can’t make society more equitable if we don’t acknowledge both the inequalities and the things which trigger the unequal treatment.

So trying to ignore these labels—specifically either saying or implying that ignoring them is a better idea than using them—is a way to try to silence members of marginalized groups. It’s telling them that their lived experience of being discriminated against is less important than your comfort. And quite often it is often a way to say that you’re perfectly okay with the inequality as long as it doesn’t affect you.

Second, claiming that you don’t care. The more often someone repeats a statement that they don’t care about something, the harder it is to believe them. If they really didn’t care, they wouldn’t say anything. This has been demonstrated most clearly recently by people who get defensive about video games, claiming that the games aren’t sexist; besides, if you don’t like them, don’t play them. Then the same people threw a hissy fit and called for boycotts when someone cast four women to play the leads in the new Ghostbusters movie. If sexism and representation didn’t matter to them, they wouldn’t have gotten upset.

Now, I’ve had people claim that the only reason they say anything is because we keep talking about it (whichever category it is). This has happened to me personally most often in relationship to sexual orientation. The cliché that I have heard millions of time is, “why do you have to keep shoving your sexually in my face?” Most ironically it came from the co-worker who had plastered an entire wall of his office with pictures of himself, his wife, and their five children—and he was objecting to a single picture of my late first husband (in an ugly Christmas sweater, no less) that I had discretely tucked in a frame on my desk where most of the time no one but me could see it.

Humans are social animals. We often are defined by our relationships to other people. People mention spouses, children, parents, friends, niece and nephews, and so forth all the time, without thinking about it. Studies have shown that if people we work with are reluctant to share these sorts of real life details, that they are perceived as stand-offish and not team players. It affects the likelihood that they will get raises, get promotions, and even the likelihood that they will be the person chosen to be let go if there are layoffs. So queer people are caught in no-win situation. If they are honest and open about who they are, they get accused of shoving their sexuality on people. If they evade the topics, they’re not team players.

If labels really don’t matter, then you shouldn’t mind hearing about them.

Third, claiming that you don’t want to take sides, you just want to live and let live. Why does this have to be a conflict, you may ask? Or “being intolerant of bigotry isn’t very tolerant,” you may say. This is a false equivalency. It is logically identical to saying that the person who reports a theft to the authorities is making a victim of the thief.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
—Bishop Desmond Tutu

When inequalities exist, live and let live just perpetuates injustice. You aren’t being tolerant or neutral or impartial, you are actively supporting the side of the bigot. You are aiding in the oppression. You aren’t helping the oppressed, you are doing quite the opposite.

“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?” —Marin Luther King, Jr.
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?” —Marin Luther King, Jr.
Stop telling me what you don’t care about or don’t see. Show me what you’re doing to make the world a better place.

Mr Open-minded Seldom Is

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As a gay man hoping to one day enjoy full equal rights under the law, I spend probably far too much time reading about people who are trying to prevent those rights from being granted. A surprising number of them describe themselves as open-minded, just before they start spewing their most bigoted talking points.

Which reminded me of a discussion I had with some friends a while back. We had all met people who had described themselves as open-minded, yet once we got to know them, they were quite the opposite. There are several reasons for this phenomenon:

The first is defensive: some of them have been accused often enough of being narrow-minded or intolerant that they are now trying to preempt more accusations. Like the professional spokespeople for various hate groups, they operate under a delusion that simply saying they are open-minded will somehow cause you not to notice their narrow-minded behavior or statements.

If they aren’t delusional, they’re simply trying really hard not to appear to be intolerant, because they’ve realized that if people think you’re intolerant, only intolerant people will hang out with you, and they aren’t usually good company. You would hope that realizing this would make them try to figure out how to actually be more open-minded. Maybe someday it will.

Some people are genuinely trying to be open-minded. In some cases, they recognized that their past narrow-minded behavior ruined a friendship, broke up a relationship, or simply hurt someone they cared about. Now they feel guilty and are trying to be open-minded. And there’s nothing wrong with trying, per se, but it is a little disingenuous to say they “are” open-minded when they’re only in the hoping-to-be stage.

There are others who aren’t at the trying stage, they simply misunderstand what open-minded means. For instance, for some open-minded means smiling condescendingly at people, ideas, or behaviors they disapprove of—sometimes even encouraging the behavior—only to ridicule and condemn it later when the person isn’t around. It’s a form of social entrapment: I’ll pretend I accept you as you are in order to get you to reveal more of yourself, then use what I learn against you.

Similarly, some think being open-minded means letting the other person have their say before telling them just how very wrong they are. Now, sometimes that’s how a debate can look to an outsider, but every interaction shouldn’t be a debate. And there’s a difference between gritting one’s teeth while waiting for the other person to finish spouting off their nonsense so you can tell them what they ought to think, and sincerely trying to understand why the other person feels that way. And consider whether maybe there might be room in your worldview for more than one opinion on the matter.

Along the same lines, some folks think that they have a nuanced position on some issues, because they are willing to be friends with the unfortunate people who are so wrong-thinking. “I’m not bigoted! I know that it’s not really your people’s fault that all of you are mentally ill and morally bankrupt. It’s like a sickness. And look at how big hearted I am, willing to be next to you and not at all afraid it might be catching!”

Most of these are just a subset of a bigger truth about human behavior: the more eager someone seems to be to describe themselves with a particularly positive treat, the more emphatically they insist that they do not feel a particular negative way, the more likely that the opposite of what they are saying is the truth.

As Hamlet’s mother famously observed, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”