> I've never really found a good solution to this that doesn't just require patience and persistence from the start.
The kinds and amount of emotional labor that the "invisibly disabled" have to do for the "normal" people in our worlds is sometimes a full-time, completely exhausting, job of its own.
It means that, despite being the one with the brain that processes human emotion and social cues radically less efficiently than other people, I'm the one who, e.g., has to explain to the "emotionally competent" not to rageface at me for not understanding (or, more likely, even perceiving) the cues they probably aren't even aware they're emitting.
Yeah, that's pure "SJW". (Flagged for that, btw. Never in the history of online discourse has that term served as anything but an attempt to shut people up. Throwing it around un-ironically is prima facie bad-faith discourse.)
How about, "It's fucking hard to have a brain that the overwhelming majority of people fail utterly to understand, recognize, or allow for in their behavior; who, more often than not, act like I'm the one malingering, or attention-seeking, or whatever; and that it is the utter antithesis of 'self-indulgence' to be piqued by that."
If you saw "crying victim" in my comment, you must have been looking for it, because I'm damned sure there wasn't any when I wrote it. I was offering a token voice of solidarity to someone who thinks it's bullshit that he should have to justify how his own hearing works to people. Because it is.
I am sorry if you took that as directed to your comment.
You literally replied to their comment.
For you, "SJW" evokes "an attempt to shut people up" or "bad-faith discourse".
It's name-calling, so yeah.
For me, "emotional labour" evokes something more political, which I often see derided here.
So I see what you're saying, because a lot of people use this term in political ways.
But I think politics aside, it's a pretty important psychological and cultural concept. I don't know if there's a better term for it that doesn't feel politically coded. Do you have a better suggestion? Maybe read over my thoughts and let me know what you think.
Basically, there are many things people do to keep society polite and orderly. In most cases, for most people, being polite is just a normal part of doing business with the world.
But just imagine---for the sake of argument---that you have an obvious physical deformity, and strangers constantly stop and make you feel weird in a way that is not really socially acceptable. Yet you are expected constantly to maintain the social order and respond to these gawking and obtrusive strangers in a polite way. Wouldn't that be a little exhausting? Particularly if you were having a shitty day, and weren't feeling particularly polite?
This is the phenomenon people are talking about when they use the term "emotional labor". It means that people are being shitty to you, but they don't understand that, so for that reason it would be impolite for you to point out they're being shitty to you, so you just eat shit and move on with your life.
We could call this "politeness", but that terms elides the nuance that sometimes it is really emotionally exhausting to be polite and maintain social order all the time.
I replied to that comment because stood out the most, due to this choice of words.
Regarding the concept of "emotional labour" you define, I am neutral. I am not saying it does not exist - I just believe it is a common human experience, even if it may hit some people more often than others.
I just have a problem with what I perceive to be either A) an inability to feel a similar level empathy toward people who have different problems or B) hypocrisy.
Seriously, imagine the same article towards another similar issue, and think about the conditional probability of finding the same supportive comment.
Are these accusations of hypocrisy and lack of empathy directed at rosser specifically? Or are you complaining about the general sentiment on HN? Or are you complaining about something in your imagination (since you mentioned it)?
The reason people use terms like “emotional labor” is because it’s a label for an important concept that doesn’t have other terms. It allows us to get a qualitative grasp of why, for example, different policies can affect metrics like productivity and turnover for different groups of workers.
The term “SJW” is not much more than a pejorative. It’s not very useful otherwise.
Again, this is not to rosser specifically, but to the general sentiment on HN.
I used the word imagination to consider the likelihood of an identical overwhelmingly positive response, yet directed at something that is not autism - say minorities for example.
To state that very clearly: I believe there is a differential treatment on HN for some topics such as Asperger, autism, ADHD, burnout (etc).
This can be seen by the responses it generates: keywords (regardless of their pejorativeness or the importance of the concept) are different, and some things that often don't fly do appear to fly.
If you believe it is in my imagination, do a sentiment analysis using the text of the comments for group1=(autism, Asperger, ...) group2=(minorities, women...) , then check with a t-test if the response is different.
This is a valid point but does nothing to justify your earlier comments in the thread, which were basically garbage and that’s why one of the reasons why they’re flagged/dead.
The reason why people find hypocrisy so aggravating stems from the underlying mechanics of how virtue signaling works. Hypocrites are not worse in some moral sense, in fact they’re the opposite, but they are threats to other people’s social capital. Maybe that’s also the reason you’re interested in attacking hypocrisy, but these attacks are at best misdirected.
From the standpoint of someone reading your comments, it’s looks like you’re attacking someone who doesn’t deserve it (even if that’s not your intent, it’s how it looks). If you’re attacking someone who doesn’t deserve it as an attack on hypocrisy, that looks like nothing more than a bare-faced virtue signaling game play.
It sounds like your comments are connected to some genuine desire for equality and empathy for oppressed groups, so if I were you, I would consider whether the mechanics of how you are advocating for your position make sense in your value framework. Does it make sense for you to make accusations of SJW-coding? Or will people think that the term “SJW” is little more than a pejorative used by the alt-right to discredit the socially progressive?
The other problem is that it’s a common tactic to sabotage conversations about oppression—bringing up other oppressed groups as a comparison. This technique can be used to sabotage almost any conversation about any oppressed group. Well-meaning progressives will engage use this tactic unintentionally, and trolls will use it on purpose. More broadly speaking, this technique is straight out of the cold war era Soviet Union propaganda playbook for attacking and discrediting western nations.
The comment I replied supportively to was from a person whose disability involved their hearing.
Given the context of the article, that the ensuing discussion was about autism should come as little surprise, but my initial comment was completely neutral as to the nature of the disability, beyond its visibility.
As such, it might, if one were inclined to read it with its author's intent, constitute a notable data point, given your perception of "an inability to feel a similar level empathy toward people who have different problems".
> Yeah, that's pure "SJW". (Flagged for that, btw. Never in the history of online discourse has that term served as anything but an attempt to shut people up. Throwing it around un-ironically is prima facie bad-faith discourse.)
Do try to be more careful about speaking in absolutes. They have this annoying habit of not actually being true.
The kinds and amount of emotional labor that the "invisibly disabled" have to do for the "normal" people in our worlds is sometimes a full-time, completely exhausting, job of its own.