December Days 2022 #5: Sympathetic
Dec. 6th, 2022 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[What's December Days this year? Taking a crowdsourced list of adjectives and seeing if I can turn them into saying good things about myself. Or at least good things to talk about.]
From the list of definitions it's acquired, sympathetic seems to be a very old word that's found more than a few ways to be useful, and usually on the same theme of alikeness. The "of a person" definition and the "relational" definition seem to be both at once when describing a person as sympathetic: they are aligned or affiliated with me, and I like them. At the beginning of a relationship or friendship, it might be "Because A, B" or "Because B, A" but for those relationships that last for a while, the two become an infinite loop with each other. "Because A, B: Because B, A" and you find you like someone more because they're affiliated and you affiliate more because you like them. This is a positive feedback loop ("positive" here has no moral judgment.) It can work to someone's benefit and to help drive someone farther into conspiracy theories or groups that use a charismatic leader and promise those who feel unsympathetic a place and power, so long as they do the work of the group. An adjective such as sympathetic, then, reflects upon the person using it as much as the person receiving it, to say "this one is someone we can make common cause with."
A fair number of groups make this claim about me that should not, because I do not want to be associated with them and they do not speak or act according to my Way. From outside perception, though, I wonder how much of my saying no to those groups is interpreted as "not all" rather than "I dissent." When someone talks about a negative aspect of a group that I am perceived to be part of, I get "Not you," which is usually both correct ("You do not carry these negative aspects") and alienating ("therefore you cannot be a part of this group.") For example, John Biewen and Celeste Headlee talk about masculinity, its toxic forms, and what it means to be a man in Scene on Radio's third season, looking at it from several different perspectives, including ones that incorporate stereotype threat and how that changes the perception of masculinity when there's a racial adjective in front of it. They come to much the same conclusion that I have - masculinity's current dominant conception is built on a pillar of shifting sand that believes itself concrete and focused on a small set of rules. Those rules, however, define masculinity almost always in a negative form, which makes the boundaries highly dependent on what someone else believes and whether they find you sympathetic enough to put you as Us instead of Them. For someone who believes that it's possible for men to not be toxic, to be on board with feminism, and spread to other men that the way it always has been is not the way it always has to be, I might read as a man (possibly a "good man" in comparison) and they perceive me as "not all," as an optimistic thing. For someone whose boundaries don't allow for the possibility of a non-toxic or feminist man, if I say things that are non-toxic, or demonstrate an understanding of feminism, then they perceive me as "I dissent" and categorize me as Other, possibly a human (more likely a dragon), but not necessarily a man. And this happens regardless of what I say about myself, sometimes even after I have laid plain what my identity is to an audience I expect to understand, remember, and behave accordingly.
And that she's gets more complicated when it turns out that I can understand a group that I do not agree with, because I have experience that's relevant. Or because I have a professional obligation to get someone the best information I can on a topic, and they've made it clear that they consider the best information to be something that already agrees with their preconceptions. I understand the mindset of someone who believes they are owed wealth, prestige, respect, and sex, regardless of whether, as a person, they would be competent with wealth, able to handle the pressure of prestige, earn the respect of others through their actions, and have personality and actions that are sexy. They have often been told the story that these things are owed to them, regardless of how much they are supposedly told they have to be earned, because the people telling them these stories are quick to blame the Other for why things didn't turn out well for them. They have been taught that wrongs must be avenged, or better, escalated, and that people who have accumulated resources like money and power no longer have to abide by any rules they don't want to, so long as they have the resources to cover the penalty or to intimidate anyone who would bring a complaint into silence. The people they're taught to admire and emulate do this, even though we tell them not to do as they do in these situations. (Assuming they're not being portrayed as victims suffering under oppression from the Other.)
I understand how the entitlement gets into your head, and the messages you see say that it's not fair or right for someone not to get what they're entitled to, especially when the undeserving Other is getting what should rightly be yours, and how it makes someone vulnerable to the idea that they are the victims of whichever group makes the most sense to blame, so long as it isn't them. I used to believe it. I don't any more, and I don't sympathize with someone who takes that mindset and commits violence against others. But plenty of them seem to believe that I will be sympathetic to them, because to say otherwise would be to diminish my own privilege, and I'll act in my own self-interest instead of what's virtuous.
(I might, because I will not have perfect understanding or perfect virtue over time. I can hope that I keep those things to a minimum, though.)
I am improving, as best as I can, to be sympathetic to people who are making things better for everyone, not just for my privilege group, and I can hope that I continue to be sympathetic to the people making improvements for everyone. (And that there might be enough sympathetic magic to bring us all together with the resources to make the transportation happen.)
- sympathetic (comparative more sympathetic, superlative most sympathetic)
- Of, related to, feeling, showing, or characterized by sympathy.
- Showing approval of or favor towards an idea or action.
- (of a person) Attracting the liking of others.
- (construction) Designed in a sensitive or appropriate way.
- (relational) Relating to, producing, or denoting an effect which arises through an affinity, interdependence, or mutual association.
- (of magic) A supernatural connection or power resulting from two items having the same form or some other correspondence.
- (sound) Relating to musical tones produced by sympathetic vibration or to strings so tuned as to sound by sympathetic vibration.
- (neuroanatomy, neurology, relational) Relating to or denoting the part of the autonomic nervous system consisting of nerves arising from ganglia near the middle part of the spinal cord, supplying the internal organs, blood vessels, and glands, and balancing the action of the parasympathetic nerves.
From the list of definitions it's acquired, sympathetic seems to be a very old word that's found more than a few ways to be useful, and usually on the same theme of alikeness. The "of a person" definition and the "relational" definition seem to be both at once when describing a person as sympathetic: they are aligned or affiliated with me, and I like them. At the beginning of a relationship or friendship, it might be "Because A, B" or "Because B, A" but for those relationships that last for a while, the two become an infinite loop with each other. "Because A, B: Because B, A" and you find you like someone more because they're affiliated and you affiliate more because you like them. This is a positive feedback loop ("positive" here has no moral judgment.) It can work to someone's benefit and to help drive someone farther into conspiracy theories or groups that use a charismatic leader and promise those who feel unsympathetic a place and power, so long as they do the work of the group. An adjective such as sympathetic, then, reflects upon the person using it as much as the person receiving it, to say "this one is someone we can make common cause with."
A fair number of groups make this claim about me that should not, because I do not want to be associated with them and they do not speak or act according to my Way. From outside perception, though, I wonder how much of my saying no to those groups is interpreted as "not all" rather than "I dissent." When someone talks about a negative aspect of a group that I am perceived to be part of, I get "Not you," which is usually both correct ("You do not carry these negative aspects") and alienating ("therefore you cannot be a part of this group.") For example, John Biewen and Celeste Headlee talk about masculinity, its toxic forms, and what it means to be a man in Scene on Radio's third season, looking at it from several different perspectives, including ones that incorporate stereotype threat and how that changes the perception of masculinity when there's a racial adjective in front of it. They come to much the same conclusion that I have - masculinity's current dominant conception is built on a pillar of shifting sand that believes itself concrete and focused on a small set of rules. Those rules, however, define masculinity almost always in a negative form, which makes the boundaries highly dependent on what someone else believes and whether they find you sympathetic enough to put you as Us instead of Them. For someone who believes that it's possible for men to not be toxic, to be on board with feminism, and spread to other men that the way it always has been is not the way it always has to be, I might read as a man (possibly a "good man" in comparison) and they perceive me as "not all," as an optimistic thing. For someone whose boundaries don't allow for the possibility of a non-toxic or feminist man, if I say things that are non-toxic, or demonstrate an understanding of feminism, then they perceive me as "I dissent" and categorize me as Other, possibly a human (more likely a dragon), but not necessarily a man. And this happens regardless of what I say about myself, sometimes even after I have laid plain what my identity is to an audience I expect to understand, remember, and behave accordingly.
And that she's gets more complicated when it turns out that I can understand a group that I do not agree with, because I have experience that's relevant. Or because I have a professional obligation to get someone the best information I can on a topic, and they've made it clear that they consider the best information to be something that already agrees with their preconceptions. I understand the mindset of someone who believes they are owed wealth, prestige, respect, and sex, regardless of whether, as a person, they would be competent with wealth, able to handle the pressure of prestige, earn the respect of others through their actions, and have personality and actions that are sexy. They have often been told the story that these things are owed to them, regardless of how much they are supposedly told they have to be earned, because the people telling them these stories are quick to blame the Other for why things didn't turn out well for them. They have been taught that wrongs must be avenged, or better, escalated, and that people who have accumulated resources like money and power no longer have to abide by any rules they don't want to, so long as they have the resources to cover the penalty or to intimidate anyone who would bring a complaint into silence. The people they're taught to admire and emulate do this, even though we tell them not to do as they do in these situations. (Assuming they're not being portrayed as victims suffering under oppression from the Other.)
I understand how the entitlement gets into your head, and the messages you see say that it's not fair or right for someone not to get what they're entitled to, especially when the undeserving Other is getting what should rightly be yours, and how it makes someone vulnerable to the idea that they are the victims of whichever group makes the most sense to blame, so long as it isn't them. I used to believe it. I don't any more, and I don't sympathize with someone who takes that mindset and commits violence against others. But plenty of them seem to believe that I will be sympathetic to them, because to say otherwise would be to diminish my own privilege, and I'll act in my own self-interest instead of what's virtuous.
(I might, because I will not have perfect understanding or perfect virtue over time. I can hope that I keep those things to a minimum, though.)
I am improving, as best as I can, to be sympathetic to people who are making things better for everyone, not just for my privilege group, and I can hope that I continue to be sympathetic to the people making improvements for everyone. (And that there might be enough sympathetic magic to bring us all together with the resources to make the transportation happen.)
