“The Librarian”
My Alter-Ego Who Battles Bullying and Shoddy Debate
I comment on probably 60–70% of the articles I read, which means I comment a lot. I don’t typically “hate read” or go after articles whose premise I’m pretty sure I’m going to disagree with, but I do like to say something about what resonated or not for me in the ones that I enjoyed, which is frankly, a lot of them. There’s usually something interesting or insightful in everything I read and it’s the main reason I joined Medium — to be able to interact with other people’s thoughts and ideas.
However, more and more I’m finding that I will challenge comments that others have made on articles I’ve read if they don’t seem to be bolstering their position with facts or other reasonable support for what they are saying. It’s not that I want to tangle with trolls, and if someone is apparently just baiting instead of trying to participate in an actual discussion, I will usually leave them be. And I obviously don’t challenge everyone who makes an unsubstantiated comment, because that would be a full time job, but if someone is particularly aggressive or snotty and clearly just talking out of their ass, it seems to bring out my alter-ego personality, The Librarian. She likes to present better documentation or point out that there’s a failure to stay on topic. Sometimes it’s for the purposes of defending someone’s right to speak and sometimes it’s just because it’s a little bit fun to watch some guy hang himself with his own rope.
There is a long and well documented history of shutting down or interrupting women’s voices in both public and private spheres and the internet is one of the places where it seems to be the most overt. Sometimes this goes to the extremes of death and rape threats, as with Gamergate, and sometimes it’s more subtle, if no less unacceptable. The Librarian doesn’t only defend women, but mostly that’s who seems to be getting attacked with specious or unsubstantiated comments, at least in the articles that I read.
Recently, I read about a woman explaining her experiences as an entrepreneur. She discussed the kinds of help and advice that she tends to get from both men and women. It was largely an opinion piece, based on a couple of years of her own personal experience but was also supported with some studies that backed up her claim that when she asked a man for help, he tended to point out potential pitfalls where a woman was more likely to seek ways to be helpful, either directly or through providing contacts and resources. The point of the article wasn’t that men are bad and women are good. It was just detailing what seems to be a pervasive dynamic and ended with the author giving a list of concrete suggestions for anyone to be of greatest assistance to someone asking for help. What could be the issue with that?
When one commenter spewed, “Nearly all surveys show that women would generally far rather work for a male than a female boss. You do know this?” I couldn’t help chiming in because not only was this somewhat tangential to the topic of the article, it is also factually incorrect. So The Librarian stepped in with some relevant information because it seemed like the intent of this comment was not so much to argue a different viewpoint as it was to punish and silence the author by pointing out her stupidity and lack of knowledge.
I countered with, “Current data from Gallup says that most people don’t have a gender preference about who they work for, and if they do, it’s to work for a woman. Forbes says companies do better with women leaders, perhaps because they do tend to be more collaborative and focused on how to help others make things work.”
His response was, “I began my comment saying “Nearly all studies show …”; until recently, I could safely have said, “All major studies show…”. I’m quite aware that there are shifts happening.” I couldn’t help but then ask why, if he knew that shifts were happening, had he so angrily and condescendingly insisted in citing old data. Since there wasn’t really a great answer to that, the conversation didn’t go too much further.
The Librarian doesn’t just like to come to the aid of people who are being bullied and told to shut up. She is also more generally in favor of actual good debate. There’s nothing at all wrong with robust disagreement. It can be quite interesting and stimulating, but if you can’t make a linear argument or a rebuttal that isn’t full of holes, perhaps you shouldn’t be making one at all. One of The Librarian’s signature moves is to quote back to someone what they just said a minute ago, but no longer seem to be supporting with what they are saying now. She’s got a good memory for data as well as that kind of inconsistency, which usually tends to indicate that the person doesn’t actually have much of a position in the first place. They really just wanted to get in someone else’s face.
It’s one thing to say that you’ve had a different experience. I say that quite a bit in fact, but that doesn’t mean that I’m intending to negate the experience of the author. It’s just adding another angle. It’s a big world out there, with plenty of room for nuance, varied perceptions, and differences of opinion. It’s time for a variety of voices to be heard without being bullied, condescended to or silenced and The Librarian is just trying to do her part. She knows what it’s like to be talked over or dismissed when she had something to say, and if she can occasionally call a perpetrator on this kind of behavior, she wants to do so. It may not change him or anything at all in the immediate moment, but the act of standing up and speaking has it’s own power and reward.
As Rebecca Solnit said in her Guardian article about silence and powerlessness, “Having a voice is crucial. It’s not all there is to human rights, but it’s central to them, and so you can consider the history of women’s rights and lack of rights as a history of silence and breaking silence. Speech, words, voices sometimes change things in themselves when they bring about inclusion, recognition: the rehumanisation that undoes dehumanisation. Sometimes they are only the preconditions to changing rules, laws, regimes to bring about justice and liberty.
Sometimes just being able to speak, to be heard, to be believed, are crucial parts of membership in a family, a community, a society. Sometimes our voices break those things apart; sometimes those things are prisons.”
For more on this topic, read my article
