Derailing for Dummies

Derailing for Dummies is a document written from the perspective of a member of several marginalized groups who's seen the exact same arguments and stances trotted out over and over again to silence minorities. It's satire, written as though it's a how-to guide for people to derail discussions.

What's interesting to me is how universal the derails actually are. I've seen them time and time again in online "debates". Whether the discussion is about class, religion, politics, sex, gender, race or disabilities, somebody's going to pop up with one of these. They also come up frequently in vicious little backhands when two allied marginalized groups (such as when different parts of the LGBT alphabet soup intersect) as part of the "Oppression Olympics":

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...if you are a member of another Marginalised Group™, you can also exploit it to indicate to the Marginalised Person™ how absolutely disdainful you are of their concerns and issues by making out that yours are far more important and imperative.

You can even suggest that your issues are more valuable than theirs, implying a hierarchy of oppression in which you always win.

You see, as a Marginalised Person ™ yourself, it is all the more infuriating to another Marginalised Person™ that you're exercising the exact same prejudices and discrimination that Privileged People® exercise against you! The Marginalised Person™ will be tearing their hair out at your obliviousness and lack of perception and this will weaken their defences.

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Is it possible to debate such hot-button emotional issues without resorting to these derails? I'm embarrassed to realize that I've used some of these derails myself without even meaning to. Should these derails be avoided? Do they have any value? Can you fathom a lively, active debate forum that avoids all of those derails?

Oh, man, that site is obnoxious. I try to always be aware of the ways I have privilege and not make anyone feel "othered" by it, and I do my best to educate myself before I piss anyone else off, but I think a lot of those are pretty much unavoidable. Most people who start from a position of privilege on any particular issue usually have to have a wake-up moment before they even realize they have privilege. And until then they're going to use some of those, particularly the ones like "you're hurting your cause by being angry" and "you've lost your temper so I don't have to argue with you any longer".

Reading that, though, reminds me of people that don't seem to actually want to do anything to effect change, they just want to argue in circles about privilege until, I guess, every white person admits to being a racist, every straight person a homophobe, etc.

Yeah, I wondered about that myself. Certainly a lot of those are fucking annoying as hell, but everybody starts from a place of ignorance. Somebody asking questions and accidentally offending is not the same as someone maliciously trying to dehumanize you.

Some of them particularly annoyed me. There's one about how it's a derail to liken someone else's experiences to your own. Eh? If I'm talking to my Deaf friend and, to try to relate to her and understand what she's talking about, I relate her experiences to my own as growing up with auditory processing disorder, I have now dehumanized and marginalized her? Instead of trying to find common ground? Seriously?

But a lot of them (like derailing every discussion about female genital mutilation with the same old asinine anti-circumcision fight) are absolutely widespread problems in online discourse.

The problem with the premise of that website, though, is that it automatically puts anyone who isn't a member of a minority group on the defensive. You and Taumpy said it yourself, Zuul, if you're trying to understand, and that effort alone is considered derailment, then where are you supposed to go from there? OK, fine, I'm privileged and therefore inherently can't understand or relate to your issues or point of view. Might as well just quit the conversation right now.

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Originally posted by Sarahfeena

The problem with the premise of that website, though, is that it automatically puts anyone who isn't a member of a minority group on the defensive. You and Taumpy said it yourself, Zuul, if you're trying to understand, and that effort alone is considered derailment, then where are you supposed to go from there? OK, fine, I'm privileged and therefore inherently can't understand or relate to your issues or point of view. Might as well just quit the conversation right now.

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In a way, the site itself is a "derail." If someone from outside of your particular minority group tries to argue with you, you don't have to argue because somehow you can fit anything they might say into something on that site.

In fact, if you had two marginalized people arguing together they could easily be "derailing" one another: But that happens to me too! and A In B Situation Is Not Equivalent To X In Y Situation. On the one hand, it's wrong if someone from outside of your group tries to empathize with your situation or liken it to something they experience. On the other hand, it's wrong if someone picks apart your metaphor as you're trying to get them to empathize with your situation or liken it to something they experience.

While I agree with what the site said about the Oppression Olympics--and that was probably the most spot on aspect of it--I'm not sure how well you could actually carry on conversations if you tried to avoid those "derails." It'd pretty much be nothing but everyone kowtowing to the biggest victim of the moment.

I do have to admit that you have to tread carefully with the "But that happens to me too!" line of argument. It can seem awfully pandering to try to draw certain parallels...like the one they cite where a skinny person tries to "relate" to an overweight person struggling with finding clothes that fit. You hear that a lot...a person practically making up a "handicap" and trying to make it equivalent to a real problem someone else has. I think, though, that it's common courtesy not to do that...either IRL or on the internet.

I recognize that the site is satirical, but with a few tweaks one could treat it at face value: "How to push the buttons of anyone you are arguing with, so that they get too angry to be coherent, and you win by default, or at least you don't have to argue anymore."

It's not fighting fair, but honest to god there are a few people in my life against whom I wouldn't mind being armed with these techniques. I think I should memorize them one by one and drag them out as needed. (Bear in mind I'm not thinking about arguing with members of oppressed groups about their victimhood; if you argue with ANYONE who is emotionally invested in their argument about ANY subject, you could probably adjust and apply at least some of these methods.)

Hatshepsut, I agree. I don't think those techniques have anything to do with being an oppressed class, even though they are presented entirely as marginalization methods on that site. I see the exact same techniques in poorly moderated debates often. Hell, make a Bingo card out of that site and just go skimming through the debate forum on a particular message board. I doubt it'd be long before you got Bingo.

Y'all just can't understand the plight of the middle aged, middle class southern white man.