So much for the tolerant left
ID: A scene from Legally Blonde of a conversation between Warner and Elle in the corridor at Harvard, in 4 panels:
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Honestly real talk for all my inclusion and belonging folks: we really gotta work on our vocab.
Was the term “tolerance” ever anything but confusing? In my lifetime I’ve only ever heard it used by conservatives dragging out this straw-man. Did “tolerance” once connote open-mindedness, graciousness, charitable judgment, acceptance/inclusion, or anything other than “weary endurance of something unpleasant?” Legit curious.
Similar examples include “consent” (sexual). Why are we pretending its primary non-figurative meaning isn’t legal or contractual when literally trying to say it’s the opposite? It has a strongly passive connotation, to acquiesce to a request, allow an event to occur, or go along with a plan — as in “tacit consent,” “consent form,” “consent to search,” and so forth. So it sounds gross, like “fine I guess you can do sex to me.” I know we tried to fix it with “enthusiastic consent” but seriously has anyone ever filled out a consent form with enthusiasm? What we really mean is active, reciprocal desire. The point is to give someone what they want if what they want is you, not to secure their consent to get what you want from them, so why the fuck do we insist on still using a word that’s in so many ways the opposite of what we mean?
I even think Crenshaw’s identity is confusing, because most people want to think of personal identity as something discovered or self-actualized, but intersectionality’s dependence on lived experience implies that to some extent it’s always something that happens to you. It’s how other people perceive you and the labels they give you that furnish these identities. But that probably sounds like a good thing if wearing those labels helped you bond with others similarly labeled, offering you a community or roots. Otherwise, calling these labels “identities” might sound like letting others define who you are instead of deciding for yourself. Gender identity for example is usually approached as an outward expression of one’s true self which can entirely reject the labels others give. But to ask someone “how do you identify” concerning something like ethnicity or race is not treated the same at all. To an outsider, these theoretical constructs might sound preposterous simply because we insisted on using the wrong words for our ideas, then overloading or bending their definitions to the point that a person needs a graduate seminar to actually parse the intended meaning.
Edit: to be clear, I’m only against the word choices, not the ideas. It’s because it feels like our messaging is hamstrung by insisting on using the wrong words as jargon with wildly different in-group definitions that to outsiders can make us sound inconsistent, confused, or at least difficult to understand. /rant
They steal our vocab and twist it.
Polysemy is a regular part of language, and rather than accept Warner's assumptions, Elle could have countered that tolerance (in the stricter sense of allowing or overlooking an objectionable matter) is satisfied.
That said, tolerance is not that confusing, and a looser sense of tolerant (meaning not intolerant) was commonly understood as more live and let live, open-minded, gracious, charitable, inclusive, etc. In the 90s & early 2000s, leftists were more commonly easy-going, freedom loving, unconventional, uncritical like the Dude while rightists were more rigid puritans critical of any provocative influence (non-judeo-christian) they believed would corrupt society & children. When rightists claimed to be tolerant (stricter sense), skeptics might wonder if they're really that tolerant of objects they frequently complain about. Leftists, in contrast, were largely more tolerant in that looser sense. Later, more critical leftists gained influence and may have increasingly distanced themselves from people with disagreeable ideas even on technologies that could bring people together (can't platform those pesky ideas).
Consent can have a more open meaning, though it seems you're trying to load a biased definition. It's an agreement to participate where rights are at stake. Your negative connotation isn't necessary: people can consent to share something fun together or take risks. There are certainly other words that could better fit your idea like interest, eagerness, or willingness.
I don't know what identity is doing here. I think we already knew without much explanation that social identity is made up of multiple, diverse factors: some personally determined, others inherited or socially determined. Buzzy intersectionality isn't needed to understand that, and it doesn't blow the imagination.
No, it was never confusing, the right's propaganda engine ceased on it, called it confusing.
Whatever message we put out will be "mired" in confusion as long as the right media factory deems that a useful statement to make and their undereducated masses will just blindly agree.
For sure they seize on these terms constantly, but these pundits are opportunistic brawlers. They tend to pick words and phrases they know are easily misconstrued then just amplify the confusion.
Consider the reason why a bunch of Americans literally never understood the slogan “black lives matter.” Its punchiness as a chant at rallies was the juxtaposition of an extreme understatement with police brutality everyone was intimately aware of. The blunder was trying to use it to spread awareness of the violence (because without awareness of the violence its meaning is lost) so all the pundits had to do to discredit the movement was just… pan away from the violence.
I totally get ya. I don't think any slogan is ever safe, well, Cops Disproportionately Kill Black People and nobody cares might have worked. but it lacks that je ne sais quoi.
Yeah I’m with you. Just want the downtrodden to prevail the way a footballer wants his team to win. Sorry for yelling in the locker room.
Ehhh it's a good locker room to be in, and we are all in good company.
Cheers!
tolerance /tŏl′ər-əns/ noun
consent /kən-sĕnt′/ intransitive verb
Dictionary definitions are nice but rarely capture the full meaning of the word. Connotations of the word are pretty important.
If I say "I tolerate that behavior," you can probably infer that I don't like that behavior based on the connotations of the word tolerate. It invokes a negativity toward the subject.
Similarly for consent. The examples bear this out: medical treatments, business trips, and short notice are generally not pleasant things.