Words for cutting: Why we need to stop abusing “the tone argument”

Spend enough time in activist circles and you’ll likely hear about the “tone argument” in short order, as well as some variation on the sarcastic meme “intent is fucking magic!” These ideas were formed from two crucial insights that have emerged from a half century of activism among people of color, women, and LGBT people. 

1. That those who advocate for social change, especially if they come from a historically marginalized group, will be told they’re too “angry” to be taken seriously and told, both implicitly and explicitly, that recognition of their humanity is contingent on how nice they can be to their interlocutors.
2. That intentions have no bearing on the experiential or empirical reality of an outcome. A harmful outcome remains harmful irrespective of any good intentions on the part of those who brought it about, and priority should be placed upon that reality rather than the feelings of the “well-intentioned.”

These insights are cornerstones of much activist discourse online these days and form a foundation to the ethics we take for granted in dealing with one another as feminists, and how we assess the morality of actions in the wider world. But, apropos of last week’s discussion of toxic activism, we face a very serious problem: when these insights are turned into rules, they lose their elegance as moral guideposts and instead become cudgels that are used by some activists to bully others.

An insight is a lens of sorts. It can be questioned, it is mutable, it can contour itself to the demands of clarity in any individual situation. A rule, by contrast, is treated as a settled and non-negotiable principle that is defined by its universal applicability.

The Tone Argument

In rule form, the tone argument might be expressed as follows: Any attempt to discuss or criticize the tone of an activist is a deliberate attempt at leveraging institutional power to silence the marginalized and must be avoided at all costs.

At first, this sounds like a blessed antidote to abuses of privilege but anything beyond a cursory glance reveals very serious problems here and a perversion of identity politics that greases the skids of abusive dynamics.

First and foremost, what “the tone argument” refers to is the way in which historically marginalized people can be easily dismissed through recourse to our supposed anger. The bitch, the angry black man/angry black woman, the angry tranny, the fiery Latina, all provide stock figures ready to be deployed against anyone who speaks out against inequality or oppression.

But what is often forgotten is that it is deployed against us regardless of our actual “tones.” No matter how gentle you are, no matter how evenhanded your speech, your “tone” is judged by your thesis and not by your intonations or choice of words. If you make a radical or discomfiting argument there will always be a rapscallion in the wings waiting to fit you into the cookie-cutter “angry x” stereotype. While they claim to be attacking tone, they are actually attacking the message, and often as not the very identity of the messenger.

This is lost, however, when the insight of the tone argument is converted into a rule, and instead becomes a contrapuntal veneration of anger and rage that puts all genuinely outraged expression above question and consideration.

Outrage has a valuable place; it is the natural reaction to injustice, to a severe moral breach that must offend every nerve ending of one’s sensibilities. To look at our world at present there’s much to be angry about, and there’s some wisdom to the idea that outrage is better than a placid acceptance of our present condition, better than becoming desensitized to the cavalcade of moral crimes that litter the daily newspapers. But like any emotion or tool, there are right and wrong ways to deploy it, and when we uncritically suggest that all rage is valid so long as it is expressed by activists we thereby foreclose all strategic discussion of the utility of rage.

To invoke “the tone argument” against someone criticizing an activist for, say, wishing death on someone is something that fully misunderstands the very nature of what the actual “tone argument” is about, then. It’s meant to refer to the silencing of an idea one does not wish to hear at all, whitewashing it from discourse; “tone” is simply a lazy, bad faith excuse used to plaster over this discomfort and shift the burden of a moral faux pas onto the activist one criticizes. It is not meant to describe any and all situations where “tone” might be discussed, and we should not take it to mean that rage is the kryptonite to all oppression.

“Let Him Hurt, Let Him Bleed”

To put it simply: sometimes someone is being too angry. Sometimes an activist’s rage is doing more harm than good. Sometimes there is no good being done by it whatsoever. Not every emotion we have is a great strike against oppressive forces. Sometimes you are just being too loud, abusing people verbally, triggering them, and so forth. Sometimes you are just being a jerk and your tone is a fairly reliable indicator of this.

When an activist attacked me and a friend who made a rhetorical mistake by saying she hoped my friend died sooner from her lupus, that is not a question of righteous anger or of an idea that one hopes to censor through “tone policing.” It’s, quite simply, abuse. Or consider the following examples of long-term toxicity from a social justice activist in the sci-fi/fantasy fandom communities known as Requires Hate; a South-East Asian woman who made it her business to antagonize those who, she felt, did not live up to her standard of radical activism, especially other women of color and queer people.

To a white trans woman she disagreed with she said the following:

“Dear X, our trannies generally look much better and classier than you. Even the pre-op ones don’t look half as mannish and buttfuck-ugly…”

Of a man on Twitter she said this:

“as for X, flay him alive slowly, pour salt, pour acid, dismember and keep alive for as long as possible.”

Among other charming bits of discourse she said this:

“Spread the word that *** is a raging racist fuck. Let him be hurt, let him bleed, pound him into the fucking ground. No mercy.”

Something about that statement feels unintentionally profound; in an economy of words, Requires Hate spoke to the lust for catharsis at any cost that often seems to animate the most toxic varieties of activism. Bloody vengeance to no good end, a desire to hurt others as you have been hurt, a perverse way of clawing back at power that only makes sense in the terrible masculinist economy of violence we are supposedly fighting against.

The inflexible tone argument rule would suggest that nothing Requires Hate — or the others like her — did was wrong. Any discussion of her words would be tantamount to silencing and, indeed, an act of oppression against her as a woman of color, whose rage is merely a justified response to institutional racism. Yet when you get away from the lofty abstraction for a moment, what remains is undeniably odious, and no identity or political goal could (or should) obscure that judgement.

The use of “the tone argument” concept to lend grandeur and political importance to such abuse should strike us as contemptible.

When we talk about “toxicity in activism” this is one of its most crucial vectors: the use of things like the tone argument to excuse any and all expression, no matter how abusive, because it can be garlanded with pretensions to forthright opposition to oppression. You’re not brutalizing someone to tears, you’re attacking patriarchy or white supremacy. You’re not a bully, you’re a fiery radical. You’re not rhetorically violent, you just won’t be silenced by bourgeois norms of politeness.

Intent: It’s Fucking Data!

This brings us to intent and its misuse. Oftentimes when someone engages in a microaggression and argues that they did no wrong because their intentions were honorable, social justice activists rightly argue that intent does not matter in assessing the harm. If one trods on someone’s toe by accident, the lack of malicious intent does not erase the pain, after all. It’s a useful moral insight that helps us better adjudge harms and discern a path to ameliorating them.

The problem comes when we argue that intent has no bearing on the situation whatsoever.

Intentions are not magic, but they are data. They give you useful information about why a microaggression or some other harm happened in the first place, provide clues as to how it might be prevented in the future, and yield guidance on how to educate the person who committed the harm or how best to heal the person who was harmed. There is a world of difference, for instance, between dealing with a 4chan troll trying to ruin your life and someone who uses the word “tranny” because they think it sounds cute. Assessing that difference requires some attention to their differing intentions.

The trick is to recognize that you can simultaneously know that intentions do not, in and of themselves, heal wounds while also understanding that they are helpful for assessing the unique contours of the specific conflict you’re addressing. Judgement, in its highest sense, requires attention to what is unique about the case you are judging, not merely how it can be fitted into an abstract framework. If intent cannot be considered at all, then you are denying yourself potentially useful information that could help you better understand the situation.

Put another way, we need a moral framework that provides people with a path for redemption from their mistakes, and fashioning such a path requires an understanding of the intentions at work.

A Prayer Against Rage

This, then is the crucial problem with the rules-based thinking we’ve become inured to as feminists and social justice activists online. It forces us into one-size-fits-all thinking where we are actively discouraged from recognizing the unique circumstances of individual conflicts in favor of judging others according to standards they may not even understand.

Frequently, this is done for the performative benefit of other activists one wishes to impress above all else. The rage we so love, the expletive-laden injunctions against judging tone or intent, is often as not meant to convince others that we are kindred, that we are one of them, and that we are not a threat. And often, in an irony that reveals the underlying moral bankruptcy of the entire rules-based enterprise, we do it in hopes of forestalling our own turn in the stocks. Hoping that we ourselves, through the performance of this rage, might never be on the wrong side of it. Meanwhile, there is a never-ending supply of bigots, clueless people, folks making innocent mistakes, and fellow activists from a diverse array of backgrounds that we can practice against, sharpening our tools for their dual offensive and defensive purpose.

And then there are those who most benefit from this sorry arrangement: those who get a rush from being abusive, from clawing their way to the top of the invisible activist hierarchies we like to pretend we don’t have, and who cannily manipulate our honor-system-based rules, parleying them into weapons and armor alike to win a social game only they fully understand.

The people who pay the highest price for this are often women of color, trans women, and LGBTQ people, who are least able to afford the kind of activist perfection that, in theory, should keep such rage and judgement at bay. I think of my mother, the Puerto Rican housewife, working class and proud, who never saw the inside of a college classroom; she saved her transsexual daughter from the streets and is proud of my activist work. Yet I have heard her use words or phrases that would bring activist Twitter down on her head. It stings me to know that where I walk, and where I work, is not made for her even as it so often speaks in her name (and with no small amount of sincerity, either).

Those on the margins are the most accessible to the most virulently toxic of activists. For all their ranting about the evils of white feminism and so forth, who do you think these folks have the most access to? Hillary Clinton, or a brown trans girl on Twitter who’s just starting to come into her own and isn’t up on all the lingo? Be honest with yourself: you know the answer.

We need to ask serious questions about why so many of us are so very eager to defend activism that includes violent threats, abuse, unwarranted aggression, and worse.

True morality makes strenuous demands of our judgement, and activist rules are a poor substitute for both.

Correction: I originally misidentified Requires Hate as South Asian rather than South-East Asian. I sincerely regret the error.