Like many women of my age, I was brought up with a complicated relationship with “emotions.”
On the one hand, there was the very real stereotype that women are more emotional than men. We were brought up in a world that would dismiss us at any hint at an emotional response to anything because it was deemed women’s hysteria. I won’t tell you how my times my father called me a “drama queen” because I got mad at something that, looking back, I had every right to be mad about, but, like most men, he needed an excuse to not deal with things; so the easiest thing to do was dismiss me. This was the way we were dealt with for most of our lives. We were told we were overly emotional, so ANY emotion was an excuse to belittle and dismiss us.
This was incredibly frustrating and diminishing for a number of reasons, but primarily because we recognized that men were just as emotional as women; but men’s emotions were normalized, so they were seen as just “natural” while women’s were seen as “hysterical.” But if you consider anger, jealousy, or aggression an emotion, which they absolutely are, men are every bit, if not more, emotional than women. And if you need any proof, tell this to a room full of men and see how red in the face some of them get.
This accusation of “overly emotional” has been used against people other than just women, too. It has been levied against men AND women of color for ages, and really anybody who had the gall to get mad at the status quo. Really, the charge of “hysteria” or “overly emotional” has been a convenient way for those in charge to dismiss people mad at things that they have every right to be mad at for a long, long time. And it’s a smart way to address those who are upset. Because it diminishes the people who are claiming there is an injustice without addressing the injustice, and questions their character and their ability to assess a situation like an adult. Basically, it is a disqualifying accusation. And the proof is right there – how do you know a person is too emotional? Well, look at how angry they are! The accusation doesn’t require that you look at what a person is angry about. You don’t have to pause and ask whether a person has a right to be angry. You just know that a person is TOO angry for civilized society.
In the 19th century two different rhetors approached this dilemma in two very different ways. Susan B. Anthony, who faced the stereotype of the hysterical woman, and Frederick Douglass, who dealt with the prejudicial image of the “angry Black man.”
In 1873 Anthony made the speech “Is it a Crime for a US Citizen to Vote?”
It is a very boring, very long speech.
My students hate reading it. And I don’t blame them! Without context it is just a slog. So why, I always ask them, do we read it? What can you get from something so dull?
To ascertain this, let us think in Aristotelian terms. This is a speech that really emphasizes logos and ethos, but there is very little to no pathos. This is a learning experience for my students. So many of them are always adamant that appeals to emotion are a bad thing – so when they see what a speech looks like that doesn’t have any, it’s kind of eye-opening because it’s kind of like, oh, no. That is not what I want AT ALL. So why do this?
Consider Anthony’s position.
She had been arrested for voting. She was going to be on trial. But, according the law, no women could be on the jury, and she couldn’t testify on her own behalf because women weren’t allowed to speak in the courtroom. So, she wouldn’t be allowed to make her argument on her own behalf at her own trial. So, she went from town to town and paper to paper making this boring speech.
What is this about?
Anthony is playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers.
She’s seeding the jury pool.
And not just with her account of what happened. With her argument defending her actions. And not just any argument – with a completely LOGICAL argument that totally defies the stereotype that women are overly emotional. Anthony takes that stereotype and completely throws it out with the garbage. If women are supposed to be emotional, she does the exact opposite. This is a defiant speech. It is thwarting the law AND societal norms.
It may be boring to read but it is NOT a boring speech.
Frederick Douglass takes a very different approach.
In 1852 he made his infamous “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech. It tends to make the rounds every year around Independence Day, and has kind of established itself as a hallmark of progressive thought. Which doesn’t say a lot since it is over 150 years old and we’re still holding it up as a marker of progressive thought.
ANYWAY.
It is an angry speech. The whole point is that it is insulting to ask Douglass, a Black man and former slave, to speak about America’s legacy of freedom and independence when her legacy of dehumanization and capitalistic bondage are not just alive and well, but IN THE PROCESS of making itself. Douglass is, in a word, livid. And he makes no bones about it.
He actually says,
“What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”
In other words, he says he, and others like him, have made this anti-slavery argument many times before. He knows it is a good argument, yet each time it has fallen on deaf ears. If the opposition has failed to consider their arguments and think of Douglass and his ilk as people, then these are not people who are arguing in good faith. The opposition is not coming to the debate with resolution on their minds, but with oppression.
In that case, good arguments are pointless. Nobody is going to say anything that is convincing. So, what do you do? Douglass says in that case you don’t need a good argument, you need scorching irony. These are not people who deserve your respect. If you want to be sarcastic or snide, so be it. The time has come to be a little tongue in cheek. Because this is not a rational audience. So there is no requirement that you make rational arguments.
These are interesting speeches because they respond to similar problems in such wildly different ways. Anthony recognizes the problem and adjusts to expectations to work within the provided framework. Douglass steps outside the framework and highlights how it is problematic to begin with. Neither is wrong. Both are effective.
They also both point to a concept that has been at the heart of argumentation, and free speech thinking, for a long time, and that is “civil discourse.”
Civil discourse has been the ideal for as long as we have been thinking about speech in a democratic environment. It’s basically the idea that in order to make progress or come to solutions on matters of public concern, it will require public deliberations. And public deliberations require an environment where everyone is calm, rational, and respectful to each other. If we are going to make progress as a society, we can’t have people flying off the handle, insulting each other, or moving the arguments outside of the public sphere and that rational paradigm.
According to Habermas, the public sphere is “a domain of our social life in which such a thing as a public opinion can be formed” and that “is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public.” It is in that public sphere in which decisions are made. And it is not necessarily that one always persuades another. We come to consensus. We make decisions.
Public opinion is formed only when a “public that engages in rational discussion” to create informed opinions, which he contrasts to “mere opinions.” So the public is a rational, informed group or place. The public is a group, or a place where people come to discuss in an informed way the issues facing them in a healthy way to move their interests forward.
The public sphere is defined in terms of communication. It is constituted by conversation/rhetoric of people as they discuss topics of general interest.
Habermas’s definition is both descriptive and prescriptive. It describes public discourse as enabled and constrained within society by institutions and norms. But it also prescribes and ideal to work toward.
According to Habermas, there are certain elements to an ideal public sphere:
- It must be “open in principle to all citizens”
- It must address “matters of general interest”
- It must be free from coercion
It is, in theory, a good idea. We SHOULD be respectful to each other. We SHOULD try to make rational arguments. There is a lot of good that comes from this concept.
However.
Civil discourse demands that we all remain calm and rational. But you know what? There are some things worth getting upset about. Yes, civil discourse has the laudable goal of respectful conversation. But let’s be honest – do all positions deserve respect?
We touched on this when we discussed the idea of “invitational rhetoric.” This insistence that everybody be treated with the same respect or everybody be given a place at the table puts a lot of onus on the already marginalized to make space for their oppressors.
If white supremacists are making claims about the nature of American identity, why is it incumbent upon People of Color to treat them, or their argument, with respect or dignity? Why do they have to “make space” or “invite” them into the conversation?
The truth is, there are plenty of arguments that don’t deserve our respect. Men who advocate for relationships in which they groom teenage girls to become young trad wives do not deserve to be treated like they have something valuable to add to the conversation. People who say, OUT LOUD, that migrants are animals don’t deserve my respect.
Obviously, however, this leads to a slippery slope. I don’t think blatant racists deserve respect. So I don’t do a lot of work to make them feel welcome. The flip side is that blatant racists don’t feel like I deserve a lot of respect because I believe in equity, so they don’t do a lot to make me feel welcome. So on the one hand, encouraging civil discourse does a lot to keep things…well, civil. On the other hand, civility does a lot to cover up for ideas that honestly, we should have left behind long ago.
The thing about civil discourse is that it leads to what is called “tone policing.” That means if you get too angry (you know, too emotional), you can be cut out of the discourse that is an attempt to solve problems. So if you get too angry or upset about a problem, you will be left out of the discussions that are supposedly designed to address that very problem.
So, you know, if Black people get too upset about racism, or God forbid, police brutality, then they won’t be consulted in how to address the problem. If women get too upset by sexual violence, they will be left out of those conversations.
Do you see how craptacular that is?
Because those are UPSETTING things.
You SHOULD get upset about police brutality. Or sexual violence. What’s wrong with you if you AREN’T upset by those things? The only people who aren’t upset by those things are the people who will never be affected by them and have no empathy for others. So…if those are the people who “discuss it rationally” without getting upset, and leave the people who ARE affected out because they are too emotional – you can see how civil discourse can quickly become a tool of the oppressor.
Other theorists have presented ideas of weak or other kinds of public spheres.
Nancy Fraser describes a weak public, which is a public whose deliberative practice consists exclusively in opinion formation and does not also encompass decision making. This is opposed to a strong public whose discourse encompasses both opinion and formations and decision-making. “Strong” and “weak” refer to the power to make decisions or legislate, not to the general ability to dominate public opinion.
There are also counterpublics. Counterpublics are “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourse to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities.” They don’t just expand the space for argument, but what counts as an argument. They create safe spaces in which participants a) develop alternative norms for public argument and what counts as evidence, b) regenerate their energy to engage in argument in the political and public spheres, c) enact identities through new idioms and styles, and d) formulate oppositional interpretations of identities, interests, and needs through the creation of new language. A dominant public tends to focus on the needs of the dominant group, and disempower those who are already marginalized. A counterpublic provides space for marginalized people to expand on their argument and paradigm.
These descriptions of publics are helpful in thinking about how we associate and how we form our arguments because expectations are different in different publics. A counterpublic will have different expectations for an argument than Habermas’s idea of the “public sphere.”
But how these things play out make a difference in how we react to each other. If we are expecting everybody to behave rationally and civilly in order to come to be best possible solutions, then does that eliminate Frederick Douglass and his scorching irony? I mean, it seems like it’s not a very good public if it doesn’t have room in it for Frederick Douglass. But it does seem to have room in it for Susan B. Anthony. But at the same time, the whole reason she was there was because she was a criminal. Does a rational public, civil sphere really have room for those who are guilty of crimes? I don’t know what Habermas has to say on that specifically. But it seems like that would make for difficult rational deliberation.
So this idea of the rational public sphere eliminates a lot of the people who I would think drive the public.
And we can’t ignore the fact that this is 100% gendered and racialized. When Obama cried, it was touching and heroic. When Hilary Clinton cried, we questioned her ability to lead. And there was a whole comedy sketch about how Obama wasn’t allowed to get angry because God forbid we let a Black man get mad about the nonsense he has to put up with. Though, it was honestly a moment of comedic and rhetorical brilliance when Obama had the “anger translator” from Key and Peele on with him at the correspondent’s dinner.
We have put this premium on “civility” and “rationality” and “calmness” which is such a falsehood. It usually gets translated to a premium on whiteness and maleness, but anybody who watched the Brett Kavanaugh hearings knows what a joke that is. But we have this concept of the ideas white Anglo-Saxon Protestant calmness, rationality, and a father figure, who is going to come in and coolly resolve things.
But in many ways, that ideal is slipping. A lot of the country right now is cultishly supporting a man who is pretty much the opposite of rational and calm. BUT, that’s a whole other podcast on the appeals of paranoia, populism, and conspiracy! It does, however, indicate that many people, from all sides, have lost faith in the idea of civil discourse. But for different reasons. One side because they are mad at injustice; the other side because they are mad somebody told them they should behave nicely.
Civility be damned, I guess?
Music in this episode is “Fearless First” by Kevin MacLeod at https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3742-fearless-first.
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