TW: brief discussion of Wayne Couzens and violence against women

This thought process started, as many of my thoughts do, with feminism. This week, Wayne Couzens was convicted of horrific murder, and so the issue of violence against women was once more prominent in my corner of Twitter. This Twitter corner was full of women expressing anger and telling their own stories of violence and fear, and acknowledging the anger and stories of others. And as can be expected, there were also some men (I only saw men) who arrived to provide the traditional ‘well, actually…’

I’ve been thinking about the nature of opinions for some time; see, for example, that you only get up to 14 areas of expertise and how some people play devil’s advocate because they believe it’s a signifier of education.

I’d like to add another thought, which is that there are two types of opinions: those that expand and add, and those that constrict and reduce. To expand and add is to contribute your opinion, experience, thoughts or examples. To constrict and reduce is to criticize the opinion, experience, thoughts or examples of others.

And to draw all these articles of mine together into one coherent thought, it seems that, when I suggested you’re only allowed to have opinions in 14 areas, what I meant was that these are the only areas you’re allowed to have constrictive, reductive opinions about. Because, for those up to 14 areas, you’re a specialist. You have a lot of knowledge of this area: of key facts, of common areas of discourse. Your knowledge goes beyond first base.

If you want to discuss something outside your 14 areas of expertise, you can, but only in a way that adds. Highly emotionally-literate people could perhaps politely question, with full acknowledgement of their ignorance. (See the discussion threads at the amazing Captain Awkward for an example of how respectfully this can be done.)

The thing is, very few problems respond to a first base solution. To take violence against women as an example, experts have been thinking about and discussing this for years. There’s virtually no way that someone new to the field could come up with something that hasn’t been thought of before, and no way at all that they can do it in response to and within the character limit of a tweet. And to assume you can is infuriating and a huge cause of emotional labour on the internet.

So, please do discuss topics, but add rather than subtract. And please do educate yourself, but not at the cost of the time of others.