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Whoever coined the phrase "it's not my job to educate you" is top of my rogues gallery. If you want democracy to succeed, it is literally your job to educate everyone you can about the things you are passionate about and the changes you wish to see. I get where it came from, I understand the feeling, but it's the worst possible phrase in the context of trying to make a political change.
“It’s not my job to educate you” led to Prager University
It really didn't. Maybe 10 people said it because they were being harassed by concern trolls, while the rest of us continued to engage in conversation with people who seemed like they might genuinely be confused.
Like literally just do a web search for your question and you will be on better footing when you ask it.
Like I felt offended the first time I heard "my culture is not a costume" but I actually did some reading / thinking before I started bothering people with questions like what??? or even banditos?? or what about mummies?
I feel like a lot of progressive vocabulary words get used outside the contexts where they apply.
"It's not my job to educate you" is a fair and valid thing to say when someone demands you defend the validity of your identity while you're just trying to live your life. It's unreasonable to expect every trans person to explain the history and complexity of gender to every chud who gives them shit.
It is, however, the opposite of activism and super unhelpful for an activist to say while ostensibly trying to build a movement.
Similarly, "mansplaining" is not a blanket term for any man explaining anything, listening to a friend vent is not "emotional labor", and participating in cultures other than the one you grew up in is not "cultural appropriation". All real terms that point at real problems, all sometimes used outside the contexts in which they are helpful.
Gaslighting is another often misused term. It's not just a blanket term for lying, it is a specific type of lie.
And the thing to remember most is that the side we need to defeat doesn't care about any of these terms.
If you instead choose to level these "academic" arguments at allies because they're more likely to address your concerns and engage like a human being, you are making a mistake. A human mistake, but a huge mistake nonetheless.
It's so easy when you're charged up emotionally and scared and also prepared to exercise your knowledge and express your feelings, you might not know what to do with all that energy other than try to rip apart someone adjacent to you because it's easier than feeling like you're beating your head against a wall arguing with the actual mindless blocks of concrete who make up the conservative right.
Sure, I personally don't use "academic" terms against other people. It does make the words lose meaning, which is why I use context and followup questions to really understand if the distinction is important.
I think it's ok to bemoan the semantic drift of useful terms, away from the people trying to simply communicate with me. (No point in chastising.)
I'm not sure where you are getting where I am "ripping apart someone adjacent to me."
In this instance, like most comments here, my comments are directed generally to readers, exactly like yours was. You're obviously not attacking anyone and I didn't suggest you were, which is why I started my comment with "and."
Thanks for the clarification! Sorry, I misunderstood.
Yeah I mean I can understand not everyone wants to be an educator, especially of more ignorant people but when people say this I do wonder why they are even talking. I usually speak to people because I am interested in learning from them or because they’re interested in learning from me. This is the purpose of human communication. If you aren’t interested then the obvious solution is to stay silent.
When out distributing political flyers people will often come up to me pretending to want a conversation and learn something about my/our points, but just talk over me all the time. Their purpose is not to listen, or to learn, or to question, but just to feel like they matter.
Had a guy recently tell me about how he is a mechanic and that he did his own study where he found out that combustion engines do not, in fact, let out any CO2. He started it all with "give me 3 reasons to vote for you" to put me on the spot, then immediately was like "ok, I have 3 not to do it."
There is no conversation with people like that, I've tried it often. Now I just wish them a nice day and go away as it's not my job to waste time trying go educate them talking against an idiot wall.
I first started seeing this on reddit (who knows where it actually came from though) which I believe schools its users to want to say SOMETHING, ANYTHING for attention and engagement. I agreed with or rather understood its meaning at one point but this phrase along with has "let me Google that for you" has fostered an abysmal internet culture. I think a much more servicable and sympathetic version of what this phrase was once trying to say, when said in good faith, should be "its not my responsibility to engage with this post right now", which isn't spoken aloud but is applicable to everyone online, and which I find myself thinking more and more when a comment makes me groan. The problem is how driven we all are to say SOMETHING, ANYTHING for attention amd engagement. I think it was a valuable realization at the time that felt so good to fire off uncritically on Twitter that people really hurt themselves, others, and the internet's culture when they did.
You need to educate the right people at the right times, more than anything. I swear both this original message and most of the replies to it, like this one, speak of wild levels of inexperience in how to socialize and make people unite with you.
If you can choose between spending your energy addressing the stupid, ill-informed ideas posted by liberal Americans on Facebook or Reddit and withstanding a little public trolling, or spending your energy "educating" a vocal, prominent leftist who makes content about something they're doing wrong or some word they're misusing or some marginalized group they might be offending, can you guess what's going to help the cause more?
(The really sad part here is that some people are reading this trying to weigh both options.)
It's not exactly the sentiment I have a problem with. There are definitely people who aren't worth engaging with and there's a time to walk away, as someone else in this thread pointed out they do. Responding in a kind of snarky, condescending tone rather than just walking away does not help you.
Think about an online thread where this happens: Someone is making an argument, and a troll appears. They engage for a bit, but realize they aren't going to make any progress. Walking away let's the thread die, and people who stumble upon it in the future will likely recognize the troll for what they are and consider the argument. Responding with condescension instead makes the person appear to only be arguing for self-aggrandizement rather than to actually help or improve anything, and it can poison the argument they made before. It plays right into the troll's hands.