The way I see a lot of social justice stuff playing out is analogous to what would happen if you continually taunted a dog and finally it started barking at you, and then you blame the mean dog for barking*.
Yes, it would be nice if everyone always had a calm, polite, and civil tone and patiently continued to explain to you why you’re wrong. But unfortunately few people have that sort of emotional resilience. Yeah, I’m sure it doesn’t feel very nice when someone snaps at you. But consider that it felt even less nice for them when you kept saying whatever bigoted crap you were probably saying, when you were talking over them about THEIR own experience, when you were treating their daily struggles as some interesting intellectual exercise for you to logic your way out of.
People ARE responsible for their reactions, but the apparent lack of proportionality of someone’s reaction (I say “apparent” on purpose here) does not retroactively justify whatever you said to elicit that reaction. If you call me an idiot and I fly into a rage and punch you, my reaction was inappropriate and unfair, but that doesn’t mean it was somehow okay for you to call me an idiot. It does not mean that in lieu of discussing what you said to me, we should ONLY discuss the fact that I punched you.
*Yes, humans are not dogs, but there’s not as huge of a difference between humans and other animals as we like to imagine. Anyway, Imperfect Analogy is Imperfect.
