Accountability is Not a Useless Sacrifice

Jaded_Japan · 2023-10-19T01:01:07+00:00

Since each and every one of us has been in the position of being harmed, of being the harmer, and of witnessing harm, we already have the ability to recognize multiple sides of a conflict.

Perhaps it's the perspective of a chronic navel-gazer, but this seems wildly optimistic. I have absolutely been in situations where I was being abused but felt like I was the one in the wrong; I've done substantial harm (or at least, done things with the potential for harm) which make my skin crawl now but which I utterly failed to recognize at the time. I also think we're all familiar with the statistics on demographic groups such as evangelical Christians who, despite wielding immense social power as a block and being the defacto sole beneficiaries of massive legal privilege, nevertheless report feelings of being beset by persecution from all sides.

All this is to say that while we have undoubtedly been in the positions outlined, the subjective experience of these positions can be unintuitive or even counterintuitive--but not necessarily consistently so. So it does not follow that experiencing these positions empowers us with the ability to recognize them, on an individual or social level.

There's another reservation I have about this principle. I've run across several instances of groups practicing radical accountability, and...I mean, it might be a coincidence of sampling, but they were all cults. Not comparatively chill cults, either. The formalized act of airing grievances or confessing sins in a public way seems...not to have the positive social effects that might seem like logical results of these practices on a theory level.

Finally, I think that the article's example, of pediatrics and genital mutilation, is a great example of the wrong-headedness of this approach. I am a resentful victim of circumcision and just had a challenging conversation with my wife about why our son (due in the next few months) will not be.

But like...the idea of the AAP being A) the problem or B) being able to provide the solution is just baffling. This is a cultural problem that doctors are caught up in as members of culture. It's also not in the top ten worst things on which doctors have historically been mistaken, and it's not in the top ten worst ways society screws men over. The fact that I cannot be made whole goes without saying, but I don't think it's worth bankrupting the people doing childhood leukemia research in the futile attempt.

Striving to be better in the future (so, a unified position on genital modifications) is, to my mind, the gold standard of what we can hope for in situations like this. Demanding more than that is an impulse toward vengeance, not progress.

Low_Rich_5436 · 2023-10-21T06:18:26+00:00

Good message, terrible delivery and application. Not only is it barely legible, but the author fails to either give a clear view of what they mean by "radical accountability" nor to substantiate through adequate examples, nor to make their points about why it's good.

As an other commenter pointed out, cults love public déclamations of sin, and the hollier than thou love making demonstration of their "accountability" ironically to flatter themselves. The one example given in the article falls into that second category. It's not about a professor realizing the anger of the boy being justified and going into a journey of self-critique, it's about her managing to "convert" him by giving him some ground. That's a rethorical method of persuasion, not actual self accountability.

The idea isn't even that novel. It has a thousand years old name: stoicism. She could have tapped into the longest philosophical thought current in the world for a clear and rich understanding of what "accountability" means, but instead uses exclusively openly feminist sources. The writers of those can only be ignorant or manipulative to present this idea as novel, but either way lack the necessary condition for discussing accountability: humility.

This is just virtue signaling.

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