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Thread, after yesterday's general one, on ally-ship, disability, and why behavioural science is a piece of **** even if it advocates something you support...
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If you want to know what to do individually as an abled ally to disabled people during Covid, a place to start would be pointing out how awful articles like this are:
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3021
Let me explain (so I only have to do it once)
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https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3021
Let me explain (so I only have to do it once)
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This is fairly low grade behavioural "science" - as such, in the way Dom would love, it takes its goal as a given and simply asks how best to implement it. That's very effective, but in terms of humanity really poor.
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The first reason it's bad is because it seeks a convergent rather than a divergent goal (it's over-simplistic). Here is a resource on why that is really bad for both humanity and those most at risk https://rogueinterrobang.com/2020/03/15/convergence-divergence-vision-strategy-tactics-behavioural-science-game-theory-and-coronavirus/
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The second reason it's bad is that it ignores side effects. I mean, this article LITERALLY ignores them, as in it doesn't mention negative consequences. NOT ANYWHERE. (I would be shocked it passed peer review if I didn't know the academic publishing industry)
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One of those negative side effects is to create an empathy gap towards those who can't wear face coverings by focusing on how "easy" it is for most people to do so. Here is an article about how that happens and why it means we need to be careful https://medium.com/@DanHolloway1/nudging-back-is-the-rise-of-the-nudge-creating-a-less-accessible-less-tolerant-society-and-what-79c7f387cc73
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But it's more worrying than that. The article advocates the use of peer pressure to create social norms for a behaviour that some disabled people can't perform. Let me break down why that is REALLY bad
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If this were not a pandemic we would get that this is just bad per se. We already understand how this kind of social norm pushing damages people. But many think (a senior academic said as much to me recently) "it's a pandemic" means it's OK
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"It's a pandemic" does not make it OK, because when a crisis is over it REALLY matters HOW we survived it (here is a longer piece on this https://rogueinterrobang.com/2019/10/05/holiness-utopia-disgust-imagination-disability-and-the-mechanisms-of-erasure/) It has to do with the origin stories we tell
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In short, if we survive by shaming, stigmatising, or excluding ("if you can't wear a mask, don't go out in public") disabled people (or anyone else) afterwards, we give a special, normative value to the behaviours that enabled our survival (including the shaming & exclusion)
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In other words, if saving society relies upon excluding or hating on disabled people, you need to ask yourself some serious questions about the society you want to preserve
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Peer pressure is not something neutral you can use for good or bad. Behavioural scientists are like Bilbo wanting to use the Ring for good. You can't do it. It represents the very worst of our nature. The moment you use it you have lost.
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Which leaves us with how we do proceed, because obviously we DO want everyone who can wear a covering to do so, but without anyone shaming on or excluding those who can't. Here's a start
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Storytelling is at the heart of it. We need to tell the story of why saving society matters. It's something we think of as straightforward but it's really not. It matters because we want a future that's better than the past.
And that means we have a powerful story to tell about why those in greatest need matter most, about why we need to involve and empower everybody in how we move forward. It's a story about humanity.
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In other words - the person behavioural science's peer pressure would lead someone to shame - they are the very reason our actions matter. That has to be our starting point. And it starts with allies calling out spurious tactics and their dangerous consequences
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