Thread by @JuliusGoat

Both Sides, Part 3: License

"Narcissists demand permission. They usually get it.

'Both sides' is an effective permission delivery system for narcissists—and a preferred one."

getrevue.co/profile/julius…

To define in 3 rules what I mean when I say "license":

1. An idea has “license” if it is so commonly accepted that expressing it, or any other ideas or activities premised in it, carries no expectation of reputational damage or social penalty—consequences we could call reproach.

So, here’s a rather important question: who bestows license?
Here’s a rather important answer: The people who hold some measure of control over another person’s reputations, relationships, and careers.

If you express an idea through word or deed, and the people with control over your reputation, relationship and career enforce no reputational damage or social penalty, then you have received license from them.

If they reproach you with reputational damage or social penalty, then they don’t.

Likewise, by the same mechanism, you give them license.

This happens all the time. It’s normal.

You don’t have license to squat on the dining room table at Thanksgiving dinner and take a shit in the stuffing—nor should you. The idea "I can take a shit anywhere I want" is does not have widespread popular license, nor should it.

2. “License” determines who has to take care in word and deed, and about what sorts of things. It’s how social structures communicate values. It’s how society communicates what matters, and who; what is acceptable and what is not.

License is how society works—when it works.

Or, if society gives license to harmful lies, it’s how society fails.

From this we might correctly deduce that it's important not to give license to lies.

3. “License” is as much about who within society is permitted to bestow license—that is, who is permitted to participate in communicating societal values—as it is about the values themselves.

You can’t give or receive license if you don’t exist.

So it’s important, if you are somebody who wants to not care about another person while staying Beyond Reproach, to establish that person as someone who doesn’t exist.

If we only revoke bigotry’s license to the extent that it no longer disrupts our own lives and our own comfort, then we’ve only made bigotry retreat a polite distance, and taught it the use of ranged weapons.

And that is, unfortunately, what so many of us with the most power to bestow license have done.

We’ve stayed comfortable and "reasonable." We’ve avoided reproach from those who deserve reproach.

So the struggle to exist, for people who are not me, continues to this very day.

You know who understands this dynamic really well, and has in the past expressed it with power and insight?

As a result, Dave Chappelle became somebody who can speak with extraordinary power and credibility to issues of bigotry and systemic injustice.

And also because of that:

If you were an anti-trans bigot who wanted to receive license to believe trans people don’t exist, I can think of few people with a more damaging ability to bestow it upon you than Dave Chappelle.

And, in four consecutive specials, he did just that.

Which deserves reproach.