A place to discuss and share events in how we communicate—both good and bad—and how they effect us individually.
Political Speech: How we interact with supporters
To kick off Amala Network, I'd like to discuss the language we use when interacting with each other in the realm of politics. This includes people within our own wing who support candidates different from those we support (Bernie Bros v Shillarys) and people who support policies we don't like.
What issues do you find with the language we use?
What issues do you find with the interactions we have?
What actions do you take when coming across someone who greatly differs from you, politically?
What improvements do you think would be beneficial in our political dialogue?




One of the biggest issues I find is making sure everyone is defining terms in the same way. Sometimes, we try to talk about something, but we're coming from completely different places, so there's no common foundation to our discussion. We've got to "define our terms" before we can get into the issues. Recent examples in my own life include:
PRIVILEGE
Definition I was using: Things society hands to you based on one or more of your identities, that you often take for granted (white privilege, straight privilege, male privilege, etc)
Definition the other person was using: A nice house, a nice car, or general wealth accumulated through hard work.
GENDER
Definition I was using: The identity in a person's brain, which may or may not relate to their sexual organs
Definition the other person was using: Biological sex (penis/testicles = male, vagina = female)
SOCIALISM
Definition I was using: Any form of government where members contribute something as individuals to benefit the group as a whole
Definition the other person was using: Communism/fascism/totalitarian state
If we're not on the same page, we can't get very far in our discussions. If I sense I'm not talking about the same thing as someone, I try to pause and figure out how we're each defining our terms.
The other benefit of asking people "When you say _, could you clarify what you mean?" is that it signals to the other person that you're interested in LISTENING, in give and take, and not just ranting at each other.
Well, and one of the problems (in my experience) when it comes to online conversations is that people will argue for hours over something and eventually get into a fight over semantics.
That's where, for sure, you need to clarify at the beginning what each person is referring to when talking about XYZ so that you're not wasting a bunch of time when people have a fundamental disagreement over what XYZ actually means.
Of course, there are plenty of conversations that still end in a semantics debate solely because one side isn't approaching it in good faith and refuses to step away when it's clear they've either run out of steam or are wrong about something.
YES. So much this. And never underestimate this part for both creating a more productive conversation and also fostering a sense of collaboration rather than antagonism:
(Also, I'm really excited about this group.)