About the baffling logic of dignity
But it's not faaaiiiiiirrrr
What we think of as the neurodivergence spectrum is really more of a radar chart. So even when you get your official paperwork, you quickly find that there are some ‘common’ traits that you strongly relate to and others that seem as unfamiliar as any neurotypical train of thought.
For example, rigid black and white thinking doesn’t ring that many bells with me. It’s not that I don’t see a handful of things in starkly moral terms (I think even neurotypical people do) but I do spend a lot of time muddying things up into shades of off-white. And I actively enjoy holding two things to be true at the same time. This particularly discomfits an auDHD friend of mine who likes everything neatly tucked in a labelled drawer.
Two traits that do swing through me like a clapper though, clanging against the sides of my brain, are rejection sensitivity and a deep emotional reaction to unfairness. Together, these have led me to the conclusion that dignity is a largely unhelpful concept that mostly protects the feelings of the wrong—and not the wronged.
After all, what’s the point of being dignified? It’s supposed to help you preserve something about yourself—but what? It’s apparently good to project a performance of being unflappable—but why?
Recently I’ve seen this play out with a few friends who have been treated badly by people they loved. One suffered an outrageous betrayal, and then felt bad that the person who shoved the knife in got to see that she was scarred by it. Another has a masterfully avoidant pal—real love kernels territory, but friendship—and decided to leave the ball in his court to be more responsive. Fair. Then, when she cracked and got in touch because she suffered a shock and felt the need to create connection, she instantly felt stupid.
It’s not that I don’t understand the reaction; on the contrary, I’ve been in their shoes a hundred times, a thousand. I look back on the relationship I had before my marriage as one of the most humiliating clusterfucks of all time, in part because I didn’t hide my feelings or devastation for any of it. I had absolutely no dignity. I’ve more recently picked up a vaguely avoidant pal of my own, and thanks to the miracle of RSD my brain occasionally gives me kicking that’s vastly disproportionate to any actual depth of feeling I have for that person. Now, I recognise that the outsize nature of my reactions is my problem alone; but it is still triggered by something that would be annoying even if I had the capacity to brush it off in seconds. And my only recourse is to maintain a... dignified silence.
Bah.
Dignity does nothing to make the hurt party feel less hurt. All it does it shield people from the consequences of how they behave. It doesn’t matter whether they’re an actually bad person doing bad things or just someone who operates in a very different way than you do; neither should be immune from feedback. It’s completely fair to be presented with someone else’s feelings and conclude that it’s a them problem—but it doesn’t seem fair to remain oblivious those feelings and never interrogate your own involvement in them. And yet if someone speaks up and says “hey, the way you’re acting doesn’t feel good to me”, then that automatically makes them sad, desperate, pathetic. Why is expressing their feelings seen as having less self-respect?
It makes no sense to me. It needles at my oversensitive injustice sensors. Because it feels like the person popping their pogo stick on a landmine and then bouncing away while I take the blast gets to maintain a state of perpetual plausible deniability. So the only form of control left is standing there and trying not to look like I’m bleeding out, because it’s terribly gauche to have an open wound.
The case for dignity seems to be “at least you got to look like you were coping”. Which doesn’t feel like a very impressive consolation prize. Does it really make me look stronger to pretend I’m not bothered by a thing that’s bothersome? What, exactly, is the virtue of looking stronger anyway?
“You won’t give them the satisfaction of knowing you were hurt.” This could be a decent argument if you’re dealing with someone who’s just trying to get a rise out of you. But most people—even people who do really awful things—don’t necessarily do them out of maliciousness. In those cases they won’t actually get any satisfaction out of seeing you hurt. If they decide that yes, they actually should have done things differently, what they’ll actually feel is shame—in other words, the emotion that reveals the gap between their principles and their behaviour. While guilt is frequently pointless, shame has a purpose. Feeling it reminds us to do better next time.
Of course, it doesn’t matter if we all recognise how vastly illogical it is to ask people not to feel hurt publicly. Knowing it’s grossly unfair didn’t make 25yo me feel any better about wearing her battered heart on her sleeve and I Will Survive will still resonate in 100 years (I can’t with disco beats—they hurt my brain—but the Cake cover is a gem). There’s probably some evolutionary theory behind why we think it’s so important to show how impervious we are to being rejected or discounted. I just can’t help hating that it also lends cover to people who blast through life like Bullet Bill. I guess that’s why they call it a power up.
This is a super interesting topic, and ties into something I often think about, which is how we take the same word, or the same definition, to cover different things.
Like I do believe there is some value or worth in dignity. But I do not think we should let people hurt us and suffer in silence for the sake of appearances. The whole appearances thing is just gross to me in general, and silly, and I could not care less about it.
My mom fought cancer for 3 years and ultimately lost, at the pretty young age of 66. Her battle was an absolute vision of dignity. Observing her from the outside you would think cancer was a mild annoyance at worst. When she shaved her curly hair she sent me a series of silly photos with progressively more and more shawls, scarves and handkerchiefs piled on top of her head, saying 'from now on I'm going out like this.' I laughed so much at those photos.
That's the sort of dignity I admire. It's a show of internal strength and grit in the face of horrible circumstances we cannot change. When I look at the way the Palestinian people are facing everything that's happening to them for almost a year now I see that same grit and dignity. Staying yourself no matter how the world treats you. Finding some inner core to hold on to.
I don't blame for a second those people who don't manage to find that strength. We can't all be strong.
I also don't ever think our 'dignity' should protect the wrong-doers by never calling them out. I think you can absolutely call someone out in a dignified way. It's a little like the question of having boundaries, right? My boundaries are not me telling you how you have to treat me - I don't have power over how you treat me. My boundaries are me telling you what I am going to do if you continue to treat me in a way I do not accept. The avoidant friends one is a good one. If you don't want to talk to me as much as I want to talk to you, I can either try to enforce some equality and play waiting games until you notice I'm missing, or I can take on the role of 'the person who calls more often' and just decide that's how this relationship works. I have honestly done both in life depending on how the other side was positioning themselves and I do think both have value.