What comes to mind when you hear the word “activist”?
For some, it’s a heavily charged term. The first picture that springs to mind when I hear it is that of a militant, closed-minded fanatic; completely out of touch with the mainstream, wrapped up in his or her own activities; doing more to alienate people than to create change.
I know this is a wildly unfair description. I know that many people who consider themselves activists are nothing like this stereotypical depiction.
In a positive light, ‘activism’ could be defined as any activity that bucks the status quo to promote change. You could be an activist by running a socially responsible business, by promoting unusual ideas in almost any field, by fostering discussion and debate about controversial issues. In short, ‘activist’ could be considered almost synonymous with ‘do gooder’.
And yet, I suspect that in most peoples’ minds, it’s not.
For me, the faintly disatasteful association persists. I witnessed a lot of pointless activity under the banner of ‘activism’ in my university days in our nation’s capital. There was almost always some sort of demonstration going on in front of the Parliament buildings, and no one paid them any attention. I saw many flyers for protest marches that read more like ads for keggers than for serious efforts at change.
I’ve heard that there are even areas (such as environmentalism) where serious changemakers actively avoid being labelled ‘activists’, because it decreases their chances of being taken seriously. Apparently, it also counts against them in efforts to collaborate with government and industry: fields where the term “environmental activist” is anathema.
If this visceral negative reaction to the concept of ‘activism’ is fairly common, then is it possible that it’s time to retire the term?
If, however, the word still has value in our do-gooding, what can (or should) we do about this stigma surrounding it?
Whenever labels are used to describe people caution is advised. I believe that naming our distaste is important, if even just to ourselves, or with courage to others as you have done. Honestly naming our distaste while still being willing and humble enough to admit that our experience may be valid they are far from the complete story. The dialogue that is desired to grow our awareness is often derailed if the conversation begins with our opinion rather than an open inquiry.
I understand the compulsion to stop using a word because it has acquired a negative connotation in some circles, but I’d caution against it. The reason is that it’s not the word that is the problem so much as the behavior, which will not change with a name change. Those who are more mainstream may try to choose a different label for themselves, but there is nothing stopping others who are involved things they don’t support from eventually appropriating the label, thereby repeating the problem. Do we change the terms we use periodically, constantly trying to outrun the negative associations that people may develop by not grasping the nuances within our community? In the name of clear messaging, I think it’s best to hold our ground, be consistent about what each of us does/does not do. Otherwise we are constantly asking people outside of our circles to hit a moving target.
More problematic perhaps, is that those who seek to undermine the validity of any challenge to the status quo will often clump the whole range of dissenting voices into one category and label it “activism”. Sometimes it’s a tactic to play off of people’s knee-jerk negative reaction, but sometimes it’s simply because of the aforementioned lack of understanding regarding the diversity within the dissenter community. This too will not be solved by changing the label, because the same tactic can and will be used for any term. In the environmental field, this has played out over and over as new terms come and go, eventually losing their intended meaning, and sometimes taking on whole new, antithetical meanings. The words conservation, sustainable, and green come to mind. In Canada, there has been a concerted effort at the level of the federal government to make the word “environmentalist” synonymous with “terrorist”. So can we no longer self-identify as environmentalists? I think people get burned out on learning new terms. And for those who challenge the status quo in any way to react to being mislabeled by constantly trying to redefine themselves in a way that is palatable to their detractors seems to me like a waste of precious energy. Again, I think it’s better to be clear about what we each do/do not do, resist the urge to play into accusations based on inflammatory tactics, and which tend to polarize us within the community of dissenters, and consistently require that our detractors formulate more informed and nuanced critiques of us based on what we actually do, rather than what their first gut reaction says.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Michelle! You’re right about names being a moving target – if we changed the word for “terrible” to “splendiferous”, pretty soon “splendiferous” would just come to mean “terrible” anyway. Euphemisms and doublespeak don’t change meaning, and they wear people out.
You’re also right about having more informed and nuanced conversations about what we all do. Quick labels and elevator speeches have their uses, but can be counter productive when speaking to people who are really involved in or affected by our work. A superficial understanding of what we are each trying to do does not advance collaboration, progress, or constructive criticism. We’ve got to go deeper, seek more understanding, avoid jargon, and pursue clarity.
Well, said…….