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What is universalization?
Simply put, it's the assumption that everyone else has had the exact same experiences as you, and that what works for you will also work for everyone else.
The far-too-prevalent belief that because Joe Blow worked hard and pulled himself up by his bootstraps is one example of this. Another example is a woman thinking another woman is faking how horrible her periods are because she doesn't spend two days doubled over in pain from cramps. It's an extremely common thing to do.
Why is this bad?
It isn't true. No one else, not even a hypothetical twin sibling, has the exact same experience. A sibling may have the most similar experience, at least for 18 years or so, but they won't react to everything the same way.
The bootstraps myth, for example, doesn't include things like Joe Blow's luck in being raised in a city with good schools, or getting scholarships for college, or being (usually) a white male. If he were Jamal Blow, assuming they both started out life poor, Jamal would be more likely to be shunted to poor schools in crime-ridden neighborhoods and have to deal with the effects of racism, like his teachers assuming he'll never make anything of himself.
(The bootstraps myth is also a lie; class mobility in the US is at an all-time low, and income inequality has been increasing for decades.)
Telling your friend who's struggling with chronic depression that one time you were sad but you thought positively and got over it actively harms that friend.
Telling your friend who has a chronic illness or disabilities that if they don't cook food from scratch every night they're a failure actively harms that friend. Even if you don't say it in so many words, praising to high heaven people who have said those words endorses those sentiments, and it hurts your friend.
When you universalize your experience, people can feel like you're judging them for not being perfect by your standards.
But I don't mean it that way! I'm just sharing with them.
Think about how you're doing it, then. If you're talking about this new recipe you tried, and how good it was, that's probably cool. Or if you're talking about how you think it'd be cool to have chickens or something, that's probably cool.
But if you're blithely, naïvely assuming that because you can/want to do X, everyone else can/wants to also X, and don't understand why people are disagreeing with you/a link you posted, there might be a problem. They might have a good point about why they personally can't X, or how shaming people who don't X, is a bad thing.
Future installments in the privilege and slow food series: classism, ableism, and explaining that pointing out that there are some seriously judgmental shaming assholes in your movement doesn't mean (like these fools assume) that the person pointing it out thinks large-scale, factory farming is good.
(A guy wrote his master's thesis in 2005 on the exclusionary rhetoric of the slow food movement. This isn't a new problem.)
Simply put, it's the assumption that everyone else has had the exact same experiences as you, and that what works for you will also work for everyone else.
The far-too-prevalent belief that because Joe Blow worked hard and pulled himself up by his bootstraps is one example of this. Another example is a woman thinking another woman is faking how horrible her periods are because she doesn't spend two days doubled over in pain from cramps. It's an extremely common thing to do.
Why is this bad?
It isn't true. No one else, not even a hypothetical twin sibling, has the exact same experience. A sibling may have the most similar experience, at least for 18 years or so, but they won't react to everything the same way.
The bootstraps myth, for example, doesn't include things like Joe Blow's luck in being raised in a city with good schools, or getting scholarships for college, or being (usually) a white male. If he were Jamal Blow, assuming they both started out life poor, Jamal would be more likely to be shunted to poor schools in crime-ridden neighborhoods and have to deal with the effects of racism, like his teachers assuming he'll never make anything of himself.
(The bootstraps myth is also a lie; class mobility in the US is at an all-time low, and income inequality has been increasing for decades.)
Telling your friend who's struggling with chronic depression that one time you were sad but you thought positively and got over it actively harms that friend.
Telling your friend who has a chronic illness or disabilities that if they don't cook food from scratch every night they're a failure actively harms that friend. Even if you don't say it in so many words, praising to high heaven people who have said those words endorses those sentiments, and it hurts your friend.
When you universalize your experience, people can feel like you're judging them for not being perfect by your standards.
But I don't mean it that way! I'm just sharing with them.
Think about how you're doing it, then. If you're talking about this new recipe you tried, and how good it was, that's probably cool. Or if you're talking about how you think it'd be cool to have chickens or something, that's probably cool.
But if you're blithely, naïvely assuming that because you can/want to do X, everyone else can/wants to also X, and don't understand why people are disagreeing with you/a link you posted, there might be a problem. They might have a good point about why they personally can't X, or how shaming people who don't X, is a bad thing.
Future installments in the privilege and slow food series: classism, ableism, and explaining that pointing out that there are some seriously judgmental shaming assholes in your movement doesn't mean (like these fools assume) that the person pointing it out thinks large-scale, factory farming is good.
(A guy wrote his master's thesis in 2005 on the exclusionary rhetoric of the slow food movement. This isn't a new problem.)
