When I was still hanging out on Twitter every single day, the beauty of that era was that one could learn all sorts of things about all sorts of things. Some of those things I filed away, mentally, for future reference, and some of these surface now and then. A recent of that I remembers reading about is ring theory, or more simply put “comfort in, dump out”.

Ring Theory, from Wikipedia.

Originally this theory was designed by a women with cancer, she did not want to comfort her friends and family, even though of course she also understood their grief and worry. I think it is an excellent model, that we should all follow. Don’t complain to a sick person that you are so worried, save those complaints for people further away from the situation (dump out) and only be kind to the sick person or someone closer to them than you (comfort in).

I recently though about to similar situations in which two friends (on separate occasions) mentioned how I was treated sexist/unfair by a third party, at events where I was not even present.

These situations were interesting since I was not really “in crisis” before the friends had made their remarks, they were in a sense causing the crisis, because I thought it was pretty heavy that people are so openly sexist or negative about me without me present! But then I was in crisis, and I was expected to also comfort my friends saying things like “well, I am sure you did your best to mitigate the situation” or “what a weird person that they’d go off to you about me!”, so it became a “comfort out” for me.

So let’s try to adopt a “defend out” mode for sexism and other injustices please. It people are sexist about non-present people, defend them “out”. And, important for this context, do not bring your knowledge in, and certainly do not do it without thinking about it! If other people are shit about me, I do not necessarily need to know! In addition to these two friends (in the span of a week days) I have heard so many of these remarks “ow such an such called you this or that, you will not believe it.” Well I will but I’d rather not know, you can shield me from that.

So I guess the ring theory for injustice should be “shield in, defend out”.