Stop Fixing Problems

I read the book “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” long ago. There’s one chapter or so in the book that talks about how women talk about problems and how men try to “fix” them immediately, and how, often, it is not a solution that’s needed, but just space to talk.

Many feminists openly say “I don’t want you to respond, just listen” in a similar sense. When people are talking about a problem, it is easy for some people to respond with “Hey, have you tried …?”, “Oh, you know what you should do?”, “This is just a problem of ….” and so on.

While this can be seen as a trend of mansplaining, this instant “fix” responses can be seen in other contexts too.

One that I often see is within academic spaces. When people who have been working on some problem for years to decades share a challenge (or even just talk about their work), I’ve seen them getting responses like:

• “Hey, I know this person who has done similar work, have you seen their work, maybe you can learn from them. Should I put you in touch?”
• “Hey, there was this fantastic paper I read about this, are you aware of it?”
• “Here’s my paper from 10 years ago that talks about this issue”
• “You should write about this”

It is difficult to problematize these instant fixes, yet I’ll try to do so.

The problems with these instant fix responses are:

1. It ignores the work they’ve already put in and the experience they have already gained.
2. It ignores the difficulty and complexity of the problem and how it takes hard, committed work to solve.

Patronization through unsolicited wisdom sharing

This maybe easier to contextualize. The experience people have is overlooked in all kinds of situations.

Recently I attended a meeting of health activists where someone spent a whole day teaching (literally teaching) the activists what right to health means!

Workshop facilitators ignore participant experience.

Doctors ignore patient experience.

Researchers ignore experience of those being studied.

Men ignore women’s experience.

Seniors ignore juniors’ experience.

Employers ignore employee experience.

And so on…

A lot of human beings operate from a sense of hierarchy and self-centeredness when it comes to knowledge. They see existing only their own knowledge (however limited it maybe), assume that others lack it (especially when they are lower in hierarchy in some way or the other) and try to share wisdom.

Disrespecting the struggle

A lot of problems are hard. Hard problems are a struggle to solve. When people are struggling through such problems what they need is solidarity. And offering them the loose end of a random thread is not solidarity.

If you want to get down to business and struggle together, please do! But if all you intend to do is a 30 second “fix” response, then you are being incredibly disrespectful of the process.

What you could probably do instead

Do what’s needed. Sometimes people need empathy, sometimes validation, sometimes understanding, sometimes insights, sometimes help, sometimes solutions, sometimes fixes, sometimes just a shoulder. If there’s space to, ask people what they need. Operate through a relationship. And do what’s the best. If possible.