The need for validation

[Outhere]

I was talking with my 13 year old niece about her friends and she commented that one of them was so popular because she was 'so validating'. I asked what that meant in real terms and whether she could give me an example and she said she wasn't sure but there's 'just something about her'. I thought the phrase was really interesting and reflected on language and how I may have thought about the qualities my friends had at that age. Validation certainly wouldn't have come into it and I think I would have considered a good friend as someone who I could have fun with and probably someone who was loyal.

I'm curious as to when 'validation' became 'a thing'. I know it is oft used in slogans in reference to gender and I have to profess that I'm unsure what the act of validation looks like, or why it has become so important to some people. Do people really need others to validate them? If so, what does that look like, and why? When did our sense of self become so reliant on others approval? I was also thinking about other phrases which I find bizarre too, like 'speak your truth'. Again, I don't think I really understand what this means. What truth am I speaking if it's not my own?

I've been pondering whether the rise of the internet is partly why this language has evolved; in a world where a quick like or emoji supports your position, or confirms that you look good in your picture. Neither of which take any more effort than a cursory glance and action, nor require much thinking. Is that validation? And why is there such a drive to seek this? And does this feed into the distinct lack of critical thinking that appears present on many SM platforms? I see a lot of slogans and phrases that get thrown out as statements, that don't appear to mean anything but garner many likes and support.

Apologies for my ramblings, it's not entirely sex/gender related, but could easily be applied to it. I guess what I'm asking is how have we got here and why is there such a desire for other people to 'validate' others? It feels very alien to me, however that may be because I'm of 'an age' where I have a secure sense of self and couldn't imagine needing someone else to approve of this.

“Validation” only developed this meaning in the last ten years or so. First time I heard it used in that sense was in The Simpsons in an episode where Maggie is lost without school grades and says “validate me! Validate me!” And the joke is that it’s a daft as fuck idea 😂

Yet suddenly here we are in 2021 and kids are using it seriously. I keep having to explain why gay people in the 19th century were a) not “queer” and b) were not looking for “validation” from other people.

Ugh. You validate tickets, not people. Except that’s the very idea behind the term - like rubber stamping someone to say they exist and are OK.

What happened to inner selfhood? Self-esteem? Character? Developing a sense of your true self? Being true to your principles? Inner confidence? Not being swayed by others? Standing up for what you believe in? Having a sense of self-worth? All gone in the new era of “I must be approved of by others or I don’t rightly exist” validation.

I’d be proud to not need “validating” by anyone!

OP hasn't given a context to this and has acceded she has no awareness of any gender/sex element to the original scenario.

In terms of how validation or lack of it might work, I guess you could look at historic (and actually present day) contexts of young women abused in patriarchial societies. Their experiences were not validated by others. They were shouted down, told to conform, pressurised into silence and acquiescence by husbands, mother in laws and the rest of the family, and to adhere to the social norms that were prevalent for the time. They were reasoned and bullied out of their lived experience by a prevailing majority that determined that they had the right to define these womens' lives.

If only they had been resilient and stoic enough to realise that they didn't need anyone else to validate their abuse. They just needed to believe more strongly in themselves, and that would have been enough on its own, right? well done feminism.

Self esteem does not arise in isolation.

suggestions but “validation” as people are currently using it does not mean any of that. It’s an extremely shallow and needy idea of “I only mean something if other people say I’m okay”. It isn’t recognition; or political or artistic or social representation; or being meaningfully heard. It’s more like - in fact it’s exactly like - being “approved of” by an authority figure, or getting a good mark on a test. It’s the exact opposite of empowering for young women; it’s being dependent on external approval for self-worth. Which is exactly what women have been fighting against throughout the history of feminism - not needing to be “validated” as worthwhile by external social hierarchies, which assign women “good” or “approved” status dell PPI ending on how well they perform the social roles and expectations they’re judged against.

“Validation” is no friend to young women. It’s just our old friend “being desperate for approval” repackaged for the “identity” era.

*depending on how well they perform the social roles and expectations

@irresistibleoverwhelm

suggestions but “validation” as people are currently using it does not mean any of that. It’s an extremely shallow and needy idea of “I only mean something if other people say I’m okay”. It isn’t recognition; or political or artistic or social representation; or being meaningfully heard. It’s more like - in fact it’s exactly like - being “approved of” by an authority figure, or getting a good mark on a test. It’s the exact opposite of empowering for young women; it’s being dependent on external approval for self-worth. Which is exactly what women have been fighting against throughout the history of feminism - not needing to be “validated” as worthwhile by external social hierarchies, which assign women “good” or “approved” status dell PPI ending on how well they perform the social roles and expectations they’re judged against.

“Validation” is no friend to young women. It’s just our old friend “being desperate for approval” repackaged for the “identity” era.

I don't think you can easily separate the experiences out of a sense that the political context and direction doesn't happen to suit you.

Early interventions of validation of abusive experiences would have made a major impact in the the scenarios I refer to.

Equally nowadays, we have social media scenarios of majority overwhelm and shout down of other experiences. There often appears to be a 'call to arms' to invalidate and overwhelm another's expression.

In that context of 'hostile majority drown and overwhelm' I am not surprised if there are defensive shortcut attempts along the lines of 'I validate your experience' to try to quickly buoy up an expression that they realise will quickly obliterated by a call to arms.

That video looks like adult entertainment. Edgy dissonance to the music, sexual innuendo. No genitalia. Uncomfortable Weimar cabaret feel.

So how come one of them ended up in Redbridge library for a children's event with a dildo dangling?

Sorry, wrong thread. Have asked for it to be moved.

@irresistibleoverwhelm

suggestions but “validation” as people are currently using it does not mean any of that. It’s an extremely shallow and needy idea of “I only mean something if other people say I’m okay”. It isn’t recognition; or political or artistic or social representation; or being meaningfully heard. It’s more like - in fact it’s exactly like - being “approved of” by an authority figure, or getting a good mark on a test. It’s the exact opposite of empowering for young women; it’s being dependent on external approval for self-worth. Which is exactly what women have been fighting against throughout the history of feminism - not needing to be “validated” as worthwhile by external social hierarchies, which assign women “good” or “approved” status dell PPI ending on how well they perform the social roles and expectations they’re judged against.

“Validation” is no friend to young women. It’s just our old friend “being desperate for approval” repackaged for the “identity” era.

To say it shouldn't happen is to declare there is a level playing field.

There isn't a level playing field for critical analysis.

There are a load of privileged, educated people out there easily capable of drowning down others.

People who had good mental health and got an education.

People who never had to contend with questioning their sex, gender, or sexuality, never had social or economic disadvantage. Never faced harassment.

And those others who are trying to make their experiences and voices heard in this context of disadvantage. And who might just resort to saying 'I validate your experience' because in their gut they know that's what they believe in even when they don't have the words to counter the critical analysis coming their way.

Suggestions, I honestly can’t unpick what you mean there - it needs a bit less jargon and more clarity.

“Validation” is nothing to do with recognition of others’ experience. Enlightenment philosophy has been writing about that for centuries. Validation is the exact opposite. “I validate your experience” is meaningless, isn’t it? How do others “validate” someone’s experience? You either have the experience or you don’t. Others can hear and recognise it, or respect it; (or they can not do so); but what they can’t ever do is ensue it with meaning like a ticket being stamped on a bus. Experiences only being “valid” if someone else says they are is exactly what rights-based civil and social movements have fought against for centuries.

Sadly, you aren’t going to rehabilitate here what is, fundamentally, a silly social media idea that other people have to approve and “validate” you in order to be “valid”. It’s a daft bit of Valley-girl Instagram-speak phrasing, that used to be satire-worthy, and has now taken over youth culture (with apparently no sense of how silly it sounds to others); but what it definitely isn’t is a serious civil rights statement. Go and read some actual philosophy, feminism, history and political theory if you want to talk about “political context and direction”; don’t read youth social media.

Ensue? Autocorrect is on steroids tonight. Endow.

I was thinking again about that thing about "Trans women are women, Trans men are men and Non binary People are valid." Does that mean that TW and TM are NOT valid? Obviously there are two kinds of people in the world, binary and nonbinary. Personally, I do think the idea of nonbinary people being considered actual trans people does invalidate the whole concept of transgenderism because wtf is it they are trans (across) from?

Across from the binary? However it creates a new binary, binary and non-binary.

It is a weird one I don’t identify as binary or non-binary, I don’t believe in the theory that we can “identify” out of sex. However, and this is a bit like religious belief too, gender identity believers would tell me that I must identify as binary if I don’t identify as non binary. Gender Identity believers are determined to put everyone in one identity box or another which they will tell us we must have chosen in some way.

In their way of thinking there is no escaping this focus on identity and stereotypes. In my way of thinking the only thing we can’t escape is our own body, male or female and there is no need to obsess over the creation and performance of “identity” which is perhaps another word for the narcissistic false self.

It seems like narcissistic types are trying to make narcissism the new societal norm ironically enough through queer theory and by means of social media influence over young people. The real self has no need of external validation, only the false self is so fragile as to require the bolstering of constant validation from other people and feels outrage (described as having suffered “literal violence”) when someone refuses to actively supply that validation. Typically the “validation” will never be enough and will never truly satisfy as there is always the fear underneath that the people who validate the false self don’t really believe in the validation they are giving but are doing it under duress or to be polite or even as a form of manipulation. The false self remains weak. By self awareness and self acceptance people find a secure sense of true self which persists without the need for constant (yet never fully satisfying) external validation from everyone we come into contact with.

That’s a great post, @DaisiesandButtercups.

You can never get away from binaries: as soon as you try to another one inserts itself into the division…

None of it makes sense: the entire logic of “non-binary” should be the exact opposite of trans.

On validation I think it’s absolutely right that “identity” is a contemporary social fetish which has internalised a lot of different, and sometimes conflicting, inner and outer ideas of selfhood. We used to be perfectly aware that “identities” are constructed stories we tell ourselves (national identity, cultural identity, group identity and so on). But along with the unthinking return of nationalism has come a naive idea of identity as some kind of reified soul which must not be challenged but only accepted with mystic and religiose fervour and “validation”.

The adepts of identity can’t even conceptualise another way of thinking which most older people were brought up with — which is that one’s inner sense of self is not reducible to all these shifting and changing narratives, and has no need of rubber-stamping by others.

Thank you @irresistibleoverwhelm I read your posts this morning and felt that they also really got to the point particularly the difference between hearing and acknowledging someone’s traumatic experience, and providing active “validation” of someone’s self concept.

Active listening, recognition of and respect for an individual’s response to major life experiences
is not the “validation” which we are talking about here.

What we are talking about here is that expectation that everyone an individual meets, including all institutions of the state, will validate the things that an individual believes to be true about herself or himself and that if that doesn’t happen the individual’s self concept, being so fragile, will crumble precipitating an existential crisis, it will be as if the very existence of the individual is being denied and/or as if the individual had experienced some physical violence against his or her person.

There is much talk of being one’s true self. What I find unconvincing is that anyone’s true self requires validation from all people, organisations and institutions it comes into contact with lest it cease to exist and the person concerned then presumably dissolves like the witch in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy threw water over her.

Yes - the whole idea of “validation” rather undoes the idea that “identity” (especially “gender identity”), is a true unchanging eternal internal soul-self. It can’t actually be that if it requires constant external “validation” in order to exist at all.

In terms of how validation or lack of it might work, I guess you could look at historic (and actually present day) contexts of young women abused in patriarchial societies. Their experiences were not validated by others. They were shouted down, told to conform, pressurised into silence and acquiescence by husbands, mother in laws and the rest of the family, and to adhere to the social norms that were prevalent for the time. They were reasoned and bullied out of their lived experience by a prevailing majority that determined that they had the right to define these womens' lives.

This is in most cases completely irrelevant to the class of people being discussed here, in developed countries, in 2021. They are in many cases extremely privileged and no one has really ever said no to them.

And in fact your last sentence is rather ironic as many of these people are focussed on bullying women and girls to affirm their own religious mantras, and defining their lives. This maybe in and of itself something of an escape from how society treats women, for the female people in this group. "I'm not like all the other girls". I have some sympathy for that, but not for them throwing the rest of us under the bus.

What we are talking about here is that expectation that everyone an individual meets, including all institutions of the state, will validate the things that an individual believes to be true about herself or himself and that if that doesn’t happen the individual’s self concept, being so fragile, will crumble precipitating an existential crisis, it will be as if the very existence of the individual is being denied and/or as if the individual had experienced some physical violence against his or her person.

Yes, exactly. It's not in any way a healthy way to think.

Interesting thread. Next time you see your niece, OP, why not ask her what she meant? Can she give some examples? I have two nieces of this age and their take on the world is educational for me.

My transman niece has deleted me from her Facebook again because I politely disagreed with her about Maya Forstater's judgement.

She demands complete agreement with her opinions or silence. Anything else is 'invalidating' or hateful.

The connections with religion and The Crucible are interesting. When I watched the recent Chernobyl TV drama (bleak but brilliant) I was struck by the parallels with Soviet ideology. On the one hand, Soviets valued education for everyone (lots of female scientists and engineers), but that knowledge had to be practised within a strict framework of public attitude. So scientists had to balance what they "knew" from the facts in front of them (there was a fucking serious error with the design of several of their nuclear power plants) with what they could safely express (they are communist nuclear power plants so can't possibly fail, as communism cannot fail!). This was further complicated by the layers of nodding Yes Men management, all ticking off the paperwork, keeping their heads down and passing it on to the next office to be someone else's problem. Individuals had to be heroically brave to put their hands up and point out that something was wrong and needed fixing. Much easier to do what everyone else is doing and repeat a soothing mantra like Onwards Glorious Comerades! TWAW!

I agree Beowulfa lots of similarities with Soviet Communism and other totalitarian regimes. It is concerning.