What is ‘a difficult conversation’?
Gina Martin, “No Offence, But …”: How to have difficult conversations for meaningful change, Bantam / Transworld Publishers (Penguin / Random House), London, 2023, pp 337.
Katarzyna Fleming and Fufy Demissie, editors, Nurturing ‘Difficult Conversations’ in Education: Empowerment, agency and social justice in the UK, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2024, pp xxiii and 249.
Reviewed by Mike Makin-Waite
It’s perhaps a tricky thing for a reviewer to say and, perhaps, for some authors and publishers to hear – but many of the books and ‘how to’ guides about ‘having difficult conversations’ are not very good.
There are also some books (good and bad) which are marketed as being about how to have difficult conversations – but are actually about no such thing.
One of the best of these is “No Offence, But …” by Gina Martin, subtitled How to have difficult conversations for meaningful change.
What the book actually does is to set out the arguments that Martin thinks will be effective in persuading people of her position on a range of issues. It is a confidence-building ‘how to’ manual for activists, packed with suggestions on the best ways to assertively promote the points that she thinks will cause other people to reconsider views which she finds disagreeable.
Martin’s a well-known campaigner for gender equality, best known for leading the campaign which changed the law in England and Wales so as to establish the Voyeurism Act, making upskirting a specific sexual offence.
Her writing – and that of a range of contributors to this book – is clear and accessible. It provides a guide to arguing particular political positions, and advice on how to respond to the counter-arguments which might be made on issues from misogyny and racism to climate change and immigration.
There is, however, little evidence of curiosity on the part of Martin and her collaborators about why opponents of their views often hold those opposing views sincerely. Nor does the book communicate any sense of how registering opposing views about the issues covered in the book has been unsettling for the contributors – other than in terms of saying that those opposing views are reactionary and hurtful.
Martin states that “No Offence, But …” is not ‘about shutting down anyone and everyone with whom you disagree’ and talks about the importance of ‘unravelling and understanding the things they – or we – say that are harmful, distracting or untrue’. But the pattern of every chapter is to explain what to say if someone asserts ‘x’, ‘y’ or ‘z’ that you disagree with, concluding with ‘prompts for discussion’ and ‘information to remember’ which are clearly intended as position summaries and confirmations. On this reviewer’s reading, consideration of the interests of people who hold opposing views is usually only offered where Martin is suggesting to readers who agree with her how they might effectively ‘land’ their points, e.g., if a climate change denier enjoys skiing holidays, they should be told that rising global temperatures will melt the slopes.
Martin is alert to the psychological harm caused by oppressive social structures and behaviour – and the descriptions of how these operate make her book a useful read – but readers should not look here for insights into the concerns and complex emotional needs and defences of people who are ostensibly concerned about ‘Islam oppressing women’ but in fact are using statements of support for women’s’ rights as a first step in asserting Islamophobic prejudices, or (an entirely different category of argument) health professionals who worry about the effects of some permissive ‘body positive’ attitudes. Nor are the arguments of those who would oppose Martin and her collaborators on such issues as trans rights or immigration set out as they would present them.
Overall, the rhythm of the text takes the form of ‘if someone argues this point, here is how you should counter them’. Martin’s conception of a difficult conversation is one in which you vigorously promote your own pre-existing view, and need to handle the risk that others will state their disagreement with you, perhaps in abusive terms.
It is not only some progressive liberals who use the term in this way. In an October 2024 fringe meeting hosted by The Spectator, Kemi Badenoch asserted (alongside her judgements that ten per cent of civil servants are ‘very bad’, and that ‘too many people are living off the government’), that ‘I’m prepared to have difficult conversations now, and I don’t care what people say’. As she built support for her campaign to become leader of the Conservative Party, it was reported that ‘she does not choose to have a fight. But if she has to have a fight, she is willing to do that. And she makes sure she wins’. Her ‘I don’t care’ conception of ‘a difficult conversation’ is even narrower than Martin’s.
In my view, the term is more helpfully used to describe an exchange which is not just difficult for the person you are having the conversation with: a real ‘difficult conversation’ is difficult for you, too, and not simply because you are interacting with a person or a group of people who may see things otherwise.
Conversations which I feel are properly categorised as ‘difficult’ are those concerned with sensitive issues and / or troubled questions on which the participants may hold (sharply) divergent views and (radically contrasting) understandings: they involve exploration and listening, so that each participant learns about the feelings, interests and needs of the other.
These conversations can create space for each participant to reflect on their own understandings and emotional attachments in relation to the issues: the resulting potential gains are what redeems the ‘difficulty’. Such sharing is a world away from what the Danish novelist and scientist Jens Peter Jacobsen described as each person in turn ‘making a speech in which problems are supposedly debated but are actually just postulated as solved’.
The pieces collected by Katarzyna Fleming and Fufy Demissie will not achieve as wide a readership as Martin’s book: they tend towards an academic tone and structure, and are mainly concerned with teachers’ professional practice.
Nevertheless, Nurturing ‘Difficult Conversations’ in Education is full of insights and suggestions which it would be good to see applied more widely. As Fleming and Demissie state, ‘“difficult conversations” can provide an affective space where transformation in thinking and practice can take place’. In his foreword, Joshua Fortenzer characterises ‘difficult conversations’ as ‘personally meaningful’ and ‘emotionally demanding’, allowing ‘us to interact and share in our authentic vulnerability’. He notes that even gentle, everyday, conversations ‘involve risk: the risk of being misunderstood, of being shunned or shamed, of failing to understand or to be understood – in short, of exposure’.
The distance between this book and Badenoch’s conception and wider political positions is well-illustrated by a point in the introductory chapter: ‘there is an increasing awareness of the impact of structural racism and social inequalities on individuals’ lives … it seems inevitable, therefore, that challenging or difficult conversations are vital to begin the process of transformation towards a more equal and just society’. Quoting Sara K. Ahmed, the editors show how ‘learning how to handle “difficult conversations” in a constructive manner takes time, and effort, and often requires us to “sit in the uncomfortable” with “no quick fixes for long-term progress”’.
Demisse’s chapter on her work to promote discussions on race and inequality in higher education settings using a ‘Community of Philosophical Inquiry’ approach includes many stimulating insights, noting for example that the ‘well-established … notion of a “safe space” is a contested concept’, and quoting Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens who have warned that “safe spaces” can “conflate safety with comfort”’ and have questioned ‘whether it is reasonable to expect safety in dialogues around social justice’.
Sean Henry’s chapter on ‘Free Speech, Conversation and the “Difficulty” of Academic Freedom’ quickly establishes its advantages over any number of simplistic diatribes about ‘cancel culture’ when it notes that ‘an individualistic framing of academic freedom fails to account for our shared relationships with one another’. Henry’s chapter, like most of the others, explores the detail of a particular situation: such concrete attention to specific contexts is one of the many valuable qualities of the book. Henry describes how a male university student he was teaching argued that sexism is no longer a structural problem in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and later (as well as making sexist comments about a female student in a ‘private social media group chat’) provocatively proposed writing a paper on misandry in education. Henry’s consideration of the issues involved in this case, and his thoughtful observations on the ways he responded and handled the situation (which he disarmingly characterises as ‘inadequate’) is itself an illustration of how useful learning can result from reflecting on challenging experiences. Henry proposes that we might usefully affirm ‘an alternative vision of academic freedom, a freedom actualised less through a rugged, competitive, individualism (where some “win” and others “lose”) and more through an attunement to our collective responsibilities, where we transform what is desired by us into what is desirable for others’.
Around half the chapters in Nurturing ‘Difficult Conversations’ in Education centre on situations where the authors have, for example, worked with people with ‘profound intellectual and multiple disabilities’, or have handled the learning needs of autistic young people. Amongst other achievements, these chapters critique the ‘deficit model’ which focuses on learners’ supposedly ‘negative’ traits; illustrate how effective communication sometimes requires ‘the interlocutors to enter a liminal space where their entrenched ways of being might need to be temporarily abandoned in place of a sense of uncertainty or discomfort’; and explore techniques for having worthwhile conversations with people who ‘do not use mouth words and do not have access to standardised forms of communication’, so that ‘the barriers faced by people seeking to have these conversations can be addressed’. These chapters confirm a truth that is too little understood in education, and in society as a whole: the practices which effective and respectful teachers and carers use with people with disabilities in so-called ‘special’ situations are based on principles and values which should not be the exception, but which should instead be taken as exemplary more generally. To take one example, Lorna Hughes’ description of ‘enriching’ partnerships between Special Education Needs Coordinators and the parents and carers of children they work with as ‘open, honest and transparent’ is an account of ‘improved ways of working’ which should be celebrated as good practice in all areas of education, with lessons and applicability far beyond the SEND system.
Published October 2024.
Illustration from package of training materials used by Process North.