When faced with a conflict humans tend to fight, freeze, or run away.  

I am a freezer. This means I do not engage unless I have to.  On good days I stand my ground.  On bad ones I am conflict avoidant.  In my mind this is because most conflicts are over nonsense and the prizes are stupid.  I don't want to play.  Nevertheless engagement with nonsense is just about the only way to make it go away.  I applaud those with the fighter's instinct who engage.  Like my friend who is a fighter.  He loves to debate.  We met in county jail back in 2014 and have been each other's thought-exercise partners ever since.  In jail we debated religion, science, and politics over sips of lukewarm shower water coffee with FireBalls tucked under our lips.  Today we continue from America to France by email.

Recently a friend emailed asking for suggestions on how to respond to a spicy situation he as a fighter had found himself in.  He had just re-enrolled from France to the University of Colorado Boulder in order to complete his Masters Degree that he had begun there before prison.  This gave him access to a .edu email address for Boulder which has given him access to both academic journals and academic minds, the latter of which he is lively debating.  The topic that got him into hot water: "microaggressions."   You can read parts one and two here in his diaries.  

In part two my friend does an excellent job breaking the magic spell "microaggression" by comparing it to conversational friction.  He writes,

"As I see it, what is labeled “microaggression” is often nothing more than the side-effects of free speech and debate. Nothing more and nothing less. It’s the inevitable heat produced by the friction of conversational gears doing some work, ideally with the goal of producing light."  

He faced conversational friction of his own when an angry respondent brought up my friend's criminal history as if to deadname him.  This is what one of the respondents wrote to him:

Was this a micro or macro aggression?

https://www.publicpolicerecord.com/missouri/doc-prisoner/redacted_0000000

That is a link to my friend's criminal record.  This website has a disclaimer:

My friend said he was thinking of (or at least toying with the idea of) filing a formal complaint with the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance at Boulder U.  After all, he had just been 'deadnamed' by a 'woke' individual in an 'open dialogue' about 'microaggressions.'  Talk about a lively debate!  

Here is the email I wrote back.   It is the advice of a freezer to a fighter, and I explain more about that below.

---------------

Dear Friend,

I was thinking about that disclaimer you sent me a screenshot of because that one response you got: "Was this a micro or macro aggression?" is clearly an example of breaking the rules of such a website.  So fight on!

But before you fight, here are some words from a "freezer."  As you know some of us humans when faced with a problem fight it head on.  Some run away.  Some freeze.  I am a freezer.  You are a fighter.  And just as we freezers can learn from fighters and runners, so you fighters can learn from runners and freezers. Let me tell you why I wouldn't engage to better help you as you do engage.

If I were in your shoes and were to respond to CU Boulder with this screenshot and accusations of "deadnaming" and "shaming" then I would be playing their game according to their rules.  This is because whenever I use their terms I am giving my unwritten consent to play by the definitions they have established for the terms they invented.  And in most cases, it is all nonsense.  Remember the card game Mau.  The one who can obey the most nonsense rules wins.  In real life however, obeying nonsense rules has consequences for my conscience.  For example, one underlying assumption that comes with the term "deadnaming" is, "deadnaming is offensive." In order to win by their rules, I have to accept their nonsense belief that deadnaming is offensive.  If I am witty enough I will beat them at their own game.  But what is the prize for winning their game?  And what behaviors do I have to perform in order to win?  Will any of these behaviors go against my conscience?  And if I go against my conscience to win, will the prize be worth it?    

In the book and movie Ready Player One the main character Percival is competing for the ultimate prize in the virtual online video gaming world called Oasis which was created by a sad, pathetic, and demented old man.  The ultimate prize is a personal fortune of $500 billion and you gain total control over the game Oasis.  You in essence become God.  Percival learns that in order to win the mini-games within Oasis to gain the ultimate prize, he must think and play like the game's sad, pathetic, and demented creator.  Interestingly, the ultimate prize was already designed to only draw in those who are already thinking like a sad, pathetic, and demented old man.  Wanting to be God is sad, pathetic, and demented.  Even more interesting, the game's title itself is more honey to draw in the sad and pathetic.  The only types of fighters who would enter a game called Oasis are those who want to stop fighting.  So Percival is already thinking this way before he begins honing his thinking skills even more in this direction--and not just his thoughts but also his actions.  In order to win, he has to play like a sad, demented, and pathetic old man.  

Back to your email exchange with Boulder, I see winning a "deadnaming" and "shaming" game as one where I would be forced to play like a sad, demented, and pathetic old man in order to win.

Let me give you a specific example from Ready Player One of what I mean by being forced to play pathetically.  There is a car race that Percival must win in order to get closer to obtaining the ultimate prize.  And Percival is a fighter.  However no one has ever beat this race because the track is full of impossible obstacles, including King Kong at the end.  This race draws in every player from Oasis with a fighter's instinct.  Including Percival.  But you can't win it by racing forward.  

Percival then uncovers a clue about the nature of the game's creator which convinces him he can win by racing backwards.  He tries it and wins.  

But in the process of racing backwards, he has shamed every player with a fighter's instinct who went forward in the race.  This includes himself in prior trial runs.  Which is exactly what a sad, pathetic and demented old man would want.  He loves to frustrate, shame, and exasperate those with the most gumption to win the race.  When Percival wins by racing backwards he publicly confirms the creator's bias written into the bedrock code of the game, "Why even try?  No need to face the obstacles.  Just go backwards." which shames the fighter's instinct in all of us.  In other words, Percival has to betray himself and lie to his friends in order to win.  Yay.

I want you to win this email exchange with Boulder but I don't want you to do so by going against your conscience, which you will do if you play by their rules.  Consider another example, this one from my own life.  In the third grade, boys in my class would fight a lot and all the fights began the same.  One boy would invade the personal bubble of the other, chest to chest, and the two would stare in each others eyes to see who would be the first to either push the other boy away or the first to back off themselves. The rules of this game say pushers win and runners lose.  I do not like to push other boys.  I also do not like to back off.  In my mind, pushing is just as much losing as running away is.  I am a freezer.  Fighting and running are both nonsense to me.  It goes against my conscience.  For good or ill.  Well, one day a boy approached me to start a fight.  (Unrelated to current events, his name was Brandon.)  He brought his chest up to mine, puffed it up like a rooster, and stared me in the eyes. Since I don't like to run or fight, I blew air in his face.  It startled him so much he stepped backward and lost the fight.  He backed off first.  My advice from this example: approaching a game from outside the written rule set can oftentimes make the game go away entirely.  

You are very witty, bright, and intelligent.  You could beat Boulder head on in their game.  But doing so would reinforce their underlying assumption that deadnaming is offensive and you by virtue of this offense are now a victim deserving recompense and/or action on your behalf from authorities.  Sounds like a rule written by a pathetic old man!  --a rule you would be reinforcing if you play by their rules.  You'd win but you'd have to betray yourself and lie to your friends.  Yay.  

Is there a way you can blow in their face?  

Consider this: combine two tactics of rhetoric: 1) speaking past the sale, and 2) speaking from a position of authority.  Those who speak from a position of authority speak as though their underlying assumptions (rule set) are already accepted as truth by the majority.  Speaking past the sale is giving people a glimpse of their life after they've purchased your product.  Your "product" in this email exchange will be a new underlying assumption that is the exact opposite of Boulder's.  They assume that deadnaming is offensive.  Write them from a position of authority that believes deadnaming is not offensive and assumes the majority has already accepted this as truth.  

For Example:

Dear Boulder,

I am writing to tell you how deeply offended I am that one of your students thought it would be offensive to deadname me.  I hope you aren't teaching these students that deadnaming is offensive.  I wasn't offended at all!  However I am offended that one of your students is so dull that they thought they could shame me and win an internet argument by deadnaming me.  I delight in my deadname.  It is dead for a reason.  Do these students not have any deadnames of their own?  Are they still butterflies folded up in cocoons?   What will the next generation of workers be like in this country if you are teaching them that is it OK to not have a deadname and that having a deadname is offensive?  How deeply offensive indeed!

Or something like that.

These are my suggestions.