I don’t have to tell you that Steubenville is all over the news.
I don’t have to tell you that it’s a fucking joke that Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, the two teenagers convicted of raping a sixteen year old girl, were only sentenced to a combined three years in juvenile prison. Each will serve a year for the rape itself; Mays will serve an additional year for “illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material.”
I probably don’t even have to tell you that the media treatment of this trial has been a perfect, if utterly sickening, example of rape culture, with its focus on how difficult and painful this event has been for the rapists who raped a sixteen year old girl then bragged about it on social media.
And I almost certainly don’t have to tell you that the world is full of seemingly nice, normal people who want to go to bat for the convicted rapists. I’m quite sure that you already know about the victim-blaming that’s been happening since this case first came to light. You know about the fact that people have actually come out and said that the real lesson to be learned here is that we need to be more careful with social media (i.e. go ahead and rape but make sure you don’t get caught). You already know that people seem to think that being a sports star and having a good academic record should somehow make up for the fact that you are a rapist.
I don’t have to tell you any of that because it’s all par for the course.
What I do want to tell you is that you need to stop using the “wives, sisters, daughters” argument when you are talking to people defending the Steubenville rapists. Or any rapists. Or anyone who commits any kind of crime, violent or otherwise, against a woman.
In case you’re unfamiliar with this line of rhetoric, it’s the one that goes like this:
You should stop defending the rapists and start caring about the victim. Imagine if she was your sister, or your daughter, or your wife. Imagine how badly you would feel if this happened to a woman that you cared about.
Framing the issue this way for rape apologists can seem useful. I totally get that. It feels like you’re humanizing the victim and making the event more relatable, more sympathetic to the person you’re arguing with.
You know what, though? Saying these things is not helpful; in fact, it’s not even helping to humanize the victim. What you are actually doing is perpetuating rape culture by advancing the idea that a woman is only valuable in so much as she is loved or valued by a man.
The Steubenville rape victim was certainly someone’s daughter. She may have been someone’s sister. Someday she might even be someone’s wife. But these are not the reasons why raping her was wrong. This rape, and any rape, was wrong because women are people. Women are people, rape is wrong, and no one should ever be raped. End of story.
The “wives, sisters, daughters” line of argument comes up all the fucking time. President Obama even used it in his State of the Union address this year, saying,
“We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace, and free from the fear of domestic violence.”
This device, which Obama has used on more than one occasion, is reductive as hell. It defines women by their relationships to other people, rather than as people themselves. It says that women are only important when they are married to, have given birth to, or have been fathered by other people. It says that women are only important because of who they belong to.
Women are not possessions.
Women are people.
I seriously cannot believe that I have to say this in 2013.
On top of all of this, I want you to think of a few other implications this rhetorical device has. For one thing, what does it say about the women who aren’t anyone’s wife, mother or daughter? What does it say about the kids who are stuck in the foster system, the kids who are shuffled from one set of foster parents to another or else living in a group home? What does it say about the little girls whose mothers surrender them, willingly or not, to the state? What does it say about the people who turn their back on their biological families for one reason or another?
That they deserve to be raped? That they are not worthy of protection? That they are not deserving of sympathy, empathy or love?
And when we frame all women as being someone’s wife, mother or daughter, what are we teaching young girls?
We are teaching them that in order to have the law on their side, they need to be loved by men. That they need to make themselves attractive and appealing to men in order to be worthy of protection. That their lives and their bodily integrity are valueless except for how they relate to the men they know.
The truth is that I am someone’s wife. I am also someone’s mother. I am someone’s daughter, and someone’s sister. But those are not the things that define me, or make me valuable in this world. Those are not the reasons that I should be able to live a life free from rape, sexual assault or any kind of violent crime.
I have value because I am a person. Full stop. End of argument. This isn’t even a discussion that we should be having.
So please, let’s start teaching that fact to the young women in our lives. Teach them that you love, honour and value them because of who they are. Teach them that they should expect to be treated with integrity because it’s a basic human right. Teach them that they do not deserve to be raped because no one ever, ever, ever deserves to be raped.
Above all, teach them that they are people, too.
The Belle Jar 
Brilliant. Thank you for writing this.
I would like to thank you for thinking of people without those relationships. I did not win the bio family lottery and am currently unpartnered and childless. When I’m depressed, I often have the feeling that nobody would miss me if I committed suicide, that I’m worthless to society because I’m not in a nuclear family, and that not being someone’s SO or mother would mean nobody will miss me. Who would be outraged if I were raped/murdered? Nobody. I’m nobody’s mother, wife, or daughter, so I am invisible and worthless until somebody’s love endows me with value. Since I’m not sure if I want that, that means I’m broken in addition to worthless.
I’m this person, too, Miim. I’m all alone in this world and have always been. I have those same exact thoughts and fears. I thank the writer for including me in this exclusive world we live in. This blog is right on point and It has given me strength today and not being the only one is indeed an added plus.
I found this to very thought provoking. Where I agree on some points there were some flaws in the logic. I view the young girl as a human who was abused and robbed. Yes robbed she lost and continues to lose parts of herself. I sympathize and hurt for her. I know what it feels like to be robbed. I can not help but to imagine if this were one of my daughters. I put a face to the tragedy. Not as some sort of value only perceived to and by men. It is called empathy. I am a mother, wife, sister, and daughter. I have daughters and sons. We are all human. We all have value regardless of our relations to and with other humans.
Brilliant. I have been a feminist all my life, but have never looked at the “Wife, sister etc” argument in this light. Thank you.
The difference is that men are just about never referred to as someone’s husband, father, brother or son the way women are consistently referred to in terms of relationship. Yes, we’re all related to others in some way. The fact that women tend to be referred to in a proprietal sense and men are not is the point here. Men don’t need to be referred to in terms of their relationships for them to be a human face in a tragedy. They’re already seen as fully human and deserving of empathy. Women come with qualifiers.
If you look WAY back in time to the removal of female deities from history (Mesopotamia times) THIS was the issue and what was used to discount women for their power and ability. They were “re-branded” as their relationship to men. This has been going on for thousands of years and can not simply be ignored. It needs to be addressed before we can move forward. It is only women who are refereed to in terms of their relationship with men.
Brutally accurate. Thank you!
Spot on. Not to mention the fact that you may be speaking to someone who thinks nothing of emotionally or physically violating his mother/daughter/sister/wife. There are a whole crap ton of men (some too close for comfort to me) whose female family I would NEVER want to be treated as.
Oh my. Thank you. I always thought something seemed remarkably strange about such commentary, but until now it was difficult for me to place into verbage. Kudos, and again, I appreciate the fact that you went out on a limb – patiently – to explain that which should never need explaining.
Reblogged this on sarahjanelives and commented:
Very thought provoking. The Steubenville tragedy and subsequent trial shined a light on an ugly problem that occurs everywhere, all the time, to all kinds of people.
Nobody has the right to do anything, to anyone, ever, without their clear consent. A shake of the head means NO. A whisper means NO. An uncertain “I am not sure about this…” means NO. Silence means NO. Lack of consciousness means NO. Any kind of diminished capacity for understanding the situation means NO. A YES, given under any sort of fear, pressure, or duress, means NO. If the answer is not a clear YES, it is NO.
It does not matter whether the object of your desire is male, female, or transgender. It does not matter if they are straight, gay, bisexual, or any other sexual orientation. It doesn’t matter if you bought them dinner, or gave them a ride home, or picked them up in a bar, or met them running naked through the street. There is NO excuse, EVER,, to rape someone else. If you rape another person, you are a rapist. You are wrong.
If you stand by while it happens, you contributed to the rape, and you are wrong. Nobody gets to be neutral in this situation. If you do not completely support the victim, you are supporting the rapist. You are adding to the problem. Slut shaming a victim is effectively raping them again. Outing their name to make it easier for others to torment them is assaulting them again. Making excuses for the rapist is assaulting the victim again. It makes no difference what they were doing, or where, or with who. What kind of person you think they are is immaterial. Whether you agree with their life choices is immaterial.
If you are not part of a compassionate solution, you are part of the problem. Period.
This article is so utterly on point you’ve brought me to tears. Thank you so, so much for writing it and speaking it directly and truthfully. When situations like this happen and we see rape culture so clearly shoved in our faces and played out in front of us, I get so angry I feel like a spinning top. You wrote what I think many of us wanted to say but couldn’t quite figure out how. I’m a survivor of sexual violence, too, so thank you for speaking up for all of us. All my love to you.
So perfect! Thank you.
I couldn’t ‘t even fucking finish reading this horseshit. You feminazi’s take it over oars when someone has good intentions and try to defend the victim. “Oh, the way they were depicting the victim can be misconstrued or re-imagined as objectifying, etc”
Seriously, you argue semantics in retaliation for THEM arguing semantics.
Women aren’t things, and they sure as fuck aren’t the only things in the world either. You’re need for man shaming is really uncalled for. The media, as stupid as they are, DO end up inevitably showing multiple perspectives, and one of them is inevitably going to be “poor girl, she’s going to have issues now.”
The dudes deserved more than what they got, sure, but put your pitch fork away, lezzie, and quit digging for arguments that aren’t there.
Unfortunately Josh you started bashing the author while at the same time making a valid point. While this article addresses the injustice of calling attention to few while ignoring the many; it also ignored the many. There is no need for man shaming, that is true. As the first responder so eloquently said, she is someone’s wife, mother, sister, daughter. Name-calling and hate-mongering makes your point moot Josh. We are all one. It is okay to look at young men and shake our heads and think they have not been properly raised. If it takes a community to raise a child, then it is okay to ask ourselves where we went wrong. It is not okay to ignore the plight of the young teen girl who has become unhinged. She needs us even more.
great job intentionally (i presume) devaluing the author by calling her a “lezzie” which has no value for straight men. You just proved her point.
Troll warning do not feed.
And it is just that kind of language and name-calling that proves how truly evolved you are.
First of all, why “lezzie”? I didn’t read anything that implied she was a lesbian, and if I did, it would have nothing to do with this discussion. Why “feminazi”? To compare someone to a nazi says to me that they have some sort of intense hatred toward a group of people, and I can only assume you think that group of people is men? There is nothing “man shaming” in her argument. What she is shaming is the mode of thought, which has been referred to as “rape culture,” that perpetuates rape. From what I read, she is not suggesting we start shaming men, but shaming the culture that creates an atmosphere that excuses rape and rapists.
It’s not just semantics – it’s a call for a cultural shift. The difference may seem subtle to you, but it is really a deep shift in the foundation of human relationships – to regard women as whole and human and deserving of basic human rights (protection from rape and violent crime) with or without a man by her side.
If you can’t see the difference there, hopefully someone else can explain it better.
You don’t have to be a feminist to notice the fact that the press has been sympathetic with the rapists and mostly focused on them thus far. No where was it mentioned that the girl was “objectified”, that’s just a stereotype of what people assume feminists claim constantly. The fact that you address the author as “lezzie” makes you seem incredibly ignorant. I wasn’t aware that defending women’s rights automatically made a woman a lesbian. Who knew that defending victims of my gender meant I actually want to have sex with other women?
Sir, why are you so intent on ruining any sort of reasoned discourse with name-calling? Your willful maliciousness is repulsive. As many of the other commenters have already noted, there is not a whiff of “man shaming” in this post. I can surmise from the tenor of your words that you probably believe yourself to have a superior intellect to just about everyone you meet in your life and feel pity for you, because I, as a person, cannot stand that sort of arrogance. Your comment regarding the media is also telling of your cognitive orientation. I am glad that the probability of our meeting each other out there in real life is astronomically miniscule.
Welp! Found the Redditor/MRA, everybody!
Uh. Huh. Full stop. So full of perfect.
This was just enlightening, I will be honest I have used the wives sisters rhetoric before. Thank you for making me realize how wrong it is, cannot believe I was this ignorant before. You are amazing!
I don’t believe people are saying that women only have value when they are valued by a man when they talk about something in terms of “daughters, wives and sisters.” We use the same phrase when we talk about our sons, brothers and fathers dying in war. If something traumatic happens it is our natural response to think, “what if that was me, or someone I knew (i.e. my mother, sister, daughter or my father, son or brother).” It has nothing to do with demeaning women.
“Who” is this phrase directed to? This is a subtle, but powerful, part of the message. “Daughters, wives, mothers” is essentially directed towards men because of the word “wives”. The equivalent phrase in your war example would be “sons, husbands and fathers” not “brothers, sons, fathers”. Rarely do I hear this. To me, as a woman, the difference is subtle, but I hear it loud and clear when I’m included.
How about instead of saying “What if the victim was your wife, mother or sister?” try saying “What if the victim were YOU?” After all, one is six MALES are the victim of unwanted sexual assault in their lifetimes. If we’re trying to inspire empathy, ask a man to imagine what it would be like if he were sodomized against his will and then no one believed him or assumed he must be gay and wanted it. Then I think he’ll see the victim’s side a little better.
I’ve said this, actually. I had high hopes, but they were dashed. Turns out those 1 in 6 victims are almost always incarcerated MoC, so most people who are not those things still cannot relate to it at all.
Nice thought … I appreciate.
Thank you 🙂
I’m ready to march r
Totally agree! I wish it wasn’t so hard for people who have been raped to seek justice. I do not blame women and men who do not seek justice for fear of being exposed through media. Many young women experience this atrocity and do not share with anyone for fear of becoming outcast members of society.
As a woman working toward her doctorate degree in medicine I sympathize with other women who have and will have to make the decision of whether or not to raise a family while working a highly stressful and demanding career. However; any career can be stressful. It is hard to choose between family and career which has been a major dilemma to date. Hopefully in future generations the younger women in this nation will truly be able to have both career and time to spend with their children.
I agree completely. Also the fact that the issue of rape should not have to be humanized or personalized in order for society to understand how horrible it is. Why we still even have to explain to people how tragic the situation is, is beyond me.
Yes. YES. Thank you. This is what we needed!
Thanks for this. In India too, we have been saying the same thing for ages. But the difference here is that fast court convictions are few and far between.
Reblogged this on The Dixie Flatline.
You couch the “daughter, wife, sister” argument as if men are the only ones who were blaming the victim here, as if men can only feel empathy for a woman if she’s somehow shown to be valued by a man. There are plenty of women blaming the victim. Of the most heinous comments I saw on those social networks after the verdict were from women saying that she shouldn’t have gotten drunk, and that it was her fault for letting it happen. Believe it or not, not all of those comments were from teen peers. They were also from adult women.
This argument is often used to frame a woman as only valuable when shown to be valuable to a man, so men should care. What about the women who are involved in rape culture by perpetuating the concept of blaming the victim?
Women in jury trials on rape are more likely to acquit the rapist because they will blame the victim more than a male jury will. Because if she didn’t “do something” to cause the rape, then “oh my god, perhaps I can be raped too. It MUST have somehow been her fault. Please tell me it was her fault!”
I was with you on your article right up until you framed the “daughter, wife, sister” argument only to men. You should also aim some of that towards the women who are out there right now blaming that victim and mothering the criminals.
Sean.
“as if men”
I stopped reading there. Nowhere in this article did the author say it was only men who do these things. We know there are plenty of lady rape apologists and misogynists. Stop ‘splaining, please.
Ides, while the article didn’t specifically state “men do this”, the alient point of the article was this paragraph:
“You know what, though? Saying these things is not helpful; in fact, it’s not even helping to humanize the victim. What you are actually doing is perpetuating rape culture by advancing the idea that a woman is only valuable in so much as she is loved or valued by a man.”
For you to stop reading after “as if men”, you would have to completely have glossed over this paragraph. Is this article also blaming women for valuing a woman only if she is loved or valued “BY A MAN”?
That doesn’t make a ton of sense.
This article, while it carefully manouvers around actually citing men as the subject being lectured, this paragraph gives the lie away. This article is to chastise MEN for only valuing women when they are seen as valued by a man.
What woman would value another woman only as she is valued “by a man”?
I read ALL of what you said. You could do me the same courtesy instead of just saying “I stopped reading before you got to your point.”
Sean.
Sean,
I didn’t think that point was directed towards men at all; I think it was directed at all people in general. Women use that argument too and that doesn’t make the argument any more acceptable.
Women definitely victim blame, and you are very accurate in your statement that women victim blame more than men. I think we (women) victim blame as a way to subconsciously help ourselves feel safer, as we are looking for reasons the victim did something wrong so we can tell ourselves we can keep ourselves safe by not doing what the victim did. Do we do this consciously? Not usually. But is it understandable that women look for ways to blame victims more than men do because, in general, women are unsafe in society and may feel somewhat unable to protect ourselves? I think so. We look for ways to help ourselves feel safe in situations where our safety may be out of our control in many ways so that we can psychologically continue living day to day without an insane amount of anxiety and hypervigilance. Again, I don’t believe women do this consciously, but I do think this explains why women victim blame. Is it okay for women to ever victim blame? No, and I think if women were more aware of this dynamic I just spoke about, they would victim blame less. But I think it’s important to understand why women victim blame more and address the societal issue that is connected to that reasoning so our society can be a safer society for all people to live in.
I often wonder what it would be like to be able to walk down the street without having thoughts of what I would do and where I could go if I were to be attacked. I wonder what it would be like to be able to not feel like I have to pay attention to every person that is around me, analyzing them for potential physical strength and possibility of attacking me and crossing the street or redirecting my direction of walking if I feel unsafe for any reason. I wonder what it would be like to be able to walk at night without having my keys intertwined between my fingers as a weapon while simultaneously knowing where my phone is at all times. I wonder what it would be like to be able to go to the bar (or anywhere else) on my own on a Friday night, without fearing that I may be overpowered or something may be slipped into my drink and no one will care enough to help me (that’s what I bring my girlfriends for…we have each other’s backs). I would like to be able to walk to my car without having to check my backseat before getting into my car. I would like to be able to drink as much alcohol as I would like without worrying about if my alcohol consumption could contribute to a decrease in my physical strength and physical ability to fight off an attacker (specifically a rapist). I would like to occasionally be able to set my drink down instead of taking it into the bathroom or onto the dance floor with me. I would like to dress however I would like to without having to think about how many men are going to treat me like a piece of meat and feel entitled to grab wherever they feel like. I would like to go on a date with a man without the expectation that their sexual “needs” (desires) are more important than mine.
I would really like to not have to worry about any of these things, but, as a woman, I do have to worry about and think about all these things in our society. So, do I understand when all of these unrealistic, unwritten rules are difficult to follow? Absolutely! These “rules” shouldn’t be in place! They shouldn’t be something that women have to worry about or even consider. These unwritten rules set up a perfect culture for victim blame if a woman “breaks” any of these “rules.” But again, I would challenge all people who are reading this to consider where the responsibility is put time and time again…Rape is definitely not a women’s issue; it’s not really a men’s issue; rape is a societal issue; it is an issue that is created, tolerated, and, in many ways, encouraged by our society. Fighting this rape epidemic is going to take some serious change in our society overall.
I wish I knew where to start…
Thanks, Kristin. You may be right. Perhaps this article wasn’t targeted to men, but read my reply to Ides’s reply. The article clearly talks about women being viewed as valuable only when valued “by a man”. I think that however the rest of the article carefully avoids blaming men specifically, the context laid out by this, the main argument, tells me, at least, otherwise.
Perhaps I’m simply misinterpreting.
@Sean Huxter, I didn’t read this as targeted towards men at all. In fact, many times, women can be our own worst enemies. Girls standing around slut-shaming another girl because she had sex or making fun of a “prude” because she’s still a virgin. I’ve seen adult women whispering about teen girls who are showing a little more skin than others and talking about how they’re going to end up “pregnant or worse.”
I’d even go so far as to say women can be as bad as men when it comes to rape apology. And I’d submit it’s at least partly because if we blame the victim, WE are immune to rape. If the victim *could* have prevented it and did not (she was drunk, she was dressed “slutty,” she was with a bad crowd, whatever), then we of course can’t be raped because we don’t do those things.
But none of it’s true. Victims cannot prevent rape. Only rapists (and in some cases, bystanders) can.
Powerfully said. 🙂
Reblogged this on Mindless Observation.
WHY has it taken over 30 years for me to see this? When I was attacked I was unable to explain to myself, much less anyone else, why I got very angry about the very nice and loving men who wanted to attack the stranger who had attacked me. They were reacting, albeit subconsciously, from this paternalistic view of an attack on their potential property.
Thank you.
Well written, and very true! I myself have used the “imagine if it had happened to your sister/daughter/etc…” argument, but had not thought about the repercussions. I still think that personalizing a problem (whether it is related to women or not) can help others relate, but it is true that we should all relate because the problems involve other people of value, not just women who are valued by the men in our lives.
In the court proceedings against the man who sexually abused me for close to 8 years there was a whole side hearing on whether he was legally my stepfather because despite a 15 year + relationship my mother and he never legally married? Do you really think my status as a “daughter” mattered when he was raping me repeatedly? It certainly affected how the law would deal with him. In a court room the defense does everything it can to dehumanize the victim of a sexual assault. It’s why rapists get off, its why they get minimal sentences and it makes survivors feel like so much human garbage…. and those not yet sexually assaulted? How does it make you feel, what does it teach you about our culture, your value, where it lies? And we have senate committees covening to tryand understanding why sexuyal assault reporting rates are so low….
I disagree. When we say your sister, daughter, etc… We do not mean in terms of speaking to a man, it is in terms of speaking to ANYONE. I am a woman and I have a daughter, if someone says to me what if that was your daughter are they saying I am a man? No, it is a general statement that means SOMEONE loves them not a man. We are not teaching our daughters that they need to be loved by a man with this statement we are teaching them that they are LOVED by SOMEONE
Did you know that this post ended up as #1 in wordpress’s “Blog of the Day”? Well-earned.
No! Whoa, that’s crazy! Thank you 🙂
While I see the authors’s point, I think she is wrong. The rhetorical device of reminding the reader that the victim is someones daughter, mother, spouse, or father, son, or neighbor works because at some level, at any moment in time, we all desensitize ourselves to the horrors of life. Thousands of people die, are abused, starve to death, are raped, or otherwise suffer traumas every day.
Now unless each of us was to break down in deep emotional sobbing any moment this becomes clear, we shut down some functions of our brain so we can go about her day. This is normal and healthy. If an author asks the reader to view things from another perspective to add texture to a story, it is not necessarily acknowledgement of the weakness of the reader or writing for the lowest common denominator, it is recognition that the reader may have a million different things going on inside her or his head and that adding some gravitas to the story with a little bit of suggested perspective taking is just recognizing how the brain works.
I will also add emotions are not a zero sum game. When someone talks about the difficulties of what those young men must be going through this is not condoning their acts as rapists, this is simply doing some perspective taking. It is healthy and a measured sign of healthy brain development. Feeling sadness for them does not mean you also do not sympathize with the victim or have forgotten her in any way. It simply means you have a healthy and functioning brain that allows you to see things from another perspective and your mirror neurons are firing and your limbic system is in full operation.
Probably the only question to be asked is “How would you feel if you were the victim?” Anybody can be raped, no matter what the gender.
The problem with that rhetoric though is that people will say/think, “oh but I wouldn’t wear that/drink that/go there/etc, so it wouldn’t have happened to me”.
Reblogged this on The Travel Insider.
As you said, your statement is the bottom line. Excellent post.
nteresting article. I wonder though, as we do live in 2013 and the majority of us have relationship ‘equality’ with our spouses ( when i say equality i mean total dominance by my wife ), and the majority of men from my generation treat women as individuals, as humans, whether the ‘device’ is meant purely as a way of provoking more disgust of the despicable act of rape. Most men I know do not have a 19th or even 20th century attitude towards women
I entirely agree with the blog’s point of view, especially re the human rights argument. I guess, based on that, I’m left feeling more than a little uncomfortable with the dehumanizing of the boys who committed the crime by labeling them rapists – as if that’s the entirety of their story – not noting that they’re subject to the most onerous aspects of the sex offender laws for the rest of their lives – or that they now fall into a category that’s basically unforgiven for as long as they breathe. Somehow that doesn’t feel like justice. Or right. At what point in your view can these boys and soon to be men get past punishment.
They are rapists. Unforgiven as long as they breathe? The number of men who are convicted of sexual assault and/or domestic violence, who are later accepted by society with open arms, absolutely disgusts me. These are teenage boys who screwed up royally, and I will admit I’ve glad they were tried as juveniles instead of adults, but they got off easy with only 1-2 years minimum in juvenile detention.
Feminists have been working for years to illustrate that rapists are usually “good” people and not just shadowy figures in the dark. Calling them rapists is not dehumanizing–it’s a factual description. The more our society realizes that rapists can be church members, and good students, and start athletes, the better our society will be.
Excellent post! Bravo!
While I see the authors’s point, I think she is wrong. The rhetorical device of reminding the reader that the victim is someones daughter, mother, spouse, or father, son, or neighbor works because at some level, at any moment in time, we all desensitize ourselves to the horrors of life. Thousands of people die, are abused, starve to death, are raped, or otherwise suffer traumas every day.
Now unless each of us was to break down in deep emotional sobbing any moment this becomes clear, we shut down some functions of our brain so we can go about our day. This is normal and healthy. If an author asks the reader to view things from another perspective to add texture to a story, it is not necessarily acknowledgement of the weakness of the reader or writing for the lowest common denominator, it is recognition that the reader may have a million different things going on inside her or his head and that adding some gravitas to the story with a little bit of suggested perspective taking is just recognizing how the brain works.
I will also add emotions are not a zero sum game. When someone talks about the difficulties of what those young men must be going through this is not condoning their acts as rapists, this is simply doing some perspective taking. It is healthy and a measured sign of healthy brain development. Feeling sadness for them does not mean you also do not sympathize with the victim or have forgotten her in any way. It simply means you have a healthy and functioning brain that allows you to see things from another perspective and your mirror neurons are firing and your limbic system is in full operation.
Reblogged this on jobsiteliberal.
Love.
Reblogged this on A Day in the Life and commented:
A great read in response to the media treatment of the Steubenville rape case.
“I have value because I am a person. Full stop. End of argument. This isn’t even a discussion that we should be having.”
This is so important. Keep going, Belle Jar! This is my first visit to your blog. Obviously this entire case is blowing up all over the place – and it SHOULD be. Finally, maybe people will stand up for one another and society will stop turning a blind eye and LISTEN. The internet has allowed us to use our voices much more effectively. Surely those who have not stopped to think through this before will stop and think through it now.
funny how the majority of negative comments here come from men. Truth hurts doesn’t it fellas?
GREAT post BTW! And gratis on the ‘blog of the day!” yay!
Thank you!
Wonderful word,,,.
You missed something: ““We know _our_ economy is stronger when _our_ wives, mothers, and daughters can live _their_ lives free from discrimination in the workplace, and free from the fear of domestic violence.”
Who is “US” and who is “THEM” in this situation? Whose economy is it? It’s OURS: Men’s. WE might let THEM participate in it, but It’s solely by OUR grace that THEY may live free from discrimination and fear.
It’s as if Obama was up there speaking to male America alone.
I very much agree, thank you for writing about this. I understand the drive to “humanize the unseen victim” but the fact that we need to humanize a human is sad.
I feel similarly about the media coverage of the violence in Chicago. In the past few months, we’re often told that the deaths of these children is tragic because “she was an honor student” or “he was recently accepted to college” or whatever. What does that tell us about how we’re expected to feel about the deaths of children or teens or adults who are not honor students? The deaths of kids who are not going to college? Are they supposed to matter less somehow? No, the deaths of these children is tragic because they’re people. One person is not better or worse than any other. In the end, we’re all people and we all have potential and value.
Reblogged this on Learning to Teach in the Cloud(s).
I agree with this sentiment. However, if we are going to treat women as a person in and of themselves and not as a fragile being whose identity is based on their relationship to a man, we need to change some of the laws. It should not be a greater crime to hit a woman than it is is to hit a man. Also women should have to sign up for the Selective Service. The equal rights they deserve come with the equal responsibilities of being a member of society. I know it is not the fault of women that these laws and such exist, but it adds to the victim mentality when there are different standards for how people are treated. And yes I know that income inequality and other forms of discrimination are out there, but all of these things, the protections and the discrimination need to be addressed if we are going to treat women as equals and not someone to be protected or valued based solely on their relationship to some man. The law should apply equally to all. Case in point, the number of female teachers having sex with underage students has been increasingly reported, the majority of these women get a slap on the wrist and little or no jail time. However, if a male teacher does the same thing, then the lynch mobs form and his sentence is usually far worse. Please understand I am not an apologist for any from of abuse, but the law should apply equally in all circumstances. And please do not get me started on male rights when it comes to child rearing and custody battles. All I am saying is that everyone should be treated the same under the law. Rapists should get the maximum sentence that is allowed by law, regardless of if they are good athletes or students, and the victim should get all the help they need and not made to feel as if it is their fault or they “were asking for it”. Please feel free to bash me for saying these things, but another freedom that we all have is freedom of expression.
While I understand what she’s trying to say, I disagree with this very much. It can be hard for someone to wrap their mind around a tragedy like this, and trying to imagine how they would react if it was someone they loved is a reasonable way of trying to understand the suffering of the victim and her loved ones. They’re not saying she’s invaluable because they don’t know her; they’re just trying to understand. I don’t see how trying to relate to the problem is dehumanizing in any way, and calling someone a wife, sister, or daughter isn’t wrong. I’m my brother’s sister. That’s not dehumanizing, it’s a fact. It seems like she’s completely misunderstanding the point of people saying this. It’s not offensive that most people can’t fully grasp this without being in the situation themselves.