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Nov. 13th, 2012 09:56 amYesterday's post (bother, slipping).
Thinking about the Saville mess.
One of the things that I think is pretty clear from this present mess is that an awful lot of people were abused and didn't feel they could (usefully) complain about it, and also an awful lot of people were abused and did complain but it turned out that this wasn't useful (useful would be for instance putting Saville in prison, or convincing hospitals/charities/the BBC to stop letting him near children) because people didn't believe them.
To me this is part of a larger pattern of human wossname - that we are (as a species) much more happy to put people in a GOOD box or an EVIL box than we are to recognise that individual humans are in some ways good and in some ways bad. It is really very hard to stand up and accuse a person who is widely regarded (either in general social terms, or in your specific social situation) for having done a terrible thing because there are so many people ready to say "no, they are a good person, and good people don't do terrible things, so you are a liar [1]". I think it is heartening that (as I heard on BBC news 24; can't find a good reference online) Childline have had a huge increase in people phoning them for help; the news furore surrounding Saville may be saving children from abuse by encouraging them to come forward and be believed. I can only hope we can keep on believing children (at least enough to put some investigative effort in) for longer than Saville remains headline news. In this case the people doing the not-believing were powerful people in institutions like the BBC; but also similar situations can play out in much smaller situations, and I think a particularly pernicious meme is the notion that accusing people of doing bad things is "causing drama" and in itself a Bad Thing. I think quite the contrary - it is good to openly accuse people of doing bad things (if you do so honestly) because otherwise the tendency is that they will get away with it, and may go on to do it to more people causing more harm.
Of course the flip side is that once "we" (a very general we) have got ahold of the notion that a person is EVIL (whether we are right or wrong about the thing we suppose them to have done and it's bad-ness) it then seems hard to argue against that. Either to say "actually no it wasn't them" (Lord McAlpine had this problem - he didn't do it but "everyone knew" he did, and "everyone" is very hard to argue with) or to say "yes, he did Bad Thing A but we don't think he actually did Bad Thing B" (the gutter press seems very keen to see Qatada posted off to Jordan) or even sometimes "yes, he did ALL THE BAD THINGS but that doesn't mean we should $retaliatory-action" (see arguments about how we should treat prisoners).
This clear division into GOOD PEOPLE and BAD PEOPLE is also a common trope in our fiction - there is the HERO whose every action is NOBLE AND RIGHT, and the VILLAIN whose every action is EVIL. The hero will probably win, and Get The Girl. (sometimes the hero looses and the outcome is dire and terrible). The whole "OMG HOW DARE YOU CRITICISE MY FRIEND" instinct spills over into arguments about fictional people too - in fandom I see a fair amount of this sort of thing; people reaction very angrily to suggestions that their preferred character could possibly have done something wrong or that the book they love could have any flaws. And on the flip side that any action of the character-they-hate could be justified, or any book that they think is garbage might have any redeeming aspects. Fictional characters of course don't argue back...
Right now one of my favorite works of fiction is a song of ice and fire; essentially *because* the characters are really hard to pin down as GOOD or EVIL - almost everyone is portrayed as having both good aspects and bad aspects.
[1] I find this work (liar) stupid-hard to spell. I don't really know why. I'm adding this footnote because maybe you have a helpful way of remembering how to spell declensions of words like "die" and "lie" because I don't. Also as a diversion from the vileness.
Thinking about the Saville mess.
One of the things that I think is pretty clear from this present mess is that an awful lot of people were abused and didn't feel they could (usefully) complain about it, and also an awful lot of people were abused and did complain but it turned out that this wasn't useful (useful would be for instance putting Saville in prison, or convincing hospitals/charities/the BBC to stop letting him near children) because people didn't believe them.
To me this is part of a larger pattern of human wossname - that we are (as a species) much more happy to put people in a GOOD box or an EVIL box than we are to recognise that individual humans are in some ways good and in some ways bad. It is really very hard to stand up and accuse a person who is widely regarded (either in general social terms, or in your specific social situation) for having done a terrible thing because there are so many people ready to say "no, they are a good person, and good people don't do terrible things, so you are a liar [1]". I think it is heartening that (as I heard on BBC news 24; can't find a good reference online) Childline have had a huge increase in people phoning them for help; the news furore surrounding Saville may be saving children from abuse by encouraging them to come forward and be believed. I can only hope we can keep on believing children (at least enough to put some investigative effort in) for longer than Saville remains headline news. In this case the people doing the not-believing were powerful people in institutions like the BBC; but also similar situations can play out in much smaller situations, and I think a particularly pernicious meme is the notion that accusing people of doing bad things is "causing drama" and in itself a Bad Thing. I think quite the contrary - it is good to openly accuse people of doing bad things (if you do so honestly) because otherwise the tendency is that they will get away with it, and may go on to do it to more people causing more harm.
Of course the flip side is that once "we" (a very general we) have got ahold of the notion that a person is EVIL (whether we are right or wrong about the thing we suppose them to have done and it's bad-ness) it then seems hard to argue against that. Either to say "actually no it wasn't them" (Lord McAlpine had this problem - he didn't do it but "everyone knew" he did, and "everyone" is very hard to argue with) or to say "yes, he did Bad Thing A but we don't think he actually did Bad Thing B" (the gutter press seems very keen to see Qatada posted off to Jordan) or even sometimes "yes, he did ALL THE BAD THINGS but that doesn't mean we should $retaliatory-action" (see arguments about how we should treat prisoners).
This clear division into GOOD PEOPLE and BAD PEOPLE is also a common trope in our fiction - there is the HERO whose every action is NOBLE AND RIGHT, and the VILLAIN whose every action is EVIL. The hero will probably win, and Get The Girl. (sometimes the hero looses and the outcome is dire and terrible). The whole "OMG HOW DARE YOU CRITICISE MY FRIEND" instinct spills over into arguments about fictional people too - in fandom I see a fair amount of this sort of thing; people reaction very angrily to suggestions that their preferred character could possibly have done something wrong or that the book they love could have any flaws. And on the flip side that any action of the character-they-hate could be justified, or any book that they think is garbage might have any redeeming aspects. Fictional characters of course don't argue back...
Right now one of my favorite works of fiction is a song of ice and fire; essentially *because* the characters are really hard to pin down as GOOD or EVIL - almost everyone is portrayed as having both good aspects and bad aspects.
[1] I find this work (liar) stupid-hard to spell. I don't really know why. I'm adding this footnote because maybe you have a helpful way of remembering how to spell declensions of words like "die" and "lie" because I don't. Also as a diversion from the vileness.