(no subject)
Nov. 13th, 2012 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naathYesterday'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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 10:45 am (UTC)Yeah, it's really, really hard. As someone online put it, "Too many people think they're 'good' rather than 'neutral' because they're generous to their friends and kind to animals. That's not really enough to cinch it, after all Hitler was kind to animals and generous to his friends, but gratuitously tortured millions of people to death".
encouraging them to come forward and be believed.
Although ironically, sometimes I feel that if I were trying to open up about something, it'd be easier if I knew I'd be taken seriously, but I wouldn't start a national hoopla about how evil the perpetrator was and how brave I was and people go on and on and on about how bad it was... It seems the current hysteria about child molestation is the only alternative to ignoring it, in which case it's much much much better, but I don't know if I want society to go on being myopically obsessed by this issue for the next 500 years...
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 10:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 01:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 01:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 11:08 am (UTC)(S)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 01:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 01:52 pm (UTC)(S)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 11:15 am (UTC)[There's a side note here. There's an idea brewing in my brain, that says that the notion of belief is overrated. I should write it up; it's at the level of "crackpot theory" at the moment. I mention this because it does touch on issues here.]
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 11:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 11:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 11:52 am (UTC)... story of my life. :-)
Domestic abuser brother-in-law who we've broken contact with to save me (and my kids) from abuse after many months of trying to reason with him and/or get him to seek help..?
Nope, I'm definitely lying. Or I provoked him. Or he's definitely changed now so I should just forget it happened 'for the sake of the family'. Or whatever.
Sigh.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 11:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 12:03 pm (UTC)Hopefully the Saville stuff will at least cause a few people to rethink their attitudes to victims of sexual abuse.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 02:03 pm (UTC)On the other hand, only 20 years ago marital rape was legal, domestic violence rarely deemed as a crime, and almost noone except those involved knew sexual abuse existed, let alone often being why kids in care were in a state (as opposed to the kids being 'wild' and thus in care). That's a huge leap in less than a generation. Let's hope for a similar leap towards civilization in the next 20 years - society doesn't change overnight.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 05:19 pm (UTC)People are capable of incredible good, and incredible evil. And sometimes, it's the same person.
Another reason why I dislike the dividing people up into GOOD and EVIL, is that it makes it much easier to distance oneself from the EVIL people. The whole, "those people are EVIL, so nothing I do can possibly be like what they do, even if they look the same" thing.
My parents are pillars of the community, who have both done a great deal of good in their lives. They also emotionally abused me, and did a few things that were borderline physically and sexually abusive too. And yeah, all those years with people telling me how amazing my parents are and how lucky I was Did Not Help when it came to recognising, even for myself, what exactly I went through in my childhood.
And they're still lovely people in many ways, and I love them both very much.
The world and the people in it are so very, very much more complicated than an awful lot of people (of many political, philosophical and religious/non-religious persuasions) are willing to accept.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 08:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 06:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 08:47 pm (UTC)Relatedly, I fear acclaimed heroes can start self-identifying as noble and right and thereby become complacent about any little peccadilloes they might exhibit. And, indeed, start assuming the ends justify the means whenever they're Doing Good™.
Larger groups of people seem to be just as susceptible as individuals.
An obvious example is what people engaged in a War On Terror or War On Drugs or McCarthyist vendetta might decide is reasonable, but I suspect the BBC may have been guilty of some of the same kind of thinking. They're a National Treasure and defenders of impartial journalism, and a Respected Public Service and proud heritors of Lord Reith's traditions. So they're heroes and what they do is good. Especially if they brush under the carpet things that might disillusion tens of millions of people.