| Why I defend scoundrels, part 2 |
[Oct. 17th, 2012|11:10 pm]
Scott
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There are at least two kinds of bullying.
Imagine the smelly, ugly kid we all probably had in one of our classes at school. We all assumed he probably had some kind of developmental disability, but no one talked about it. He would mostly sit in the corner picking his nose, occasionally saying random things to people that only he understood. One day, he says to Susy the popular, well-liked person sitting next to him: "You're ug...ugl...ugly".
Probably she would laugh this off. Maybe it might sting for a few seconds before she forgets it. Then she goes to her popular, attractive friends and says "Bob the smelly kid said I was ugly!" The popular kids would start talking at the lunch table about what a terrible person Bob was, and how you should never go saying mean things like "You're ugly" about people. A few would take it into their heads to retaliate by showing Bob who was boss. A few of the football-team guys would beat him up after school. Bob would say "I'm s...s..sorry!" but they would refuse to believe his apology, or come up with reasons why it only made him an even worse person. The cheerleaders would laugh at him whenever he walked by. It ends with everyone in the school standing in a circle with Bob in the middle, them all laughing and him crying and wishing he was dead because then people might finally leave him alone.
So the first kind of bullying is Bob the smelly kid telling the popular kid next to him "You're ugly".
The second kind of bullying is one of the popular kids, let's call her Susy, realizing she could become even more popular if she looked strong by picking on someone no one really likes. She settles on Bob. Every day she says various mean things about Bob, tells him how smelly and stupid he is and how nobody likes him. The popular kids are pretty okay with this. Susy is attractive and well-liked, so her friends join in and help pick on Bob. Whenever Bob tries to defend himself, they mock him, because only losers try to defend themselves. Some other popular kids try to join in by beating Bob up after school. It ends with everyone in the school standing in a circle with Bob in the middle, them all laughing and him crying and wishing he was dead so that people might finally leave him alone.
In other words, it doesn't really matter whether we start with Bob bullying Susy, or Susy bullying Bob. The end result is everyone in the school standing in a circle laughing and Bob and Bob wishing he were dead.
Only one of those two kinds of bullying consistently gets punished. Because the teacher is a human being and likes attractive popular people as much as everyone else, and because the popular kids are smart enough to hide what they're doing and Bob isn't, Bob is going to end up in detention for calling Susy ugly, and everything else is going to get dismissed as "that smelly kid complaining again".
This sort of thing - let's call it a group hatefest - seems pretty common. The key feature seems to be a very large group of high-status people who all like each other and are friends piling abuse and mockery and hatred on one out-group member who has no support at all, and dehumanizing that outgroup member enough that any of his apologies and pleas for mercy and objections that really he's not as bad as they think get interpreted as "excuses" and are met by turning twice as vicious as before.
I can only remember two group hatefests against me personally, but I suspect my memory on this may be faulty; two events don't explain how powerful a trigger this is for me, and it seems unlikely that a nerdy kid with no interest in social interaction could make it through twenty years of schooling and only run into this pattern twice. But suffice it to say that I have a deep hatred for this kind of thing, and that if I see something that even kind of looks like a group hatefest I am immediately filled with a burning desire to start standing up for the victim.
This is something I probably should have realized earlier and mentioned in my Why I Defend Scoundrels post. I defend scoundrels because it's part of my moral system that if there is a group hatefest being held, I can on no account join in, and if I just leave it without standing up for the poor guy in the middle I am a horrible person. I hope that one day having that morality will pay off. As it is, it mostly means I defend scoundrels a lot.
When some white male politician makes a remark that sort of out-of-context sounds racist, I pattern-match this to the smelly kid saying "You're ugly". It's not clear whether there's genuine malice behind it. It's not clear whether he really meant it. He has exactly zero other people on his side. When the victim mentions it, everyone is immediately sympathetic to the victim and tells her how brave she is to have put up with such a terribly offensive remark. They get it into their heads to punish the guy, and everyone who wants to be Internet Popular tries to punish him harder and more enragedly than the last. It ends with everyone in a circle laughing at the white male politician, and the politician desperately screaming apologies and finally resigning his positions and promising never to run for any office again if people will just leave him alone.
When someone decides it would be fun to pick on someone who holds a slightly different opinion about gender issues than they do (aka "misogynists"), they write an amazing number of genuinely hateful things: they're "douchebags", "pieces of shit", "don't deserve to live", or, recently spotted on Reddit, "a straight white suburban shitlord with all the privilege in the world". No one even considers defending them; instead everyone else who's popular joins in gleefully and adds new insults. If the person tries to explain their position, everyone gets twice as vicious and attacks them for "mansplaining" or "totally refusing to apologize" or "thinks a half-hearted bullshit apology suddenly makes it okay". It ends with everyone in a circle laughing at the target, and the target desperately screaming apologies and trying to sink into the ground and disappear.
I recently noticed on Google Analytics that some of the criticisms of feminism I wrote a while ago were getting linked by the r/MensRights reddit. This sort of worried me, beyond the usual worries I get when people I don't know link here.
I don't know if I share the men's rights mentality. A few of their points, like even model fathers not being able to see their children after divorce, seem spot on. But the more general idea that there is a dangerous lack of men's rights in our society seems to miss the mark. In general I think men have a pretty good number of rights.
I don't even agree with those people who say feminists hate men. Most feminists seem okay with men who agree with them. Some feminists are men. They seem pretty okay with that.
My complaint about feminism - and all the other isms - isn't any kind of object-level complaint like that at all. On the object-level I think they're pretty okay. It's that they have a tendency to really love their group hate-fests, and they make sure to hold them with a halo over their heads.
The last time I mentioned this, people criticized me for making vague claims. So today I'll be more specific. Mitt Romney. Binders full of women. My facebook feed. Twelve posts about it (and I don't have all that many Facebook friends). Five of those twelve included the word "misogynist". One included the phrase "giant d-bag". Then I go on Reddit, where the phrases are more like "condescending prick", "ego so twisted he starts believing his own bullshit", and "I can't see how any self-respecting woman could ever think of voting for him." Plus a link to http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/, because someone was enjoying the hatefest so much they though it would benefit from an entire website.
And what was interesting was that one of these comments ended up spawning a thread where someone defended Romney. It went something like this: "Isn't 'binders full of X' a relatively common phrase?" "Oh, it wasn't the binders that offended me, per se. It was his statement that women only care about flexible working hours." "Well, he didn't say women only cared about, just that it was a special care of women. And surveys show this to be totally true." "But it was that he was getting into this at all, when the question was about pay equity." "But Obama arguably departed even further from the question, talking about free contraception, and no one criticized him." "Well, maybe you're right, but it was incredibly stupid of Romney to phrase his comments in a way that could be interpreted as offensive, and I'm still not convinced there aren't some offensive feelings lurking under the surface."
Notice how incredibly scary this thought pattern is. You express this burning intense hatred for a guy you don't really know based on one remark. When someone demonstrates that this is irrational, you say "Well, okay, but I was still right to hate him because of this totally different thing he did." And then when someone demonstrates there's no basis for hating him, "Well, I can still hate him, because it's still his fault for being so stupid as to say something I misinterpreted."
In other words, "I can hate anyone for any reason, and I am always right and it is always their fault. Either it is their fault directly, because my reasons are correct. Or it is their fault that I misinterpreted them as deserving hatred. In any case, I can hate anyone I want and I can never be wrong to do so."
I think I speak for everyone who dislikes hatred when I say AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaAAaaaaaaAAAH!
(So that I don't have to deal with it in the comments, I've written a separate post on exactly why I'm defending Romney in this case.) |
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