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Natural victims
Oct. 7th, 2010 12:30 pmI just had to defriend someone on FB for querying suspiciously why Tyler Clementi didn't murder his bullies before killing himself; and then going on to suggest that "being a victim is a personal choice". My stepfather also believed in "natural victims". He used to tell me I was one. And then beat me up, mock and humiliate me, and occasionally "jokingly" threaten to rape me. (That last one he apologised for, at least.)
That discourse, in its self-congratulation for lack of compassion, is very closely aligned to right-wing and libertarian ideas that bad things happening is a sign that people have made wrong choices, and therefore compassion is inappropriate (and we should let their houses burn down). ("If failure had no penalty then there would be no point striving for success" - such a capitalist notion.) Generally the people who're saying this are trying to suggest that their lives are great solely because of their own choices. Pure egotism, and defence of privilege, bordering on solipsism.
Although there's one point in the left-liberal response to all this that does strike a false note with me - the idea that homophobia in modern society is due to fundamentalist Christianity (or Islam, or Judaism - some religion we don't like, anyway). There was no-one religious in any serious way in my immediate family, but the bigotry against homosexuality was still palpable. It was a "small town petty-bourgeois" thing, not a God thing.
That discourse, in its self-congratulation for lack of compassion, is very closely aligned to right-wing and libertarian ideas that bad things happening is a sign that people have made wrong choices, and therefore compassion is inappropriate (and we should let their houses burn down). ("If failure had no penalty then there would be no point striving for success" - such a capitalist notion.) Generally the people who're saying this are trying to suggest that their lives are great solely because of their own choices. Pure egotism, and defence of privilege, bordering on solipsism.
Although there's one point in the left-liberal response to all this that does strike a false note with me - the idea that homophobia in modern society is due to fundamentalist Christianity (or Islam, or Judaism - some religion we don't like, anyway). There was no-one religious in any serious way in my immediate family, but the bigotry against homosexuality was still palpable. It was a "small town petty-bourgeois" thing, not a God thing.
