Category: Human Nature

Why do we act the way we do?

Our Coronavirus reaction is like a test run to the climate catastrophe

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It amuses me darkly to see the reaction of the so-called “civilized world” turn from schadenfreude at the plight of the Chinese, to denial and worry, to full-blown panic in the past month, as the Coronavirus spreads unchecked to our own communities now.

However I can’t help but see similarities in these reactions to the ones we have to the climate apocalypse, albeit at something like 3 orders of magnitude faster pace.

Like the climate catastrophe, nations not yet affected have been assuming nothing bad will come out of the Coronavirus and that business as usual should continue. Any steps of preparation were sporadic and isolated, from a few “doomers”, often ridiculed by the smug people who assumed this epidemic would simply fizzle out like the Ebola, or SARS.

They don’t realize, of course, that those diseases might have only fizzled out due to an immediate and good response. But it’s on our nature to label any successful attempt to prevent the worse as an “over-reaction” to something that “wouldn’t have been a big deal”. Frustratingly I see this daily in how many companies perceive investment in their IT departments as an overall loss.

The calls of “climate panic” of climate deniers map very well to the denials and conspiracies created by people when Coronavirus first appeared on the scene. It is for this reason that Europe and US have completely squandered all the time and lesson bought by the Chinese response. And by the time the effects of the pandemic were felt in the western cities, it was way to late to mount an effective response, and the cost of that response is likewise orders of magnitude what it could have been had measures been taken early enough.

Likewise, by the time the real effects of the climate catastrophe start being felt in an undeniable manner, it will be way too late to salvage it. The cost to the existing sociopolitical systems will be prohibitive and thus nothing significant will be effected.

The people in power assume that they will be spared the worst of a catastrophe, but as Coronavirus spreads indiscriminately and the old plutocrats realize their money cannot shield them, so will the collapse of modern civilization from climate catastrophe make their power vanish into thin air as their private security forces realize who has the power in an apocalyptic situation.

The worst thing in my opinion is that we cannot even use this epidemic as an effective wake-up experience because of the timescale of the climate. To mount an solid response to the global warming, we should have started 30 years ago, but like Coronavirus, we simply squandered out rime into business as usual because “it hasn’t happened yet”.

In the scale of climate Catastrophe I speculate we are at the phase Coronavirus was two weeks ago. Some isolated nations have felt the brutal effects, but they were either not significant enough, or those nations themselves could somehow be blamed for it. By the time the climate catastrophe finally manages to panic as many people as Coronavirus has today (5-10 years I expect), it will be too late to do much about it.

On celebration

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Ever since I left school I remember I was not big on celebrating my birthday. I don’t say this as any sort of boast, but rather because an event today made me realize something about the concept of celebration and by extension, birthdays.

You see, I just passed an IT certification exam that I felt was fairly difficult. I did the usual and posted about it on Facebook and LinkedIn and whatnot because I was overjoyed I made it. Naturally I wanted people to interact with me about this achievement which is why I broadcasted this online, so I obviously I have the drive to want to share things about my life. However I’m not the kind of person who wants to try and rub it in people’s faces to make them interact with me, so that’s as far as I usually go.

Anyway, at the semi-humorous advice of a colleague on chat, I decided to anyway bring some croissants to work to mark the occasion. What natively happened is that everyone who stopped by to pick one up, also congratulated me about the occasion. and some also asked for more details and ended up having a nice conversation about my experience. Naturally this was very pleasing to me, as I received more positive attention than usual. Certainly more than I would have gotten if I simply came to my desk as any other day.

This is, I expect, normal. People don’t much care about other people achievements and if I went around just announcing it to people unsolicited, it would sound boastful and forced. People might even resent me for thinking I’m trying to rub it in their faces. Typically this is why I tend to not to play up any of my achievements.

In that sense then, me buying a round of croissants for everyone, is sort-of like paying for their attention in a socially-acceptable manner. The croissant is free, but there is an unwritten expectation that you positively interact with the person that brought it!

This has probably been consciously or subconsciously obvious to most of you, but it never really clicked for me until now. I bring snacks now and then, like everyone, but it was more of a guilt-thing. “Everyone is bring stuff on occasion, so I guess I should be doing that as well”. The dynamics of the situation are simply more clear to me now and I felt I had to share.

As I mentioned, this led me to thinking a bit further about birthdays as well, and why I don’t really care to celebrate them. The birth of concept of celebrating birthdays is lost in history, so I’ll guess we’ll never truly know, but It feels to me that birthdays must effectively be tradition that begun when human life was much more easily ended than it is today. Especially since children mortality was sky-high before the advent of modern medicine. Thus surviving for a whole year into your life, especially as a child, is a noteworthy event, and naturally, an occasion on which you might want to reminisce about the past year as well.

Therefore, I think I instinctively stopped caring about my birthdays because they in turn do not feel like an achievement. At this point of my life, it’s not difficult to survive another year, and thus I feel no reason to make it a big deal.

To wrap it into the concept I explained above, I see no reason to “bribe” people to interact with me about something I have nothing to say.

And yes, I realize I sound like a robot learning about human emotions 🙂

Can Overwatch one-trick drama be a good simulation of microaggressions for privileged people?

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Yet another Overwatch flamewar is ongoing about the classic question of whether someone “one tricking” a hero ((This is the practice of only choosing that hero, regardless of map or opposing heroes)) in competitive should be a bannable offense or not. As always the “ban them” camp has the loudest or more numerous voices, even though the Overwatch design team has publicly stated that they disagree with this approach. This latest drama round was only started because an ex-Blizzard/Overwatch employee has publicly stated the opposite. Check the thread sorted by “controversial comments” to witness some nerdrage if that’s your thing today.

However as someone who habitually plays primarily “off-meta” characters ((This means characters which the “competitive scene” is not using, and as a result the  majority of OW players take to mean they are weak choices)) who’s spent significant time improving my skills with them, I’ve been often lumped into the “one-trick” corner by raging team-mates. In fact, playing off-meta characters is a more likely indicator that your team-mates will turn against you, rather than one-tricking as a practice, since if you’re tricking an in-meta characters, nobody bats an eyelid; but I digress.

What I want to suggest is that the experience of someone who plays off-meta/one-tricks in OW is going to be like a very very mild experience of microaggressions that marginalized people experience regularly. What tends to happen to people who make such choices in competitive play, is that there is a constant level of hostility and bothering that other players just don’t experience. From the mild, such as someone asking you very politely to switch your choice at the start of the game, to the overly hostile, such as someone flaming at you, or deliberately throwing the game to spite you.

On their own, each of these might not be an issue at all, or just a hilarious occurrence, respectively. Howevever where these situations start to approach the microaggression territory is when one experiences some form of them in almost every game they try to play. If in almost every game you play someone politely or aggressively tries to make you switch characters at some point in the match, then at some point even the most polite phrasing is not going to help the effect they have on your psychology.

While there are other games with hero choices, Overwatch is uniquely positioned to act as a “microaggression simulator” due to its mechanics which support a constant change of each team’s roster. Other games might have “off-meta” characters, but often due to the locked-in nature of each once the game starts, people tend to not rage on this issue that much. However in OW, people will keep annoying the off-meta choices for this exact purpose, with the comments often escalating in vitriol when the game is going bad and the off-meta player refuses to switch.

Now, reminder that I don’t think they are anywhere on the level of microaggressions a marginalized person receives, but they are a really good way for someone who otherwise would have too much privilege to even understand what a microaggression even is, to get a mild sampling themselves. Perhaps is might be something on which an understanding and respect for actual microaggressions might be built?

The psychological grounding of Direct Action

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I just read this article about human psychology and the counter-intuitive way our brain functions in regards to the things we like or hate. The more I read into it, the more it seemed to validate on the most common practice of Anarchism: Direct Action. Or more specifically the core concept of anarchist theory that the only actual systematic change can come from each of us by actively doing things ourselves.

Very often I’ll speak with people of differing ideologies who support this or that political party and during the conversation I often say something like: “This all sounds nice and well in theory, but how do you plan to get your party into power, or otherwise put your theory into practice”? The disappointing answer inevitably is something along the lines of “proper education” or “more convincing others” (from the optimists at least). Subsequent questions on where this education should come from tend to be unsatisfying.

On the other hand, pessimists or people rejecting anarchist theory, tend to say that no signicant change can come because people are too stupid/ignorant/lazy to take care of their societies and as such, not only is Anarchism painted as a utopian ideal, but even their own theories are deemed as impossible to actualize (Or patently ridiculous plans are suggested)

But anarchism, tends to suggest something different; that change can only come by putting practice first. It is by having people actually put the future society we’d like to have, into practice, that we actually demolish the current one. Surprisingly, original Anarchist theorists seemed to have understood exactly how we need to act, given what we’ve recently discovered about human psychology: The way we act forms the person that we are.

This is the reason why anarchists support forms of self-organization such as unions, co-operatives, mutual banks, communes etc. A workplace union is not just a place for syndicalists to join, it’s an actual conversion tool! A worker who joins a union starts getting converted to a mutual aid personality. It does not wholly ((I suspect there are limits to how much personalities can change given a starting point)) matter if they were lazy or ignorant before, because taking part in such an org will actually change how they act.

Same is true for neighborhood unions or any other form of direct action mutual aid. By actively having people practice mutual aid, you make them the kind of people who want to do so.

This is why always the most important question about a political theory is: “But how are you going to achiveve it?”, because if it’s just based on “convincing people first” it’s just doomed to fail. Nobody will be convinced if what they’re currently doing in their daily lives is the completely opposite of what you’re suggesting, regardless of how good what suggest is in theory.

Why people are annoyed by very strong opinions in online forums.

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Recently I’ve been getting more and more active in the BoardGameGeek.com community for Android:Netrunner, since I’m so active in the development of the OCTGN game definition for it, as well as liking the game itself quite a lot. And yesterday a usual event occured that gave me an insight into forum culture.

As is common with geek culture in online communities, some people tend to form strong opinions about various aspects of their hobby and want to share those opinions with others. But sometimes we get to see things heat up a little too much. Apparently randomly, one person will reply rudely to someone known for strong opinions suddenly there’s an outpouring of negativity against the opinionated player coming from all directions.

Someone reacts badly to a strong opinion
Someone reacts badly to a strong opinion

The opinionated person is usually taken aback from such hostility as they don’t understand where it’s coming from.

Reaction to negativity

I’ve seen this reaction occur quite frequently, but it usually happens in hobbyist discussions, such as the ones revolving around games. This is because those tend to have a low-impact consequence to a change within them being bad, which makes most moderate people not bother as much with online discussions about them, unless those people are opinionated or bored.

This however means that someone who does react strongly about changes that they perceive to be important, tends to stick out like a sore thumb. Why does someone gets constantly flustered about something as insignificant (in the large scale of things) as a game? And why do people get annoyed at such common reactions?

This hadn’t actually click for me until today, as I was reading the above exchange and I was also considering that I also felt annoyed every time I saw such strong opinions being posted by the same people. But I couldn’t put a finger as to why. Why was I irritated about someone taking a card game too seriously?

And then it dawned on me, that I wasn’t getting annoyed by the opinion itself. I wasn’t even annoyed by the opinion being put forth as a fact. It was rather the situation that the same people would post the same kind of “the sky is falling” commentary every time and then, predictably, others would reply aggressively in to point out why they are completely wrong, which would trigger a discussion that took over most of the thread from that point on.

In short, those posting strong opinions ended up almost always focusing the whole topic on their ideas, “heating up” the thread and making the whole discussion revolve around them. It’s an attention grab! And it’s this constant attention-seeking that is annoying the people around them, possibly without them realizing the true reason. And thus ending up with random lash-outs like the above screenshot.

I suspect that the people behaving this way do not realize why they are doing it. For them, this is a hobby that they really love and they have strong opinions because they’d hate to see it ruined by bad decisions. So it’s understandable that they post those opinions on every relevant discussion and make threads about them, isn’t it?

It just so happens that this behaviour makes them the superstar of every discussion. Sometimes negatively, sometimes positively, depending on how much they reflect the popular sentiment, but almost always there will be one or more people with an equally strong opinion on the other side who’ll be annoyed enough at the arrogance or stubbornness to reply likewise, and thus a heated discussion will begin, centering around their comments. And given that humans are social creatures, this is addictive.

It’s addictive to always be the center of attention, as long as that attention is not overly hostile. So any behaviour that brings about this state of affairs is going to be repeated as long as the reward is reinforced. And given that most people, on both sides, don’t realize what is going on, is is going to be reinforced every time.

And then people in the community are going to start getting annoyed, because it turns out that any thread where particular people comment on (in their usual style), immediately takes a few steps towards flamewar status, and it just so happens that everyone will be discussing those comments for the next few pages, and every other interesting comment will be ignored as those most inflamed by the arguments are going to focus on just that.

So you see this kind of comments, and you grind your teeth, mutter “Oh it’s this person again? What horribly wrong opinion do they have to present now?”. And after months of the same procedure, someone else tells them to “STFU because nobody cares” or something, and you think “Fuck yeah” and pile on at the opportunity to put them in their place, until the whole thing escalates and feelings are hurt.

I think this whole thing can be quickly de-escalated if people realize the true reason why such comments create a negative attitude. The attention seekers need to stop trying to make the kind of inflammatory comment that will make them the center of discussion, and I believe the way to achieve that is not in random hostility, which is likely not to achieve anything as it’s vague and misdirected, but to call those people out explicitly for their attention seeking and how that negatively affects the community around them.

Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren't yet ready for it?

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This is a question posted in the /r/anarchism101 subreddit which is a common misconception about what anarchists suggest

Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren’t yet ready for it? If so, then what the fuck use is an ideology that can’t be applied to humans?

I want to think of anarchism as a description for what is wrong and what needs to be plucked out, but once I think of its implementation I can’t help but to think it doesn’t fit humans as a whole. We need to rise intellectually before it can be applied. Right?

So here’s a chance to address this quickly

Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren’t yet ready for it?

No. Anarchism is the most compatible with what anthropology and psychology tells us about humans social relations. The problem is that the environment you live in (i.e. society) shapes what things you accept and humans have been either too conditioned by hundreds of years of coercion and violence to accept capitalist values, such as wage slavery, or actively prevented from seeking the alternative even now.

Most humans would gladly shake off capitalist concepts of work and wage and exploitation given half the chance, but those who have the most benefit in doing so (the poor in other countries) are actively repressed by violence funded by their exploiters (the rich and middle class of rich countries). In turn, the middle class and the poor of the richer counties are palliated by the crumbs from the theft which occurs wholescale in the rest of the world, so that they don’t rise up. And when the palliatives fail, actual violence is again employed.

Quote of the Day: Staring at women's bodies

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Should women take it as a compliment when men catcall them or stare at them? No!

In response to this comment, SRSister Kelderwick replied:

Not sure if “subjugate” is actual transcribed word or a totally clueless yet perfect mis-remembered “objectify”. (Despite shitthatneverhappened.txt)

But okay really dudes. Thought experiment thing time yeah? You are at the gym, running, and your workout clothes are somewhat showy and fairly form-fitting. In the mirror you notice Jane Random Runner inspecting you – awesome, says you. Okay sure, whatever. What if JRR is still staring at you ten minutes later – are you still fine? That’s not intrusive at all? Now pretend her expression isn’t neutral – she’s obviously interested. Doesn’t say a word, just stares at you or takes long glances. The whole time. You are still not affected at all by this? She keeps watching you.

Sure. Now, it isn’t just JRR anymore. Now she has 10 peers all using machines behind you. Some of them don’t look, one of them stares like JRR, some of them take the odd glance. One of them wrinkles her nose in disapproval because she doesn’t find you attractive, or so she whispers to her friend beside her. Thinks she’s being quiet, probably, but maybe not? Wait, was that a camera her friend just slipped away? Hmmm. Oh well.

But now it’s not just JRR and her peers, it’s your female co-workers. Most of them are decent enough folks and don’t bother you. But Gwen does. She leans in too close when you talk, she watches you a bit too long when you wear shorts. Whenever you go to office parties Gwen always corners you and tries to make conversation. She doesn’t take well to rejection. But she’s nice enough most of them time, right? And she’s never, you know, said anything – she is married, after all. Definitely hasn’t done anything either. Well okay there was that one time she put her hand… It doesn’t matter, she was a bit upset that day (home stuff and all that). Besides, you talked to Stephanie and she figures you just over-analyzed the whole thing.

Okay. But now it’s not just JRR and her peers and your female co-workers and Stephanie. Now it’s women on the street. Some of them whistle at you. Some are rather more lewd. Usually you’re too tired or too determined and just ignore them. But if you flip them off and reject them, sometimes they get mad.

They get real mad.

And their friends get mad too.

Now listen, you bunch of shitlord smugfucks who’ve never experienced fucking anything like this, who have no comprehension of the experiences of women who are subjected to this very predominantly male behaviour, get a fuckin’ clue: they are people out there. They have to fuckin’ live a whole life in this context. You, you who felt so stung about getting called out, or vicariously felt so, or were so morally stoked by the thought of such happening that you made it up to circlejerk with your like-minded shitlord friends like a bunch of fucking leeches writhing in a pool of liquid fucking manure, fuck off. Your little sting, that was nothing – one hair pulled out from the arse of an elephant. There is no thing, no habit from women or overbearing cultural narrative and tropes, there is no thing that gives you any fucking perspective on this.

P.S. You, shitlord, do not think this means that gender-flipping situations will be a good tool for analyzing every situation. It is not.

This is actually a very common complaint from men and a prime example of how male privilege works. For us that we have never experienced anything like this in our day-to-day lives, it’s impossible to intuitively comprehend why staring/leering/creeping at random women is not flattering to them. The thought process above is exactly what is meant when one asks us to “Check our Privilege”.

/inb4biotruths

Objectivist Dad

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A child is cursed with an Objectivist dad.

Ayn Rand

I haven’t batted heads with Objectivists for a while now (and I don’t miss that experience one bit), but I always enjoy seeing what results their cult-like ideology brings around. Just now I read this article about a woman who’s childhood was ruined by Ayn Rand and it was fairly depressing.

It’s funny because the experience described here also closely reminds me of the experiences another person described to me about having a (right-)Libertarian dad, and how the parent-child relationship devolved into a form of market exchange. “I’ll send you your birthday gift when you reply to my letters” was an example that stood out.

These ideologies are mental poison.

Feminists don't think all men are rapists. Rapists do.

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A brilliant quote succintly explaining why rape jokes are harmful.

Via chickwithmonkey I have discovered this excellent comment from Time Machine explaining just how rape jokes are harmful. Quoted here in it’s entirety, for truth, justice and the ‘murican way FUCK YEAH and because the original thread is 1000+ comments deep and takes ages to load.

[Note: Many people on Reddit have expressed the sentiment that while they agree with the substance, they have a problem with the condescending tone. This is because the comment I’m reposting was on a blog post and was made in response to a guy who was actually arguing that it’s okay for him to make rape jokes with his friends. While it starts by addressing all men, it’s coloured by the reaction to that particular guy.]

To all those who don’t think the rape joke was a problem, or rape jokes are a problem.

I get it, you’re a decent guy. I can even believe it. You’ve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You’re upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something or connect you to doing something that, as far as you’re concerned, you’ve never done and would never condone.

And they’ve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can’t let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right?

So fine. If all those arguments aren’t going anything for you, let me tell you this. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt anybody, and you don’t see the harm, and that it’s important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.

Because this is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down-

6% of college age men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act.

6% of Penny Arcade’s target demographic will admit to actually being rapists when asked.

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

If one in twenty guys is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, really cool guy, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves.

But, here’s the thing. It’s very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn’t mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.

And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

You. The rapist’s comrade.

And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore…

Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim.

This is a perfect example of how social norms are insidiously perpetuating acts you might not expect. Just from a seemingly harmless activity like laughing as a rape joke, a sexist joke, a racist joke and so on.

PS: Protip (for chickwithmonkey). You can find a permalink to a Disqus comment under the date of the comment (Where it says something like “1 day ago”.) Same with Intense Debate that I’m using here.

This is what rape culture and male privilege looks like

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Should rape victims deserve to be accused of lying? Should males be praised for not dumping their girlfriends after they were raped? You tell me.

A woman made an IAmA/AMA ((For those not in the know yet, IAmA/AMA stands for “I Am A [insert trait, description, experience here], Ask Me Anything)) about her experience with being raped, keeping the child and her current boyfriend staying with her and marrying her eventually. The story of how it happened was quite interesting to read since for a change it does not come from a “Western Nation” but rather from a “Developing Country” which has still quite backward social norms. And one of those that immediately jumped out at me was the crass rape culture that exists.

The 5th day, I finally called the police. I live in an asian country. You have to understand that the culture is different here and that when a woman accuses a man, the police always assume that the woman was lying. Except in my case, I wasn’t. They came, I told them what happened and the police was less than helpful.

This whole part of the story is in fact quite interesting in a horrifying sort of way in giving us a glimpse into the post-rape mindframe of a rape victim. How she was feeling so guilty and unsure that it took her 5 days just to report it and by then, much of the evidence is gone and the rapist has enough time to secure an alibi. And then, the police will immediately assume you’re lying. This isn’t just “too much” for the victim of a type of assault that completely destroys you emotionally, It is overwhelming. Is it any wonder why so many rapes go unreported? If it takes a week, or even a month to get emotionally stable enough to even speak about the event, who wants the first reaction to it to be an accusation of lying and victim blaming?

As a privileged person (male and have not been raped), I can’t even begin to feel what it must be like but even the thought of having to deal with such a traumatizing event and then have the whole world distrust me because of it, downright horrifies me.

This is what a rape culture looks like and the immediate distrust of rape survivors coupled with victim blaming is why rape is still so widespread. And this particular point, the fostering of distrust of the experiences of victims of rape is why I especially despise those who align themselves with the “Men’s Rights” movement which continuously agitates on the platform that false rape accusations are frequent and that being  falsely accused is just as bad as being the victim of rape (Yes, this was an actual position someone stood by).

The Men’s Rights crowd will of course claim that they only want the “guilty until proven innocent” doctrine be used, but in practice this boils down to treating anything the victim claims as lies until conclusive evidence is presented in court. When someone points out that treating rape survivors as liars at worst or dishonest at best is not exactly the best way to foster an attitude where rape victims can come forward, they strawman your argument as you are pushing for a “guilty until proven innocent” doctrine. A ridiculous strawman setup just to shut down any discussion by enraging their opponent and then derailing due to that.

That’s the first point, the second point I wanted to talk about can be seen by looking at the comments of the reddit post. Go look at them and tell me if you can see it. I’ll wait.

Done? Good. Did you see anything troubling?

Well, let me put it out clearly: Of the 15 best comments in the post ((“best comments” being the default sorting algorithm that reddit uses)), 10 are praising the male. Of the best 3 comments, all 3 are about praising the husband. To put this into context:

In a post about the personal story of a rape victim who ended up getting pregnant because of it and her husband decided to stay with her, 2/3rds of the responses are all about praising the male.

Does it seem just a bit odd to you that in a story about the rape of a woman who opens her heart and allows for some Q&A, a male who is not even there would be getting praises in large amounts, just for being a decent human being?

This is what male privilege looks like. The fact that so little is required of you due to your gender, that even basic human decency is grounds enough for gushing adulation. It’s the sheer mentality of “I could act like a dick if I wanted to, but if I don’t, then goddamnit you’d better recognise it and give me the appropriate praise“. And this permeates everything. Woman doing the housework all week? No big deal. Man cleaning the toilet over the weekend without being asked to explicitly? OMGWTFBBQ Best. Husband. Ev4r!

In this case it just really really irked me the wrong way. Here we have a woman who had one of the most traumatic experiences a human can go through and ended up in a life changing situation (being pregnant). She nevertheless had the courage to report it, even though she knew she would be treated with distrust by those who were tasked with “protecting her”. She went through hell and came out alive and the boyfriend deserves all the praise for not dumping her on top of it?! I’m sorry, I just can’t wrap my head around this mentality. The sheer fucking absurdity of it…

It could be in part due to how much the woman herself is promoting her husband as deserving the lion’s share of the praise for sticking with her during these bad time, but for fuck’s sake people, this is the time to point out that most of the credit belongs to her. For being courageous enough to report it. For managing to overcome crippling psychological damage enough. For not taking her own life! She is the strong , wonderful person in the story here and she doesn’t seem to know it, given on how she attributes her whole recovery on her husband. You shouldn’t be reinforcing this. You should be pointing out that she is putting herself down far too much.

Argh!

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