Thank you for noticing
A facebook friend posted a link (Junot Díaz and the Problem of the Male Self-Pardon) which prompted this response:
What seems clear to me is that there are a lot of men at fault. Why to I say this? It seems clear that more than half all women have been sexually assaulted\emotionally assaulted\physically intimated by men. That means the fault is in millions of men. This is systemic.
Our culture encourages this misbehavior. There will be a lot of evil before this gets corrected (if ever).
My friend thanked for noticing. That prompted a fuller response:
It seems fairly clear to me now that in a lot of my past I did not notice. That's one of aspects of this that makes it so hard. Our culture encourages differential behavior. When you're embedded in the culture it's really hard to see that the culture is sick. And I'm the triple threat: Male, White, and Highly Educated. That means that if I do what a lot folks do, which is to not look too hard at things, I won't see anything wrong. Or it will seem like a few bad apples, easily dismissed.
The last couple of years somehow whacked me upside the head. For some reason things began to filter in. One was a fb friend that would post 'accidental' gun deaths of children, roughly once a week. I started to ask myself what the fuck was wrong with people? Then I read a piece on what some call The Talk, where Black parents tell their kids how to not get shot by the police. That was a WTAF? Then it began to snowball. I remember a south Asian college friend telling me people there discriminated on the basis of color, in addition to the idiot caste bullshit. And I learned that within the American black community they discriminate on the basis of color. Then I watched the rise of authoritarian, nativist, populism rise all across Europe, and then here. Then all the murders of Black folks by police. When #MeToo started to happen I started to see a lot more reports of the incidence of violence towards women. All over the Damned Planet. If half (absolutely has to be a massive under count due to the fear of reporting) of all women are assaulted, then it must be the case that millions of men are committing assault.
All of this put together has to mean that some large fraction of all humans are fucking assholes. Half? More?
How much death is due to men being stupid? Women don't start wars.
What seems clear to me is that there are a lot of men at fault. Why to I say this? It seems clear that more than half all women have been sexually assaulted\emotionally assaulted\physically intimated by men. That means the fault is in millions of men. This is systemic.
Our culture encourages this misbehavior. There will be a lot of evil before this gets corrected (if ever).
My friend thanked for noticing. That prompted a fuller response:
It seems fairly clear to me now that in a lot of my past I did not notice. That's one of aspects of this that makes it so hard. Our culture encourages differential behavior. When you're embedded in the culture it's really hard to see that the culture is sick. And I'm the triple threat: Male, White, and Highly Educated. That means that if I do what a lot folks do, which is to not look too hard at things, I won't see anything wrong. Or it will seem like a few bad apples, easily dismissed.
The last couple of years somehow whacked me upside the head. For some reason things began to filter in. One was a fb friend that would post 'accidental' gun deaths of children, roughly once a week. I started to ask myself what the fuck was wrong with people? Then I read a piece on what some call The Talk, where Black parents tell their kids how to not get shot by the police. That was a WTAF? Then it began to snowball. I remember a south Asian college friend telling me people there discriminated on the basis of color, in addition to the idiot caste bullshit. And I learned that within the American black community they discriminate on the basis of color. Then I watched the rise of authoritarian, nativist, populism rise all across Europe, and then here. Then all the murders of Black folks by police. When #MeToo started to happen I started to see a lot more reports of the incidence of violence towards women. All over the Damned Planet. If half (absolutely has to be a massive under count due to the fear of reporting) of all women are assaulted, then it must be the case that millions of men are committing assault.
All of this put together has to mean that some large fraction of all humans are fucking assholes. Half? More?
How much death is due to men being stupid? Women don't start wars.
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