![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
**********************************************
Blaming the victim
Some years ago, I discovered that I become nearly hysterical when I witness some act of great pain suddenly happening to another creature--I might have thought this reaction was confined to the sight of injured dogs still trying to escape the traffic that injured them, except for the time we passed a car with its passenger compartment burning merrily away while a small crowd watched, and I flashed on the possibility (it wasn't actually true, of course) that there were people still inside.
The last time I had one of those episodes, a small white poodle had been running along the side of Halls Ferry Road (four lanes with traffic divider at the stop light we were approaching), clearly lost and panicky, totally inexperienced with the huge objects hurtling past him, but determined to get through them in his desperate desire for home and safety. We watched him helplessly as he finally dashed into the road. I closed my eyes as he disappeared and rocked in sympathetic agony, wailing "stupid little dog!"
There is is, your classic "blaming the victim" reaction; it wasn't his fault he didn't have a clue about how to survive in traffic. His people should have made certain he would never have reason to learn--but protecting small creatures like him from their ignorance is a task made successful only by ceaseless vigilance--and large amounts of luck. Things happen. There is no perfect safety, perfect foresight, perfect preparation against all contingencies that might possibly occur. One time, perhaps, your seven-year-old will open the front door to welcome Grandma, and the dog will dart away on the adventure he's been hoping to have all his life. Then, two hours later and a mile away, a passing stranger rails at him for not avoiding the dangers you'd always assumed he'd never have to know.
We always feel that way, I think--almost every tragedy that happens could have been prevented or ameliorated if the victim had done something differently, something foreseeable, something DOable. It didn't have to happen that way. And we relieve our pain by screaming at something or someone that SHOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING ELSE, DAMMIT--and the first person on the list is the victim, even when we know he isn't the only or even the main perpetrator of his fate. After all, if you don't want to be mauled by bears, you shouldn't go into the woods, should you?
Mostly, of course, we then put that aside and do what we can to help the victim get past the immediate effects, whether or not we really do believe he could have avoided it if he'd been as smart as we all are now, looking back. And sometimes, the guilty suspicion that perhaps we might not have been any smarter, any more prepared, any more in control of our own fates locks us into the anger that it happened at all, and we keep screaming at the victim, or maybe the not-quite-timely enough help. Because, you know, it hurts so much to see somebody like that. Screaming just feels necessary. And the victim is right there.
***********************************************
Lifeboats R Us
I don't have any trouble with the idea of living in areas that are, at times, unlivable, if there are reasons people do that, and there usually are--even cogent ones--for the people involved. It's like picking people up from a life raft in the middle of the ocean. Even if you find out they'd set out in a leaky yacht with bad engines, you don't throw 'em back in (dammit!), you hand 'em blankets and water and food and other assorted aid. Heck, you might even hand them something to help them get a better boat together for their next sea-going adventure.
Where I have trouble is when they come to me for the wherewithall to keep sinking over and over again. I don't want to shell out my own time and effort and money to buy bubble gum to plug the leaks in that yacht, and then pat the castaways on their furry little heads and watch 'em set out once more in the Good Ship Sinks-A-Lot, knowing somebody's gonna hafta pull 'em out again. And again. The third or fourth time they show you the shiny new paint job you kind folks bought 'em, and tell you how happy they are to start over--you get a bit... jaundiced.
But the next time there's somebody bobbing on the waves in a yellow rubber dinghy, you haul them in, and hope no kindly soul tells them where to find some bubble gum.
Blaming the victim
Some years ago, I discovered that I become nearly hysterical when I witness some act of great pain suddenly happening to another creature--I might have thought this reaction was confined to the sight of injured dogs still trying to escape the traffic that injured them, except for the time we passed a car with its passenger compartment burning merrily away while a small crowd watched, and I flashed on the possibility (it wasn't actually true, of course) that there were people still inside.
The last time I had one of those episodes, a small white poodle had been running along the side of Halls Ferry Road (four lanes with traffic divider at the stop light we were approaching), clearly lost and panicky, totally inexperienced with the huge objects hurtling past him, but determined to get through them in his desperate desire for home and safety. We watched him helplessly as he finally dashed into the road. I closed my eyes as he disappeared and rocked in sympathetic agony, wailing "stupid little dog!"
There is is, your classic "blaming the victim" reaction; it wasn't his fault he didn't have a clue about how to survive in traffic. His people should have made certain he would never have reason to learn--but protecting small creatures like him from their ignorance is a task made successful only by ceaseless vigilance--and large amounts of luck. Things happen. There is no perfect safety, perfect foresight, perfect preparation against all contingencies that might possibly occur. One time, perhaps, your seven-year-old will open the front door to welcome Grandma, and the dog will dart away on the adventure he's been hoping to have all his life. Then, two hours later and a mile away, a passing stranger rails at him for not avoiding the dangers you'd always assumed he'd never have to know.
We always feel that way, I think--almost every tragedy that happens could have been prevented or ameliorated if the victim had done something differently, something foreseeable, something DOable. It didn't have to happen that way. And we relieve our pain by screaming at something or someone that SHOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING ELSE, DAMMIT--and the first person on the list is the victim, even when we know he isn't the only or even the main perpetrator of his fate. After all, if you don't want to be mauled by bears, you shouldn't go into the woods, should you?
Mostly, of course, we then put that aside and do what we can to help the victim get past the immediate effects, whether or not we really do believe he could have avoided it if he'd been as smart as we all are now, looking back. And sometimes, the guilty suspicion that perhaps we might not have been any smarter, any more prepared, any more in control of our own fates locks us into the anger that it happened at all, and we keep screaming at the victim, or maybe the not-quite-timely enough help. Because, you know, it hurts so much to see somebody like that. Screaming just feels necessary. And the victim is right there.
***********************************************
Lifeboats R Us
I don't have any trouble with the idea of living in areas that are, at times, unlivable, if there are reasons people do that, and there usually are--even cogent ones--for the people involved. It's like picking people up from a life raft in the middle of the ocean. Even if you find out they'd set out in a leaky yacht with bad engines, you don't throw 'em back in (dammit!), you hand 'em blankets and water and food and other assorted aid. Heck, you might even hand them something to help them get a better boat together for their next sea-going adventure.
Where I have trouble is when they come to me for the wherewithall to keep sinking over and over again. I don't want to shell out my own time and effort and money to buy bubble gum to plug the leaks in that yacht, and then pat the castaways on their furry little heads and watch 'em set out once more in the Good Ship Sinks-A-Lot, knowing somebody's gonna hafta pull 'em out again. And again. The third or fourth time they show you the shiny new paint job you kind folks bought 'em, and tell you how happy they are to start over--you get a bit... jaundiced.
But the next time there's somebody bobbing on the waves in a yellow rubber dinghy, you haul them in, and hope no kindly soul tells them where to find some bubble gum.
