On Drama and other pitfalls
There's a fairly large subset of the alternative/kink/nerd demographic, who seem deeply concerned about having too much drama in their lives. "This is a drama free zone", they'll say, or, "hi drama people, stay away". I always shrugged it off, until someone pointed out to me that they're actually saying, "I'm high drama, so don't engage with me unless you're into that sort of thing!"
This principle can apply to other kinds of statements as well. When I moved into this place, I quickly discovered that "Emotional Authenticity" was a thing. As in, "tell the truth about what you're feeling". This had never been a problem for me before, I'd never seen it be a problem in others, so I was curious what the hell it meant in this context. Turns out in practice, it means that there are bad consequences to having emotional responses to things... and telling the truth becomes risky, so of course we *say* you're supposed to tell the truth.
What this reminds me of the most, is back in elementary school when the adults would say out loud, "Are you being bullied? Come to us, tell us what's going on, and we'll fix it for you!". Which was so completely unrealistic, they could have more truthfully said, "Are you being bullied? Figure out how to deal with it on your own, because we really don't want to be bothered with the politics of 8-year-olds."
To my mind, the *real* story about Bill Cosby, is not that he drugged and raped women, or that maybe he didn't. The real story is how many people had his back while he was (allegedly) doing it, and how many people still back him up today. It's rape culture, to be sure, but rape is just a particularly vicious form of bullying.
As hard as it is to talk about "Rape Culture", it's even harder to talk about "Bully Culture". Too bad.
This principle can apply to other kinds of statements as well. When I moved into this place, I quickly discovered that "Emotional Authenticity" was a thing. As in, "tell the truth about what you're feeling". This had never been a problem for me before, I'd never seen it be a problem in others, so I was curious what the hell it meant in this context. Turns out in practice, it means that there are bad consequences to having emotional responses to things... and telling the truth becomes risky, so of course we *say* you're supposed to tell the truth.
What this reminds me of the most, is back in elementary school when the adults would say out loud, "Are you being bullied? Come to us, tell us what's going on, and we'll fix it for you!". Which was so completely unrealistic, they could have more truthfully said, "Are you being bullied? Figure out how to deal with it on your own, because we really don't want to be bothered with the politics of 8-year-olds."
To my mind, the *real* story about Bill Cosby, is not that he drugged and raped women, or that maybe he didn't. The real story is how many people had his back while he was (allegedly) doing it, and how many people still back him up today. It's rape culture, to be sure, but rape is just a particularly vicious form of bullying.
As hard as it is to talk about "Rape Culture", it's even harder to talk about "Bully Culture". Too bad.