I think it makes it easier to avoid introspection.
I saw a comment the other day, some off-hand little comment in someone's blog/article mostly concerned with a tangential story that clarified things for me. And that was that it's easy for people to condemn homosexuality because for many people, it's not something that applies to them. And that just clicked with me: If it's an evil bad thing, then it's something they can give themselves a gold star for avoiding... just by sheer luck! "Nope, still not gay! Yay me." They're not criticizing anything that might be an actual personal flaw that they too might have to struggle with - pride, greed, selfishness.
And in a similar way, I think the same applies to racism/sexism/whatever. If you can go on a rant about those 'goddamn [insert slur here]', you can instantly feel better about yourself, because you're not one of THEM. (then of course, there's also the scapegoat option, where you get to make up for your failure as a human being by blaming THEM for it.)
I recently had a very charming conversation with an Asshole about how molesting a drunk girl was obviously not rape, because hey, she didn't say No and what's a poor guy to do and now that drama queen is acting all traumatised, but you know how seriously to take that *winkwink*.
It was a case of talking past each other as well. But it was a good reminder that I hold beliefs that really aren't shared as widely as you'd think.
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I saw a comment the other day, some off-hand little comment in someone's blog/article mostly concerned with a tangential story that clarified things for me. And that was that it's easy for people to condemn homosexuality because for many people, it's not something that applies to them. And that just clicked with me: If it's an evil bad thing, then it's something they can give themselves a gold star for avoiding... just by sheer luck! "Nope, still not gay! Yay me." They're not criticizing anything that might be an actual personal flaw that they too might have to struggle with - pride, greed, selfishness.
And in a similar way, I think the same applies to racism/sexism/whatever. If you can go on a rant about those 'goddamn [insert slur here]', you can instantly feel better about yourself, because you're not one of THEM. (then of course, there's also the scapegoat option, where you get to make up for your failure as a human being by blaming THEM for it.)
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See, thing is, you'd think graduating high school would be an incentive to move away from this sort of thought process. Clearly it's not though.
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It was a case of talking past each other as well. But it was a good reminder that I hold beliefs that really aren't shared as widely as you'd think.
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*itches to smack some heads*
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