This piece didn’t sit well with me. At first I thought it was just because of my knee-jerk, “no-duh”, reaction. Penetrating someone who is sleeping is rape. I still can not fathom why the guy was struggling with the idea he raped the girl. She was sleeping for god’s sake! But I was also have a hard time with this “good guy/bad guy” dichotomy that was being pitched at me. Not that Alyssa Royse is alone in this conversation, and I don’t think it was her intent to start a good/bad labeling war.
Matthew Salesses had the same response as me: trying to separate society and the individual’s sense of responsibility seems like a faulty way to go. After a semester of dealing with ethical issues with my senior communication students, I was reminded how important this conversation of personal responsibility is, as too many of them wanted to blame everything on the mass. Society! It makes us Do Things! The one student who consistently said, “But we have a choice,” was often shot down. So I was already sensitive to Royse’s idea that society is playing a role here. In fact, typing that makes me realize how much that still grates on me–my soul is screaming “we make choices!!”
The conversation shifted a little with these two pieces. Lynn Beisner talked about why consent isn’t an end all, and promptly came under fire for giving rapists ammunition–to the point that we need to sit down and play the label game. I don’t think that was Lynn’s intent either, and I think it was amazing of her to share such a personal and important story. The piece that really allowed me to understand the real struggle I was having was the one telling us why we shouldn’t say only “bad guys commit rape.” Joanna Schroeder’s piece alone has given me a lot to mull over, but what really struck me was the title. “Bad Guys.”
Good Guys do this. Bad Guys do that. Rapist Monsters. Is anyone noticing the language we’re using here? I see this when students give opinion speeches on crime/criminals or when people talk about any group of people they deem “beneath” them. Only good people do this and everyone else is a disgusting monster. Step one to hatred, intolerance, to indifference? Decide that some category of people is no longer human. Demonize, segregate, ignore completely the idea that ANY human has the capacity for ANY behavior. The language that decides “once a rapist, always a rapist” (really, put any crime in there), doesn’t allow for humanity, doesn’t allow for change, doesn’t allow to any societal improvements.
Oh yeah, it also doesn’t allow for that personal responsibility I’m talking about. Those choices we all make? If we say well that person is bad so that’s why s/he did that, then we’ve taken away any personal choices in the matter, as well as any ability for the individual to change and improve. Why bother rehabbing anyone at this point? They’re all bad, that’s their life sentence.
Joanna called it empathy. I’m fine with whatever you want to call it; I just want us to pay attention to our language choices. It’s a short easy step from bad/awful/horrific acts to “all these people are monsters.” Taking that step, in my opinion, places us right there with those we’re shaming.
Will it surprise you to know that I agree with you. And that is precisely what all three of us were talking about in our posts. That the binary language we use doesn’t work, and is at least partly to blame for the continued problems.
In the case in my story, I went to great pains to repeat that IT WAS HIS FAULT, HIS CHOICE and HIS RESPONSIBILITY. In suggesting that society helped to form his decision making process doesn’t remove any responsibility from him, at all. But it does give all of us some responsibility in addressing the underlying issues that enable the powerless sexulaization that hurts all of us. The idea in both my piece and Joanna’s piece was that although we all make choices, they are the result of what we believe based on what society has taught us from they day we are born.
It’s a basic tenant of sociology and anthropology and even psychology – our thoughts, actions and behaviors are shaped by the world we grow up in. Society is ALSO to blame, not instead.
After all, as a commenter on the thread pointed out, if two people are arrested for robbing a bank, they don’t each split on sentence. They both get a full sentence. So too in this case.
Good / bad does not work, at all. All humans are capable of acting anywhere on the good / bad spectrum. Further, each person’s interpretation of value (is something good or bad) is different. Which is why we have to come up with a more productive dialog. One that looks at why otherwise decent people think it’s okay to do bad things (or worse, don’t even know they’re all that bad.) And what role does society play in the formation of our ideas about what is an acceptable way to treat other people.
Thanks for keeping the dialog going. We have to, in order to change the world.
No it wouldn’t surprise me that you agree. I’ll admit that my initial reaction was triggered in my inability to get past the “she was sleeping” part. It took me a long time to put that part aside and look at the rest of what you wrote.
I still struggle with saying that society has such a strong role in our behaviors, but I haven’t quite figured out why, which is why I wrote this post. I worry that the second we say these things we allow ourselves to ignore the personal aspect. I’m saying that after semesters of students blaming society for everything–educational systems, violence, media images. It turns into this “we’re just helpless victims and society is pushing all of this on us.” And I want that line of thinking to stop. I firmly believe too much focus is placed on environment, which leads to this faulty idea that we don’t need to think about the self. I don’t think you were saying that, but I worry–seeing similar conversations on similar topics in many colleges in my area–that we aren’t considering enough.
There was another article I didn’t link to about how people who commit violent acts were awful, and shouldn’t be loved. It frustrated me–having been someone who was once a violent person–that the jump was made so quickly for one to be the sum of one violent act. I think that people do both good and bad things, and trying to label the individual as good or bad immediately sets up the rest of the conversation for failure.
And I’m still thinking about all of it and trying to organize my thoughts, so I do hope we can keep this conversation going!
I”m so grateful that you’re a part of this conversation, and that you were ultimately able to step out of your knee-jerk reaction, and I would’ve felt that way even if, ultimately, you had ended up further from my stance on the issue.
It is hard to organize our thoughts. The hardest thing to do, often, is to step out of the world where we get to call the people who do bad things The Bad People. In the world where The Bad Guys do all the bad stuff, we’re safe, aren’t we? We’re good, our spouses are good. The people we trust most are good.
Only that stranger, that “Other” over there is Bad. And we, in this culture, love us some Other.
The Other. Thanks for pointing that out. After lecturing my students all semester about that exact thing, it seems obvious to point out now! ha. I do realize I keep going back and forth with how I feel about it, but I also realize a straight up emotional reaction isn’t helpful. I needed to sit on Alyssa’s post for a little bit, but being aware that I need to do that instead of just reacting is a step forward for me.
I talked to my mom about this today, and she kept saying “but people are people, why do you [younger generation] need to make it good or bad? ” IOW: People do things, the actions are good and bad.
Thank you so much for saying this. It’s too easy for us to demonize “those people” and that’s a dangerous road for society to take. It ends badly, and I’m grateful your voice stands out against such a binary worldview.
You’re welcome. Thank you for your comment. I struggled with this issue–not specifically with rape–but the binary viewpoint, a lot this semester.
I’m actually impressed with Alyssa as she’s one brave lady to say stop and we need to asses and take stock. She’s following in eh footsteps of many others
Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius – the expression of one thing is the exclusion of the other.
I really would welcome a great many taking responsibility for their language choices – but I suspect they never will.
Ok, I replied and wordpress ate it, so the second time around might not be so elegantly worded. This: “I really would welcome a great many taking responsibility for their language choices – but I suspect they never will.” –I don’t want us to give up on wanting people to take responsibility–and for helping each other to remember that as well. We all make language shortcut, I know I do, which is why we need to keep talking and helping the conversation.
I think if we want to facilitate change we need to separate behaviour from the person. If doing something makes you a bad person, which is inherently flawed and unacceptable, all your efforts will go into denial. If recognizing your bad behaviour makes you a person of strong character with the ability to apologize and make amends, you have the foundation of a change movement. It is all about the symbolic meanings.
Yes, exactly