It's fascinating to observe the battles of the culture war. They evoke the strongest emotions of all of us, flood media coverage for days, maybe even weeks, on end, and highlight how differently the two political sides think and feel. Then they highlight just how much these political differences can turn us from thinking and feeling people to just feeling people, governed by more raw emotion, which leads us to stop actually considering the issue that we are at war over. Instead, we automatically assume that any contrary statement is one of the worst things that could ever be said, and any chance at rational conversation breaks down.
It's no coincidence that these battles are fought over the most sensitive and emotionally charged issues. Otherwise, they wouldn't drive us to feel as passionately as we do. The massive battle over Rush Limbaugh's attacks on Sandra Fluke was triggered by the sensitive issues of equality for women and a warped view freedom of religion. The massive battle over Dan Cathy's comments was only fought because of the emotional issue of marriage equality. The massive battle over Phil Robertson's comments was only fought because of the emotional issue of the treatment of LGBT people.
Sometimes it's okay to get emotional. Sometimes, what is said is just so outside the bounds of any level of civility that it should be condemned. Rush Limbaugh's attacks on Sandra Fluke is such an example. It is absolutely disgusting to go on a rant for three straight days in which you make one vile statement after another, including repeatedly declaring your target a "slut" and a "prostitute" and claiming that "she's having so much sex it's amazing she can still walk." But other times, the emotion evoked transforms into complete and utter hysteria, hysteria that is not warranted to respond to whatever it is that has caused the controversy. Chick-fil-A comes to mind here. It was not necessary to absolutely lose our minds just because someone said that they don't support marriage equality.
At the moment, I have the feeling that some elements on both the Left and the Right are falling into the hysteria trap with the controversy over Rolling Stone's flawed article about the alleged rape of a woman at the University of Virginia, who is known only as "Jackie". Some on the Left have instinctively declared any calls for due process of law in a rape case "victim-blaming" and "rape apology", while some on the Right have automatically dismissed any calls for sexual assault to be taken seriously as lies and whining.
But ultimately, in this sorry saga, the Left has committed more errors than the Right.
When trying to decide how to react to sensitive situations involving an allegation of wrongdoing, I find myself conflicted between two different approaches: an emphasis on sensitivity to the complainant (the approach that some on the extreme left absolutely adhere to), and an emphasis on skepticism of an unproven allegation (the approach that some on the extreme right absolutely adhere to). A more potentially problematic skepticism is skepticism that, if the allegation is true, that it was as bad as it actually was.
The former approach is driven by up to two things: human compassion and fear. It is very easy to be very moved by a horrible story. Like I said in the opening paragraph, our emotions are powerful. We can't fight what we feel. And it is very easy to feel bad when a story like this pops up. This is a good thing. We should be treating people who have been wronged with compassion. However, sometimes that need for compassion takes over and becomes the only thing that should be considered, even before due process of law. A fear of seeming uncompassionate can lead one to be compassionate to the point where suspects who have not been proven guilty are thrown under the bus. This is what Rolling Stone did by deciding not to try to contact the accused.
The latter approach is (generally) driven by an inability to understand what the complainant has actually experienced. You cannot know the true effects of misogyny if you are not a woman, or of racism if you're not black, or of homophobia if you're not gay. And when you don't know, you think that the complainant is overreacting. People who would dismiss such complaints need to understand that the complainant is looking at it through an entirely different perspective, and may have been harmed in a way that the dismissers cannot imagine. But that understanding has to work both ways. People who would assail the dismissers need to understand that they do not have the ability to view what has been complained about in the same way. It's not always through malice that this occurs. They just do not, and cannot, know.
Now admittedly, sometimes this dismissal can be through malice, or at the very least, a callous disregard of a very serious problem. This was the case with George Will back in June, when he accused anti-sexual assault advocates of making the status of being a sexual assault victim "a coveted status that confers privileges". This is extremely offensive, and something that I do not find acceptable in the slightest, even as I view comments on this issue with a mindfulness to not instinctively crucify. To come to this conclusion, it's necessary to slow down, slow your brain down, and consider what the person is actually saying, rather than automatically and instinctively identify a specific and precise comment with a view that you find abhorrent. (This is what Ben Affleck did with Bill Maher.)
Speaking of Maher: If you have read my diary "Bill Maher, UC Berkeley, And Guilt By Association", you would know that the standard that I use to determine this question is whether or not the view expressed is "wholly incompatible with the operation of a just and civilized society". This test deliberately sets a high bar. It is not to be likened to whether or not you merely disagree with a viewpoint expressed, even strongly, even if you find it offensive. How do you apply it? Consider what a person has said, and then consider what would happen if society took that view and acted upon it, and behaved according to it. If society did so, would it be neither just nor civilized? If the answer is yes, then the view expressed fits that test, and deserves condemnation.
Now, what Will said certainly fits that test. If society acted towards sexual assault victims with an attitude that their status as a sexual assault victim is "a coveted status that confers privileges", it would be neither just nor civilized. This kind of thinking could not be more damaging to sexual assault victims. Such attitudes of dismissal have led to rape victims attempt suicide. The consequences of Will's attitudes would, without question, make society neither just nor civilized.
But while his comments about the victimhood of rape survivors have been roundly (and rightly) condemned as disgusting, an overall criticism of what some have perceived to be an excessive victim mentality has emerged. Over at The Daily Beast, Lizzie Crocker has written of a "victim culture" that holds that "anything that runs contrary to the victim’s narrative is cast as an attack on that person", and accurately points out that "today, everyone rushes to be a victim". It is my belief that the extremists on the Left are holding too much to this idea, where any claim of being a victim is automatically valid, and that any questioning of it makes you a cold, callous, uncaring psychopath.
This talk of a "victim culture" reminds me of a cause célèbre about free speech, and the bounds of what is acceptable discourse, in my home country of Australia. In September of 2011, right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt was found to have breached Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, an absurd law that actually makes it illegal to offend (offend!) someone because of their race. (Seriously. Go have a look for yourself.) (There are also narrow free speech exemptions.) The work that got him into trouble was two columns from April and August of 2009, where he accused light-skinned Aboriginal Australians of exaggerating their Aboriginality to access financial benefits available only to Aboriginals, to advance political careers, or to be part of what he called a "trend"; a fad, I guess, where it's cool to be of a certain race.
The part that what he wrote that is relevant to this case was from the second article. He was discussing a light-skinned Aboriginal man who claimed that being both light-skinned and Aboriginal made him "a white black man" and meant that he "was becoming a victim." I find this absurd.
Now, Bolt's articles represent an unacceptable standard of journalism. He made a total of 19 factual errors, which were the entire basis for attacking a group of people. (It's fair enough that he breached the law on these grounds.) He also demonstrated a lack of understanding of how identity as an Aboriginal person is formed. He did not realize that the people he attacked had been raised Aboriginal, and had always understood that about themselves. They did not choose to be Aboriginal, as he claimed they did. But while he may have demonstrated a lack of understanding, so too did his detractors. They couldn't accept why he might think that it's silly to firstly identify with a race that does not comprise a large amount of your biology. And the results of such a misunderstanding ended up being quite vindictive. The counsel for the people who sued him argued in court that he had a eugenics view of race, similar to the Nazis. On an episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Q And A" program, Aboriginal professor Marcia Langton stated that he "believes in race theories." (3:30 in the video) This, to me, doesn't sound like a rational consideration of his argument.
And one more thing about this talk of a "victim culture". A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a diary that I regret writing, where I mocked a Canadian reporter's response to having her reporter interrupted by a yell of "fuck her right in the pussy". I made two mistakes: one; I should not have used a mocking, derisive and sarcastic tone in response to a woman speaking up about sexism, and two; I misinterpreted her comments as speaking in a way that she herself had been raped, or assaulted, or bashed. I showed one part of a lack of understanding: not being able to understand what a woman must feel when that phrase is shouted loudly in her vicinity. But I've moderated in my belief of how bad it actually was, and I also think that a lot of the criticism directed at me showed a lack of understanding of my lack of understanding. I will never be able to understand what a woman feels when she hears that phrase. I wish some of the criticism directed at me had kept that in mind. And I cannot help but wonder if the reporter's reaction was a manifestation of the victim culture mentality, the mentality that Crocker, a woman, has written about.
This trend of knee-jerk, overblown criticism of politically incorrect comments has continued with the Rolling Stone controversy. Amanda Marcotte has broadly attacked "rape apologists", without identifying any actual people that she's talking about, who "think that if they can “discredit” one rape story, that means no other rape stories can be true, either." The lack of identification of specific people for whom rape apology is a problem inadvertently implicates everyone who questions Jackie's story. She also claimed that "all these accusations that all the facts aren’t out are aimed at discouraging investigation and reporting things that gets the facts out." Apparently, advising people to be careful to judge because we don't exactly know what happened is intended to discourage victims of sexual assault from coming forward.
New York Magazine's Kat Stoeffel wrote that "skepticism of writer Sabrina Erdely mirrors the disproportionate scrutiny that sexual assault victims face at the hands of the police." (She did, however, still urge caution in the case.) The magazine's contributing writer Marin Cogan called blogger Richard Bradley a "UVA truther" for raising doubts about the story. (She has since apologized.) Jezebel's Anna Merlan denounced as an "idiot" Reason Magazine writer Robby Soave for agreeing with Bradley, claiming that he "takes Bradley's giant ball of shit and runs with it." (She, too, has apologized.) A number of embarrassing backdowns have been the result of a vindictive rush to convict.
But one all-sensitivity-no-skepticism left-winger who is not backing down is Jessica Valenti. In The Guardian, she has written that "Jackie is now another woman who is not believed", that "the fact that Jackie is not and was not a symbol or a cause, but a person, has been lost in the rush to indict her and anyone who believes her", and denouncing the raising of legitimate doubts about the story as a "frenzy to prove Jackie’s story false", possible because "disbelief is the misogynist status quo". She also states that "I choose to believe Jackie."
I find these comments quite problematic. Yes, Jackie may not be believed so strongly, but think about what a strong belief that she had been raped would imply. It would imply a strong belief that somebody had raped her. This is a conclusion completely incompatible with the presumption of innocence. Now, I do think that some elements on the Right have rushed to indict Jackie, and this is also quite a problem, as I will bring up later on. However, I find this part also quite ironic, as the real indictments have been made against the fraternity and those who took its side, as Marcotte, Stoeffel, Cogan and Merlan indicate. My biggest concern is Valenti's perhaps inadvertent conflation of raising legitimate doubts about a dubious story with a "frenzy", and with her perhaps inadvertent conflation of being legitimately skeptical of rape allegations with "misogynist" "disbelief". This is the politically correct tip-toeing that discourages any questioning of an allegation. And sometimes, the result may be that due process goes out the window.
The problem with Valenti's column, like that of Amanda Marcotte's writing, is the broad indictments. Valenti did not identify any actual, specific, and genuinely problematic responses to this controversy. Had she done, she would have been able to make the claim that she was talking only about that line of thinking. Instead, she inadvertently captured any and all disagreement as being problematic.
In another response to Valenti's comments, I don't believe Jackie. I know that that may sound controversial prima facie, so let me explain what I mean. The lack of belief in something is simply the lack of a definitive conclusion that it is true. It need not imply a definitive conclusion that it is not true. I also do not believe that Jackie was not raped. I just don't know. There's not enough evidence. Also, I certainly do not claim that Jackie lied. I just cannot make a judgement about this situation. I just don't know what the facts are.
But that's enough excoriating of the Left. The Right's reactions have been problematic too. NewsBusters argued that for the Left, "this wasn’t a case of a magazine writing up a story based on an unverified account, but a slip up that affected their “rape culture” agenda." Rush Limbaugh mocked "all of these rape stories and whatever else that fits into the War on Women meme that the Democrat Party has established." Jonah Goldberg said that the (correct) idea that rape on college campuses is a serious problem is "an elaborate political lie intended to strengthen the hand of activists". Fox News' Tammy Bruce claimed that anti-sexual assault advocacy intends to "romanticize being a victim".
Ultimately, though, I think the Left has emerged from this looking worse than the Right has.
I once wrote that "I am on the Left, but I don't think we can reasonably expect that we'll get it more correct than the Right every single time on every single issue." It is my hope that we may all be able to think like this, both on the Left and the Right, and be able to actually listen to each other, instead of rushing to identify a contrary opinion that comes from the contrary side of the political spectrum with genuinely despicable beliefs, and thus, damning a possibly valid viewpoint to nothing but demonization, condemnation, and a reaction that makes anyone too afraid to even consider that it might be valid. (Admittedly, we on the Left are better than the Right, owing to Fox News.)
The balance to be struck between appropriate sensitivity and appropriate skepticism is difficult to find, and we all have different ideas of what it should be. Let's keep that in mind, and not be so quick to assail anyone who strikes a different balance as an enemy of humanity.