Re: [Pan-users] Re: updated info - O.T.

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 6 Aug 2010 06:14:21 am Duncan wrote:

> Hmm... perhaps putting it in terms Stallman might understand, given
> the quote below (tho the parallel isn't perfect and doesn't in this
> pseudoquote reflect the ability to, with work and time, master the
> former master)...
>
> "Every abuse victim now has a lord, a master, that has the potential
> to torment them for the rest of their lives.  By speaking such 
> imagery, you awake once again this tormentor.  Is that what you
> really wish to do?"

Or to put it another way, "Once a victim, always a victim".

You should know better. From your above comment, you do know better. So 
why do you approvingly quote a comment that is such patronising 
nonsense?

Forbidding the use of disturbing imagery is one of the tools of the 
victimizer. It wasn't the *victims* of abusive priests who argued that 
they should be forbidden from telling anyone what happened, it was the 
abusers and their defenders. Arguing that we shouldn't use such imagery 
because it will -- not even "might", but *will*, in "every" victim -- 
re-awake their tormentor is simply aiding the victimizer. Every call to 
censor is made with the excuse that it is for the victim's benefit. It 
never is.

One of the defining moments of my childhood was watching a documentary 
series on television about the Nazi concentration camps. The 
documentary could have followed the above advice, and avoided any 
imagery which could have disturbed victims. They didn't. They showed 
photos of the piles of emancipated corpses stacked high in graphic 
detail. They showed photo after photo of starving survivors, their 
limbs shrunk to barely more than skin and bone, the haunted looks on 
their faces. Could it re-awake bad memories in Holocaust survivors? 
Yes, I'm sure it could. Was this disturbing? Absolutely. But I never 
forgot it. Those disturbing, frightening, horrifying photos of 
strangers shown on the screen were a million times more real to me than 
the knowledge that my grandfather's own family had died in those camps.

If people had followed the advice above, and kept silent because it 
would "re-awaken" the tormentor, would we even know the name of 
Auschwitz today? Silence aids the abuser, not the victim. How many 
people remember the victims of the Rape of Nanking? How many people 
remember the genocide of the Armenians?

Does anyone think that sexual abuse disappeared in Victorian times 
because it was socially unacceptable to make dirty jokes? On the 
contrary, the opposite was the case. Abuse of all sorts was rife. 
Sexual abuse of household servants was endemic. The more "polite" the 
household, the more nasty it likely was.

Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

A joke about losing virginity is not even close to film of concentration 
camp victims. So what should we say? That it's okay to *really* disturb 
people, but not to disturb them only a little bit? That the *less* 
disturbing something is, the *more* we should disapprove of it and 
censor it? That is insanity.

Talking truth to power is disturbing, especially to the powerful and 
those who have accepted their lies. You can't talk truth to power 
unless you accept that disturbing imagery is *necessary*, and maybe 
even a good thing. The cost of that freedom to disturb others is that 
sometimes they will disturb you.



-- 
Steven D'Aprano