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

[Duncan]

Steven D'Aprano posted on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:22:48 +1000 as excerpted:

> On Fri, 6 Aug 2010 06:14:21 am Duncan wrote:
> 
>> Hmm... perhaps putting it in terms Stallman might understand,

>> "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?

It's true in the sense of once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.  That 
is, similarly in both cases, once one has fallen into that pattern, one 
must be forever vigilant (tho it does get easier with time and old habit 
breaking, new habit formation, it's still surprisingly easy to fall into) 
to prevent one's falling into the same old pattern once again.  

Now, there may come a point, as there has with me, at which one may 
recognize that the experience is now a part of them and has changed them 
such that they'd be a rather different person without it; it's part of 
owning one's experiences and learning to accept what happened in the past 
in a way not unhealthy to self-esteem and acceptance, but there's still 
the recognition that nobody should have to go thru such an experience, and 
that it shouldn't have happened in that case either, even if one does 
recognize that had it not happened, they'd now be a rather different 
person.  That's certainly part of the healing.

But just as a former addict must watch less they fall into the same 
dependency patterns, so must an abuse victim.  In that sense, yes, once a 
victim, always a victim.

> 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.

But it should be up to the individual, and thus, shouldn't appear in a 
public context (in a discussion of an entirely different subject, if it 
were the announced subject, one could intelligently make the choice) where 
one cannot be certain of the history or sensitivities of the audience in 
that regard.

> 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.

Interestingly enough, I had a perhaps similar experience.

Consider that my family was medically oriented, and it wasn't unusual to 
have medical discussions (in general, no names of course) of all manner of 
"gross" topics, bowel obstruction, etc.  As a result, I've never tended to 
get queasy at the dinner table no matter what the topic of discussion 
might happen to be.

With that context, I was watching... who knows, maybe the same documentary 
you were... while eating pizza, again, not something I'd normally turn 
down by any means.

But I ended up putting it in the freezer for another day, that night, as 
watching that documentary really /did/ make me queasy.

Later, thinking back on that evening, I decided that, if there was 
anything that should make me queasy while eating, even pizza, it should be 
something like that.  And I realized I was rather comforted by the fact 
that I /did/ get queasy watching that program.

But there again, that's a scheduled program on an announced topic, 
something people with sensitivities to it could simply choose not to watch 
(or to simply hit the switcher on if they came across it), not something 
hitting you broadside out of nowhere.

Altho, come to think of it, I'm advocating a similar reaction here.  
Simply get up and walk out when it hits sensitivities or gets offensive.  
It'd be quite a different story if, for instance, the context were that of 
a comic performance of someone known for their ribald humor, in a 
nightclub or the like.  One wouldn't be obligated to get up and walk out 
there, as it'd be in an appropriate context where people knew what to 
expect going in, tho I'd certainly not fault anyone finding it a bit more 
than they could handle, for deciding it was a good time to go visit the 
restroom, or take a walk outside, or whatever.

> How many people remember the genocide of the Armenians?

Actually, I know about it from a book my mom read to us kids.  The (true) 
story was told from the perspective of a survivor.  A businessman happened 
on the group on their walk to destruction, and took an interest in a 
particular young lady, who he ultimately adopted as his own child.  But at 
the time, she left her mom and sister, crying at being separated.  She 
never saw them again, realizing only later what happened to them.

But my point remains.  There's an appropriate context, when the topic is 
known and those with sensitivities can choose not to go (and parents with 
kids with sensitivities can choose not to read certain books to them, or 
to take special care in doing so), and there's not.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman