Can we wait until things are a bit calmer?
One of the more annoying thought-terminating clichés of the moment is the “please, let’s not talk about the roots of misogynist violence now when the news is fresh, lets give the families time to mourn” one.
I say this because I’m grinding my teeth over one I just saw.
Joan was on Womans Hour because she has a new book on the subject, and because the Home Office has heeded her advice. But behold, a man appears.
I’ll refrain from sharing his actual tweets, but I’ll damn well quote what he said, because I find it so annoying.
Hi Joan, I agree with you on extreme misogyny and radicalisation but can we wait until things are a bit calmer? My parents live a stone’s throw from there – these are raw wounds for the people of Plymouth.
Of course they’re raw wounds for the people of Plymouth, but what’s that got to do with Joan Smith talking about policy on Twitter? Are the people of Plymouth going to be made more upset by Joan’s tweets?
Of course not! And what do this guy’s parents have to do with anything? What does their proximity to the exact spot have to do with anything?
Bupkis. I think he just grabbed the opportunity to say something pious. And the pious (stupid) thing he said amounts to saying can we wait to talk about this until no one is paying attention? And the answer is no, you fucking fool, because the whole point is for people to pay attention.
He amplified:
I fundamentally agree that it should be talked about beforehand. Misogyny and the violence associated with it is a dangerous and worrying trend in society. But I feel like leaving it a few days so the families can mourn the victims is appropriate.
Again: that’s stupid. It’s a cliché, for some reason, and it’s utterly stupid. It’s become a conventional thing to say, and why? I don’t know, I guess because people enjoy saying pious stupid things. It’s stupid because talking about the connection between violence and misogyny does not in any way interfere with anyone’s mourning.
If advertisers were hammering on the doors of people who are mourning the victims to offer promotion opportunities, that would be interfering with the mourning. But public discussion? Don’t be ridiculous.
The Plymouth Shooter admired Mr. Trump, called himself a blackpiller incel and felt sorry for himself because no one would date him. It wasn’t because he has a shitty personality and thinks women who’ve had sex are “ruined.” No, it was women being too picky.
Not talking about it because it’s too fresh is a stalling technique brought out after every mass shooting in the U.S. and because they are so frequent, there’s never an interval that allows discussion. Imagine if no one spoke about aging bridges following the collapse in Minneaplis of an interstate bridge?
Yes, now is the time to talk about it, England, because in a couple of days there will be new headlines and new things to talk about.
“Don’t talk ill of the dead.” “Don’t politicize this tragedy [sic*].” It’s always a convenient sidestep around difficult issues, innit? Gun violence in the US, for example. Of course you shouldn’t tell people in mourning what an awful person the deceased was, or how their death is an example of why we should do x, but that doesn’t mean those discussions are or should be verboten out of earshot of the mourners. And if the loved ones want to bring up those issues, we should at a minimum listen respectfully.
As it happens, I was just reading about the murder of Emmett Till. His mother insisted on an open casket so the world could see what they did to her son; she even allowed Jet magazine to publish the pictures. Of course there were voices saying that she shouldn’t do that, but later Rosa Parks said that she was thinking of Emmett when she refused to give up her seat.
*I hate that use of “tragedy”. I don’t insist on using the word only in the Greek or Shakespearean way, but a mass shooting is an atrocity, not a tragedy.
Let’s wait seems to be a response to any difficult problem. I have been told I shouldn’t waste time talking about environmental issues while: there’s a war on; people are in mourning; we’re in the middle of an election; a tsunami just wiped out large numbers in Bangladesh; black lives are being taken by police; there are hungry people in (wherever the trendy place is to have hungry people this year).
Try to find a time when no one has raw or bleeding wounds, there are no wars on, we’re not in the middle of an election, there has not just been a natural disaster, black lives are respected as completely as white lives, and there are no hungry people anywhere. Not gonna happen. So we don’t have to talk about difficult issues…like the environment, police shootings, misogyny…it’s a good, all purpose no-fact-based rebuttal to any issue. If you can get the person arguing for the issue to buy into that technique. I don’t, though I will approach it with compassion when dealing with mourning people.
Yes about Emmett Till’s mother. She had to insist, because it was horrific. People at the funeral fainted.
If there’s a common tendency for people to say “let’s give the bereaved some space to mourn and stay off the subject,” it could be because we evolved in small, close social groups. We may have developed a mental heuristic to the effect that, when we talk openly about something to our tribe, we should assume all members will eventually hear it and feel obligated to respond.
After all, the admonishment makes perfect sense if we’re at a funeral held in limited space. “My parents … stone’s throw … raw wounds” all invoke a cozy image of closeness. People often revert to the default under stress.
If some topic isn’t to be spoken of even when recent events have made it extremely relevant, then the obvious intent is for it to never be spoken of. “Don’t talk about X now, people need time to recover”, “let the bodies at least cool down before politicising this”, and so on, are just ways of stopping talk on that topic entirely. See also: USA’s gun problem every time there is a mass shooting.
A conversation I recall having seen re-enacted on TV. Robert Kennedy: “It’s not the right time.”
Martin Luther King Jnr: “It’s never the right time.”
It strikes me that it’s basically a decorum complaint. It’s indecorous to talk about the connection between misogyny and terrorism unless no one is listening. Yeah you know what’s really indecorous? Killing a bunch of random strangers because no one wants to fuck you. That’s indecorous.
You know the old story?
An old man is sitting in his house, and there’s a hole in the ceiling, through which the rain is leaking in.
They ask him: Why don’t you fix it?
He says: I can’t; it’s raining out.
They ask: So why don’t you fix it when it’s not raining?
He said: What would be the point of them? When it’s not raining, it don’t leak.
And during Pride season? The horror…
*virtual hug*
Be strong!
As others have said, it’s taking natural impulses that are understandable locally and misapplying them globally. Sometimes this misapplication happens naturally, but there are those who exploit it cynically; e.g., politicians who want to bury an issue. And of course, there are the people who’ve internalized the cynical actors’ “argument” and believe themselves virtuous when telling people to shut up.
You got a mention in the most recent The Mess We’re In concerning this, Ophelia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKGtP8xfBKA
I don’t have the timestamp, but there’s some good stuff at the start about the world’s most famous fox-murdering kimono-wearer so you should watch the whole thing anyway. I saw you there in the comments too, Bjarte!
The ‘parents’ thing really riles me. I’m supposed to care more about what this guy thinks because his parents might be slightly more likely to personally know someone who knows someone vaguely related to the people who were murdered than is Joan Smith. His views are therefore supposed to have extra relevance. Not only that, in fact, but we’re also supposed to actually mark down the relevance of Joan’s point because of that relationship. If we thought Joan had a good point before we read that man’s tweets, we’re now supposed to think it’s a less good one than we did before.
That is not the way anything works.
“Would it kill people [like this guy] to think about what they write before hitting the Tweet button?”
Is an example of an insensitive comment under the circumstances.
“Can we all pay attention to the reason this happened so that we can try to stop it happening again?”
Is not.
Yes, I started following Graham’s channel a few weeks ago and have been binge-watching all the episodes since then. Highly recommended. The reference to Ophelia begins at about 11:08.