I’m older now and I read a lot more than I move, which thing I ought to bring more into balance. With that admission now on the table, I spied this headline while zoning in and out of Packers Bears pre-game. Even at my age, I was very curious. Turns out, this gifted wordsmith and student of human nature IS my age. This is must read stuff for any couple hoping for longevity.
This will both open in a new tab in your browser, and open your eyes! Just look for yourselves. Now I don’t wish to make disparaging remarks about Me Too in general even though . . . . most certainly . . . many hopefully claimants are guilty of sheeping. (It’s a thing here in the West) The victimhood bandwagon is crowded with hitchhikers and hijackers alike. There are also many women who have been truly used and traumatized. The fact that I am talking about victimhood culture shouldn’t blind us to the fact that real victims exist or lead us to think that the true victims of that culture are exploiting that same culture. If dignity culture is to win the battle, it is going to need a few heroes. This talking point is much written about these days from the Left Wing view, the Right Wing view, and from every anatomical appendage and location in-between! Consider this excerpt from an interview by Claire Lehmann, Editor In Chief of Quillette. Bradley Campbell, and Jason Manning co-authored The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars
Claire Lehmann: Just briefly for our readers who have not read your book, can you explain . . . . . . . victimhood cultures which you outline in your thesis?
Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning: “What we call victimhood culture combines some aspects of honor and dignity. People in a victimhood culture are like the honorable in having a high sensitivity to slight. They’re quite touchy, and always vigilant for offenses. Insults are serious business, and even unintentional slights might provoke a severe conflict. But, as in a dignity culture, people generally eschew violent vengeance in favor of relying on some authority figure or other third party. They complain to the law, to the human resources department at their corporation, to the administration at their university, or — possibly as a strategy of getting attention from one of the former — to the public at large.”
“The combination of high sensitivity with dependence on others encourages people to emphasize or exaggerate the severity of offenses. There’s a corresponding tendency to emphasize one’s degree of victimization, one’s vulnerability to harm, and one’s need for assistance and protection. People who air grievances are likely to appeal to such concepts as disadvantage, marginality, or trauma, while casting the conflict as a matter of oppression.”
“The result is that this culture also emphasizes a particular source of moral worth: victimhood. Victim identities are deserving of special care and deference. Contrariwise, the privileged are morally suspect if not deserving of outright contempt. Privilege is to victimhood as cowardice is to honor.”
In some ways, our society is now a cynical personal point scoring endeavor, always on the lookout for an opportunity to exploit our human tendency toward logical fallacy and tribalism. This political polarization plays right into the hands of certain special interest groups whose activities are of questionable repute.
Much of the MeToo movement might be seen as an expression of dignity culture. That is an appeal to ideals already widely held but commonly violated. Women demanding that they not be bullied, groped, fondled, demeaned, assaulted, or harassed by men the workplace, and that the men abusing their power in this way face consequences, aren’t typically relying on radical feminism or its notions of endemic patriarchal oppression. They seem to be trying to bring to light behavior that was already considered wrong but that many people weren’t aware was going on.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of us men are by and large innocent of what the Me Too consortium would have society believe is rampant both around the water cooler, and in the privacy of our homes. To our collective credit, we are not demanding that women get a handle on what many men perceive to be just as hurtful. There is a Mel Gibson movie (yes I realize that movies are pretend) titled “What Women Want” and for the male species who have watched it, it is a pretty good look at the age old “Battle Of The Sexes”.
The stereotype for both genders is and always has been a thing I suppose. But here is The Thing! Inaccuracies abound in both camps, and this forgotten albeit well done (in my flawed man brain anyway) film gives us a pretty good idea of where I wanted to end up when I started this post. We could hash tag it #He Too just for pun. I’ve been around the block a time or three, and deep, I mean BURIED inside of us is the real thing we want, and Jed Diamond nailed it! The article left me rather emotional and I immediately wanted to write about it, the author and the many thoughts that started bouncing around in my head.
So, back to the game . . . . Football and Life. I hope my 4 or 5 readers find this worth your time and muse. Meantime, I have super to prepare out on the grill.
Rusty Bent Nail 