Blaming the victim

[flexibeast]

i've been hanging out in a particular IT-related Yahoo! chat room lately - the one i mentioned in a recent LJ entry. From today, however, i'll no longer be doing so.

i recently created a new Yahoo! account because my existing Yahoo! account, 'bi_gendered', was attracting the attention of the small-minded jerks in the room, and causing often-useless discussions about my gender and sexuality. i say "often-useless" because the people in question tended to not want to actually learn about the existence of sexual and gender diversity; most of the jerks in question were not interested in reading the wealth of on- and off-line material via which they could learn about such things, instead of just spouting prejudicial rubbish.

Today, however, i'd decided i'd had enough. Someone in the room started arguing that i should expect to be flamed, given my nick (i.e. 'bi_gendered'); and this same individual went on to basically argue that women who go out at night are "asking for it", i.e. they shouldn't be surprised when they are harrassed, attacked and raped. i became furious at this blaming of the victim, as did naked_wrat, who was also in the room at the time. She was the only one in the room to step up and stand alongside me as we angrily argued that it is a human right not to be harrassed or attacked or raped. In the end, after saying "Oh yes, blame the woman, as usual", i resorted to using ALL CAPS and said "How ABOUT BLAMING THE FUCKING PERPETRATORS, YOU SICK JERK!" And left the room. Only to find out i had been banned from a related IRC room i'd been hanging out in. i suspected the argument in the Yahoo! room and my banning were related, so i briefly re-joined the room in question and said "One last thing: good to see i've been banned from #[IRC channel] . . . . clearly it's unacceptable for people to defend themselves from being attacked and harrassed."

It's bad enough that there are people who blame the victims of violence for what is done to them; it's awful to see bystanders fail to speak out against such people. So i won't be frequenting that room anymore, even though i have met several great people there. On the other hand, as a result of this tiff, naked_wrat and i were invited to an IRC channel which has amongst its basic rules "Be nice", "No gay bashing" and "No racial slurs" :-) "Be nice" - what a novel idea! :-P

Comments

[otheapathy.livejournal.com]

People suck, I don't know what else to say and unfortunately in the tech/geek world there are a lot of men who have spend no time around people who weren’t straight male normal types who have never considered the concept of being in a different situation. Most people don't want to change there views.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

i guess . . . . but on the other hand, to me, this is a basic question of human rights. Although when i said that in the room, at least one person (the main person i was arguing with) seemed mystified by the notion that it's a basic human right not to be harrassed, attacked and/or raped simply on the basis of one's sex and/or gender. :-|