What would you have done?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 2:37PM The videos are a setup from a TV show, but that knowledge did not make me feel better after watching them, or made it easier to watch them.
The question is, what would you have done? In my experience, most people abhor confrontation. They would rather suffer in silence when it came to tolerating the belligerence of strangers. But when it comes to cases that are manifestly signs of abuse, that calls for intervention from strangers, then it shouldn't matter how they are dressed. No one deserves to be abused physically or psychologically. This isn't about playing hero, or playing nice and avoiding confrontation, it is about doing what is right by your conscience.
These are delicate situations, and I understand that. But the variance in reactions shown in the video is just too wide for my liking. No one asked to be a victim, and if they are abuse victims, the least we could do is to intervene. I would regard that as nothing less than a sign of compassion, that those who need help deserve no less from others. Blaming the victim is handy to stay out of a complicated situation, but hardly helpful to anyone.
I wonder what I would have done, if I encountered the same situation. I would probably offer help to the victim, and at the very least separated them to cool down while the police arrives on the scene, but this is me and my (some say) over-inflated ego, and I can take care of myself in a physical confrontation. But even if you can't, or don't have the confidence to, would it be beyond your decency to just call the cops?
ABC, Feministing, abuse in Feminism, TV, United States, What the fuck, Women's rights
Reader Comments (1)
My belief is that the number of people who will stand up to a bully are in the minority. And even for those who want to intervene, they don't want to be the only one. Everyone is waiting for someone else to take the lead. So right now we are talking about a very small sample of people who might actually take a stand.
It's easier to think that in the second set of experiments, people were more apathetic towards the women. When this happens, viewers (that's us) get to impose our own morals to explain the behaviour exhibited by the other diners. The problem I have with this experiment is this:
We don't know if the diners who acted the way they did will behave consistently throughout all 4 scenarios. For all we know, those who just chose to watch during the last two experiments would be equally apathetic or frightened in the first two experiments. Those who did help during the first two might also help during the last two. It's just easier for the viewers to assume that people behave differently when women dress differently because the website cues people into that conclusion:
"Until you see they change one variable-the women's clothing. In the second set of scenarios no one comes to aid the women."
Even for those who didn't read that line, it's quite obvious there is a "catch" somewhere.
The funny thing about perception is that it's easy to see other people being clouded by it, but not ourselves.