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Okay so I'm not interested in engaging with random dudes who want to defend not feeding a nine-year-old girl for six hours, but I do want to take a sec to talk to any actual friends I have out there who find the backlash the guy is getting baffling, as a case study.
I'm going to assume you know that making a kid spend six hours figuring out a can opener before you feed her is a bad thing to do, but if the level of anger is surprising to you, then this is an example of how to understand instead of dismissing people's anger.
First, let's imagine the guy is joking. Hell, let's imagine he isn't even embellishing, as he said, but that he made the whole damn thing up. Why get so angry about a joke?
Because jokes should be funny, and 'joking' about shitty behavior normalizes the behavior.
Because jokes should be funny, and 'joking' about shitty behavior normalizes the behavior.
And if fact, jokes don't just normalize shitty behavior--they are themselves a grooming tactic: abusers frequently make 'jokes' about things they do or want to do to see what kind of reaction they get. If people laugh? Green light. If they don't? Yellow light.
And if they object outright, then that's a red light, but a red light that allows you to turn right and exit the intersection by saying "gosh it was just a joke, calm down."
Now, abusive people are not the only ones who make shitty jokes. But non-abusive people who make shitty jokes are making that right turn on red easier by giving cover to grooming behaviors.
When you say "no, it wasn't a joke, because abuse/assault/neglect/etc aren't funny," you aren't just putting up a red light. You're putting up a No Turn On Red. You're telling a potential abuser that shit doesn't fly around you without giving them means to reroute.
So that's the first thing to note: people you perceive as being "too emotional" are often being strategic. Whether they're emotional is irrelevant, because their reaction is rational and calculated towards the goal of shutting down abusive behavior.
But let's also look at the case where he's not kidding, or you think he's only embellishing a little. Maybe you're thinking that he took it too far, but you also think calling it abuse to make a kid miss one meal is also taking it too far. Why are people THIS angry?
And here's where we get into empathy as a skill and a practice, which is a thing you can apply more broadly to situations where you don't understand why people are mad about something you consider minor.
The easy logic is as follows: "I am not mad about this, and I am a good, rational person. Therefore, people who are mad about this must be irrational.
This is cognitive dissonance in action.
This is cognitive dissonance in action.
We call a lot of things "cognitive dissonance" though, so here's what I mean: when we are presented with evidence that we're wrong about something, it can threaten our self-image. If we are smart/rational/compassionate/good, then we would be right!
So if we're wrong, then we are not as rational/virtuous as we thought, which leads to feeling bad about ourselves, aka dissonance.
The easy way to resolve that dissonance is to protect our self-image and validate that we are right and others are wrong.
The easy way to resolve that dissonance is to protect our self-image and validate that we are right and others are wrong.
But often, the better, more empathetic way to resolve that dissonance is to say, "well yikes. I am wrong. And I can do better in the future, so I'm going to work on that."
That kind of self-reflection is an extremely valuable skill to have, but let's drill back down to people are mad. You don't see why. How can you tell if this is a "well yikes" situation or if it really is a bunch of people mad for no reason, because certainly that does happen?
First: do you have your facts straight?
Do you actually understand the situation people are mad about?
Do you actually understand the situation people are mad about?
For example, you might think it's irrational to be mad about spilled coffee, but then you find out the coffee was so hot it caused full-thickness burns to someone's crotch and suddenly the anger makes a lot more sense, right?
Congrats, now you understand that McDonald's lawsuit.
Congrats, now you understand that McDonald's lawsuit.
Getting your facts straight is an especially big deal when it comes to sexual assault, because we as a society have a habit of downplaying the facts or using euphemisms that obscure what really happened.
But let's say we're all straight on the facts. A 9yo girl asked her dad for lunch because she was hungry, but he was too busy doing a puzzle to feed his child so he told her to feed herself, and made her spend six hours trying to figure out can openers from first principles.
We've already covered why this being an 'embellishment' doesn't make it okay, so we're going to take those facts at face value.
If you're thinking skipping lunch isn't that big a deal and people are blowing this out of proportion, cognitive dissonance has kicked in.
If you're thinking skipping lunch isn't that big a deal and people are blowing this out of proportion, cognitive dissonance has kicked in.
Reaching that conclusion is starting from the position that since it's not a big deal to you, it's not a big deal at all, and anyone making a big deal out of it is being irrational.
Empathy is a skill and a practice, and it starts here: what would need to be true for people's anger to make sense? What might you have missed that they did not miss? What might they know that you don't know?
And well. Here are some things they might know that you don't about this situation.
What food insecurity feels like.
What being humiliated by your parents for not knowing something you were never taught.
What food insecurity feels like.
What being humiliated by your parents for not knowing something you were never taught.
What it's like to be a girl in a world where men expect girls to cook and clean at a much younger age than boys because it's women's work.
What it's like to live in a world where people assume girls are bad at things, like spacial relations, unless they get them right away.
What it's like to live in a world where people assume girls are bad at things, like spacial relations, unless they get them right away.
I'm calling out the gender dynamics here because it's telling that a lot of the folks defending Bean Dad are white men, where a lot of the people who are calling this abuse are not.
And that's your first clue that you're missing something: are the people who are angry marginalized in a way that you are not? Are you missing a micro (or macro) aggression that they've experienced many times before?
(and now I've got a call so I'll wrap later)
And call done but I can't stay long so this might be a thread that really needs to be expanded into a blog post (you can sponsor said post @TheBiasBlog for $150).
But one more possibility for why you're missing why folks are angry:
But one more possibility for why you're missing why folks are angry:
In this and many other situations where I see people expressing confusion about why folks are mad, some of the confused folks are people who survived similar or worse behavior.
Acknowledging that the behavior is bad requires re-evaluating their own history, which is a very hard thing to do in public in front of a bunch of angry people.
If that's you, that's hard!
And if you see someone else going "my parents did that to me and I'm fine," maybe reach for "I'm sorry your parents did that to you" instead of "you're an abuse apologist."
And if you see someone else going "my parents did that to me and I'm fine," maybe reach for "I'm sorry your parents did that to you" instead of "you're an abuse apologist."
and sponsorship has now been claimed! So blog post to come, and I'll update the thread when it goes up.
