'Legitimate concerns'

[dolorosa_12]

There is a strand in popular media in the US which I first noticed when I was a teenager: a repeated narrative that characters whose parents, spouse, or other family members abused or neglected them had a moral obligation to immediately forgive them the instant the abusive/neglectful person attempted to reconcile. Often, this takes the form of the friends and family of the abused person insisting that this is the moral, healing, and compassionate thing to do, and to refuse forgiveness means a lack of 'closure,' and demonstrates a poisonous, corrosive bitterness. Such narratives reinforce the notion that a refusal to forgive is more damaging to the abused person than the abusive or neglectful behaviour they experienced.

I most often see this trope presented in media aimed at women, or at teenagers, but it's also there in the sorts of action films which assume a mainly adult male audience. Usually in the latter it takes the form of the manly, tortured antihero reconnecting with an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend (and sometimes their kids) in the wake of an apocalyptic catastrophe, or a smaller-scale violent threat. The woman will be aggrieved at some kind of past neglect (usually presented along the lines of the hero being so obsessed with the demands of his — dangerous, important, manly — job that he was a neglectful husband/partner/father). Again, by the end of the film she will be expected to be reconciled with the neglectful hero, and have come around to a recognition that his work was so, so important that of course it was unreasonable to have expected him to be a present, active partner.

Whether it's abuse or neglect, this kind of weaponised forgiveness seeps into everything. We're seeing it now with the calls for those of us celebrating a Biden/Harris victory to be empathetic and compassionate to those on the opposing sides. Somehow, this always seems to be what's demanded of those of us on the left of centre. When we lose an election or referendum, there are immediate calls to listen to the 'legitimate concerns' of frightened racists, and an expectation that we will bend over backwards to accommodate and legitimise their ideology. On the rare occasions when we win, we're told not to antagonise them by celebrating too happily, and commentators try to draw an equivalence between the disappointment they're feeling, and the sheer, bone-chilling terror we felt when they won.

When the Brexit result was announced, Brexiteers beat up a Polish man in the street, and started screaming abuse at people of colour and/or people they heard speaking English with non-native-speaking accents in supermarkets. One of them gleefully told a friend of mine (who worked in a customer facing role and thus couldn't talk back) that she would have to 'leave now'.

When the US election result was announced yesterday, people started dancing in the streets, partied with postal workers driving by in their vans, and shouted with joyful relief from their apartment windows.

I have been told to empathise and coddle the feelings of people whose first response to their victories is to terrorise and hurt others. I've been told I just need to try harder to understand their 'legitimate concerns'. I've been told this for years, until I'm drowning in the icy water of these calls for forgiveness. I think, instead, that it is high time that my political opponents get asked to do the work of understanding my concerns, and feeling a scrap of the collosal amount of empathy that I'm constantly asked to feel for them.

Comments

[lilysea]

Yes!

[wheatear]

I say now is the time to celebrate. No reason to feel guilty about that.

[kore]

//wildly applauds

I mean the chosen leader for these people was a guy who said "It is what it is" of hundreds of thousands of dead citizens HE WAS SUPPOSEDLY SERVING as millions more were at mortal risk? They won't even wear masks? They showed up with ASSAULT RIFLES at protests and vote-counting centers and deputies had to escort poll workers to their cars? It's just an extension of the grisly "but you should understaaaaaaand the grievances of the poor white racists" which was the (FICTIONAL) narrative that the media latched onto in the first place. Their need to scream vitriol does not mean I am required to listen.

...and on a personal level, as someone who was repeatedly ordered to forgive or at least totally forget about all the emotional and physical abuse in my family, I automatically distrust anyone pushing a "radical forgiveness" or "closure" guilt trip. It's just almost always meant to spare the feelings of abusers and enablers, never about the healing of the people who suffered the actual hurt.

[merit]

That is, as we have previously discussed, one of my least favourite tropes.

And yes, legitimate concerns indeed!

[lyr]

Right on. I am supremely uninterested in catering to the fears and anxieties of violent fascist bigots. I would really prefer they shut up and crawl back under rocks now. It's bad enough that there are more of them than I thought there were.

[goodbyebird]

Thinking certain races/nationalities/sexual or gender orientations makes them lesser humans is never am acceptable or reasonable position, and approaching it as such is nothing short of dangerous, not to mention immoral. You don't reach across the isle on stuff like that, you make sure there are consequences, and that the shameless politicians that tried to accrue power through fear and hate are left with less power than they started with.

You let people off the hook on this one, you enable it, you nurture it, and that will never be the right thing to do. Ever. We need consequences. And the people who did the harm are the people who should be called on to do the work. 😤 If the media could just fucking learn one of these days...

(I absolutely loathe the Crap Husband redemption arch in movies too, ugh.)

[schneefink]

I think, instead, that it is high time that my political opponents get asked to do the work of understanding my concerns, and feeling a scrap of the collosal amount of empathy that I'm constantly asked to feel for them.
Hear hear!

[lirazel]

The stuff you note in your first paragraph is religiously motivated. The reason it's so prevalent in the US is deeply, deeply tied to a certain kind of approach to Christianity.

think, instead, that it is high time that my political opponents get asked to do the work of understanding my concerns, and feeling a scrap of the collosal amount of empathy that I'm constantly asked to feel for them.

True.

[corvidology]

I agree with Lirazel about the first paragraph. Religion is woven into the fabric of almost everything that happens here... and it's exhausting, particularly when you're trying to have a discussion based on facts.

I haven't really seen anyone ask for us to be compassionate to Trumps followers - and would laugh my arse of it at it. I think everything in Biden's speech was appealing not to the bully boy fascist part of Trump's followers but to the politically conservative part following years where Trump stated he had no interest in the 'blue' states. It took a moderate centrist to beat him no matter how many of us would have preferred one of the more radicalised candidates.

[trepkos]

I totally agree. The left has to address the concerns of the right, and move towards them, and the centre keeps shifting further right, because they never reciprocate. I don't forgive my mother for her years of aggression and put-downs, and I don't forgive Margaret Thatcher for setting the world on this lurch to the right, or any of her cronies or successors. They have NOTHING TO FEAR from us, apart from getting a good education and better healthcare, and we have everything to fear from them, including destitution and death.