I think that, probably, most people generally don't kill themselves over one isolated incident of cruelty. But the thing that we are seeing with these incidents is that they are not isolated. Even when an individual incident is not itself part of a larger pattern of bullying directed at an individual (which is rare), it is *always* part of a larger cultural and political context, and therefore isn't really isolated. Repeated cruelty can be that underlying problem, can be that "constellation of stuff."
I was reading Paul Butler's reply, where he writes: "Clementi's bullies cruelly exploited that social prejudice [homophobia], but they did not cause it."
In these cases, I'm not sure where the line is, because the cruel exploitation of such social prejudices furthers and causes these social prejudices. If his roommate hadn't videotaped Clementi having sex and and shown it on the internet, that particular instance of "people who thought Clementi having sex was strange/disgusting/funny" wouldn't have been able to exist.
If the people who watched the video and found it strange/disgusting/funny hadn't been able to watch the video, would they have still had an opinion about Clementi's private sex life? Would they have expressed it to him? Possibly. But that opinion would not have formed from, or coalesced around, "an individual incident of watching Clementi having sex, against his expressed consent, for laughs."
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Date: 2010-10-02 10:51 pm (UTC)I think that, probably, most people generally don't kill themselves over one isolated incident of cruelty. But the thing that we are seeing with these incidents is that they are not isolated. Even when an individual incident is not itself part of a larger pattern of bullying directed at an individual (which is rare), it is *always* part of a larger cultural and political context, and therefore isn't really isolated. Repeated cruelty can be that underlying problem, can be that "constellation of stuff."
I was reading Paul Butler's reply, where he writes: "Clementi's bullies cruelly exploited that social prejudice [homophobia], but they did not cause it."
In these cases, I'm not sure where the line is, because the cruel exploitation of such social prejudices furthers and causes these social prejudices. If his roommate hadn't videotaped Clementi having sex and and shown it on the internet, that particular instance of "people who thought Clementi having sex was strange/disgusting/funny" wouldn't have been able to exist.
If the people who watched the video and found it strange/disgusting/funny hadn't been able to watch the video, would they have still had an opinion about Clementi's private sex life? Would they have expressed it to him? Possibly. But that opinion would not have formed from, or coalesced around, "an individual incident of watching Clementi having sex, against his expressed consent, for laughs."
If nobody exploits a prejudice, does it exist?