Here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide
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Well said.
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Che Guevara also wrote on the subject but not as well or clearly.
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The fundies that carry out these attacks (be they “christian” or “muslim”) see women trying to improve themselves or take control of their own bodies and they don’t like that. it flies in the face of all the nonsense they have heard about a woman’s place and what she should do in the world. So the fundies lash out at women and anyone who supports them.
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the people in Manchester are no more my family then the people in Kabul. Both cities are full of human beings that I don’t know, but whose lives are precious and should be treated as such. I don’t think that @kkaishakunin direct stake in either place.
Obviously, if an attack involved people I knew, I would be more upset, but the point of that story is that the vast majority of lives lost in the war on terror have not been in the US or Europe, but the middle east and Afghanistan. It certainly wouldn’t change the facts of the war on terror, though. By ignoring that, we’re giving into the whole clash of civilizations narrative that makes this a much more intractable problem than a solvable one.
[ETA] And again, just to be clear, I in no way wish to justify the attack or to diminish the people who are suffering because of it. I just don’t think that means we should ignore others who are suffering too.
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Agreed. Another point: many people think (correctly) that the chances of being attacked in the places they usually frequent are low. They may not think it’s a good use of time to spend hours learning all this fancy knife stuff (or martial arts stuff, or whatever) for no reason. Unless they truly enjoy it as an avocation (or vocation, for that matter). And if you don’t frequent bars where knife fights are likely, then your chances of survival are a lot higher.
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As @SheiffFatman noted, we’ve shown solidarity with people who died in cities in Europe, as well we should. Why not the people who are being hit the hardest by the war on terror, too?
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By not defining it that way, but looking at it (properly, in my view) as a criminal act, that needs to be investigated, and the perpetrators found, arrested, and prosecuted under traditional laws against murder, assault, conspiracy, possession of weapons, etc. I’m not sure when or how the word “terrorism” was coined, but now it’s being used for political reasons in the countries that are subject to these kind of crimes. Which is kind of ironic.
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I agree one should.
Though I think my tongue in cheek comment partially explains why most don’t. Racism, Islamophobia, and the victims appearing to be too similar to the attackers are contributing factors for others.
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Oh! You were being cheeky!
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LOL, if you thought I was serious, it would have been the first time Sam and Max were taken in a serious context.
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I guess I didn’t get the reference! My bad!
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Here you go. Should be queued up. Its the classic Lucas Arts point and click game.
But also seriously the human condition makes it hard to empathize with strangers half a world away, even though they aren’t really much different.
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Do you think that’s really true? It’s certainly true that if you know a person, that’s a whole different emotional thing… but as people here, the distance (emotional) between London and Kabul is about the same, yeah? I can understand that citizens of those cities feel it more directly, as they should. Because it’s their cities and it could be their loved ones. Is distance between a random stranger in London and Kabul all that far from us there, or is one somehow less a stranger because the physical distance is closer? There just aren’t shades to people’s individual humanity, I think in that way.
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Like it or not, to people in the West, Londoners are a part of the in-group whereas the inhabitants of Kabul are not. Sadly, we don’t really think of ourselves as “humanity, indivisible” when push comes to shove. An attack in Sydney would elicit about as much of a response, irrespective of the factual geographic distance involved.
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What you say sounds right to me but slightly bypasses my point.
It appears to have been an organised act of mass violence by a non-state actor or actors.
So, “terrorism,” right, by current terms?
Who the perpetrators are or were or were acting for doesn’t effect the act itself.
Does that make any sense?
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Why is that? Are the people of Kabul less human? What creates the in-group/ out-group dynamics you’re referencing, and why should we just accept them as they are? Why are people in London or Sydney more “us” than the people in Kabul?
I don’t think that assuming it as inevitable is particularly helpful, because it just further reinforces the roots of the problem in the first place. The dehumanization of people in places like Kabul have ramifications, including the continued use of terrorism as a tactic by those whose concept of in and out group differ from yours or mine. Continuing to deny that some people have carried the burden of this war heavier than others only compounds these categories and makes them harder to untangle later.
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It’s the victim blaming that was a problem - as if because they didn’t defend themselves, there was something wrong with them.
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See the etymology, nothing ironic at all in fact.
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If you THINK about it, not it’s not that far away. People don’t think.
But people compartmentalize, we are very good at it. So while London and it’s people and language and culture is way more like what most people in the US are accustomed to (or Paris, even), Kabul is not. It is much easier to skim over the head line and barely get up the emotional “that’s too bad”.
Confronted with some of the horrors of the Kabul bombing, similar to say the recent chemical attack in Syria, will start to crack through ones veneer. But if you just skip the images and stories, you don’t have to care.
Basically people only have so much care and concern in their emotional bank, and it is easier to ignore suffering you relate less with. This means even less people in the US are going to have an emotional response to someone in London as well, compared to if something like that happened in the US.
Also because our emotions are limited, we can tend to put up blinders, and it certainly is easier if you’re owning interaction is some headlines on the news or online. We don’t just do that to people a world away, but many of us are guilty of doing it to people we know - ignoring their pain or issues as we don’t know what to do with our selves or how to act (I did this recently to my dying Uncle…)
I mean we can see this with the negative press and protest with refugees from wherever, Syria today, Cuba, Vietnam, etc in the past. They don’t see people desperately grasping for survival, they see moocher and leeches who will poison the US with their culture, and in the case of Syrian refugees, hidden terrorists waiting to spring in to action if just given a chance to be welcomed into the chick coop.
The best way to combat this is to encourage others to empathize. Even better, introduce them to real people.
To be clear, I am not condemning this apathy, just acknowledging it is there.
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