by Matthew James Perez
Earlier this week I’d been on a hunt for information. It was a hard month. Adult pleasures are often defined by their innate ability To Fucking Destroy You. You smoke, you drink and imbibe the pills. Barring some sort of jarring brain damage that destroys your ability to discern reality, you’re well aware of that going in. Some days you think of it and some days you don’t think of that little sliver of life you rob from yourself to bring about some immediate relief from the pain that can beset a life. We may be born God’s Children, but the decision making process we’re left after the fact leaves us beset with Grand Devils. When we search, it seems we destroy.
Imagine day in and day out enjoying something that in a very real way, engages you. You are not destroyed thereafter if you keep your wits about you. You’ll find yourself in common company, with those while not of a great kinship but still, of like mind. Some people find Jesus together, or Allah, or in their ethos, or of their ethics and love of philosophy. A recent BBC documentary called “Secrets of the Superbrands” made the rounds of the tech outlets, claiming that Apple products triggered what seemed to be religious reactions in the brain. These are the new confederacies. As the gulf between the rich and poor widens and we normalize and bat no eyelashes at grave injustices suffered at the hand of our fellow man day in and day out it seems so the capacity for empathy diminishes, even on a subconscious level.
Our society is currently based on constant immediacy through distance, thanks to the device you’re reading this on and the systems it takes to buy one. Consequently, tt seems prudent to take some sort of look at the implications of what we say, what we’re indifferent to and what engenders indifference. Otherwise, your relations are just the constant quenching of the consumer’s thirst, and the inflation of the ego. Your interactions become: “What are my friends up to?” “What do they think about what I said?” “I didn’t like what she had to say about that!” It continues much as you’d guess.
This may seem cynical (well okay it is),but our distance communication based culture and its astounding speed don’t necessarily go hand in hand with learning and being a better, well rounded person. The assholes simply have better means of communications. The tools for empowerment and education do not by definition have to be used as tools for progress. I see a smartphone, this motherfucker right here sees a toilet. And really, what’s scariest is the speed at which meme culture in turn comes right back out into regular, “RL” speech. You’ll have funny instances where people ironically invoke video game vernacular, and sometimes some fucked up repugnant garbage like people making many consecutive rape jokes.
We live in a time in America where there is increasing government regulation of a woman’s body, so if you speak about this you had best make sure you are taking into account many transgressions and not simply one errant twine such as shithead nerds who yell “rape” after a multikill in an FPS. In all, I’m frustrated with “gamer culture” (the parentheses denote contempt) and its capacity for intelligence being squandered by baser impulses, because I expect adults to act like adults.
With that, I guess I should ask a question that’s been on my mind:
What the fuck is the sense in flippantly invoking rape as an adult?
Typically, when I see a rape joke it’s in a video game with other players. Some shithead says “rape”, the requisite cackles happen (unless they’ve said a million times before in which case laughter is replaced with a stupid grease stained smirk that crawls across their face; repeat ad naseum). Youtube? Same but essentially less eloquent and accompanied by hideous visuals or allusions to anime characters and the validity of True Japanese Artists. Then, there are assholes who make these jokes in person at the workplace. While your mileage may vary, it is for the most part dumbasses male and female alike flippantly referring to an arduous task as either something they have been “raped” by or something they’ve “just raped, man”. This is normal. Commonplace.
Some people fucking wander around, entrenched in the mud, and know no different than simply dismissing disgust due to their privilege or perceived station in life. Many cannot imagine a world hostile to them. They may have read things they disagreed with. There could have been a Youtube Video that angered them. The President could’ve woken up one day, said The Sun is Blue, We’re Winning The War and That He Supports Gay Marriage. To some blind eyes, these are perceived as hostilities.
I’m no scientist, or sociologist. I cannot say whether or not the self-defensive groupthink of people in a club will have a beneficial turn in the long run. I can attest to people’s capacity to talk out of both sides of their face. Hell, for a long time I did it too. A lot of coworkers would state they were liberal, or left leaning and would then call women “cunts” or “bitches”. Hell, even some of my leftist friends have said some repugnant phrases to voice their disgust with Obama. “House Negro” and “Uncle Tom” were some of the bleaker examples I can think of. Often times, in the internet it is common practice to ask someone to kill themselves, or “Go die in a fire” (the acronym is GDIAF). This happens despite the fact if you’re on the internet long and often enough, you’re bound to see friends espouse feelings of depression or contemplation of suicide. Our capacity to normalize treating each other as Human Garbage is by no means new, but the speed at which we can now make these statements standard is insane.
If the internet’s ink is permanent it stands to reason we should treat our words as either pillows, bullets or chunks of brain for others to feast on so that they may too be quenched by the knowledge laid forth – words should matter. All too often when engaging in any discussion of rape jokes being a greater symptom of a problem which afflicts many women the words “censorship” are red stamped down. The person initially saying X stupid-ass rape joke will sit atop their throne of free speech as this impenetrable means to convey unto you, The Dirty Censor, that freedom of speech means the freedom to say anything that has the capacity to offend another.
What about freedom from speech? The self described liberals that denounces hate speech but defend it as a cornerstone of their values confuses the fuck out of me. That’s why I’d like to think it’s our distancing culture and not outright privilege that keeps people from knowing how to empathize. You will never know how I felt as a queer kid getting the shit beaten out of him for not acting in step with the Rural Alpha Male Bullshit mentality, and how badly my mind is afflicted for raging outward and only knowing only how to attack, act out or put myself in great jeopardy. I’m not going to know how it felt to be raped, and to know the person who did it, and live with them getting away with the crime for fear of violent reprisal. You might not know how it feels to be a black man in America, and having people’s impressions of you as a person being formed by a media largely portraying the black man as a series of caricatures. Or as a Mexican, often being used as a modern slave whose labor is appreciated, but whose presence as a human being isn’t.
In all spectrums of media, there is always the potential to be dismissive of detractors. It’s a given with people wired into something. Tech and well, quite frankly Nerd Culture has this great ability to downplay anything into oblivion given the right amount of sycophants and well meaning liberals. A textbook example would be at Penny Arcade. Within a few discussions about Rape Culture even existing and people being alienated, the threads within the forums where the discourse took place were uniformly shut down. No amount of shouting down for marginalizing people offended by that webcomic with another comic strip essentially saying people went looking to be offended could bring about a bizarre moment of self awareness in which Mike Krahulik could potentially (however unwillingly) act as an agent of rape culture. For those unfamiliar with the term, as of this writing Wikipedia describes it as follows:
Whether or not our Beautiful Grim Nation Forged From Blood has a Rape Culture (IT DOES) or not is besides the point. The lengths to which people went to defend something blindly despite the fact rape is a very real problem is disheartening. What if it was your daughter? Your mother? If you shrug I want you to know the number of women sexually assaulted in this country are sobering, and whether or not you know it it’s likely happened in your small sphere of the world too, and that while I do not want to shame you, rest assured you should go fuck yourself.
The incongruity of rape used as a joke loses value if IT IS COMMON TO SEE IT MENTIONED, AND IF SOMETHING IS NORMALISED, THERE IS A GREATER CAPACITY TO LOOK AWAY, OR WORSE, TO SIMPLY SHRUG IT OFF. If you doubt this, walk through a city and ask yourself how many times you’ve made conversation with the homeless. Can we all attack the problem of sexual assault and rape in this country with hopes and dreams? Certainly not, but in our small corners of the world we can do our part in informing people that this shit isn’t a joke for those constantly living with a reality that bears down on them constantly.
//On the New Normal
I’d been playing Max Payne 3 recently. Fucking love that game. Couldn’t get enough of it. Played it into the wee hours of the morning one night, when some shithead starts harping on my gamertag. It’s “ThatWrongLove”.
For about ten minutes he starts saying shit like “Why not that right love, you little boy lover.” “I bet you’d like to take me from behind faggot” and other shit I care not to repeat simply for how angry I get even putting it to words. I felt like it was high school again and I couldn’t punch the bastard, and that even if I reported him there’s a good chance he’d go on continuing his deranged homophobic trolling as if it were another day in the office. After cursing and waking up my former partner, I’d muted him, reported him to Xbox Live.
I felt angry and ashamed for lashing out at a fucking idiot when it’s a fairly normal thing to be a scumbag via voice chat.
I thought about the word “normal” for a bit.
It was normal for this guy to do this shit. I cursed him out and he kept going as though I was the incongruous part of the angry back and forth as he let out wet, disgusting laughter.
How would it be normal for people to treat one another like that? Was there a general conduct he was stepping out of line of? Was he acting in normal conduct? We live in the same world and it’s normal for this to happen. Was I acting immaturely to something I’d seen and in younger years actively participated in? What does that say about him, about me and this great big churning?
Really, any process in which indifference is engendered makes me look on in horror at these new normals. Really, it’s progress! It is not how I want the progression to go, but that is the shape of normalcy! We look away, we’re silent and at most a chill runs down your or your stomach is uncomfortable.
On a daily basis kids are sexualized, women are triggered by rape imagery, or phrases and somebody is going to speak in stalwart defense of these things. Somebody will speak out, hell maybe even a clerical figure asking for the blood of Dead Gays. Or a Senator goes on about not aborting the products of rape or incest. Each day a bunch of people who should know better escalate and become ever more hostile against those not within the framework of this New Normal, The Newer One. Each day when a world becomes very hostile to you in very real terms, you’ll find yourself angry, cursing the fools! And who wouldn’t, if they had the capacity for empathy enough to consider what they see?
All the sudden, you’re the fucking bad guy for not laying out and planting a bunch of tulips you’re supposed to tip-toe through. That’s where our discourse is, and why to swallow down hope you must endure a big sandy bottle of Solemn Horror.
I’d like to have ended how I felt by saying maybe there is nothing you can do in the greater scheme of things as imposing your will is fascist and wrongheaded, and that ultimately God will sort things out as we trudge on together in solidarity.
That’s guilt, and all of this would be self serving bullshit wherein you can only see a capacity for empathy upon being viewing harm and at most you would look down solemnly. Guilt as an agent of action is great cowardice that keeps you from looking at something critically.
I instead ask you to speak, provoke and ask hard questions of those you love, and those you do not and look at their lives and their “normal” and realize that while the onus of education may not fall on you, we all must act in our small spheres of the world if we are to survive and thrive. This world is a river through which things beyond our understanding and capacity to ever know flow in equal speed and chaos with those we can understand and should we make the effort, at the minimum try to understand the limits of comfort and warmth, and make at least one life on this world a little easier while we are still here.
