Pot, porn, and pants that hang low--what causes the busybody reaction to these phenomena?

jpgray

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Fri Aug-24-07 10:14 AM
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Pot, porn, and pants that hang low--what causes the busybody reaction to these phenomena?

In my view it's a fundamental lack of understanding, and a natural urge to stereotype and dehumanize that which is different. For some people, the idea that other people have a different idea of right/wrong or pleasant/unpleasant or even polite/impolite is offensive and inconceivable. If we find something very unpleasant, offensive or wrong, we have an incredibly difficult time accepting or even attempting to understand why others would see it differently. Something that totally defies definition as objectively "good" or "bad" is a good illustrator--music. How often have you seen people disagree over a musical group as though one opinion is irrevocably valid and any other is objectively "wrong"? There comes a point when the musical taste of two people are so alien to one another that even entertaining the idea that each person has an equally valid opinion becomes abhorrent. This inclination dehumanizes and devalues the person holding the opposing opinion to a dangerous degree.

This phenomenon is also caused by the natural inclination to identify with those most similar to ourselves, dehumanizing those who are different by shunting them into stereotypical groups. Don't nod your head or feel superior yet--we all do this. You may be the most liberal, enlightened individual on this Earth, but I wager that you do it also.

A common example is that of the bad driver--when we see a bad driver belonging to our social class, race and gender we are far less likely to say "that type of person is a bad driver" because we view such a person as an individual. We don't say "Ah, another one of -those- is driving badly." Why? Because our similarity to the person makes us hesitant to stereotype. When we see several bad drivers who belong to an easily identifiable social group that is alien (by race, gender, class, whatever) to us, we are far more likely to start stereotyping the entire group as bad drivers. We stop to say "Ah, that person is an immigrant, a woman, white trash," and if we see the same behavior enough from the same group, we start to associate that trait with the group. Due to how memory works, we don't recall the good drivers from that group because by their nature good drivers are far less memorable. In other words you don't remember the times you win with a full house quite as keenly as you remember the few times you lose with one.

This is why the Duke rape case debate was drawn so bizarrely on gender lines here at DU. The women largely identified with the victim and stereotyped the accused, whereas the men largely identified with the accused and stereotyped the victim. It doesn't matter so much who turned out to be right, since even before -any- definitive evidence was revealed you could witness this phenomenon in the works. A female DUer could easily put herself in the place of the victim, especially if she had bad experiences with abusive men, and a male DUer could easily put himself in the place of the accused, especially if he was particularly sensitive to and worried by false rape accusations.

So with porn, you see people who can't imagine certain types of pornography as being anything but unpleasant exploitation for the female performer and deviant misogynistic fantasy fulfillment for the consumer. They simply find attempting to identify with either abhorrent and unacceptable, and resort to stereotypes while upholding their opinion on a very subjective matter as the one "right" point of view. They vehemently condemn porn as furthering the "sex-class" role of women, yet are far less vocal on the matter of other cinema, literature, painting, music, etc which by their criteria would be as bad or worse in furthering that "sex-class" role. Why? Because they identify more with consumers and producers of music, art, etc., and don't identify with consumers and producers of porn.

With pot, it's the same thing again. Those who see pot as congruent with other far more harmful substances (or as a step down an inevitable road to those substances) are completely unable to identify with the average pot user, whereas they have far less trouble identifying with a drinker or someone who enjoys fatty, unhealthy, addictive foods. Otherwise, threads about people sitting back with a martini or a Big Mac would be as controversial here as the threads about pot.

Low-hanging pants is the same thing. People are incapable of realizing that their own societal standards of propriety are necessarily out of date. Kids always seem to offend their parents' ideas of proper attire with their wardrobe, and today is no different. Whereas the miniskirt was the big no-no in the seventies, somehow those boomers who donned such skirts in defiance of their parents' ideas of propriety now unleash contradictory vitriol on "offensive" clothing that ironically is far less revealing. The claims of it being "tasteless" and "classless" are again just failures to even make the -attempt- to identify with those who wear them.

In all cases, people fail to even make the effort to see the other point of view as valid. Note in all cases there is no clear cut case to be made that active harm is being done to anyone who does such things by choice and under zero duress. When actual harm is being done or rights are being trampled, then subjectivity takes a back seat to protect human rights. But when no harm is being done, and people are very resistant to identifying with the behavior, they grasp at vague indefinite "societal" harm, such as we see in the gay marriage debate. While a good case can be made for such harm, watch out. If your claim for ephemeral societal damage is based on your lack of identification with something others enjoy and do by choice, which infringes on no one's human rights, you may need to take a closer look at your assumptions.