I didn’t get further than your choice to mention the alleged rapes by the IDF, and omitted the craven barbaric rapes and murder by Palestinian Hamas upon Israeli men, women and children on 10/7. Then I lost my empathy with you. Perhaps you should increase your reading time before writing about the news.
I also omitted the rapes in London, Bournemouth, Paris, China, Australia, Congo, and the other thousands of rapes happening or being reported today. It seems you got triggered by one fact amongst many, but I hope you regain your empathy. Rapes are indeed committed on almost all sides of all wars right now. That's one point of the first part of my piece. I was fresh specifically to the French news, not so with the worldwide wars. Go well.
It is highly interesting on further reflection, that in your comment above you describe stopping listening when you came across something that didn't fit your narrative, (rather than reading on, to gain further context and give it some more thought), then going on the attack, finally seeking to undermine my right to comment on news at all, using a insulting quip, so that I will in future 'stay in my lane'. This mirrors precisely the 'deny, attack, undermine' technique of the two main domestic abusers of my dear relatives and friends that I had in mind when I wrote the piece.
Thank you for a salutary post. I guess most of us know shame. And sensational 'news' is indeed hard to avoid. Why it 'sells' is not an easy matter to think about.
Women, and there will be children, must bear the brunt of violence and compulsion unless solidarity, family and neighbourhood provide a strong customary training base which can support native decency.
The re-appearance of WW2-scale civilian destruction in Palestine, as one example, given the demographics is inflicting permanent cruelty and grief at vast scale on women / children / family. I am deliberately broadening the context from a significant segment of the male population of a French town’s participation or complicity with rape, to complicity with the horrors of war. War introduces the 'justifications' used in war-propaganda. News-propaganda à la WW2 uses every modern quasi-scientific trick in the book, ancient & modern, to compel submission or fearful acquiescence or hateful revenge
NB. I rely primarily currently on text-based war reports from MSF (Medicine without Borders) and more narrowly on meticulous Jewish sources; in Britain JVL and JVP in the USA. There are of course reputable books for the historical context of these conflicts.
Thanks for this. Yes, I also rely on those sources, amongst others.
One horror by side A never cancels out or justifies another horror by side B, whatever sides we have in mind. Similarly, I feel one of the terrible side effects of the mistreatment of women worldwide is the concurrent alienation and despair felt by so many men, leading to epidemic levels of loneliness and suicide amongst them. Only drug dealers (whether medical or criminal) benefit from this, and its immensely sad. Sometimes, when I have seen women express sadness for the terrible toll this takes on men and their families, they are cut down by other women, furious that they are now 'siding with the patriarchy'.
I don't know how we can get out of this reactive downward spiral. I can only grieve aloud here. I really don't have answers other than a suggestion that we take a good look, pull back from knee jerk reactivity, and try to imagine what it would be like to stop fighting and do the hard work of listening on all sides. To imagine the highest outcome and to work towards it, somehow.
For 'native decency' I refer back at least to Aquinas who believed love and friendship was prior to the legal order ... quoted by Graeber ('Debt', 2011-2014) apparently referring further back to Aristotle.
Given the intricacies of human (bio)chemistry in its social context, it seems early experience and training as well as inherited story will play a major part.
I read somewhere for example that early military or similar training must ensure at the start participation in fearful mock or real extreme violence to re-order the priority of the trainee in obedience and group solidarity.
We do for sure see damage. Perhaps this is to be viewed as clearly exemplified still in the post-trauma manifestations exhibited by our 'inherited' British political and elite ruling circles?
I didn’t get further than your choice to mention the alleged rapes by the IDF, and omitted the craven barbaric rapes and murder by Palestinian Hamas upon Israeli men, women and children on 10/7. Then I lost my empathy with you. Perhaps you should increase your reading time before writing about the news.
I also omitted the rapes in London, Bournemouth, Paris, China, Australia, Congo, and the other thousands of rapes happening or being reported today. It seems you got triggered by one fact amongst many, but I hope you regain your empathy. Rapes are indeed committed on almost all sides of all wars right now. That's one point of the first part of my piece. I was fresh specifically to the French news, not so with the worldwide wars. Go well.
It is highly interesting on further reflection, that in your comment above you describe stopping listening when you came across something that didn't fit your narrative, (rather than reading on, to gain further context and give it some more thought), then going on the attack, finally seeking to undermine my right to comment on news at all, using a insulting quip, so that I will in future 'stay in my lane'. This mirrors precisely the 'deny, attack, undermine' technique of the two main domestic abusers of my dear relatives and friends that I had in mind when I wrote the piece.
Caroline
Thank you for a salutary post. I guess most of us know shame. And sensational 'news' is indeed hard to avoid. Why it 'sells' is not an easy matter to think about.
Women, and there will be children, must bear the brunt of violence and compulsion unless solidarity, family and neighbourhood provide a strong customary training base which can support native decency.
The re-appearance of WW2-scale civilian destruction in Palestine, as one example, given the demographics is inflicting permanent cruelty and grief at vast scale on women / children / family. I am deliberately broadening the context from a significant segment of the male population of a French town’s participation or complicity with rape, to complicity with the horrors of war. War introduces the 'justifications' used in war-propaganda. News-propaganda à la WW2 uses every modern quasi-scientific trick in the book, ancient & modern, to compel submission or fearful acquiescence or hateful revenge
NB. I rely primarily currently on text-based war reports from MSF (Medicine without Borders) and more narrowly on meticulous Jewish sources; in Britain JVL and JVP in the USA. There are of course reputable books for the historical context of these conflicts.
Thanks for this. Yes, I also rely on those sources, amongst others.
One horror by side A never cancels out or justifies another horror by side B, whatever sides we have in mind. Similarly, I feel one of the terrible side effects of the mistreatment of women worldwide is the concurrent alienation and despair felt by so many men, leading to epidemic levels of loneliness and suicide amongst them. Only drug dealers (whether medical or criminal) benefit from this, and its immensely sad. Sometimes, when I have seen women express sadness for the terrible toll this takes on men and their families, they are cut down by other women, furious that they are now 'siding with the patriarchy'.
I don't know how we can get out of this reactive downward spiral. I can only grieve aloud here. I really don't have answers other than a suggestion that we take a good look, pull back from knee jerk reactivity, and try to imagine what it would be like to stop fighting and do the hard work of listening on all sides. To imagine the highest outcome and to work towards it, somehow.
Well, me to ...
For 'native decency' I refer back at least to Aquinas who believed love and friendship was prior to the legal order ... quoted by Graeber ('Debt', 2011-2014) apparently referring further back to Aristotle.
Given the intricacies of human (bio)chemistry in its social context, it seems early experience and training as well as inherited story will play a major part.
I read somewhere for example that early military or similar training must ensure at the start participation in fearful mock or real extreme violence to re-order the priority of the trainee in obedience and group solidarity.
We do for sure see damage. Perhaps this is to be viewed as clearly exemplified still in the post-trauma manifestations exhibited by our 'inherited' British political and elite ruling circles?
(I got that last one from our younger daughter!)
We really don't need to forget how to be human.
Thank you for writing this, Caro. Thank you.