Month: October 2021

Our culture has evolved into a culture that largely believes that women should be able to do all of the same things that men do. Indeed, the 1950’s housewife stereotype is often seen as offensive. Frankly, I do not find the devoted housewife stereotype to be offensive. The devoted housewife is at least treated as a human being worthy of human rights. She has value. She is the warmth that the husband returns to at the end of a long stressful day at work. She is his support system when he has difficulties. She is the one he consults with when he has to make important decisions for the family.

Some people, however, may have an image in their minds of a grumpy man coming home from work shouting “where is my dinner!” True, it is not nice being the housewife of a mean person, but in actuality it is never nice being married to a mean person whether you have a career or not.

Hollywood culture shows women excelling in traditionally male roles such as scientists, engineers, combatants. It has turned away from the so-called sexism of the housewife stereotype, but has fallen into a much more harmful kind of sexism—sexual objectification. Sexual objectification is a harmful kind of sexism that views women as subhuman sources of sexual entertainment for any men in their vicinity. It is hard for women to escape it. While a woman can prove that she is not a housewife by excelling at traditionally male endeavors, she cannot prove that she is not a sex object. Even if a woman is ugly and old, she is still a sex object, just lower quality merchandise. Even if a woman is a virgin, how can she prove her virginity?

The Charley’s Angels movie starring Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz is one example of a film showing women excelling in traditionally male activities, but while still being sexually objectified in some scenes. The message is that while a woman can do all of the male activities she wants, she still has to be appealing to the male sex. Her sense of worth is expected to be tied to her sexual appeal, and sometimes her self esteem is influenced by how intense of an orgasm she can have compared to other women (see the Working Moms TV series).

Sometimes in television and sometimes in real life, when a young woman chooses to be in a sexual relationship with a man under the impression that she means something to him, the man leaves her. The young woman is then told that this is “just what men are like.” However, this is not what men are like — this is what BAD men are like. Such behavior is not to be accepted as normal, even if it is common.

Television often presents sexually malicious and exploitative behavior towards women as being funny or cute. Below are some examples.

Television makes out some attempted rape scenes to be funny

Television is a part of rape culture, and will show rape scenes and attempted rape scenes on the screen while we are enticed to laugh. Attempted rape can take place in many forms. We may be viewing an attempted rape scene and not realize right away that it is an attempted rape.

One example of an attempted rape scene is from the spoof comedy Scary Movie 3. The scene is a satire of a scene from the horror movie Signs where the preacher’s wife was hit by a truck and pinned to a tree. The police officer explains to the preacher that the truck is the only thing holding the top half of her body to the bottom half of her body. The preacher asks if he could have sex with the bottom half before she dies. He then tries to forcibly have sex with his wife while she repeatedly shouts “No sex! No sex!” Eventually he relents and decides to let her speak her last words before she dies.

Another attempted rape scene was from the teen comedy “It’s a Boy Girl Thing” about a teenage boy and teenage girl, who do not like each other, and who find out one day that they have switched bodies. While the girl was in the boy’s body, the girl decides to make a comment about another boy’s penis. The boy gets angry and decides to get back at her by offering her body for sex to another guy in a trailer park. This scene, though made out to be funny, is an attempted rape. Even though the girl is not in her body at the time, it still is her body, and she had planned on returning to that body somehow. Furthermore, she is a virgin and she had decided not to give herself to anyone until she meets someone special. What the boy tried to do to her was a serious crime. The boy does change his mind, but not because he has mercy on her. He only changes his mind because he is grossed out at the idea of having sex with another guy. Despite his tendencies towards sexual misconduct, the two become boyfriend and girlfriend and “live happily ever after.”

Another “comical” attempted rape scene is from the British TV series IT Crowd. In this scene, Jen’s licentious boss decides to slip a drug into Jen’s drink so that, if Jen drinks it, Jen would enter into an altered mental state that drives her to have sex with any creature sitting in front of her. Things did not go to plan, though. Jen’s boss accidently consumes the drug himself, and then he tries to have sex with two men who are in his office at the time (even though he is normally only attracted to women). The scene is presented as funny, but it is in fact an attempted rape scene. Furthermore, nobody took any disciplinary action to hold Jen’s boss accountable for what he tried to do, nor does anybody even seem disturbed.

In the attempted rape scene of the Revenge of the Nerds movie, the attempted rape actually is successful. In this scene, one of the nerds craftily puts on the costume of the boyfriend of an attractive woman in order to trick the attractive woman into thinking that he is her boyfriend when he is not. Thinking that this man is her boyfriend, the attractive woman has sex with him. When she finds out that this man is not her boyfriend, rather than reacting with outrage, she is actually pleased with him because he is “so good at having sex for a nerd.”

This scene not only makes out rape to be funny, but also shows the woman reacting favorably to the rape encounter in ways that no woman in her right mind would in real life. When we repeatedly see a woman reacting favorably or underreacting to sexual malice, we may start to view a woman who reacts with outrage as being “high strung”, “overreacting” or “a bitch.” In actuality, we are supposed to react to these acts of sexual malice with outrage.

Sexual exploitation — a guy thing meant to make us laugh

Television not only normalizes sexually malicious behaviors by men towards women, but also makes them out to be funny. Numerous scenes from television show attractive women receiving unwanted attention from less attractive men while we, as the audience, are expected to laugh. However, we should not be laughing at this. There is a fine line between a man wanting to take a woman out to show her a good time and get to know her, versus a man saying or doing whatever it takes to get sex regardless of the harm that he may do to the woman.

Television will show a man pretending to care about a woman’s mentally retarded sibling when he actually does not, just so he can get the woman to like him and then get sex. Television will show a man doing activities that look altruistic because “chicks dig it,” not because he cares about making the world a better place.

A prime example of sexual malice made funny is the Howard Wolowicz character from The Big Bang Theory. We are supposed to view Howard as a nerd/dork who is trying to be a play boy, but is obviously bad at it. We are supposed to laugh as he tries to attract women and fails. However, if we look closely, we see that Howard is acting with purely malicious intent. Howard sees the women at the bar as conquests, not as fellow human beings. Howard sometimes even dehumanizes and harasses their friend Penny to the point that in one episode, she punches him. This scene where Howard treats Penny so badly that she resorts to an act of violence is, again, presented as funny.

In one scene, Howard is excited because he heard about some women who used to be fat, but lost weight and are now attractive. He is excited because he figures that these women would still have low self esteem after those many years of being fat, and so he thinks it would be easier to get sex from them. This scene reveals how much of a terrible person Howard really is. If you rely on an individual being in a state of reduced self worth in order to get what you want, then something is wrong with you.

We are supposed to think that the reason women do not like Howard Wolowicz is that he is not “attractive”, but in reality he is a malicious, deplorable human being. In one scene when Howard and Raj are sitting on a bench at the park, an attractive woman runs past them. Howard says hi, and the woman smiles and says hi back. The woman’s returned friendliness gives Howard hope that maybe she would have sex with him, so he gets up from the bench and chases her around the park in hopes that they will have sex.

The scene is presented as funny. We as the audience are expected to laugh, but the implications of this scene are very serious. The scene implies that if you are an attractive young woman, it is unsafe for you to make eye contact or return any friendly gestures of any kind to male strangers. If you do, they will potentially see you as an easy catch and try to have sex with you. This toxic aspect of popular culture places the young woman into a difficult position where she cannot make eye contact with men, and has to act aloof just to maintain her safety. On top of that, her aloofness may be perceived by other observers as being unfriendly and snobby. The woman must then choose between jeopardizing her safety or making herself look like an unfriendly snob.

The scene with Howard and Raj on the bench is similar to something that happened to me. One evening I was walking past a fat drunk guy who complimented me on my earrings. I smiled back in response. Next, the guy exclaimed out loud that because I smiled back at him, I must be willing to be with him. As I stood at a distance away waiting for my friends, he kept yelling comments at me until I eventually flipped him off. My encounter is an example of a situation where any friendliness I exhibit towards male strangers can threaten my safety, just as it threatened the safety of the young woman that Howard chased around the park while viewers were expected to laugh.

Toxic Masculinity

Toxic masculinity refers to a set of behaviors that culture expects men to exhibit in order to be considered masculine, but that actually are self destructive and destructive towards others. Men generally want people to view them as masculine, not as feminine sissies. Different cultures vary in what their standards are for what defines the “manly man”.

In Hollywood culture, the courteous gentleman — who wants to show the woman a good time and get to know her — is seen as a homo or sissy. The manly man has an insatiable sexual desire, and has a long line of female sex partners. He says or does whatever it takes to get sex because “that’s what guys are like.” Not only is it okay for him to exploit women for sex, he is supposed to be that way, “because he is a guy.”

In one scene from the Malcolm in the Middle TV series, Malcolm decides not to have sex with a girl after she falls unconscious. Despite how heinous it would be to have sex with an unconscious girl, Malcolm actually is worried about what others would think of him for deciding not to have sex with this unconscious girl. He needs his brothers to explain to him that it was “actually kinda cool” that he did not do that. The scene is one of numerous scenes on television delivering the message that when a man passes up on an opportunity to have sex with an unconscious woman, he is either a saint or a homo or a wimp.

At its worst, behavioral standards of toxic masculinity say that a man is not supposed to show much empathy because “that’s a chick thing” and a man is not supposed to be in-tuned to another’s needs because “that’s a chick thing.” When a man lives up to these behavioral standards for masculinity, he becomes a terrible creature that no woman in her right mind would associate with! Yet when a woman condemns these “male behaviors”, she is sometimes seen as a man-basher. Of course these are not male behaviors, they are bad-man behaviors. Only bad men behave this way.

Sometimes circles of mediocre men see pleasing women as some difficult-to-accomplish task because of how complicated and difficult women can get. However, when we look at television, we see that behavioral standards for men are exceedingly low. Television will often show the buffoon husband with a smart, attractive wife, and sometimes the buffoon husband is a rotten person. Being thoughtful and caring is the woman’s job. Indeed, men who behave the way that television tells them to behave will be bound to have low-quality relationships, and no woman in her right mind would want them. Yet television will show attractive female characters responding favorably to bad male behaviors. Of course these scenes are fictional, and the women in these scenes are paid actresses.

Why would women put up with toxic masculinity nonsense? Why not just be single or only select decent men? A reason is that culture has tricked many women into thinking that their worth is to be measured by how sexually appealing they are to men — in the vulgar world known as “fuckability”. More specifically, culture has tricked women and girls into thinking that they have somehow accomplished something to be proud of when a man is willing to have sexual relations with them. In reality and in general, men will derive some degree of pleasure having sexual relations with almost any woman — even the ugly fat girl or the little old lady from a nursing home. However, the man has more bragging rights if he can score with a younger more attractive woman. So culture conditions women to compete with each other for the attention of sexually malicious creatures that just want something to penetrate for the evening.

I personally would consider it to be a curse if a sexually malicious creature were drawn to me in hopes of penetrating me. Men who view women as subhuman sexual entertainment are terrible people. No woman in her right mind would want attention from such terrible people, let alone think that attention from such terrible people is somehow an accomplishment that is supposed to boost their self esteem.

Nice Guy Syndrome

Nice Guy Syndrome is a different kind of pathology from toxic masculinity where instead of a man acting liked a crazed sex junky, he is the kind and thoughtful friend who is always there for a woman whenever she needs something; but then feels entitled to something in return, namely a sexual/romantic relationship. Such a creature is no true friend. A true friend cares about you and has your back. This “friend” is actually an enemy in disguise. In his debased mind, he may even convince himself that the woman should choose him over the jerk, but in my opinion he is worse than the jerk.

Men with Nice Guy Syndrome often do not tell the woman in advance that they expect a sexual/romantic relationship in return. Such behavior violates the rules of two-way transactions. In two-way transactions, two parties make an agreement with each other where each party agrees to give something to the other party, and then receive something in return. Giving to someone without telling her in advance that you expect something in return is wrong because you have forced the other person to comply with a two-way transaction without her knowing in advance that there is a price for her to pay. It is like giving somebody ice cream, letting him/her think that the ice cream is for free, and then not letting him/her know that the ice cream costs $10 until after he/she has eaten it all.

Women as Property

Our culture is offended by the notion of women being men’s private property — that is, the property of their fathers or husbands. Yet our culture does not always think as much of a man claiming a woman as his property because he “thinks she is pretty and wants her to be his girlfriend.” Popular culture will even go so far as to expect a woman to be flattered when some random guy claims her as his property because it means he thinks she is “pretty.”

Popular culture seems to have transitioned from seeing women as private property to public property. Now instead of a woman being owned by her father or husband, she is owned by whatever random men are in her vicinity when she walks outside the door of her home. Cat-calling is one form of public property ownership, particularly targeted at women who are unaccompanied by another man.

So which is worse? Of course many would say that we do not want women to be private or public property, but I would say that men do more harm to women when the women are public property. At least when women are private property, they are owned by men who love them and care about them (at least most of the time). Generally fathers love and care about their daughters, and husbands at least should love and care about their wives to whom they have made wedding vows. However, the man who claims a woman as his property simply because he thinks she is attractive will generally have malicious intent.

Women being expected to smile

Certain situations warrant requirements for a person to smile, like when someone is a sales clerk representing a business. Sometimes smiling is a part of the job. However, the notion that a person is required to smile when she is just walking or sitting around minding her own business is preposterous. When you see a woman at the grocery store or at the park who is not smiling, for all you know her father could have died the previous day or she may have received a new cancer diagnosis and was told she only had months to live, and she is about to leave two young children behind.

I have seen women smile during interviews while they are recalling a traumatizing experience that they have been through. Their recollection of the trauma causes tears to run down their faces…while they are still smiling. It is as if popular culture has convinced them to keep smiling no matter how much pain they feel on the inside. Is this necessary? I personally want people to be themselves, and only smile when they are happy. I do not like fake smiles. I have no sympathy for people who want anybody to put on fake smiles.

In a way, expecting women to smile all the time when they are in public is an implication that women have indeed become public property. They are meant to please anybody in their vicinity and no longer have the privilege of being themselves and minding their own business.

So what does this mean for men

Men are receiving messages from television and popular culture that certain harmful behaviors towards women are not only okay, but are all a part of what it means to be a man. It is the man’s individual responsibility to rise above the evils in culture and not adhere to these ridiculous behavioral standards of masculinity. It is the man’s individual responsibility to behave like a decent human being and not expect people to be kissing his feet whenever he passes up on an opportunity to do something terrible to a woman.

Television causes harm to the human psyche in insidious ways. Much of its harmful effects are in the form of subliminal messages. These subliminal messages are not just in advertisements, but also in movies and sitcoms. They do not just convince us to buy products that we would otherwise not buy. They also condition us into believing that certain evil behaviors are okay and even amusing.

We are more likely to disagree with a controversial message when it is delivered in an explicit manner. The explicit message presents itself at face value, and we can easily see it for what it is. Subliminal messages, on the other hand, get into our subconscious and, therefore, they easily escape our scrutiny. That is why we are much more likely to agree with a subliminal message than we are to agree with an explicit message.

What if a person on the television screen were to tell you that a certain behavior, which you knew was wrong, was actually okay? You would likely disagree. What if, however, you were to see a character exhibit this very same behavior on the television screen while the other characters barely batted an eye? Such a scene would deliver the same message, but in a subtle manner. It would be more likely to escape your notice, yet the memory of the lack of reaction from the other characters could linger in your mind, and perhaps make you believe that maybe this behavior is not that bad.

One may argue that television is meant to just be entertainment, not a moral compass. However, television does still act as a moral compass. Every time a character on television exhibits evil behaviors while the other characters do not bat an eyelash, television is sending the message that this behavior is okay and meant to be tolerated. These messages may not be the intended affect, but they are an affect.

Adults are affected by what they see on television, not just five-year-olds. People idolize the characters they see on television, and sometimes even live through them. People want to look like them and sometimes even BE them. Studies have shown an increase in disordered eating behaviors among women in Fiji and in East Africa shortly after they were exposed to Western television in the 1990s. The young women reported feeling admiration for the characters they saw on television, and wanting to look like them, including being thin like they were. While Fijian culture traditionally favored robust appetites and plumper body types, after the introduction of television, young women reported even being pressured by their families to lose weight by exercising and dieting.

We can see that television is not just entertainment. Viewers perceive television as a representation of how they should be, though they may not want to admit it. This article discusses the harmful kinds of subliminal messages on television. If you deny that it has an affect on you, then your denial only increases the affect.

Scenes on television that we should find to be disturbing

There are scenes throughout television featuring events that should have provoked outrage among the characters, but do not. Such scenes send across messages that what happens in these events is okay when it is not. One example is an event from the TV series The Office, the popular reality TV show within a show. In one episode, Pam, the receptionist, is having a dispute with one of the other employees. In one scene, he is briskly walking towards Pam in an aggressive manner with the likely intention of physically attacking Pam. He is about to attack Pam when suddenly one of the cameramen, who secretly has a crush on Pam, stops him. Because the cameraman was not allowed to appear on the screen, he loses his job. A later scene shows the man sitting in his apartment bummed out that he lost his job.

We, as the audience, are supposed to think it romantic that this nice man who secretly has a crush on Pam has lost his job while trying to protect her. What we do not notice is that there should have been outrage among the other characters that this man literally lost his job because he stopped another man from physically attacking a woman. For him to keep his job, he would have had to let the other man attack Pam while they filmed it. Perhaps the man would have gotten into legal trouble for attacking Pam eventually, but the attack still would have been allowed to happen, and Pam could have gotten badly hurt. None of the characters, not even Pam’s husband Jim, questioned the validity of the reasons for this man losing his job. None of the characters expressed outrage at this injustice.

In another scene of The Office, Pam is about to go on a date. Stanley, one of Pam’s coworkers, says that if Pam orders the most expensive thing on the menu, then she will “have to put out.” This statement made by Stanley also should have provoked a negative reaction among the other characters, but instead the other characters do not bat an eyelash. The idea of a woman owing sexual intercourse to a man she is on a date with simply because she ordered an expensive food item is akin to prostitution. Furthermore, Stanley has a teenage daughter! One would think Stanley would not give this kind of advice to his teenage daughter, but Stanley has no problem with giving this kind of advice to someone else’s daughter.

Some TV sitcoms feature the buffoon husband married to a smart attractive wife. An example is the TV series Everybody Loves Raymond where Raymond is portrayed as your average every day man. The buffoon husband and the smart attractive wife, as a theme, are viewed as comical, but when we look closely enough, we may notice that the buffoon husband is often a rotten person. Raymond may act like a buffoon a lot of the time, but when presented with the opportunity to take advantage of a situation for his own personal gain and at the expense of his loved ones, he suddenly becomes cunning and crafty. In one such episode, there was a dispute between Raymond’s wife Deborah and Raymond’s mother Marie. The dispute was causing Deborah and Marie to compete for Raymond’s affection and do all of these nice things for Raymond.

What did Raymond do? Raymond intentionally pulled off a scheme with the effect of prolonging the dispute so that he could continue to reap the benefits. In the end, Raymond was scolded by his brother for “taking advantage of the situation”, but did Raymond actually feel any remorse? Not necessarily. Sometimes evil disguises itself as idiocy where the wrongdoer plays dumb a lot of the time, and where the wrongdoer’s true intelligence only manifests when the wrongdoer has the opportunity to pull off a wicked scheme for his/her own personal gain.

It is okay to break into someone’s home, as long as you know the person personally

In the land of television, it is okay to break into someone’s home, as long as you know the person personally. An example is in the first episode of the Bones TV series in which Dr. Brennan’s X-boyfriend sneaks into her house. Dr. Brennan senses that there is an intruder, and graps a baseball bat. When she sees him, her reaction is nothing more than “oh, it is my X, he wants to talk to me.” In real life there would have been reason to arrest him, but in the land of TV, it is okay for him to break into her house because he just wanted to talk to her.

Various other scenes in movies and sitcoms show characters barging into the home of another character uninvited. Another example is in the 1990s movie Dennis the Menace. Six-year-old Dennis walks right through the unlocked door of Mr. Wilson’s house, up the stairs, into Mr. Wilson’s bedroom and shoots an aspirin down Mr. Wilson’s throat. Mr. Wilson was outraged, but he seemed to complain more about the aspirin being shot down his throat than he did about Dennis breaking into his house and into his bedroom.

Mr. Wilson rightfully asserted to Dennis’s father that he is the victim, but we as the audience are not expected to take Mr. Wilson’s complaints seriously, because he is portrayed in the movie as an old grump who complains about everything anyway. We are expected to find his complaints to be comical, but in my opinion, some of his complaints are legitimate and should have been taken seriously. After Dennis’s criminal act of breaking into someone’s house, nobody explains to the little boy that it is wrong to break into somebody’s house. They only explain to him that it is wrong to shoot an aspirin down someone’s throat.

Stigmatization of celibacy

Another toxic message from television is a strong stigmatization of celibacy. Strong messages throughout television tell us that something is wrong with us unless we are having sexual relations all the time with multiple partners. If you go so much as six months without having intercourse, something is wrong with your life. If you do not lose your virginity by a certain young age, you have done something wrong. In the movie Mean Girls 2, Johanna gets laughed at for being a virgin, and she is only 16 years old!

I can only imagine how toxic these messages must be to teenage audiences, many of whom are prone to insecurities. In reality, sexual promiscuity is self destructive and destructive towards others. It spreads diseases, including the AIDS virus. It results in unwanted pregnancies, leading to the killing of unborn babies by the millions. It leads to emotional harm as people engage in a high level of intimacy that is only meant for very intimate long-term relationships. In the land of television, having sexual intercourse with a person one only met that very evening is the norm.

An extreme example of the normalization of sexual promiscuity and the stigmatization of celibacy is the TV series Sex and the City featuring four women living in New York City and going on dates. According to one episode of this TV series, if you go three months without having sexual intercourse, you may as well be revirginized. Even dating someone for two weeks without having intercourse is considered weird. All four female characters have sexual relations with a different man every other episode. Holding off sex until marriage is unthinkable.

Virginity and celibacy are private decisions that are to be made by individuals. Asking people about their sex lives has no place in civilized conversation. One would not just walk up to a married couple and casually ask them how many times per week they have sexual intercourse. That would be a highly personal and inappropriate question. Those who choose celibacy are not to be judged by any means, but when celibate individuals watch TV, their lifestyle is judged.

Adults need the assistance of children when making adult decisions

Television shows numerous movies and sitcoms where children are smarter than their own parents. An example is the feel-good movie It Takes Two starring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson. Alyssa’s father, Roger, is about to marry the wrong woman. Alyssa and her twin sister Amanda know that this is the wrong woman, but Roger does not. So the bulk of the movie shows Alyssa and Amanda trying to get Roger to marry Diane, the right woman.

Once again, something is wrong with this picture. The children know who their parent is supposed to marry, but the parent does not! This is abnormal. Adults are not supposed to require the assistance of children when making adult decisions. In this scenario, because of Roger’s incompetency in discerning a good person from a bad person, Roger is not only unable to protect his own daughters from bad adults, he is forcibly exposing them to the bad adult by marrying her and making her into her step mother. Alyssa and Amanda are left with the burden of having to convince their father that this woman is bad.

The 1990s movie Problem Child 2 is yet another example of a movie where the father is about to marry the wrong woman and only his son and his new friend know she is a bad person. The son and his new friend are burdened with having to prevent the wedding from taking place. Eventually the father realizes this woman is indeed a bad person while he is literally standing on the wedding aisle. He decides to marry the good woman that the children knew was the right person all along, and so they live “happily ever after.”

Another movie Mary Poppins Returns features yet another father who is more easily outsmarted than his own children. His children eventually figure out the scheme of the men at the bank who are trying to take their home when it does not belong to them, but the father remains ignorant, and he does not listen to the warnings from his children. Once again the parent is outwitted and the children are not. The children figure out the scheme of the bad guys while the parent remains ignorant, and the children are left with the unfair burden of having to take matters into their own hands, this time with the help of Mary Poppins.

We are encouraged to laugh at people getting hurt and hurting each other

Jerry Springer had received some criticism for allowing guests to have violent fights on his show while the audience was entertained. However, Jerry Springer is not to be singled out. His show is the rule on television, not the exception. Television is ridden with displays of fighting and drama for the purpose of making the audience laugh.

Seemingly innocuous childrens cartoons teach children to laugh at others getting hurt. Many of us recall the anvil falling on the cartoon character’s head and watching the cartoon character see birds or stars after getting into a violent accident. Of course cartoon characters do not get hurt the way that real people get hurt, but laughing at cartoon characters getting hurt is a stepping stone to eventually laughing at live action characters getting hurt, and then maybe even real people. I can testify that cartoons caused me to laugh at live action characters getting hurt, and on a few occasions even real people. I eventually unlearned this habit, fortunately.

Many things on television that are made out to be funny are no longer funny once we start to feel empathy for the characters. Television often shows a character intentionally inflicting harm or humiliation on another character while we as the audience are expected to laugh. An example is a scene from the movie Monster-in-Law starring Jennifer Lopez, featuring a rivalry between soon-to-be mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. In one scene, the older woman intentionally slips something into the younger woman’s food that she knows the younger woman is allergic to. The younger woman eats the food and has an allergic reaction. As she looks at her badly swollen face in the mirror, I had this vibe that I was somehow expected to laugh, but this was crossing the line. I had just watched a human being intentionally inflict harm on another human being, and the scene was made out to be comical. Meanwhile, did the older woman know what kind of allergic reaction the younger woman was prone to? Did she know whether it would be anaphylactic shock including airway obstruction?

A romantic comedy Say It Isn’t So features two young people who fall happily in love, but soon after find out that they are actually brother and sister. As a result, the man is known for years thereafter as the “sister fucker” and he takes on a menial job. This is a comedy, keep in mind, so it is all made out to be funny; but in actuality it is a sad story. I even cried some of the time when I was watching it.

In numerous other movies and sitcoms, we see a character saying something mean to another character that denigrates or humiliates him/her in front of others while we, as the audience, are enticed to laugh. The Office TV series has numerous scenes such as this. Over time I realized that if someone who is supposed to be my friend or coworker were to say something to deliberately humiliate me in front of a group, I would not want some audience being enticed to laugh. Who would? Once we start to feel empathy for the characters, many things on television that would be funny are not anymore.

The media’s love of scandals

The media’s love of scandals is understandable. The media needs to make money, and in order to survive, the media is going to throw out there anything that would get the audience excited. Scandals are a low-hanging fruit from the tree. The problem is that scandals involve someone doing something wrong and/or someone getting hurt. Such things should never give us joy, but there is an ugly side of human nature that likes scandals. We like it when someone else does wrong or is screwed up because it makes us feel less bad about ourselves and about our own lives. A part of us may like hearing that that seemingly perfect couple down the street is getting a divorce. A part of us may like hearing that the person who seems to have it all just got fired from his/her job or did something embarrassing.

Scandals in the media are not hard to find. Just glance at the magazine rack in the checkout line at the grocery store. The scandals are primarily among celebrities: rivalries, painful relationship breakups, custody battles, etc. I wonder what it may feel like to be a celebrity and to have your pain be broadcast in the media for all to see.

Even if a part of you likes scandals, it does not mean you are a bad person. In a way, we are born to like scandals. It is what we do with that bad side of ourselves that matters. Do we let this bad side of ourselves cause us to wish ill on others? Or do we try to overcome this bad side of ourselves and teach ourselves over time to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep? We decide.

Subjectivity protects the evildoer from accountability. It creates a setting where there is no right or wrong and/or no objective reality. Things that should be objective observations and objective chronicling of events are reduced to opinions and feelings. Subjectivity is a weapon that the evildoer may use against the voice that is trying to stand up to it and seek justice.

Impeding the ability of the victim to seek justice

In one example scenario, a victim has been wronged and decides to confront the perpetrator. The perpetrator may use phrases such as “I am sorry you feel that way”, “…how you feel…”, “that is your opinion”, “I respect your opinion”, “well now that you put it that way” and sometimes “I never thought of it that way.” To a naive outward observer, these phrases seem harmless, but to the victim they can pierce through the soul. Here the perpetrator is trying to push the victim into believing that the wrong done to him/her is all in his/her head. Admittedly, sometimes a person can feel victimized for the wrong reasons. I am not talking about such scenarios here.

In the land of subjectivity, the evildoer portrays the negative emotions of the victim as being their own independent entity. The evildoer does not acknowledge the stimulus that justifies the negative emotions. The evildoer attempts to remove the stimulus—his/her wrongdoings—from the consciousness of the victim and any others present. All that is left is this negative emotion of the victim who needs to be soothed.

When the victim has had a history of diagnosable mental illness, psychiatric disorder or just bad moods, the victim becomes an easier target. The perpetrator now has the opportunity to attribute the victim’s negative emotional response to his/her diagnosable defect.

If you find that you are having to periodically reassure yourself that you do see things pretty clearly and you do have your head on straight, then it is possible that somebody with bad intentions is messing with your head.

Subjectivity when evaluating disputes

When evaluating disputes, it is destructive to make the blanket assumption that both sides are always equally right, and/or equally at fault, and then call oneself impartial. This mindset, which I call fake impartiality, renders the victim unable to rightfully assert a wrong that has been done against him/her. The fake impartiality mindset assumes that it is always the word of one party against the word of the other party. If a victim tries to assert that a wrong has been done against him/her, then fake impartiality will render the victim’s assertion invalid because “each side always thinks it is right and is the victim.”

True impartiality, conversely, attempts to collect the facts about what happened and use sound reasoning to come to a conclusion about who did what wrong. When we do this, we will find that one side is often more at fault than the other. Oftentimes, one party is the victim and the other party is the perpetrator, and we do not want to lay part of the burden of responsibility on the victim that did no wrong.

One dispute that often occurs is a dispute between two neighbors where one neighbor likes to play loud music and the other neighbor wants peace and quiet. Some people seem to think that these disputes are simply “two people that just don’t get along,” but in such a dispute as this, both sides are NOT equal.

Nobody has a need to play loud music. This need does not exist and never has existed. Furthermore, headphones are available for people who want to hear music at the volume they want, and if the headphones are uncomfortable or inconvenient, then too bad. NO harm is done to an individual when an individual is denied the privilege of playing loud music without headphones, period.

However, potential harm can be done to the individual that wants peace and quiet. Loud music from neighbors can disrupt sleep-wake patterns, which can adversely affect an individual’s ability to function at optimal levels, leading to a reduced quality of life and increased risk of accidents when operating automobiles and other machinery. Loud music from neighbors can disrupt an individual’s inner peace and sometimes even mental health.

Subjectivity in communication

Another destructive form of subjectivity can be found when reviewing a message or set of messages. Here the subjectivity mindset is characterized by the phrase “…it all depends on how you interpret it.” This mindset neglects the fact that the intended message is the intended message is the intended message. You are either interpreting the message correctly or you are not. By adopting the it-all-depends-on-how-you-interpret-it mindset, you are stripping the writer of self-expression and have now decided that the writer no longer defines the message, but rather the reader!

The it-all-depends-on-your-interpretation mindset sometimes is applied to the Bible. This is bad because God’s intended message is God’s intended message is God’s intended message. Some parts of the Bible are hard to understand, but in the end you are either interpreting the message correctly or you are not.

Moral Relativism

Moral relativism is the mindset that right and wrong is subjective, and that my right/wrong is just as good as your right/wrong. We should just all accept each other’s ideas of right/wrong and be one big happy family. Seems not so bad to some until you consider the downstream implications. Moral relativism basically grants permission to the evildoers to inflict whatever harm on innocent people they want and simply call it “right.” Even during the Holocaust the Nazis came up with justifications for annihilating the world’s entire Jewish population and “solving the Jewish problem.” The Nazis also genuinely thought that they were making a better world by means of genetic cleansing. After all, people should be happier when they have better genes, right?

Now if you identify as a moral relativist, but still say that the Holocaust was objectively wrong, then you are contradicting yourself. Moral relativism, in its full form, states that nothing is objectively wrong. Even if one identifies as only being partially moral relativist — meaning that there are only some things that are objectively right or wrong — one must be warned that moral relativism to any extent leaves room for tolerance of potentially harmful behaviors. The more morally relativist we get, the more atrocities we are made to tolerate so long as at least someone somewhere calls it right.

Manufactured Uncertainty

In cases where it is known that there is an objective truth, such as whether or not there is climate change, evildoers may manufacture uncertainty about what that objective truth is where there would otherwise not be any uncertainty. Public health has especially been affected. The tobacco industry manufactured uncertainty regarding the health dangers of consuming their products. A saying is “doubt is in their product.” The oil and gas industry manufactured uncertainty regarding whether or not there was climate change despite the widespread scientific consensus that there is climate change and that the industrial revolution was a significant factor.

Manufactured uncertainty is an instrument of evil that evildoers use to conceal the destructive effects of their words and/or actions. It can create a confusion among bystanders that is not meant to be there. As long as there is uncertainty as to the destructive effects of something, the destructive effects can more easily continue without accountability. In the case of the tobacco industry and the oil and gas industry, profits are allowed to flourish at the expense of public health, and with reduced public scrutiny.

Summary

To summarize, subjectivity is an instrument of evil. It creates an unrealistic environment where there is no right or wrong, up or down, left or right. In such an environment, evil flourishes without accountability or scrutiny. Victims are left unable to rightfully assert the wrongs done against them. Justice is diminished. Psychological harm is magnified.