The concept of people as private property is offensive to mainstream culture. Our culture especially condemns slavery. While owning people as private property is technically illegal, evildoers will still find ways to claim another human being as their personal property.
What does it mean for a person to be the private property of another?
Imagine a scenario where there is a chair in the room, and you would like to sit down. You do not have to ask the chair if it is okay for you to sit on it. The chair has no will of its own. It is an inanimate object. However, if someone else owns the chair, and the owner of the chair says that you are not supposed to sit in the chair, then that is a different story. The chair does not have a will of its own, but the owner of the chair does.
So when one person claims another person as his/her personal property, the will of the other person does not matter anymore. All that matters is the will of the “owner”. Everything that the other person says or does is to be dictated by the one who owns him/her.
Note that romantic relationships are not the only kind of relationship where one person claims another as his private property. People may claim friends, family members or maybe even coworkers as their private property.
So let us say that Jen decides to claim Jill as her personal property. What does that mean? Well, first Jen forces Jill to be in some kind of relationship with her. For example, Jen may coerce Jill into being her friend. In the relationship, Jen will stifle Jill’s ability to express herself freely. Jen could not care less that Jill has a will of her own. If Jill is writing up an email where she is speaking her mind about something, Jen may constantly look over her shoulder to see what she is writing. If Jen finds that she does not agree with the content of Jill’s email message, then she will, by force, stop Jill from sending out the email. All the while, Jen may be too delusional to believe that she is doing anything wrong. Jen may rationalize and tell herself that she is only protecting Jill because if silly Jill does whatever she wants, she may hurt herself, and we don’t want that!
In addition to stifling Jill’s ability to express herself, Jen may also force Jill to live her life the way that Jen wants her to. Jen may tell Jill how to eat, what to wear and even what kind of career path to take. Jen also does not like it when Jill makes friends with people who are not friends with her. What if Jill’s other friends are people that Jen does not like? They may pollute Jill’s head with ideas that Jen does not agree with. Jen also will not want Jill to accomplish great things that Jen never accomplished herself. Indeed, private property cannot be superior to its owner!
One would think that Jill would want to leave such a terrible relationship, but as far as Jen is concerned, Jill has no right to leave the relationship any more than a chair has a right to decide not to be owned by its owner. If Jill tries to get away from Jen, then Jen may stalk her. For example, Jen may walk up to the door of Jill’s apartment and keep knocking until Jill answers. Jen may even try to break into Jill’s home, saying she “just wants to talk to her”. Jen may convince herself that Jill only wants to get away because she is suffering from anxiety issues and is behaving irrationally. Eventually, Jill may need to resort to an act of violence just to keep Jen from invading her space.
Fortunately, friendships like the one between Jen and Jill do not happen often, but there are shades of gray. Often people will try to exercise some degree of control over another, though not necessarily to the extent that Jen exerts control of Jill.
Why would people try to control other people?
Many articles discuss how people try to control other people. Usually, articles site anxiety as being the most common motivation for controlling other people. When people are anxious, they are more likely to want their way all the time. They are nervous about what may happen if they do not get their way. The only way that such people can get their way all the time is by controlling people around them.
I think that there are other motivations besides anxiety for controlling others. Sometimes people want to control others just because they are evil. This article discusses the characteristics of evil people, one of which is the need to control everything. The evildoer’s objective is to get whatever he/she wants regardless of the path of destruction and suffering that he/she leaves behind.
Unsolicited physical contact and invasion of space
Some say that more communication takes place in nonverbal body language than in verbal communication. Physical contact, for example, usually conveys affection, which may be sexual or nonsexual.
Unsolicited physical contact, however, is contact that is inappropriate or unwanted. When we think of unsolicited physical contact, we most often think of physical contact of a sexual nature. However, unsolicited physical contact can also be nonsexual. When the evildoer makes unsolicited physical contact with the victim, the evildoer is, in a nonverbal manner, claiming ownership over the victim in that moment. The message is not one of companionship, but rather one of control. Just as an animal marks a plot of land as its territory by urinating on it, the evildoer can mark a victim as his/her territory by means of physical contact and invasion of the victim’s space. Meanwhile, to the casual bystander, the unsolicited physical contact just looks like a friend patting the other friend on the shoulder.
So let’s go back to the story of Jen and Jill. When Jill is sitting at her computer writing an email and Jen places her hand on Jill’s shoulder, what Jen is nonverbally conveying to Jill is “You are under my control right now. Your will does not matter, only mine does”. Jen may even start typing on Jill’s keyboard and clicking on Jill’s mouse. She does not care that the computer belongs to Jill and not her. Because Jen is underhandedly claiming Jill as her personal property, any of Jill’s property automatically becomes Jen’s property as far as Jen is concerned. After all, private property cannot own other private property. An entity can either be an owner or be a piece of property, but not both.
If Jill complains that Jen is invading her space and touching her too much, Jen may just brush off Jen’s complaints. Jen describes herself as a touchy-feely, affectionate person, and tells Jill that she is being unappreciative of her friend’s “love and affection”.
In my opinion, one can tell whether physical contact by another person is malicious or friendly based on the context. If someone has been a good friend of yours for many years and pats you on the shoulder, then the physical contact is friendly. If the person makes physical contact with you continually even though you have told him that you do not like it, then what he is doing becomes harassment. If the person making physical contact with you has been trying to control you in ways that are oppressive and inappropriate, then you can figure that the physical contact is not conveying true companionship.
Making the victim feel guilty for having any will at all
In the times of slavery, a master wanted a slave to be docile, submissive and apathetic. Correspondingly, when evildoers claim another human being as their personal property, they too prefer their “property” to have these same characteristics.
To get the victim to be more submissive and apathetic, the evildoer may try to make the victim feel guilty for expressing a strong opinion about something. When the victim speaks his/her mind, the evildoer may act like the victim is being too overbearing. Also, if the victim so much as expresses a preference for things to be a certain way, the evildoer may say things like “you just like to always be in control”.
In other words, whenever the victim expresses an opinion or a preference, the evildoer may intentionally blow the victim’s behavior out of proportion, and act like the victim is being overbearing, bossy and always wanting to be in control. If these manipulative tactics are successful, then the victim will over time become less and less assertive and more and more submissive to the will of everyone else. The victim may even cease to express him/herself altogether.
Do parents own their children?
Most people believe that children are not the property of their parents. For example, children have rights, and they can be taken away from their parents if the state finds that the parents are harming the children. Conversely, when someone owns a piece of property, he/she can do with it whatever he/she wants, and it will not be taken away. Back in the days of slavery, slaves did not have rights, and no amount of harm that the master did to the slave would warrant the removal of the slave from the master.
The good parent sees the child as a separate, though underdeveloped, human being. The good parent tries to raise the child in the best way he/she can so that the child becomes the best version of him/herself. The parent who sees the child as property, on the other hand, views the child more as an extension of him/her. When this parent speaks highly of the child to others, he/she is actually flattering him/herself. For example, the parent may comment on how beautiful the child is. Now when we comment on how beautiful a house is, we are not complimenting the house because the house is an inanimate object. Obviously, we are complimenting the owner of the house. Similarly, when this parent comments on how beautiful the child is, the compliment is not directed at the child any more than it would be towards a house. The parent is complimenting him/herself, the “owner” of the child.
Parents often view their children as an extension of them. To me, this does not necessarily mean that they view their children as chattel. Perhaps these parents just feel a connection to their child because their child has inherited their genes and because they raised the child. Therefore, the child’s accomplishments are seen as a reflection of them, the parents.
The parents who view their children as their personal property, on the other hand, have a mentality that the children exist for their own sake. Their children live for them rather than them living for their children. Because they do not see the children as separate human beings, they think their children’s cares and concerns are not warranted and that any negative emotions that their children express are inconsequential. To them, the things that their children worry about are all in their head. Rather than a negative emotion being validated, the negative emotion is viewed as this thing that comes out of nowhere, and just needs to be subdued, either by hugs and kisses or by punishment.
I personally find Leonard Hofstadter’s mother (from The Big Bang Theory show) to be refreshing. Her children have accomplished some great things. When others say that she must be so proud of her children, she simply says that she is not proud because, after all, they are not her accomplishments.
People who use other people
Even when people are not claiming you as their own personal property, they may still “rent” you. In other words, they may temporarily use you for their own personal gains. Their use of you may involve invasion of your personal space. Once they have gotten what they wanted, they stop using you. Their rent period is over.
Let us say that some lady has a bad reputation and she knows that you have a pretty good reputation. The lady may stand close to you, talk to you, and maybe even make physical contact with you, just to make it look to others like she has a relationship with you of some kind. She figures that by associating with you, she can improve her image in the eyes of others. She may even give you a hug. You awkwardly let her hug you. What else are you going to do? Push her away? Meanwhile, your hug is signifying to others that the two of you are buddies, even though you are not.
Let us say that you are a woman, and a man is standing close to you and talking to you. His X-girlfriend is within sight, and he is trying to make her jealous by making it look like he has something going with you. You see that he is just using you, and you don’t like it. You try to push him away, but he is not going away so easily. He thinks that if he can just kiss you, he can make his X burn with jealousy. “I know what you are doing, and I don’t like it!” you say. He doesn’t care. Instead, he stubbornly believes that you should be flattered by his attention. In that moment, you exist for his own sake as far as he is concerned. It will not be for long though. Once he has accomplished his little scheme, his rent period is over, and you belong to yourself again.
Summary
Many will say that unsolicited physical contact implies that one’s body is not one’s own. The victim’s living body does not belong to him/her anymore, but rather to someone else. For those of you who follow the Bible, the Bible states in 1 Corinthians 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. In other words, the Bible states that the person’s body belongs to God. By claiming another person’s body as theirs, evildoers are claiming ownership of something that actually belongs to God, and are using it to fulfill their own desires.
Nonetheless, I believe that unsolicited physical contact has additional implications. For example, many would agree that it is wrong to pet a cat or a dog that does not want to be petted. Hence, unsolicited physical contact implies that the victim has even less autonomy than what a cat or a dog should have, and therefore ranks the victim at the same level as an inanimate object. Just as an inanimate object has no will of its own, the victim is treated as if his/her own will either does not exist or is inconsequential.