Pretty frequently in the United States, we get incidents like this, where a young father died of an infected tooth, for no other reason than not having health coverage. In response, we get smug assholery like this, saying (among other crap) that he should’ve bought the antibiotics instead of the painkillers. A man is dead for, let’s be fair here, no good fucking reason, and the immediate reaction is to Monday-morning-quarterback his life in order to blame him for his own tragedy.
We hear this shit all the time. It’s literally an industry here in the States. Savings wiped out? You should’ve had them invested someplace else. Dying of something preventable? You should’ve gotten better health coverage. House destroyed by a natural disaster? You should’ve lived someplace else. Robbed blind by a corporate scam? You should’ve trusted a different corporation.
You know who all these post-hoc kibitzers are? They’re that asshole who leans over your shoulder while you’re playing a video game, and every time you lose a life, he goes, “You should’ve hit jump, jump, then duck, that’s the only way to avoid the swinging blades.”
As a progressive, I feel it’s my job not to tell people that they should have ducked sooner, but to ask why there are swinging blades in this corridor in the first place. (If you’re bad at metaphors, the corridor here is socioeconomic conditions in the U.S. If you don’t know what the swinging blades are, I assume you make over $200K a year.)
The reason I bring this up here is that I think men are particularly susceptible to the shoulda-ducked narrative. Men, especially men with families, are supposed to be responsible for themselves and everyone else, so obviously if something goes wrong it’s their fault. Moreover, as we’ve discussed before on this blog, men tend to be defined solely in terms of their actions. So if something bad happens to a man, it’s not because of circumstances or the guy’s intrinsic qualities or the deck being stacked against him, it’s because of the actions he took or didn’t take. We don’t consciously decide that, but it’s intrinsically part of the gender narratives we absorb from the culture, so here we are.
This isn’t to say women don’t get the shoulda-ducked routine, but I think it’s easier for men to feel stuck with it. Our narratives about women having a lack of agency and being victims make it easier to believe that a woman got ripped off or taken advantage of. If a guy gets cheated, it’s easier for us to tell ourselves (and him) that it’s because he was too dumb or too gullible or whatever.
Thing is, the shoulda-ducked narrative depends on the notion that there’s a chance to avoid the blades, to make it, to succeed. It doesn’t have to be a fair chance; historically, it never has been. But as long as it’s possible, remotely possible, you get to cling to lines like “Anyone can make it in America” or “If [whomever] succeeded, that proves anyone can.”
To return to our video game analogy, it’s possible to beat Super Mario Brothers in five minutes, or Resident Evil in just over an hour, or… okay, I haven’t bought any new video games in a long time. But just because it’s possible with enough luck or advance knowledge or inside information does not mean that there’s a legitimate, reasonable chance of doing that. It’s possible that anyone with a buck can win the lottery, but they still have to warn people that that’s not an investment plan.
I think part of liberating men in modern society will need to involve liberating them from the idea that being ripped off, being taken advantage of, losing against a stacked deck, is somehow a personal failure.
@Gaius: Your hypothesis sounds somewhat similar to the Just-world hypothesis; another fallacy based on being unable to confront the world as it is. People want to believe that the world is fundamentally fair, and so when they hear about bad things happening to blameless people, they experience cognitive dissonance, and resolve it by constructing scenarios where the victim isn’t so blameless after all.
@Simon J. Broome: It’s my pet theory that victim blaming has its roots in intellectual weakness: the intellectual inability to confront a world in which situations, like meteorites, car accidents, and yes, rapes, are quite literally outside our control. As a result, we get people who play the Blame Game every time something tragic happens. “If so-and-so hadn’t done X, they’d still be here.” Let it not be denied that we have some control over our own fate, but the amount of control we have is generally less significant than we’d like to think. A much more elaborate discussion of… Read more »
“Jim, it’s really not cool to compare whether female or male rape survivors have the worse experience. They both have awful experiences, and it’s one of those “is it better to break your arm or your leg?” situations. ” Totally understand and agree with that, and the way I worded that makes that reading the likeliest, so my bad, because that was not what I was getting at. I was getting at the presumption of male hyperagency (accusing a rape victim of committing rape against his own rapist), male invulnerabilty (you’re male so it cannot have been rape rape) and… Read more »
Victim Blaming, in cases of tragedy or injustice… I was going to say about Big Pharma, that I don’t really see how one could start up a small pharmaceutical business, without a lot of money to start with. But that’s wildly off-topic. What is ON-topic, is that yes, Victim Blaming, when there is clearly no blame to be laid at an innocent victim’s feet, is a bad thing. But only when someone was entirely unprepared for a tragic or unjust event. Example: Got hit by a meteorite? Not your fault, you can’t predict meteorites. Car mows you down at a… Read more »
@noah: It’s a shame that you called time on the discussion of libertarianism and health care. It was refreshing to see abyssobenthonic discuss the issue of health care and poverty from a libertarian perspective without descending into platitudes and victim-blaming. I disagree with their conclusions but it’s excellent to see this being discussed in an adult way.
(If you’re bad at metaphors, the corridor here is socioeconomic conditions in the U.S. If you don’t know what the swinging blades are, I assume you make over $200K a year.) If only it were just snobbish rich people who failed to notice the swinging blades. So if something bad happens to a man, it’s not because of circumstances or the guy’s intrinsic qualities or the deck being stacked against him, it’s because of the actions he took or didn’t take. We don’t consciously decide that, but it’s intrinsically part of the gender narratives we absorb from the culture, so… Read more »
My point was not a one-sentence proof that libertarianism is best, and I have no intention of arguing that here. My point is that this is a liberal blog about men’s issues not a blog about men’s issues. It is thoroughly demonstrated.
But again, I think a consciously and openly liberal blog about men’s issues is a good thing that is much needed. A blog that claims to be a men’s issues blog that jumps on half the men should they be Don Quixote enough to comment is not.
I find the comments on that reddit thread centering on “well if he’s impovershed, then he shouldn’t have had children” to be head-bangingly frustrating. Though I also twitch at “So sad, the kids losing their daddy so young”. Yeah, that’s sad, but it’s sad that anyone loses their life to something this easily fixed.
Commenters, that is a sufficient amount on libertarianism and health care. We’re getting seriously derailed here; perhaps my fault for encouraging it, but I’m calling it now. Let’s try to stay focused on the issue of victim-blaming in cases of tragedy and injustice, and the degree to which it is (or is not, maybe I’m wrong) gendered.
Oh, and welfare is accessible for people who don’t have access to unemployment benefits (including having used them up), are citizen, and are not known to be rich (and contrary to what G&W thinks on Amptoons, owning a computer from before you were on welfare is not rich).
It’s not only accessible to single parents or the likes. Though as Valerie Keefe points out, you get penalized for being a dual parent household (get as much money as a single parent household, but need to support one more adult).
“Would other countries have paid for the man’s drugs? I am under the impression that prescription drugs are not covered by the Canadian government at any level, and this man would have made the same decision (and died) under the Canadian healthcare system just the same as he did in the American health care system. At some point, people DO need to make some rational choices.” In Quebec province, the minimum coverage for prescription drugs is 69% (0% dental, 0% eyes), private insurance can be better than that, but not worse than that. Welfare (and that’s for people not working,… Read more »
Jim, it’s really not cool to compare whether female or male rape survivors have the worse experience. They both have awful experiences, and it’s one of those “is it better to break your arm or your leg?” situations. Besides, we do have female rape survivors and reading that could alienate/trigger them, the same way that a male rape survivor reading someone saying “well, at least men don’t have to worry about having their rapes not believed because of their clothes” would be alienated or triggered.
Also, it’s not “feminists” who say that. It is “some feminists” at best.
Would other countries have paid for the man’s drugs? I am under the impression that prescription drugs are not covered by the Canadian government at any level, and this man would have made the same decision (and died) under the Canadian healthcare system just the same as he did in the American health care system.
At some point, people DO need to make some rational choices.
@Gaius: to be fair, a rather large number of self-identified libertarians don’t read Hayek (at best they read a capsule of The Road to Serfdom and go all “the EPA or food stamps will lead to Hitler or Stalin or worse!1!!!!1!!1!!!11!!!!1!!!1”)… I especially have my doubts that Michele Bachmann (not really libertarian, in any reasonable sense of the term) ever took Mises’ Human Action to the beach… 😉
(continued from #2011/9/12 20:34 ET) * Have a comprehensive safety net: there’s no reason that a civilized society bars access to care on the basis of wealth * Remove legal obligations of hospitals etc. to provide emergency medical care regardless of ability to pay. Given the comprehensive safety net, the only reason someone would be unable to pay is if they don’t want care. * Strongly encourage people to self-fund their healthcare to the greatest extent possible. This is necessary to allow the price variation limits to work. I think that something like health savings accounts and high-deductible catastrophic insurance… Read more »
@Abyssobenthonic:
In other words, libertarians use subjectivism to blame things they don’t like on the state, but the minute you suggest something they LIKE is ALSO subjective, they pitch a fit.
Not to go off-topic, but in truth, even physics isn’t objective — it only APPROACHES objectivity, a state we call transubjectivity. Objectivity? Einstein’s Relativity would like a word with you. Even quantum waveforms collapse when you observe them (because you change them just by observing them).
@SpudTater: Reason‘s Ron Bailey puts forth something similar in some sense to Romney/ObamaCare (from 2004) I generally agree with his critique and proposal, though I have objections to a mandate. That said, RomneyObamaCare is essentially a doubling down on the current US system (which is why, not surprisingly, Big Pharma and Big Insurance generally backed it). It does comparatively little to address what makes healthcare so expensive in the US and solves most other problems by throwing money at health insurers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical makers (all three of which benefit from an amazing level of government-granted privilege). What makes US… Read more »
There’s an interesting parallelism between patriarchy and the state, as pointed out by left-libertarians Roderick Long and Charles Johnson: “The state is male in the feminist sense,” MacKinnon argues, in that “the law sees and treats women the way men see and treat women”. The libertarian completion of this thought is that the state sees and treats everybody—though not in equal degree—the way men see and treat women. The ideal of a woman’s willing surrender to a benevolent male protector both feeds and is fed by the ideal of the citizenry’s willing surrender to a benevolent governmental protector. “We are… Read more »
@Jim:
Fortunately, I am NOT old to remember that.
“Lie back and enjoy it?”
o.O
Sh*t like that makes ME furious.
“Noah, one thing you didn’t necessarily mention is the fact that when a woman gets raped, she is OFTEN blamed.” At least she’s not told she should feel like she “got lucky”.* At least no one insinuates she’s a lesbian for not enjoying the experience, with the generalized threat of physical violence always in the background for being found out as a lesbian. At least no one tells she couldn’t have gotten raped, it couldn’t have been raped, because she’s female. At least she is rarely charged as the rapist in her own rape. Now there’s some honest-to-God victim blaming.#… Read more »
“The current US hand-wringing is really beyond me. I don’t see why a national healthcare system should be any more politically problematic than, say, a national road network.” Which we have been letting crumble for the last 30 years. Because roads are just a fact of nature, God just said let there be roads. And why should the government interfere with God? “I mean, it’s not even like the US doesn’t have a public health scheme already — it’s got two! Get it together, you guys. Simplify, universalise, and rid yourselves of those horridly complex insurance tangles….” And think of… Read more »
Totally agree, Noah. I do think it is important, though, to make a distinction between victim blaming and giving advice to help people avoid bad situations. For example, I was in a nasty bike accident many months ago, and many witnesses attested that it was the car’s fault. However, I do not think it is at all inappropriate for people to advise me (and other cyclists) to ride (more) defensively to help avoid getting into accidents with cars, even cars with irresponsible drivers in them. Just because the accident was someone else’s fault doesn’t mean that I can’t/shouldn’t be expected… Read more »
Back on-topic:
Noah, one thing you didn’t necessarily mention is the fact that when a woman gets raped, she is OFTEN blamed.
Even though most male rapists have trouble maintaining erections during rape, a woman is criticized for wearing whatever sexualized clothing she was wearing and somehow “asking for it” (sexually)
Even though most rapists are SOMEONE YOU KNOW (Holly Pervocracy has statistics on this), women are often blamed for not taking Epic Precautions Around Everyone They Know.
It’s neoliberalism at its best (or worst).
Simon J. Broome wins this thread. 😛 @Mousie: Okay, since you don’t want The Man to do things for you, you are hereby forbidden from: 1). Driving on any road that is federal funded. Look up roads created by the WPA. 2). Taking advantage of any federally-funded institutions. This means that if a Zombie Apocalypse happens tomorrow, those US soldiers in your area will let the zombies kill you. 3). Walking on any federally-funded sidewalk. 4). Entering a national park. 5). Using a drinking fountain or a rest area along a highway (or driving on a highway, for that matter)… Read more »
@Simon: Nobody says a word about the NHS? Complaining about it is practically a national pastime! But try to take it away from us, and you’ll quickly find out just how much we value it! The current US hand-wringing is really beyond me. I don’t see why a national healthcare system should be any more politically problematic than, say, a national road network. I mean, it’s not even like the US doesn’t have a public health scheme already — it’s got two! Get it together, you guys. Simplify, universalise, and rid yourselves of those horridly complex insurance tangles. You won’t… Read more »