A prominent female academic in a recent tweet argued that the recent scandalous behaviour of Oxfam aid workers sexual abusing aid recipients needed to be seen in the context of a "disaster zone" where it is "hard to sustain 'civilized values". The people who go there should be respected, nevertheless, because she wouldn't go there. When she was called out on it, she posted a photo of herself crying in reaction to the flak she received, and was promptly criticized for seeking refuge in "white fragility", which is the assumption that a white person in distress will attract sympathy like someone from another race wouldn't. Another prominent South Asian academic responded to her with this excellent piece.
To crudely summarize the white academic's argument, good people do things they wouldn't otherwise do to cope with the pressures of life in a disaster zone. As though exploiting helpless people for your sexual gratification is a symptom of a stress disorder. Just like insomnia, panic attacks, digestion problems and the numerous other symptoms of anxiety.
From my personal experience of anxiety, I can say that that argument is bull-shit. When you are struggling to cope with a situation, you don't turn into a cold, calculating abuser of people whom you have power over. On the other hand, the suffering of others becomes amplified to the extent that you try to keep away from distressing news. Neither is the behaviour of the Oxfam workers an example of unbridled hedonism in a war zone prompted by the knowledge that you may be killed at any moment. Like in the Tina Fey movie 'Tango Whiskey Foxtrot' where war correspondents drink themselves to the gills and screw indiscriminately every night against the background score of bombs exploding in the distance.
The academic could have said something about the white-saviour complex, of toxic masculinity, of the structures that enable aid workers to exploit the people they are supposed to help. But, she opted to exonerate the abusers and implicate the place, instead of implicating the structures. The place that makes beasts of men.
When you paint a disaster zone as a wild place outside the bounds of civility, you dehumanize the people there. For centuries, this dehumanization allowed colonists to carry out the most gruesome acts while continuing to think of themselves as good people. When you see someone suffer, it is not the natural human tendency to contribute to their suffering by exploiting them. That requires some gigantic delusions (manufactured and encouraged by structures of oppression), which you definitely shouldn't be commended for.
The academic could just have put up her hands and said she was wrong. Instead, she decided to make herself out as the victim.
To crudely summarize the white academic's argument, good people do things they wouldn't otherwise do to cope with the pressures of life in a disaster zone. As though exploiting helpless people for your sexual gratification is a symptom of a stress disorder. Just like insomnia, panic attacks, digestion problems and the numerous other symptoms of anxiety.
From my personal experience of anxiety, I can say that that argument is bull-shit. When you are struggling to cope with a situation, you don't turn into a cold, calculating abuser of people whom you have power over. On the other hand, the suffering of others becomes amplified to the extent that you try to keep away from distressing news. Neither is the behaviour of the Oxfam workers an example of unbridled hedonism in a war zone prompted by the knowledge that you may be killed at any moment. Like in the Tina Fey movie 'Tango Whiskey Foxtrot' where war correspondents drink themselves to the gills and screw indiscriminately every night against the background score of bombs exploding in the distance.
The academic could have said something about the white-saviour complex, of toxic masculinity, of the structures that enable aid workers to exploit the people they are supposed to help. But, she opted to exonerate the abusers and implicate the place, instead of implicating the structures. The place that makes beasts of men.
When you paint a disaster zone as a wild place outside the bounds of civility, you dehumanize the people there. For centuries, this dehumanization allowed colonists to carry out the most gruesome acts while continuing to think of themselves as good people. When you see someone suffer, it is not the natural human tendency to contribute to their suffering by exploiting them. That requires some gigantic delusions (manufactured and encouraged by structures of oppression), which you definitely shouldn't be commended for.
The academic could just have put up her hands and said she was wrong. Instead, she decided to make herself out as the victim.
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