--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain <no_re...@...> wrote: <snip> > I just can't buy 100% into this victimhood stigma > you wrap these women in.
I have to say it bothers me as well. It's one thing to sympathize with a person's pain from the results of a bad choice, and quite another to strip them of any agency in making that choice. What is not helpful, however, is to criticize them for the choice. I suspect they've all engaged in quite a bit of self-criticism for it, and that's more than enough. It's part of the pain they're going through. We don't need to add to it, any more than we need to pin a big VICTIM label on them. I think we should give them implicit credit for having recognized they made a bad choice, do what we can to soothe their pain, and leave it at that. Part of the motivation for portraying them as helpless victims lacking a will of their own seems to be that it facilitates demonizing MMY. The less agency the women are accorded, the more important his agency becomes, hence the harsher the blame that can be piled on him. Not that he doesn't deserve the lion's share of blame. But depriving the women of any agency at all creates an equation that's out of whack. And it dehumanizes MMY by suggesting that he himself never felt even a shred of remorse. Maybe he didn't, but we don't know that. Finally, there's a lot of hypocrisy floating around. There are people on FFL who are not just narcissistic and insensitive but actively, persistently sadistic. They know who they are, and they really ought to STFU with their condemnation of MMY. They'd do well to get some professional help as well. Sadists are never happy, balanced people, no matter how spiritual they may believe and portray themselves to be.
