Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 46

Man is basically an ethical animal. I am intentionally using the traditional generic "Man." Not humans, nor human beings, nor humankind. Why? For one simple reason. I am sometimes so sick and tired of the Politically Correct Thought Police and their anxious and anguished shrieking and whinging at anything that sounds even remotely offensive to their poor virgin ears, and non inclusive, that from time to time I just want to rebel, just a little bit, Gentle Reader. Let those dear little delicate snowflakes melt. Sometimes a little assertive freedom of speech and expression is worth the nagging and finger-wagging. It is already public domain that I am a feminist, and I was a feminist many years before Prime Minister Junior even knew that word. When I say the word "Man" I am not thinking of male humans with penises, nor those who wish they had penises. I am referring to the old, traditional name for our species, before the word man became genderized and then women were suddenly treated like a distinct or inferior species. If you are a woman and you find this offensive, then please grow a skin and get over it, and just allow me my little non-PC enjoyment. By the same token, neither do I accept that trans persons should somehow get away with obligating or bullying us into calling them by their preferred pronoun. Just because you have been through hormone treatment and have had your genitalia surgically altered or mutilated with breasts added or subtracted doesn't change your DNA nor your chromosomes. Calling you she or her, or he or him after your desire might be the nice and polite thing to do, and likely that is what I'm going to call you because I really don't want to get my face rearranged, but sometimes I just want to call spade a spade. You are not, never were and never will be a woman, or a man. You are transwoman or transman, and that's perfectly okay. Now give it a rest already and please feel free to pee standing or sitting, as you desire. Now that I've got that out of my system, yes, we, humans, are an ethical animal. This isn't to say that we often, nor even sometimes, behave and act ethically. We already know that that is simply not the case. We do have a sense of ethics, of what is right and wrong. We have only to look at the actions of many of our political leaders, and we already know they are judged, or rightly so, as unethical: Rodrigo Duterte, anyone? Jacob Zuma, now kicked out of office? How about President Dump, the Great Deplorable squatting in the Oval Office. Our own Prime Minister Junior, over his choice of privately owned Caribbean Islands for his family New Year's getaway last year? To name but a few. We naturally want our elected leaders and mentors and public heroes to perform to our satisfaction, which is to say ethically. And not infrequently, they will disappoint us. I mentioned in yesterday's blogpost that it is bad judgment giving people from oppressed minorities a pass for bad behaviour. Yes, I am considering all the rotten social conditions and structural systems that help make their lives miserable, and I know about social and economic inequality and legislated poverty. I am also well aware that the way persons of colour and aboriginals are often treated in the courts and by police and other institutions of law enforcement are often shameful. But when I was being robbed at knifepoint by a black man, I wasn't thinking of him as a poor structural victim. I was the victim. Whatever set of circumstances put him in this kind of position, no one was holding a gun to his head and telling him that he had to threaten my life and rob me. Unless he was an incurable sociopath, and maybe he was, he knew better. We all know better. This is a feature of our humanity, or this sense of ethics, morality, of right-and wrong is a feature that makes us uniquely human. When we take groups of marginalized persons and take them off the hook for doing hurtful things to vulnerable people, even if they are doing this to vent their anger and outrage, we are not helping them. We are further dehumanizing them. This doesn't mean that there aren't other factors involved, but still they have not been sufficiently mentored nor supported in reaching their full potential. I think that ethics really need to take centre stage in our lives, and in the way we build and develop cultures and societies. I also acknowledge that in this current Darwinist climate of winner takes all consumer capitalism, that this is going to be a very difficult and thankless process.