Dual Standards

[davidgillon]

Seeing a lot of disabled people commenting on twitter about how everyone seems to be condemning Will Smith, but no one seems to be discussing Chris Rock using a world-wide bully-pulpit to punch down at a woman with an auto-immune disease. (And everyone else with a visible difference).

As a friend noted, that just an hour on from an actually disabled actor getting an Oscar for a film about disabled people.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

plenty people discussing that on my Tumblr dash, and also that Chris Rock built his career on misogynoir and this isn't even the first Oscar hosting gig at which he's attacked Jada Pinkett Smith

…which mostly tells me I have curated my Tumblr dash very well

[sovay]

how everyone seems to be condemning Will Smith, but no one seems to be discussing Chris Rock using a world-wide bully-pulpit to punch down at a woman with an auto-immune disease.

The majority of my friendlist actually is discussing that angle, but I suspect it's a factor of the majority of my friendlist being disabled or chronically ill.

[lilysea]

My thoughts were:

1. That was a horrible ableist joke Chris Rock made and he should be deeply ashamed

2. It's never okay to hit someone except in self defense - there was a small but non-zero chance of life-changing injury

3. If Will Smith had been white, he would be getting a lot less criticism

[davidgillon]

It's never okay to hit someone except in self defense

I sort of agree, but ...

Given there's apparently a long history of Chris Rock going after Jada Pinkett-Smith, and that he clearly hit home, I'm not sure there isn't an arguable element of self-defence, or at least defending your family members. Chris Rock will likely think twice before going after her again, at least in front of her husband, so this may lead to a overall reduction in violence (where violence covers both mental and physical). Or he may just double down, but that will make the bullying more apparent to the rest of his audience.

And there's the wider impact to consider. Chris Rock was saying it's okay to mock alopecia in front of a world-wide audience. That message would have been unchallenged but for what happened, and undoubtedly encouraged a lot of bullies. Cumulatively that's a lot of violence. Oh, some of it would still have happened without him, but they wouldn't have had that moral backing of 'Chris Rock did it at the Oscars, so it must be okay'.

ETA: and I agree on "If Will Smith had been white".

[lilysea]

I meant *physical* self defense eg if the other person is a genuine immediate physical threat.

[legionseagle]

I bloody well hope that if someone made a nasty crack about my appearance on a night which was supposed to be a celebration to an audience of about a billion my partner would have taken similar action (though hopefully out back in the CCTV blind spot near the gents.)

[davidgillon]

out back in the CCTV blind spot

Makes sense ;)

BTW, did you see this legal tweet yesterday:

Counsel for the Home Office says in Court: My instructions are that the SSHD has received no paperwork in this case since October 2021. I know that this is incorrect because I have evidence from after that date [provided by the SSHD] but those are my instructions.

— Rajiv Sharma (@Raj_Sharma_UK) March 28, 2022

cw: bullying

[vass]

Yeah.

When I tried to imagine it from Will Smith's point of view, what he might have been thinking, the very first thing I thought was "He's [Rock] going to get away with this. There will be absolutely no meaningful consequences for him at all for saying that, not one thing to make him consider behaving differently in the future."

I would think more poorly of Smith if there were any reason to expect that there would have been any repercussions at all for Rock for using his position to be so cruel.

But as it is... well, all I can think of is the one time in my life when I hit a bully in the face (I was thirteen and she and her friends had me surrounded after school and weren't letting me leave and were deliberately trying to get me to lose my temper because they thought it was funny.) That was nearly 30 years ago, and I've never managed to actually feel sorry I did it. Sometimes I've wished I did feel sorry, but I never have. Twenty or thirty years from now, I bet Will Smith doesn't either.

Also, lilysea is right, he is being judged exponentially harder than white people who've done similar or far worse things.

Re: cw: bullying

[davidgillon]

she and her friends had me surrounded after school and weren't letting me leave and were deliberately trying to get me to lose my temper

Yeah, that one I know intimately. And both the times I deliberately punched the ringleaders out it significantly reduced the amount of ongoing bullying I experienced. So difficult not to see it as an effective response. Not necessarily an optimum response, but if the school isn't handling it, then you go with what you've got.