Are you familiar with affective vs. cognitive empathy? I ask because these kinds of sentiments often come from confusing the two. Affective empathy is the visceral “I feel your pain” kind of empathy, and policing that is really – to use the dreaded word – problematic. If you aren’t familiar with cognitive empathy, “empathize with a murderer” can feel like a demand that you internalize and excuse their murderous urges. And that definitely isn’t what I’m going for.
When I talk about empathy, I’m talking about cognitive empathy, which is the ability to intellectually understand someone’s emotional state. Which is so, so important. On the practical level, it’s absolutely crucial to curtailing violent crime and seeing that its perpetrators get the rehabilitation they need. You can’t fight something you don’t understand. We’ve wasted money, time, and human lives waging wars on drugs and on terrorism, and we’re hilariously ineffective precisely because we aren’t addressing the causes. These issues are systemic, and we’re throwing riot police at the symptoms while ignoring the core dysfunctions.
Empathizing with a person or a group is crucial in avoiding othering them. Othering isn’t just cruel – it’s ineffective. Treating someone like they’re no longer a real person or a valued part of society is a terrible way to improve their behavior. If you’re just a rapist, just a murderer, just a drug dealer, where’s your incentive to become anything else? Humans have this nasty habit of sinking to the level that’s expected of them. Sometimes the thing you need to hear is “you did a bad thing, yes, but you are more than this, and you can make amends and move past it.”
Someone linked me to this, and I think this is a really excellent post.
If you want to solve problems, you have to think about what people are experiencing and why they are doing the things that they’re doing. Otherwise your “solutions” won’t be relevant.
also, if you can’t empathize with your villains, you will be a lousy writer. so there’s also that.
I’m on board for most of this, but do not ever ask me to refrain from Othering a rapist. The act of rape is deliberate, vicious and premeditated every time–or if not premeditated, it at least stems from an ingrained and irreversible pattern of predatory behavior. Rapists deserve to be othered and cast out entirely (personally I advocate execution but I know that’s a contested subject).
OP isn’t talking about what they deserve. it’s about understanding them well enough to change or prevent their behavior.
i am so tired of people being too squicked by crime to make it stop. y’all would rather let it proliferate and punish it after the fact than keep it from happening in the first place, if keeping it from happening would require you to think of criminals as human beings who do the wrong things, rather than as alien monsters whose motives and behavior are a total mystery.
not to mention how the monster hunter mentality causes people to assume suspicion = guilt. surely you can think of some problems with that reflex. possibly related to current events? if you think hard maybe?
“Y’all would rather let it proliferate and punish it after the fact than keep it from happening in the first place, if keeping it from happening would require you to think of criminals as human beings who do the wrong things, rather than as alien monsters whose motives and behavior are a total mystery.”
Also, the mentality of “Rapists/abusers/violent criminals are MONSTERS and not human beings” leads way too easily into “Sure, this person I know has been accused of [violent act] but only MONSTERS do that and I KNOW they’re not a monster so they can’t have done it.” This is how rapists and abusers retain their support systems and victims get dismissed.
Okay. But like. Don’t empathize with rapists or murderers????????????
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