Kitty Genovese, bystanders, hu-mice, and YOU! Yes, you.

Hi all.
I MUST repost this- It is written by "LunarEchoes" and deserves your immediate attention!
Be aware that a few of you will be upset with the language. I don't care.
The message is what is to be attended to.

That some of you might be upset by the message would be beyond my own comprehension.

XOXO
Anne

Here is the post...
* Yes, ALL of the links work.

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"Kitty Genovese, bystanders, hu-mice, and YOU! Yes, you."

In 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed, raped, robbed, and stabbed again, in the parking lot and hallway of her apartment building. Her neighbors heard but did nothing. They were afraid to interfere or call the police, lest the attacker turn on them. Or they just didn't give a shit. Either way, people heard her calling for help, saw her stabbed, saw the attacker leave and come back--and did nothing.

Or so the story went. The story was told that way for years, but eventually, someone started studying the reasons that people don't help when others are in trouble, and the Kitty Genovese story began appearing in psychology textbooks as a lead-in to discussions of the bystander effect (also known as the Genovese syndrome) and diffusion of responsibility. It certainly was in my psych text.

As it turns out, about a dozen of Genovese's neighbors knew something was going on (not nearly 40, as was reported at first), and most of them didn't understand the situation. That most of them did nothing is quite bad enough, but of course, it's not nearly as awful once you've heard the original version. But the studies that her case inspired told us something important about what it means to be human--and they are reputable, replicable studies.

The Genovese Syndroms/bystander effect is this:

The more people who witness an emergency, the less likely any of them are to help.

There are lots of reasons that happens, but the two big ones are that everyone assumes someone else will handle it (what I'm going to call the Somebody Else's Problem effect, in honor of Douglas Adams) and that everyone looks at everyone else to see if others think something needs to be done--and since everyone is looking at everyone else, no one is doing anything, so everyone thinks no one else thinks anything needs to be done (I'm going to call that the People are Sheep effect, because People are Fucking Idiots effect seems counterproductively harsh).

"What," you obligingly ask, "does all of this have to do with hu-mice, as posited by Christine Janet Weiss O'Donnell?"

Wellilltellya.

Right now, we have candidates for national office who variously believe that:

• masturbation is adultery,
  
  
• scientists have created mice with human brains,
  
  
• we have actual czars in this country
  
  • and that the Constitution prohibits titles of nobility
    
    • (link tomorrow on that one),
      
      
• "the gay" can be prayed away or cured,
  
  
• Wiccans worship Satan,
  
  
• homosexuality is an "identity disorder," 
  
  
• condoms spread AIDS.

think that:

• interracial marriage is bad,
  
  
• school integration is a plot to sexually imprint white students on people of other races,
  
  
• eugenics is a pretty nifty idea.
  

• are scared of fluoridated water,

• say that women with kids shouldn't work,
• think alcohol should be illegal (see #5), 
• argue for a Scientologist-designed rehab program,
  
  • with massage and sauna, for female prison inmates.
    

• That girls who are raped by their fathers should be forced to have their fathers' babies.

Those are just a few of the wild and weird ideas out there, and I only looked at candidates for national office.

"Okay, but what do Kitty Genovese, diffusion of responsibility, the bystander effect have to do with that? you ask. "Not to mention, what does any of it have to do with me?"

Lemmefinishtellinya.

Someone for whom I have the highest respect commented, on a link to the story about Jim Russell and how he thinks white people have higher IQs than everyone else and interracial marriage is bad, that she is glad this stuff is out there, if that's what it takes to get people to wake up. And I replied that no one is going to wake up if this stuff doesn't get more exposure.

But then I started thinking about what would happen if it did. For one thing, a lot of people are getting tired of the insanity.

I think most people pretty much know that, say, "drug czar" or "education czar" isn't a title of nobility conferred by the U.S. government (even if they don't know that the Constitution doesn't forbid that); that school integration isn't a conspiracy to sexually imprint kids to people of "other races"; and that ranting about fluoridated water puts you squarely in Dr. Strangelove territory. But people are tired of hearing candidates and pundits say that Candidate X is nuts, which makes me wonder to what extent people are paying attention.

Beyond, that, though, I think that every voter in the U.S. could be notified of this stuff by phone, email, certified letter, and singing telegram--and these candidates could still be elected.

Why? Because people are sheep, and if you look around at what other people are doing about the upcoming election, only the ones who fear fluoride, liquor, hu-mice, interracial marriage, and government interference with anything but a woman's right to choose are doing anything. So sane people are looking at each other, and mostly, all the other sane people are doing is looking around, so it would be awfully easy to think that no one sane thinks anything needs to be done.

Why else? Because, really, it's all Somebody Else's Problem. YOU don't have to vote, I don't have to vote, no one sane has to vote--because all the other sane people are taking care of it.

This is not Somebody Else's Problem. Today, the Republicans and a few of the Democrats in the Senate refused to allow debate on whether and how to fund the military, because they didn't want to let gay people serve openly in the military, even though 80% of the country does. If you know someone who is serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, this is your problem. If you don't, but you care about our troops, especially the ones serving in dangerous places, this is your problem.

And those Senators? They're the sane ones. They're the good ones. They're the ones that candidates like Paul, O'Donnell, Angle, Russell, Miller, and Buck are trying to defeat.

And I didn't even talk about the candidates for statewide office, like the one who sends out pictures of people having sex with animals and wants to use eminent domain to prevent the mosque at Ground Zero.

So, if you think that you can sit on your ass because you're having a personal "enthusiasm gap," GET OFF YOUR ASS. No one else is going to act in this emergency, because everyone else thinks someone else--like YOU--is taking care of the problem.

You don't feel like voting? Fuck you.

You don't think the Democrats or the moderate Republicans or the ordinary Republicans have done enough for you? Fuck you.

You think that you can disengage and rely on the rest of us to get out there and vote, because you're so much more entitled than the rest of us? FUCK YOU.

If you don't vote this November and we get a Congress full of "no exceptions" anti-abortion nutcases who think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 might have been a mistake and that the Communists are trying to force us to fight cavities while the Constitution says we can't have Dukes--I'm blaming you.

Me and everyone else who, hearing a neighbor scream for help, would call the fucking police and rush out to help.

And we're people of action.
So stop relying on everyone else to fix the problem, get off your ass, start paying attention--and vote.

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