info at pulpculture.org wrote:
> I don't know. Firing someone sucks. firing someone _because_ of their
> race, ability, gender, sexual orienation ... shouldn't that get
> punished with a stiffer fine? Why not make people who beat a transman
> up pay a higher price for beating him up _because _ he's a transman?
> Why not make the alleged Duke University rapists endure a longer
> sentence, if convicted, _because_ they didn't just rape her but made
> her her endure racist epithets and may _in fact_ have raped her
> because, in the jock, upper class male mind, black women simply can't
> be raped by virtue of their race. (that is, any pretense to her not
> wanting sex would be just that, a pretense. By definition. black
> female sexuality is animalistic in nature and she can't say no because
> she's an animal that wants it all the time. Move along, there is no
> rape here.)
I don't really see that creating special categories of crimes that are already crimes makes sense. Murder and rape already depend on putting the victim in the category of other and of denying their humanity. The fact that in some cases that humanity is denied because of some characteristic -- race, gender, sexual preference -- doesn't matter. It seems to me that the sooner we acknowledge that there is a Humanity that we all share in, the sooner we can all grok that murder and rape and wrong period. To make special cases only exacerbates the very bad practice of categories and identities which have never done anything other that to divide us. But division is precisely what we don't want.
> i don't see why people who murder, rape, beat, and rob shouldn't be
> punished more if, indeed, they commit the acts because someone is a
> member of a group they despise and think is less than human
Well, put it this way, if a racist gets a heavier sentence for mistreating a black, do you think that's likely to make them less prejudiced or more prejudiced?
> finally, i don't see why it should be ridiculed -- hate crimes
> legislation. imagine spending your life living every single day
> knowing that there are some people out there who'd like to see your
> entire "race" or "kind" snuffed out. that's what it's like for blacks
> in this county. that's what it's like for gays. there are groups
> dedicated to the causes of seeing to it that your lives are snuffed
> out one way or another.
I'm not ridiculing anything. I'm questioning the practice as a form of justice and as a political strategy. I think it fails on both counts.
Joanna