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catsidheI was listening to the beginning of a debate on Drug Legalisation the other day, in the car on the drive home.
The Pro case started by pointing out that Prohibition is a complete and utter and proven failure, and that the more prohibitionists tighten their grip, the more junkies slip through their fingers, too many to die.
The Con case dismissed this utterly and without the dignity of consideration, and put forward instead that the danger of decriminalising drugs was in Normalising drug use: of making it socially acceptable to use drugs – or at least, those drugs which aren't alcohol or tobacco or caffeine or codeine or paracetamol or Ventolin or SSRIs or warfarin or ... I'm sorry, where was I? Oh yes, the problem with decriminalising drug use is Normalisation. The danger. (The group which is working for Marijuana legalisation is even called NORML! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!) That treating drug addiction as a medical problem and not a criminal problem has overwhelmingly worked in every place where it has been tried was irrelevant, because this leads to Normalisation. That safe injecting rooms have saved countless lives was irrelevant, because this leads to Normalisation.
And I came to a realisation. "Normalisation", in this person's eyes, was the real demon. They would rather see untold numbers of people literally dead in the street, than if the alternative were that people were more worried about the health effects drug use than of the social opprobrium. It wasn't about the facts or the numbers, every single one of which calls the Prohibition approach a vastly stupid idea. It was about the idea that someone might do something with which this person disapproved, and not feel as ashamed as this person thought they should.
It wasn't about the health effects, or the crime flow-ons, or the societal damage, or the free kick to organised crime. It was about this person not being able to accept that other people aren't upset at the same things they are, and feeling duty-bound to force everyone else to obey that morality anyway, and facts be damned.
And I realised further that this is a standard, indeed typical reaction from a certain sort of person. It explains the Bible-bashers pushing (Evangelical) Christian Scripture classes in schools. It explains institutional homophobia. It explains institutional misogyny. (Hello especially, but definitely not uniquely, to the Roman Catholic Church on both the last two counts).
It is irrelevant how harmful their prejudices and persecutions are, even in comparison to what they're arguing against (that is: it is irrelevant that their ‘solution’ is demonstrably more harmful than the problem they're trying to solve, or even is the cause of the problem in the first place); it matters not one jot how many people are personally and directly hurt by their words and their actions; facts and statistics and examples and counterexamples are of utterly no consequence. The only, the only concern is that their personal prejudices might not be taken for granted as true and right and proper. That they might have to explain themselves from a position where they might actually be taken to account for the lives they have damaged, ruined, destroyed and ended.
It is preferable that a junky ODs and dies in the back streets of St Kilda than that they live, if the cost of that life is that Heroin addiction is considered a medical and social problem to be cured, instead of a moral failure to be condemned and punished. If the choice is between a Safe Injecting Room and multiple preventable deaths, then they choose death.
If a gay man dies alone because the man whom he has loved his entire life is not allowed to be in the room with him; if a lesbian woman is raped to ‘make her straight’; if a transgender girl kills herself because she can't stand the male body she finds herself in; if a transgender boy is murdered on a back road because he's an ‘abomination against God’, it's still preferable to the idea that GLBTI people be allowed to exist as human beings, with rights to life and love and happiness like everyone else.
When someone is talking about the dangers of “Normalising” something, what they usually mean in practice is that they would rather that people die than that whatever they're talking about be treated on its merits. They would rather that people die than that their prejudices and hatreds and xenophobia and squick be treated with less than the absolute respect they demand. They would rather than people die than be accepted and treated as people.
Don't get me wrong, there are some things which are just wrong. Some things which I deplore in their Normalisation. Friday Night on King Street is pretty thoroughly normalised. Aboriginal deprivation is far too deeply normal. Homophobia is waiting where you least expect it. And there are things where, if they were normalised, it would be a sign that society is ready to be torn down and started again: paedophila, rape and slavery come to mind, before the mind shies away in horror. But the problem with them isn't that they might be normalised, it's that they happen at all. And the harm they cause is direct, obvious and clear. There exist people who talk about normalising them, of course there are. You can also find people who think that Queen Elizabeth is an alien space-reptile in league with the Catholic Church and the Freemasons to take over the world. You'll find people who believe anything. The existence of fringe lunatics many standard deviations the other side of rationality does not prove anything.
Rape must not be normalised because it is an assault: it causes untold harm to the raped, and to her (almost always ‘her’) family and friends, and that harm spreads and rots and corrupts what it touches.
Homosexuality is not such a harm. Two men loving each other does not harm anyone else, except for the feelings of the bigot who feels revolted at the sight of two men kissing without ever being able to adequately explain why. A transgender person does not hurt anyone in their quest for the right body, and while the quest can be painful, and the results almost as much so, it's still an improvement: it can be a struggle, a fight, it can leave wounds, but still on balance usually a win. Except to the Eternally Morally Certain, who cannot conceive of anyone not being revolted by the same things they are, and know for certain fact that any who aren't must be perverts of the worst and indistinguishable kind. That there is no point disambiguating between a man who wears dresses and a man in a woman's body and a paedophile and a serial killer. They are all beyond the pale, and must all be of equal hatefulness. Because they just are, OK?
Treating drug addiction as a crime simply ensures that people only seek help for it when it's too late. And those who complain about the Normalisation of drug use show their hypocrisy when they decry vociferously the existence of someone who has a joint on Saturday night to chill out or a Cancer patient having a cone to give them the appetite back to eat enough to keep them alive through Chemo, but never get around to complaining about TV ads for beer, or double-page spreads in the newspaper for Dan Murphy's, or drunken riots on Southbank, or drunken riots at some kid's sixteenth birthday party, or the guy on the corner drinking his liver into pâté de fois gras on cans of name brand Bourbon & Coke and beating his wife and kids during the blackouts. Because that is normalised, but somehow not a problem. But a treatment for crippling arthritis pain is not normalised, and therefore is a problem, by definition.
I didn't listen to a lot more of that debate. It's not a good idea to drive while that angry.
On reflection, I'm not sure how much of this makes sense, much less how much of it works as a coherent argument. C'est la guerre.
The Pro case started by pointing out that Prohibition is a complete and utter and proven failure, and that the more prohibitionists tighten their grip, the more junkies slip through their fingers, too many to die.
The Con case dismissed this utterly and without the dignity of consideration, and put forward instead that the danger of decriminalising drugs was in Normalising drug use: of making it socially acceptable to use drugs – or at least, those drugs which aren't alcohol or tobacco or caffeine or codeine or paracetamol or Ventolin or SSRIs or warfarin or ... I'm sorry, where was I? Oh yes, the problem with decriminalising drug use is Normalisation. The danger. (The group which is working for Marijuana legalisation is even called NORML! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!) That treating drug addiction as a medical problem and not a criminal problem has overwhelmingly worked in every place where it has been tried was irrelevant, because this leads to Normalisation. That safe injecting rooms have saved countless lives was irrelevant, because this leads to Normalisation.
And I came to a realisation. "Normalisation", in this person's eyes, was the real demon. They would rather see untold numbers of people literally dead in the street, than if the alternative were that people were more worried about the health effects drug use than of the social opprobrium. It wasn't about the facts or the numbers, every single one of which calls the Prohibition approach a vastly stupid idea. It was about the idea that someone might do something with which this person disapproved, and not feel as ashamed as this person thought they should.
It wasn't about the health effects, or the crime flow-ons, or the societal damage, or the free kick to organised crime. It was about this person not being able to accept that other people aren't upset at the same things they are, and feeling duty-bound to force everyone else to obey that morality anyway, and facts be damned.
And I realised further that this is a standard, indeed typical reaction from a certain sort of person. It explains the Bible-bashers pushing (Evangelical) Christian Scripture classes in schools. It explains institutional homophobia. It explains institutional misogyny. (Hello especially, but definitely not uniquely, to the Roman Catholic Church on both the last two counts).
It is irrelevant how harmful their prejudices and persecutions are, even in comparison to what they're arguing against (that is: it is irrelevant that their ‘solution’ is demonstrably more harmful than the problem they're trying to solve, or even is the cause of the problem in the first place); it matters not one jot how many people are personally and directly hurt by their words and their actions; facts and statistics and examples and counterexamples are of utterly no consequence. The only, the only concern is that their personal prejudices might not be taken for granted as true and right and proper. That they might have to explain themselves from a position where they might actually be taken to account for the lives they have damaged, ruined, destroyed and ended.
It is preferable that a junky ODs and dies in the back streets of St Kilda than that they live, if the cost of that life is that Heroin addiction is considered a medical and social problem to be cured, instead of a moral failure to be condemned and punished. If the choice is between a Safe Injecting Room and multiple preventable deaths, then they choose death.
If a gay man dies alone because the man whom he has loved his entire life is not allowed to be in the room with him; if a lesbian woman is raped to ‘make her straight’; if a transgender girl kills herself because she can't stand the male body she finds herself in; if a transgender boy is murdered on a back road because he's an ‘abomination against God’, it's still preferable to the idea that GLBTI people be allowed to exist as human beings, with rights to life and love and happiness like everyone else.
When someone is talking about the dangers of “Normalising” something, what they usually mean in practice is that they would rather that people die than that whatever they're talking about be treated on its merits. They would rather that people die than that their prejudices and hatreds and xenophobia and squick be treated with less than the absolute respect they demand. They would rather than people die than be accepted and treated as people.
Don't get me wrong, there are some things which are just wrong. Some things which I deplore in their Normalisation. Friday Night on King Street is pretty thoroughly normalised. Aboriginal deprivation is far too deeply normal. Homophobia is waiting where you least expect it. And there are things where, if they were normalised, it would be a sign that society is ready to be torn down and started again: paedophila, rape and slavery come to mind, before the mind shies away in horror. But the problem with them isn't that they might be normalised, it's that they happen at all. And the harm they cause is direct, obvious and clear. There exist people who talk about normalising them, of course there are. You can also find people who think that Queen Elizabeth is an alien space-reptile in league with the Catholic Church and the Freemasons to take over the world. You'll find people who believe anything. The existence of fringe lunatics many standard deviations the other side of rationality does not prove anything.
Rape must not be normalised because it is an assault: it causes untold harm to the raped, and to her (almost always ‘her’) family and friends, and that harm spreads and rots and corrupts what it touches.
Homosexuality is not such a harm. Two men loving each other does not harm anyone else, except for the feelings of the bigot who feels revolted at the sight of two men kissing without ever being able to adequately explain why. A transgender person does not hurt anyone in their quest for the right body, and while the quest can be painful, and the results almost as much so, it's still an improvement: it can be a struggle, a fight, it can leave wounds, but still on balance usually a win. Except to the Eternally Morally Certain, who cannot conceive of anyone not being revolted by the same things they are, and know for certain fact that any who aren't must be perverts of the worst and indistinguishable kind. That there is no point disambiguating between a man who wears dresses and a man in a woman's body and a paedophile and a serial killer. They are all beyond the pale, and must all be of equal hatefulness. Because they just are, OK?
Treating drug addiction as a crime simply ensures that people only seek help for it when it's too late. And those who complain about the Normalisation of drug use show their hypocrisy when they decry vociferously the existence of someone who has a joint on Saturday night to chill out or a Cancer patient having a cone to give them the appetite back to eat enough to keep them alive through Chemo, but never get around to complaining about TV ads for beer, or double-page spreads in the newspaper for Dan Murphy's, or drunken riots on Southbank, or drunken riots at some kid's sixteenth birthday party, or the guy on the corner drinking his liver into pâté de fois gras on cans of name brand Bourbon & Coke and beating his wife and kids during the blackouts. Because that is normalised, but somehow not a problem. But a treatment for crippling arthritis pain is not normalised, and therefore is a problem, by definition.
I didn't listen to a lot more of that debate. It's not a good idea to drive while that angry.
On reflection, I'm not sure how much of this makes sense, much less how much of it works as a coherent argument. C'est la guerre.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-25 11:46 am (UTC)I have a rant on a very similar theme sitting on my desktop, waiting for sober editing.
I think that we've both identified underlying problems in the self-harm debate, but like so many before us, have not worked out a solution. (Solution to the problem of the outraged pious wankers who cause the risky/self-harming to be a much bigger problem than need be, I mean)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-27 02:57 am (UTC)And I agree with you on every point above.