Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem
[The one hope of the doomed is not to hope for safety.]
Somehow the topic this week is activism, esp. activism for equality and against feminism (the kind of today’s mainstream feminism that sees only women’s disadvantages and ignores when men suffer from the same problems).
An addendum to yesterday’s posting, which was already quite long — one thing that also bugged my about the comment:
“‘Tragically, women journalists are under bigger threat than their male colleagues when it comes to attacks, bullying, threats, cyber-bullying, rape and abuse; all effective tools to silence women’s voices in the media. As we encourage more and more women into the profession, their safety must be paramount,’ said IFJ Gender Council co-chair Mindy Ran.”
http://www.ifj.org/en/articles/ifj-launches-global-campaign-to-end-violence-against-women-journalists
is the last sentence: “their safety must be paramount”.
Really?
I think this is the kind of feel good assertions we can expect from today’s feminism. If you look at that assertion in the cold light of the day, it crumbles to dust.
If safety is paramount — in any job — then you cannot do the job.
Any job has inherent risks — no matter how small. There are benefits of taking risks, in the case of journalism for society and for one’s own reputation — but there is also risk, in the extreme for one’s life (again, see yesterday’s posting). You try to control the risk as much as possible, but you know there is some risk left, and you decide whether possible benefits are worth it. Making safety paramount strikes me like wanting to have a carte blanche to pursue an impossible and unachievable goal.
It also fits to the usual narrative that women are victims, in danger, and being abused and that men should do everything in their power to protect women. Their lives are disposable and if they are not (possible) perpetrators the only worth they have is to protect women.
Seriously, I’m not making this up.
No wonder that the people who are really interested in equality look at what feminism actually does and turn away from feminism in disgust. And personally, I have a high respect for women speaking out against feminism. It takes integrity to speak out against something that is both unjust and unjust in their favor.
Anyway — wanting to make safety paramount, esp. when it comes to professions like journalism, might do more harm to women in journalism than any threats or abuse ever could. It puts women in a cage. And to bring the topic back to the topic of this blog, the same is true for any creative endeavor. Risk is part of the game — you cannot eliminate risk, it would eliminate the creativity as well.
