Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

I recently took an online survey as part of a psychological study on the long-term effects of sudden bereavement; every page included a link to resources to help deal with emotions that might be evoked by thinking about the loss of a loved one. That’s because part of designing a legitimate experiment that involves people is to consider any potential harm (including emotional) that may come to the people involved in the study and finding a way to minimize it. Human subjects review boards require that. ABC’s spinoff show, What Would You Do?, however conducts highly unscientific “experiments” on people who have not given consent to see if they respond to upsetting scenes; if the show has counselors on hand to help anyone who may be traumatized or retraumatized by the scene, they haven’t made it clear.

Their latest episode shows scenes in which a woman who appears to have been physically abused is being emotionally traumatized in a restaurant by her boyfriend. The show itself cites the statistic that one in four women in the US will experience domestic violence at some point in her life, which means that there was almost certainly a woman who had survived abuse in the restaurant where they conducted this “experiment”.

Did they consider how filming their show might affect that woman?

And is this show really doing anything other than exploiting serious issues for infotainment?

Lindsay’s post at Jezebel on the latest episode sees worth in the show:

While obviously the show is highly unscientific (notice that in the second video, the white actor is inexplicably dressed up in a suit) and meant for entertainment, it can’t be a bad thing to force viewers to think about issues such as racism or domestic violence. Maybe the next time they see someone being abused, they’ll be more likely to step up. (After all, they might be on TV!)

I, however, am not so sure. People who have seen the episode may be more likely to intervene, but only if they recognize the situation as similar. It assumes that they won’t find an excuse for why it really isn’t abuse. The show’s not being scientific makes it harder for people to use it as a jumping off point from which to discuss widespread attitudes that lead people not to get involved when they see abuse. It’s all too easy for viewers to sit back secure in the belief that they are morally superior to people who fail to respond, that they would know the right thing to do and would do it.

In other words, I don’t think this show is very likely to change anyone’s attitude or actions. It takes the form of serious inquiry and uses it as an excuse to entertain with someone else’s pain. The people being abused in the show are, of course, actors—but what they portray is an all too common reality. And those who have experienced that reality are placed at risk of triggering and renewed pain by the way the show is made.

Rite of Recall

in the fairy grove my hand is warmed
by Martyn’s   we’re always
meeting at a conference on vampires
where emergency fire doors hold in coffee’s
bitter scent, tea steam, and a very nice bean salad

we’re always walking
through Central Park at dusk
smelling roses & pansies
of the Shakespeare Garden
we didn’t find that time

and I bring him to the top of Fuji
where we shiver into each other until light
and I bring him to the top of Tai Shan
to show him that red sky I remember
deserving its reputation and its hundreds
who climb or take the ropeway

his hand like crinkling leaves
filters out the horrors, yes horrors
there’s nothing else to call it
when a man you loved has raped you
when strangers hold a knife
against your soft belly for cash

under the hawthorn we’re building
words for Francis Bacon & Edward Hopper
we’re building a home on the edge of loneliness
left since we’re together
to the ashy snow

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It is bad enough when an article on domestic violence ignores the victim, treating her as if she were nothing but the receptacle of a man’s unfortunate acting out, but this CNN story is far worse in that it sets the murderer up as a sympathetic figure. The headline itself, “Man goes from heroic husband to hammer-wielding wife killer”, sets Michael Ratley up as a tragic hero, a good guy brought down by a single flaw, an image supported by the defense referring to the murder as a “single, horrible snapshot” in a well-lived life. There is little mention of what that “snapshot” meant to the woman who was killed.

The heroism described in the headline refers to Ratley carrying his wife and child out of a burning trailer in December 2006, a little over a year before he would murder his wife. After describing this, the article asks “What changed a heroic husband into a hammer-wielding wife killer?” Notice that the structure of this question suggests that he was passive: something acted upon him to create a change. In fact, there didn’t even have to be a change. An abusive man desiring control might well save his wife from a fire. If you need to be in control, you certainly don’t want people around you dying randomly. (Then again, do we know how that fire started? The reporter didn’t bother to say.)

After relating his “heroism” and “fall”, the bulk of the article goes on to describing the feelings of the murderer’s family and how they came out to support him. The conclusion even uses his response to his family’s emotions as a way to illustrate his empathy:

His grandmother began sobbing. Family members comforted her until Cindy Ratley sat down next to her. The two cried and embraced for a couple of minutes. Michael Ratley looked over, saw his grandmother upset, and he, too, began to cry.

Somehow I doubt the empathy of a man capable of beating a woman to death. Was he crying because he saw his grandmother’s pain or merely because he knew he was going to be punished by losing all control over his life? The reporter’s opinion is problematically clear.

A lot of the recent Feministing-comment-thread bathroom panic comes from the same source as victim blame and life-coachy advice about not thinking like a victim. People want desperately to believe that by wearing the right clothes, making the right choices in relationships, having the right laws behind bathroom signs, or just plain old-fashioned magical thinking they can protect themselves from violence.

The stigma attached to being a victim along with the genuine horror experienced by those upon whom violence is inflicted lead to such fears that when people (irrationally) believe they see a way to avoid that experience, they stop caring about whether their ineffective efforts at self-protection will actually increase the odds of other people being attacked. It doesn’t matter to some cisgendered women that transgendered people face actual threats of violence in public bathrooms.

And of course they can’t admit that laws and attitudes which endanger trans people are not really protecting them because that would be a step towards admitting that they cannot protect themselves 100%, which may be the scariest thing of all.