Victim Conversation (off-topic moved)

[babybird67]

it's a joke Tom

Babybird,

What's the story behind your tag? Is that a joke or do you sincerely believe yourself as a weak-minded person?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

and a long story...i will PM you with it if you are truly interested...my tag will be changing soon...i've changed it already about six times since i joined.

[Mr Chumley]

an interesting side debate, i think you all have a point. These ladies chose their lives, they were hard women, who took from life what they wanted. Cicumstance and society had its part to play, as does the roll of the die, sometimes people are plain unlucky. it might be said that these ladies were unlucky to meet their end in they way they did, their choice of work put them in that situation. i do not think an empathy is the correct term as put by Ally previously, but one can feel sympathy for another human being who has lost their life, whatever the circumstances may be

[Tom_Wescott]

Babybird,

What's the story behind your tag? Is that a joke or do you sincerely believe yourself as a weak-minded person?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[babybird67]

i disagree Ally

i can empathise with people whether i share their experiences or not. As i said in chat, i had an impoverished childhood, with an abusive step-father...i can see how easy it would be for anyone to make a few wrong choices and not see a way back. And, like i said, without empathy, without being able to arouse empathy, very few novelists would be in work...nobody would care.

I can feel sympathy for the way they died without morally approving of all the life choices they made.

[Ally]

Yes empathy and sympathy are completely different and you can't possibly have empathy for these women as empathy is something that none of us are remotely capable of feeling since their life circumstances are vastly alien to any of ours.

And if you can feel sympathy for women who abandon their children and have to be paid in order to take care of them when they are sick, then you certainly do expect less of people than I do.

[babybird67]

Ally

you speak about things that are irrelevant...and you misunderstand once again what i am trying to say.

I am not making excuses for anyone. I am stating that one can have empathy for people, even people who have demonstrably made the wrong choices. Nobody gets to become a better person from outright condemnation. People know when they have been given up on...that's when they give up on themselves.

I am not saying people should not be personally responsible for the choices they make either. I am saying that in order to get them to the point where they UNDERSTAND that there are other choices and that they CAN make alternative choices, you need to understand and empathise, not condemn.

I say again...choices are not made in an existential vacuum; they are context-specific. The context of someone who is poor will not throw up as many, or the same, choices as someone who is more well off.

How do we help anyone make better choices if we just write them off?

There is a difference between EMPATHY and SYMPATHY, by the way.

But we differ fundamentally on this issue...and we digress...

[Tom_Wescott]

People constantly want to reduce these women and all other people like them to the status of perpetual victims.

People who view themselves as perpetual victims want to do the same to others. The truth is, our best thinking is what's got us all to where we are at. We always have the choice to improve our thinking and thus our situations. Does that mean we shouldn't feel sympathy for those on the outs? Of course not. But we shouldn't make excuses for them either. Excuses are a roadblock to improvement.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[babybird67]

Tom !!!!

lol!!

[Ally]

And all that's really nice and fluffy and cute. And completely irrelevant. There is a bottom line. A choice is made. All the other stuff is actually irrelevant:

You do something or you don't. You choose to do A or you choose not do A. A is A. Period. A choice, at some point, regardless of all the external influence and internal wrangling is made. And forever after that, you and you alone bear the responsibility for your choice.

Whether they were "bad" people or not is irrelevant. Whether you believe in judging them for their status in life, or exonerating them or take the middle ground that their lives were their lives to be led as they saw fit and their choices were their choices is all irrelevant.

The bottom line is this: they made their choice in life and who are you to deny them that? People constantly want to reduce these women and all other people like them to the status of perpetual victims. That's all they are to you. They aren't people who have brains, lives or ability. They are just poor, pathetic endless victims who can't be expected to make good decisions for themselves because they were poor, or their mommy didn't love them or they were abused. All of that is irrelevant. They were people who had choices that they had to make. No one on this planet has a unique experience. Everyone is victimized to one degree or another. Everyone has to make choices of what they are going to do with their lives. And everyone is responsible for the choices that they make regardless of any external factors.

Not every poor woman became an alcoholic. Not every poor woman became a whore. Not every poor woman became an alcoholic whore. Those that did, made choices. And they bear the responsibility for those choices and I am not obligated to feel sympathy for the lives of women when they have done nothing to deserve sympathy in their lives. They abandoned children. They had to be PAID to tend to their sick children. The stole. They were NOT sympathetic women. And I am not going to pretend a false sympathy for their lives just because of the tragic circumstances surrounding their death.

[Tom_Wescott]

However this was an age when women had no vote, no rights and no income if they left their husbands

Cue the song 'Those Were The Days'.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Jeff Leahy]

Thomas Hardy would certainly be out of a job

http://www.pubutopia.com/pubs/M/Maidstone/Bearsted/Old%20Plantation%20Inn/

contains photo of said pub

[babybird67]

sorry that this is off topic again, but...

to Ally, it's not about excusing personal responsibility. It's about understanding that not all choices are freely available to all, that human actions do not exist in an existential vacuum, but are situation and context-specific.

Think of any decision you have made in your own life...was there one motivating factor for and one against (the black/white theory), or were there a myriad of possibilities all competing for your attention, and seeking for you to weave from their interaction a suitable choice?

And what constitutes a suitable choice? From whose perspective? If i make a choice that would make me happy, should i still choose it if it makes somebody else unhappy? What if there are a myriad of people affected by my choice? That too impacts on how one lives one's life, for good or bad...etc

People who have made bad choices are not necessarily bad people.

People who have made bad choices need support around them, to encourage them to learn how to make better choices in life. Nobody learns from being written off. Nobody benefits.

Human beings and the lives we live are far too complex for a black and white attitude towards human choice...novelists would be out of work if this were not so.

[Jeff Leahy]

Broken marriages because they chose to drink.

You dont know that as fact. Its only speculation. While its probable in Annie Chapmans case, there is some potential evidence that Poly Nichols husband was having an affair while she was pregnant. It's most probable that Kelly's husband was killed in a mining accident. We dont actually know when or why exactly these women turned to drink and to what extent.

And the chance of stillborn children increases the more that's drunk.

While this is true, alcohol is also a good sterilizer and may have reduced the chance of infection to some level. Water from the pumps was not clean. Of course as tea became cheaper boiling the water also worked.

I'm not judging them for chosing to drink, I like an odd tipple myself, but I chose not to drink to excess, and make myself vulnerable.

For what ever reason they all drank, at what point one becomes an alcoholic I'm not certain?

However this was an age when women had no vote, no rights and no income if they left their husbands, there was no social security or free money. You got money in whatever way was possible. And for these women that meant prostituting themselves, cleaning, selling nick nacks, hop picking. Whatever turned up. They lived from day to day and often went hungry.

To try and moralize about the way they lived is ridiculous, sat in your soft centrally heated houses. They didn't choose their poverty they slipped into it over a number of years as did thousands of women in similar positions of that period.

I'm not making out these women were saints, but they were ordinary people who for differing reasons found themselves on the streets and Vulnerable to a brutal serial killer. To try and claim in any form that “they had it coming to them’ or ‘they bought it on themselves’ is just ignorance of the facts.

They were victims.

Pirate

PS Yes 'the old Plantation inn'

[halomanuk]

I tried to point out the 'off topic 'ramblings earlier Tom,
All the best,
Chuck

[Tom_Wescott]

More Irony...

The author of the book NOT currently being discussed in this thread happens to own a pub.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott