(*refudiate: (verb) refute + repudiate. Coined by Sarah Palin, summer 2010.)
It’s been a tough week to be an angry right-winger in the United States of America. A Congresswoman who is a moderate Democrat was the target of an assassination attempt by a deranged man. This Congresswoman’s district had been targeted, literally, on a website sponsored by the conservative celebrity Sarah Palin. (Palin had also encouraged her followers not to “retreat” but instead to “reload.”)
Ever since the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the wounding and murder of several others (including a nine year-old girl who had just been elected to her school’s student council and who wanted to meet her Congresswoman), the airwaves and the internet have been on fire with heated arguments about the degree to which violent metaphors in political speech may have contributed to this horrific attack. Other people have said a lot on this topic. I will not rehash these various positions here.
What I would like to address instead is the reaction that so many angry right-wingers have voiced in response to having the finger of blame pointed directly at them and their vitriolic rhetoric. Essentially, they have said:
We didn’t do it!
We didn’t encourage it!
We’re not responsible!
What strikes me about this response is how familiar it all is. These claims of innocence sound exactly like what I hear all too often from certain men who get defensive whenever the subject of violence against women comes up.
Let’s revisit some horrific numbers: 1 in 4 women will be raped. 1 in 2 women will be the victim of physical or sexual assault. 1 in 3 married women will experience physical or sexual violence at the hands of her husband.
And yet what do far too many of us men say when these facts are pointed out to us?
I don’t do it!
I don ’t encourage it!
I 'm not responsible!
Does declaring that our hands are totally clean make us feel any better about the huge number of women who are hurt? No! It shouldn’t!
Does having a sense of our own personal innocence absolve us of any responsibility to work to create a society where women might not be subject to this kind of treatment? No! It doesn’t!
Do we simply wash our hands of this entire situation? No! Not if we have a conscience!
I believe that it is not enough to declare that we are not a part of the problem. We must become part of the solution.
And I want to say to everyone – whether we are angry right-wingers who feel wrongfully blamed for the shootings in Arizona, self-satisfied left-wing pundits who are busily saying “See, I told you so!”, or men who feel attacked every time someone brings up the topic of violence against women – that we all need to stop wasting our vital energy in loudly denying our responsibility for having caused any of these problems.
Instead, we need to take responsibility for solving them.
We need to “refudiate” violence in all of its forms. Violence against another person, be it physical, sexual, psychological – or verbal – is simply wrong. And it is no longer enough for us to be “innocent” bystanders.
My friend Jodene just posted on the net what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said over forty years ago: “We will have to repent this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
One generation later, it seems that we have yet to heed his words.