Publicity photo of Bill Macy and Bea Arthur from the television program Maude. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Have you ever watched the 1970s sitcom Maude? It was a good show, a spinoff of All in the Family that brought up a lot of controversial topics—abortion, homosexuality, race relations, and many other things that made people cringe back in the day if you brought them up in polite company.
Maude Findlay was a proud liberal woman. She fought hard for the little guy (or gal) in society. She wanted justice for the poor and women and ethnic minorities. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s a very good thing that someone, whether it’s a character on a television show or an activist in real life, would stand up and fight for the rights of people who are regularly discriminated against.
There was one slight problem with Maude’s crusade for equality, though—she was trying too hard. Her undying need to show everyone how open-minded and liberal she was often blew up in her face.
One big example of this is how she was a successful, upper middle class woman who felt that she understood the struggles of poor blacks. So she hired a black woman as her maid, a stereotypical role, and to show that she viewed the maid as her equal, she insisted that she come through the front door instead of the back. (The maid didn’t want to come through the front door, she preferred the back entrance.)
I am a far left activist, and in my lifetime, I have seen a lot of liberals just like Maude. They go out and fight for justice and chant a lot about equality, but it seems that a lot of the time they are just jumping on a bandwagon. They’re not genuine.
English: A Bully Free Zone sign – School in Berea, Ohio (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Say, for instance, a liberal takes up the cause of cyber bullying. That’s an important cause, right? People should want to join the fight to end bullying, both online and in real life. So to show that they are really against cyber bullying, the liberal picks a random bully and decides to give them a dose of their own medicine.
Is that justice, or is that completely defeating the purpose of fighting cyber bullying?
I once knew a person, a self-proclaimed liberal, who insisted on showing the world that they liked to fight for what is right in the world. And traveling in the same circles as the liberal was a cyber bully who had a habit of digging into people’s personal lives offline and making sensitive information public.
The self-proclaimed liberal, like many other people, didn’t like what the bully was doing, so they decided to get revenge. How did they do it? They turned the tables on them, hacked into their account, and began sharing personal photographs and other information to people the bully harassed.
Some of you might not see a problem with doing that. You think that the bully got their just desserts. But two wrongs don’t ever make a right. And innocent people are sometimes dragged into a situation they had nothing to do with. In the case of the bully fighting liberal, they dragged the person’s spouse other into the situation. There was no reason to do so other than to hurt the bully. And it didn’t bother them too much because they continued to bully other people. It might have even made them worse than before.
So in the end the self-proclaimed liberal chose a good battle, but fought it in all the wrong ways, just like Maude always did on television every week.
So what can be done to make sure your plans don’t backfire? When you take up a cause, you might want to know why you are fighting for it, why it is important to you. And you want to expose how harmful something is to society and give solutions to the problems. You can’t eradicate a problem if you choose to use it against someone else. You can’t prove a point like that.
What do you think?
If you like this topic, please feel free to comment below. And don’t forget to subscribe via e-mail or RSS so you never miss a new post! I look forward to hearing from you.
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- Law Commission to report on cyber-bullying (radionz.co.nz)
- Local Family Stands Up To Cyber Bullies (baltimore.cbslocal.com)
- Two-Fisted Feds Fight School and Cyber Bullying (blogs.lawyers.com)
The Daily Hottentots 
RAAckerman@Cerebrations.biz
/ June 19, 2012Actually, I beg to differ. We have decided long ago that anyone who elects to “visit” our abodes unannounced are prime targets for massive overkill. Want to try to hack our servers? We feel free to destroy your computers. Want to break into our vault? Don’t blame us when you are stuck in our building until someone comes to arrest you.
The concept of non-response only eggs on the folks who feel entitled to torture you.
I am a big fan of the guy in Maryland who was personally attacked (as were his kids at school) for being a landlord that contained an anti-abortion clinic. Once they began harassing him and his kids (including calls at all hours of the day and night), he and his friends responded by providing the same treatment to the morons who were attacking him and his kids- which stopped the actions cold.
Angie Hottentots-Laurel
/ June 19, 2012I do not think that non-response is the appropriate action to take. I do not believe that if you just ignore a problem, it goes away. Ask anyone with an infection in their body if it just goes away when they turn their head and ignore it. They’ll tell you that it doesn’t improve. Sometimes it might get worse. The same is true for bullying.
But getting back at someone using their tactics, especially when what they have done is illegal, isn’t necessarily the best route to take.
And the idea that people just jump on a bandwagon instead of really being interested in a cause bothers me, too. It solves nothing.
luckhawkins
/ June 19, 2012I feel you. I used to use Tumblr and was constantly aghast at how many social justice blogs harass or belittle people who disagree with them. Sometimes it is even minor points, and they spread that person’s words around in a circle of shame. It’s not helping anyone. That’s part of why I left Tumblr and came over here.
Angie Hottentots-Laurel
/ June 19, 2012I agree, it is not helping anyone. And I think that all of us are guilty of it to a certain extent. The question is: how do we change these bad behaviors and make society better for it?
luckhawkins
/ June 19, 2012#1 try not to be a dick.