I've begun to realize that the horrible things humans do to each other comes down to one root cause: dehumanization.
I've been reading (do not click the link if you don't want to see the horrible things people are capable of) The Rape of Nanking for the past few weeks, because I read a book about Iris Chang. I've read similar books about similar atrocities; I feel I should be a witness to the tragedies forgotten by history. We like to forget about things like genocide, and we do unless the victims fight to be remembered.
Through reading Chang's book and following some current news stories, I've realized that in every case of one human or many abusing another human or many the abuser/s have used tricks of the mind to turn their victim/s into something less than human. So, one of the reasons the Japanese could do things like hold Chinese beheading contests and rape so many women is that they didn't think of the Chinese as other humans. They thought of them as animals. The same thing happened to the Jews around the same time, during WWII. And on, and on, and on.
So, imaging my surprise/ shock/ disgust when I read about a 10-year-old rape victim in Australia. According to the (Australian) judge trying the case, the girl (an aborigine) "probably agreed" to have sex with the nine men who gang-raped her.
She then proceeded to give them lenient sentences and told them they shouldn't have sex with underage girls any more.
So, the rapists and the judge both managed to dehumanize a young girl described as having mild intellectual impairment.
The system that was supposed to protect her failed her.
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WOW! That judge blew it. What a dick. I think many people have no clue that the Chinese lost more people in WWII than any other country. I think it was something sick like 11 million. Total genocide. Overlooked and overdue for a proper 'coming out' party.
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