Doing Feminism

After reading Garrick’s comment on my response to Kyle Payne, I got to thinking: When does someone deserve a second chance when they’ve done something wrong? Are there certain things that are simply unforgivable?

The latter question is much easier to answer than the first. In my mind, of course there are things that are unforgivable, but it also depends on the context. As for deciding when someone deserves a second chance, well, I think that depends on the context of the situation, too.

Using Kyle as an example (because it’s that thread that got me thinking), he did something that, in my mind, is so bad that he can only be forgiven by the survivor of his assault. It’s not up to me, to the feminist community, or to anyone else to forgive him. He’s a sexual offender, and no one should even think about forgiving him until the woman he sexually assaulted has. Now, does he deserve a second chance? Well, that’s a more complicated question.

Ultimately, I feel someone needs to be forgiven before they can be given a second chance, but being given that second chance isn’t a given. Screwing up on your first day on the job, forgetting someone’s name, unknowingly showcasing bad manners in an unfamiliar situation; those are all things that, in my mind, are all pretty forgivable and the offenders should probably all be given second chances, or the incident should merely be laughed off. These are all mistakes that humans make, after all, and they’re pretty benign. It’s when other people are harmed that the issue becomes more complex.

I remember an incident I’m still ashamed of to this day. During the Canada Day celebrations in Athabasca, I was driving downtown, and, being Athabasca during the annual festival that spans several days, it was pretty busy. I was tired and wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been, though, and I didn’t think to stop at a crosswalk when another truck was stopped and blocking my view of half of the crosswalk. So, when I got pretty close to the crosswalk, I saw a boy run into my line of view and right in front of my car. I immediately hit the brakes. The wheels screeched across the pavement. I stopped in time, and (presumably) the father of the boy immediately came over to my window and began yelling at me. I was shaken up so much I probably should have pulled over immediately for safety concerns, but I drove home nonetheless. I had never been so scared in my life and feared that had I been doing anything else - talking on my phone, fiddling around with my iPod - I would have hit the boy.

Had the situation ended up much worse, I don’t know if I would have been able to forgive myself, and, more importantly, I don’t know if the boy’s family would have forgiven me. Additionally, I don’t know if I would have deserved another chance at driving. Had the boy’s family never forgiven me, I probably wouldn’t have deserved that second chance, but due to my situation - I was living in Athabasca and working half an hour outside of it - I probably would have kept doing it (assuming, of course, that I was mentally prepared to do so). I don’t know whether this would have been right or wrong, but it’s fuzzy, I think, because I needed to continue driving in order to continue working, in order to raise money for school, in order to get a degree, and so on. Nevertheless, things turned out pretty well. I learned an important lesson that day, even if I do wish I never had to learn it that way.

This was all to illustrate the point that, at least in my opinion, context matters. If I had, in turn, decided to get into my car one day and mow down the first pedestrian I saw, I don’t think I - or anyone who did such a terrible thing intentionally - would ever deserve a second chance. Ultimately, what I think it comes down to is what it means to be human, or a decent human being, and our duty to respect other human beings.

Kyle, in sexually assaulting another woman, was nowhere close to respecting her, and, I would argue, failed in proving himself as a decent human being, never mind a feminist. (As a very quick aside, feminism seeks to end sexual violence, among other things, and, as Kyle has sexually assaulted a woman, he may be forgiven by the survivor, but he can never be given a second chance at feminism. Ever.)

Now, as for giving Kyle a second chance as a decent human being, well, that might be more up in the air for some people for various reasons, including how they define “decent human being.” First, though, (this can’t be stressed enough) he would need to be forgiven by the woman he assaulted, because it is her right and her right alone to forgive the person who assaulted her or refuse to. That said, as much as I may despise Kyle, I do believe he has the potential to do good in the world - at least as a semi-decent human being, but certainly not a feminist. Make no mistake - he can’t correct the wrongs he’s done already, from committing sexual assault to emailing and probably triggering some bloggers, but there’s a hell of a lot of bad shit in the world, and while he’s a sex offender, he may yet show he deserves a second chance at being a decent human being, but somewhere far, far away from where he’s worked in the past, which is with rape and sexual assault survivors and with feminism.

Would I ever give Kyle that second chance at proving to me he is, despite the things he’s done, a decent human being? It’s impossible to tell at this moment, and, ultimately, unless by some chance I’m placed into a situation where I’m forced to get to know him, I’ll never know the answer. So, it’s pointless to dwell on whether or not he’ll deserve a second chance. Again, I simply used him as an example to address this important question, because, at least to me, Kyle will just be another sex offender, someone who screwed up his chance to show the world that he is, in fact, a decent human being.