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Sympathy vs. Stigma: Writing the “Victim”
- Southern Illinois University Press
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76 Sympathy vs. Stigma: Writing the “Victim” Daniel-R aymond Nadon Kent State University partnered with Fringe Benefits in 2007 to develop a play addressing the homophobic climate on the Kent campuses . While Kent has a reputation as a progressive institution and is home to the first LGBT minor program in the state of Ohio, the local political climate in 2007 had led to a number of homophobic incidents on and around campus. Most notably, a violent act was perpetrated against a young lesbian student. Stories about these incidents revealed themselves quickly on the second day of the Theatre for Social Justice Institute, when the Fringe Benefits facilitators asked the students and other participants to share stories about anti-LGBT discrimination on campus. While the discussion included a barrage of name-calling incidents, as well as some mentions of vandalism, intimidation, and institutional homophobia, the focus of the discussion returned frequently to the single aforementioned violent act. The story is that of a young lesbian activist who was heading home late one night from a gathering of friends. She happened upon a duo of intoxicated young men, assumed to be “townies,” near campus. They noticed the androgynous look of the woman and mistook her for a gay man. During the ensuing savage attack, the student tried to conceal the fact that she was a woman for fear that, if the men made this discovery, the attack would escalate into a sexual assault. The crime received little notice from the campus community or the campus newspapers but was well known in the campus LGBT community. Among the shared stories, this was seen as the most powerful, and an overwhelming majority voted to include it as one of the three central stories in True Lives: I’m a Kent State Freshman. There was, however, a small dissenting minority that remained silent during the Sympathy vs. Stigma 77 Institute process. After the Institute, a discussion ensued in my LGBT studies class; most of the students had also been participants in the Institute . Many of these students had experienced heterosexist discrimination on campus firsthand, and some had known the gay-bashing victim personally. The following questions were asked: 1. Does presenting LGBTQ individuals in the role of victim combat or exacerbate the discrimination they face? 2. Will the portrayals of LGBTQ victims present LGBTQ students as “poor me” and “whiney” and cause non-LGBTQ students to react more negatively toward them, blaming them for their own victimization? 3. Could the Institute play “stir up a hornets’ nest” by further stigmatizing LGBTQ students as hated and isolated individuals and by depicting them as being at odds with campus traditions, mores, and values? 4. Instead of focusing on discrimination, might it not be better to look through another lens at well-adjusted, “normalized” LGBTQ families? Could that make a more powerful and positive statement? The students began to question the entire approach of the Institute. While many questions were raised, none were answered during class time. They did, however, prompt some research on my part. The concerns voiced by the class were in line with those articulated in Christopher J. Lyons’s essay “Stigma or Sympathy? Attributions of Fault to Hate Crime Victims and Offenders.” In his study, using data from the 1990s, Lyons examines two competing viewpoints with regard to the blaming of and prejudice against minority victims of discrimination and hate crimes. He points out that “stigma associated with the status of typical hate crime victims may induce prejudiced or ambivalent evaluations of the victim and less negative reactions to the offender” (40). In other words, according to Lyons’s “stigma perspective,” the public often derides minority victims and offenders because of their marginal status. But then he points out: “In contrast, what I call the ‘sympathy perspective’ predicts that the public will be especially sensitive to imbalances of power, viewing attacks against minorities as deserving greater public sympathy than similar attacks against members of nonminority groups” (40). [44.222.161.54] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:26 GMT) Daniel-Raymond Nadon 78 Using data from a decade later, Samantha Reis and Brian Martin presented a second theoretical matrix in their article “Psychological Dynamics of Outrage against Injustice,” in which they discuss how an individual develops emotional “outrage” to his or her perception of social injustice (6). This outrage can manifest in social action, which they refer to as “backfire.” In this model, powerful perpetrators of perceived injustice will try to maximize what...