• SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    I don’t know what I’m trying to say with this comment.

    That’s a indicative of nervousness over even discussing the problem. Which shouldn’t be the case. The existence of a larger problem doesn’t mean people should feel nervousness over discussing smaller problems.

    Also this isn’t a smaller problem for the person affected. A man that is abused is no small problem for that man. It’s the biggest problem in their life, just as for a woman that’s being abused that’s the biggest problem in her life. The fact that more women are being abused than men doesn’t lessen the effect of the abuse on the individual whether the victim is a man or a woman.

    There’s a tendency for statistics to override empathy for an individual. “Ah well, that doesn’t happen very often, so whatever.” But it did happen for that person and it’s just as horrible for that person as it is for individuals in that statically larger group.

    So we should make an effort to prevent statistics from negating empathy. There shouldn’t be a stigma against someone talking about a problem that’s statistically less probable as if low probability means something didn’t happen and isn’t worth talking about. It happened and and we should be aware of how statistics can have the tendency to turn us into statistical psychopaths which prevents real problems from being addressed.