My Fake Forgiveness Thanks to Himpathy
Walk with your head down. Don’t look up, they are staring at you. Cover your chest. Wear that extra layer to deny the accusations. Protect yourself, because no one out here is going to. He passes you. You’re overcome by anger and yet you look up to meet his smile. Why are you smiling? He has hurt you. Why are you smiling? You ask yourself. The answer never comes, not until now.
Surprise, surprise – this you I write of is me. I’m the main character of my story. A story I’ve always been hesitant to tell or speak of, due to the repercussions I envisioned facing. Once, when I was a freshman in high school I was bullied, perhaps even harassed. As I sat in studio art, the boy next to me passes me his phone under the table. I glanced down to see an image of a naked young female: no face, just body. My face turned red as I threw the phone back at the boy. Why? I asked him. I don’t want to see that. “Looks like your secret’s out,” he responds with a chuckle. That’s not me! I forcefully acclaim.
I thought it was all a joke. Anyone who knew me, knew I wouldn’t have sent this right? So I thought. “Kevin said you sent it last night.” As tears began flowing, I ran out of the room missing the remaining part of class. The weeks that followed were nothing short of hell. With each wink from another senior guy I had never seen before, I wanted to disappear. With each text message from an unknown number saying he had seen my picture and now wants to hang out, I debated switching high schools. With each “friend” of mine questioning whether or not I had really sent the picture, I cried.
Despite all of this I still talk to the boy who started this rumor today. In fact, we are friends. But I’ve never been able to comprehend why I had/have a desire to keep this friendship alive after the miserable life altering incident he put me through. It wasn’t until learning about Himpathy that I found my answer. In this paper I’ll examine how the supposive “forgiveness” I thought I felt for Kevin, was not in fact forgiveness, but rather the influence of Himpathy. I will go into more details later, but in short himpathy is described by Kate Manne as the “overlooked mirror image of misogyny” (P.196) Himpathy is the tendency to excessively sympathize with the male/ offender responsible for an act of misconduct or violence. With this phenomenon comes the reluctance to believe the woman who testified against the man. These tendencies are so common in our society, we often have a hard time identifying their existence.
Through the social implications of Himpathy, I, as a female was forced to suppress my felt resentment. So how does himpathy coerce women into forgiveness? And is this forgiveness authentic? I’ll begin by explaining a series of conditions that Charles Griswold says needs to be met in order to experience authentic forgiveness. I will then argue that these conditions were not met in my situation, preventing me from forgiving Kevin. With this discovery, I will use the concept of Himpathy as an alternative explanation for my feelings towards Kevin.
Griswold comprehensively lays out a list of conditions that he believes must be met in order to classify a personal action as one of forgiveness. In order for the victim to experience forgiveness to offender must provide the victim with “reasons to give up resentment or judgment of the wrongdoer.” In summary, the reasons are as follows:
1. Wrongdoer must acknowledge they were responsible for the wronged actions
2. Wrongdoer must repudiate his deeds (by acknowledging their wrongness)
3. Wrongdoer must experience and express regret for causing injury to person. This must be communicated.
4. Offender must commit to become the type of person who doesn’t harm.
Even if the offender were to follow this formal list of procedures, it would not be sufficient to warrant forgiveness. The victim must forswear revenge, moderate her resentment and commit to let go of resentment altogether. I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to you to hear that not one of these steps occurred in my story. For one, an apology was never received. This makes it difficult for the wrongdoer to accept responsibility for his actions. Secondly, there was no regret expressed by Kevin for his actions. Quite the opposite actually; Kevin and his friends would regularly brag about finessing this photo. So clearly the conditions have been violated. Given Kevin’s lack of concern/remorse, I myself had a hard time forswearing revenge, and eventually eliminating all felt resentment. These findings would imply I did not truly forgive Kevin. With forgiveness non existent, how did our friendship remain?
In order to answer this question, we must dissect the social pressures weighing on me as a female, within the context of Kevin’s misconduct. As mentioned previously, these social pressured directly contribute to the concept of Himpathy. To begin, it must be acknowledged that by being a female I involuntarily belong to a subordinate group. With this group membership comes injustices, specifically epistemic injustice. This phenomeon stems from the view that women are untrustworthy and incompetent, and therefore should not be taken seriously. Epistemic injustice prevents me and a woman from being the “knower” in the situation. This restriction prohibited my truth from being heard and believed. All but one of my friends believed I sent the photo “to get attention.” Had they only understood the type of attention I was receiving, they would’ve understood no woman intentionally seeks this shit.
Manne claims himpathy casts victims as villains, which gives rise to slutshaming and unwarranted sexual harrassment from strangers. A week after the spread of the rumor I received a text from a girl in my grade. We were not friends, but we were not enemies, which is why it was disheartening to open up a text from her with the naked image enclosed. Below the picture she wrote “Be careful next time Sweetheart.” Out of all the winks and whistles from random guys in the hall, this unwarranted attention hurt the most. I remember thinking “Why is she turning on me like this? Shouldn’t moments like these bring us women together?” While I wanted to believe that to be the truth, I knew it wasn’t that simple. Manne explains systems like ours place numerous roadblocks in the way of victims to ensure men can’t be stripped of their coded goods. As a victim, these roadblocks are very much visible and very much dehabiliating, leading the woman to drop the fight, to “forgive” and “forget.”
Had people found out the truth that Kevin in fact lied about receiving this photo from me, his status and reputation would have suffered. We can’t have that. We must protect the “golden boy.” Manne describes the “golden boy,” or the good guy, as the privileged white, nondisabled, American male who can do no wrong in society’s eyes. Sex offenders are monsters and devils, that doesn’t sound like a golden boy to me. Given their prestige, we turn our heads while “refusing to face the prevalence of character or sexual assault,”(Manne, 199), in this case harassment. I want to believe I do not enforce such an inequity, yet shortly after the incident I decided to drop the resentment I felt towards Kevin. I say I decided, but after reading Manne’s work, I cannot confidently say I had a choice. In studying himpathy I have realized the so-called forgiveness geared towards Kevin, was not authentic, but rather forced. Being aware of the roadblocks I would face as a woman in this situation against a golden boy, I was left with no option but to silence my anger and defend Kevin’s honor. As Manne states “if a man has a “good guy” persona and enough material and social resources then we will often fight will all our might to defend his honor, maintain his innocence.” (p. 215)
Nervous about the repercussions that would follow by stripping Kevin of his status, I sacrificed my own. Kevin’s privilege of belonging to the “dominant group” led me to feel protective on his behalf. In order to protect him, I pretended to forgive. In order to protect myself from the shame and suspicion, I moved on. But here I am writing this today, so did I really move on?
Himpathy. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. (Say it Again!)
Work Cited:
Griswold, C. L. (2014). Forgiveness a philosophical exploration. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Manne, K. (2019). Down girl: the logic of misogyny. New York: Oxford University Press.
Shared by: Laura Labate
Image Credit: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiG5OHN0ePlAhUNpFkKHbYgAd0QjB16BAgBEAM&url=httpsaqueeninkingston.wordpress.com20161231bow-down&psig=AOvVaw1trfoUby66ljgyRuzqqdax&ust=1573612515807312