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eal
2015-03-30 - 7:32 p.m.
I just watched a documentary called "Sex: My British Job". It's a hidden-camera piece about sex work in Britain.
Actually, in a sense it's only peripherally about sex work - the main focus of the film is on a "madam" who nags and pushes the "housemaid" to sleeping with clients, and when it becomes clear that she won't, starts to simply bully and abuse her constantly. Watching the bullying and the emotional violence even just for an hour left me feeling so disturbed and so angry and upset... I think in many ways I am "healed" from the wounds of my childhood, or as healed as I'm ever likely to be. But one thing that it seems doesn't change is that I have this intense, all-consuming response to bullying. I mean... the bully to me doesn't appear anymore as a fellow human, but just a thing, a dangerous thing like a cinder block on the road or a broken bottle on the kitchen floor, except that this dangerous thing happens to have a human shape and a human voice.
The other thing that struck me was that in the end of the film, when they do the "big reveal", the "madam" shows no signs of shame, so sign that she is even aware of having done anything bad. She just goes on the attack. Attack, attack, attack... it's like there's nothing else behind her eyes but this aggression.
Are such people themselves the product of violence? Or is it a choice? Or... do we have any choice about how to respond to them?
With all the stuff in the news lately about Jeremy Clarkson, it seems for many people bullying and violence are just fine so long as the bully is "funny" or "charming" or what-have-you.
Things just get locked away or hidden away. Within myself, too, but I mean, in the world. The image that Lovecraft used was of islands of ignorance in a dark sea of knowledge - or Elliot says we cannot bear reality. But isn't it rather the case that reality is made awful by our choices, driven in part by a refusal to acknowledge things as they really are?
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