Poor Dan.
Had I read some conservative blogger bemoan all those callous, unfeeling liberal bloggers who care not a whit for women who suffer under various legal or traditional regimes of terror, my response would have been quite different. As with the whole kitten-burning phenomenon (original link to slacktivist post suffering from link rot), puffing up one's chest in moral indignation over something about which one can do nothing proves nothing, costs nothing, risks nothing, and gains only an enlarged sense of one's superiority.
Who cares that some American Christian sitting behind his desk somewhere denounces violence against women half a world away, in a land and society and under conditions with which he is completely unfamiliar, in which he has no real experience, and over which no amount of moral denunciation will have any effect? Color me singularly unimpressed by such nonsense.
It takes no balls at all to call stuff "bad" long distance, especially if one understands there will be no price incurred for doing so.
Denouncing violence against women here at home, whether physical, psychological, or in some other fashion, still entails great costs. Not the least of them being the insistent denial that such things are as important as other matters, or that such concerns are either exaggerated or false; of course, if you try to shelter a battered woman from an abusive partner, that entails the very real risk of very real physical harm. Having been there, let me testify as to the dangers in doing that.
It takes no courage at all to be better than anyone else. So, um, who the hell cares?
That's the post I would have written. Not wishing to be seen as complicit in some fashion with violence against women, Dan made sure he said the obvious. Which means whoever the conservative blogger in question might be, that person won.
