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Topic : Re: A blog on sexual abuse and harrassment So I'm planning to start a blog where I write about sexual abuse, sexual harrassment and also domestic violence. Pretty heavy stuff right? That's why I'm - selfpublishingguru.com

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A couple of thoughts.

If I see a book or a movie that is advertised as being about an unpleasant subject, sexual abuse or racism or Nazi concentration camps or whatever, I generally avoid it. It's certainly not that I condone such things. Of course they're bad. But that's the point. I know they're bad. I don't want to wallow in the misery of it. I don't need to be reminded how bad they are. I already know. So I'm not really interested in reading a novel or whatever that will remind me of how terrible this thing is. It will just make me depressed. Which leads me to ...
I've been involved in various political and social causes in my life. After some debating in my mind, I think I won't name them to avoid getting into a side debate about whether I was on the right or wrong side of each of these issues, let's stick with discussing your issue. Let's just call them A and B.

Anyway, I noticed that when I attended meetings of groups advocating A, the discussion was all about how terrible the current state of affairs was. Speakers would talk about how bad it was. They'd explain why the current state of affairs was bad and why we need change. Attendees would discuss why our ideas were better than opposing ideas. The members would sit around and complain about how bad things were. Everyone would get very upset and depressed. And then the meeting would end and they'd go home.

In groups advocating B, on the other hand, the conversation was always about, What can we do to change things? What kind of laws could we propose to fix the problem? What kind of laws could we actually get passed versus proposing laws that would promptly get voted down and accomplish nothing? How could we get candidates who were on our side elected? Which candidates should we support? What sort of advertising campaigns should we conduct to convince the general public? How could we influence the media? Etc. We almost never discussed why the current situation was bad and why we wanted to change it. Everyone there agreed on what was wrong and what needed to change, so there was no point discussing that. The only time we'd talk about such things was when we were talking about how to influence the general public.

Group B was far more successful at creating change than Group A.

Do you see where I'm going?

I don't think there are many people out there who think sexual abuse is a good thing. You probably don't need to devote much effort to convincing people that sexual abuse is bad.

Maybe you need to convince people to be motivated enough to do something about it. There are lots of things in the world that I think are bad that I have never done a thing about, because I devote my resources such as they are to issues that are more important to me. As one person who doesn't have a lot of money or political power, it's hard enough for me to make a difference on one issue, never mind on every issue that's out there. So you have to convince some number of people that this issue is important enough for them to make it the issue that they will work on.

Second, talk about practical things that they can do. Give money, perhaps. Volunteer with organizations working on this issue. Whatever.


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