Women, children, rape, homicides, murderers, accomplices, the succession of vicious incidents in recent months has made everyone involved, whether involved or not, feel a chill all around them.
But the more so, the more we must open our eyes to see, everyone's eyes are a recorder of the crimes committed by the murderer, and the sorrow and anger that everyone feels are gathered together to become the driving force against these evil deeds.
Because resistance is never a one-person thing, you and I have long been in it.
All the evidence is in front of you
But justice came too late
On June 9, 2017, a girl left our sights. The long search, the cross-ocean tracking, and countless sleepless nights did not wait for her to return.
She is Zhang Yingying, lively and beautiful, intelligent and capable, and is the "perfect girl" in the eyes of everyone.
Image source: Wcia.com
Although her family is not rich, she has achieved excellent academic performance since she was a child and has assumed the hope of the whole family. Yingying Zhang worked hard, and she studied at first-class universities in China (Sun Yat-sen University and Peking University) and was a doctoral student in the College of Agriculture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In life, she is kind, enthusiastic about public welfare, gets along well with her classmates, has a stable relationship with her boyfriend, and has also gone to Guizhou to support teaching and help children in poor mountainous areas. But such a kind and beautiful girl was brutally kidnapped and killed on the other side of the ocean, and the body became a mystery at that time, and her life was permanently frozen in a pool of blood.
Two years passed, until June 12, 2019, when Zhang Yingying's kidnapping and murder case began to be tried.
On June 24, a jury in federal court for the U.S. District of Illinois convicted defendant Brent Christensen of kidnapping and murdering Yingying Zhang in 2017.
Justice came too late, and Zhang Yingying's family hugged and wept.
In the world, there is more than one Zhang Yingying. Behind every victim, there is a shattered home.
Li Mingzhu, a 21-year-old flight attendant, was killed by an online ride-hailing driver because of an incident that took a taxi home late at night. She had just joined the work, well-behaved and sensible, and suffered this misfortune in her youth, leaving only her parents who could not cry.
Lin Yihan, 26, chose to leave this world after marriage. "Famous people", "bully talented women", this should be her life, but trapped in the magic of childhood sexual assault. As long as there is one Li Guohua in the world, there will be countless Fang Siqi.
Also 26 years old left this world, there is Also Wuhan University of Technology student Tao Chongyuan. He was a teacher, had excellent grades, was calm and down-to-earth, and worked hard, but in order to get rid of power, uneasiness, trepidation and isolation, he bid farewell to the spring of that year.
They were all excellent, but they all became victims and left this world.
Damage once inflicted
It won't stop
In this contradictory world, no matter how perfect, kind, and excellent we are, we cannot completely avoid the risk of becoming victims.
The victims who left became the eternal pain of relatives and friends, but were they so lucky to survive?
Not.
Once the damage is done, it doesn't stop. Sometimes the living endure more humiliation than death itself.
In the world of Beartown, the victims are like this:
Obviously, she was violated, it was her nightmares, it was her family that was hit hard and almost fell apart, but it was she who received the "bitch" text message, it was she who was bombed at home, and it was she who was excluded and despised at school.
She didn't understand why all this was blamed on herself:
"Obviously she had a crush on him",
"Say as if she didn't want it, you didn't see what she was wearing",
"Even if something happens, it's her doing it",
"She can only blame herself for being drunk"...
These fragments were like sharp knives, plunging into Maya's already battered body.
In fact, verbal violence is not just directed against widespread victims. When you become a minority, a heretic, you become an object of attack, you become a victim. People will say that this kind of thing happens to a person, and that is that he has a problem.
Banjie, the kindest boy in Beartown 2, was attacked like this, and these public opinions were like a fire, burning his original life
When we become "victims"
Maybe the damage we've suffered has only just begun
In the jungle world, everyone is cutting through the thorns, and we have countless possibilities to become victims.
Bullied, raped, isolated, abandoned, killed, deceived... From the physical and mental damage to the situation of "being different from others", we will all be classified by this black-and-white society into the area of a few people and victims.
What should we do if we become victims, a minority?
Is it to allow others to clamor and insult us with words that we can't imagine? Or do you cower, believe in the "it's all my fault" fallacy, and hide in the dark? Or change a city, a region, and use evasion to solve all problems.
Maya, the little girl who was sexually assaulted in BearTown, gave us a new choice:
She didn't touch him, but her voice was still enough to make him stop: "Benjay, don't let those guys see you crying." ”
Banjie's eyes widened, and he stopped and said, "I can't bear it anymore... What should I do? ”
Maya's voice, though faint, was strong: "You have to walk in with your head up and your chest up." Then, wait for each of their eyes until they turn their faces apart. Benjay, the person in question is not us. ”
When Benjie asked the question, he clearly heard his own fragmented voice: "How did you hold up to the ground?" This spring this mess happened... Things later, how are you... Survive... Coming? ”
Her eyes were sharp, but her voice sounded heartbreaking: "I am not prepared to be a victim." I am a survivor. ”
- "Bear Town"
Don't turn "surviving" into "unfortunate"
Yes, we are not just victims, but survivors.
Victimization is the blow that the world has given us. And surviving means living again and standing up against an unjust world.
In the book "The Ragtag Crowd", it is written:
As soon as people arrive in the group, the IQ is seriously reduced, in order to gain recognition, the individual is willing to abandon right and wrong, and use the IQ to exchange for the sense of belonging that makes people feel safe.
In other words, it is the silence of society, the ignorance of people, and the rabble that have caused so many innocent lives to be harmed twice, and countless families have washed their faces with tears.
The few who have become victims have already suffered physically and mentally, and if they have a choice, no one is willing to bear all this. But often they lick the wound while also suffering secondary injuries from the outside world:
For violators, "slut-shaming" brings them back to the scene of the crime again and again;
For brave defenders, the rhetoric of "claiming" and "making money" makes them feel so distressed that they doubt society...
Over time, some victims will not be able to get out of the strange circle of "self-blame", live in the shadow of "victimization", and think that "I am not perfect" and "I am wrong" will encounter all this.
But in fact, even the most perfect person will become a victim. The victim is not wrong, what is wrong is this society, what is wrong is the world.
If we are unfortunate enough to become victims, we will try to stand up and stand up to face the world as "surviving".
Although we are only a small resistance, every time we resist, there will be one less secondary victim in the world.
Thousands of rebellions will eventually change the direction of the tide.