Berserk Button

see: Berserk Button

Doctor Who:

“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.”

I don't do anger well.  When I get angry, maybe once or twice a year, I am flabbergasted by the feeling and think "Man, do people feel like this a lot?  How strange!".  I am a pacifist and violence just makes me sad.

But everyone has their berserk button.  Tell someone that they are less than human, don't know their place, need to be fixed with a good beating, that they should sit down and shut up if they know what's good for them- oooh don't you dare.  I will create a clever scheme, and you will be splayed out on the floor wondering how you got there.  'Specially if you are trying to intimidate children.  That's not gonna fly, and I'm gonna call you out in a way that is public and humiliating.

Let me give you an example from my childhood.  Second grade.  My friend Rachel wanted to play basketball.  She was good at it, and that made sense to me.  She approached the group of boys getting ready to play.  Ringleader little boy says: "You're a girl.  Girls can't play sports.", gives her one of those up-down-up looks and sneers.  I swear, he had a well-developed sneer for a kid his age.  Poor kid.  Before he knew it (and, well, before I knew it) he had been whipped across the face by my plastic ponytail holders.  I had some pretty long hair then.  

Like this, but bigger

Now, by the second grade I had certainly had enough of people telling me my place.  It has to do with a cult.  Long story.  All of the sudden I started screaming, and I didn't give a damn if those boys decided to respond with violence.  I mean, they could totally have taken me out but I wasn't big on the self-preservation in that moment.  Ringleader backed away, freaked out.  The other little boys saw it, and with Ringleader deposed Rachel was in. 

Back to the science fiction.

Star Trek:

"'What right do you have to punish us? What right do you have to change us? What makes you think you can dictate how people love each other?'

'I congratulate you, Soren. Your decision to admit your perversion makes it much more likely that we can help you.'"

"'Did it occur to you that she might like to stay the way she is?'  'No, you don't understand. We have a very high success rate in treating deviants like this, and, without exception, they become happier people after their treatment, and grateful - that we care enough to cure them. You see, Commander, on this world, everyone *wants* to be normal.'  'She is!'"

"'I was sick... it was wrong.  I see that now.'  'Soren ...I love you.'  'I'm sorry.'"

[after being told to stay home during a photo shoot because he is African-American]

"'It's just a photo'  'I'll try to remember that.'"

"'It's not personal, Benny, but as far as our readers are concerned, Benny Russell is as white as they are. Let's just keep it that way.'  'Oh yes. If the world is not ready for a woman writer, imagine what would happen if it learned about a Negro with a typewriter. "Run for the hills! It's the end of civilization!"'"

"'This magazine belongs to Mr. Stone. If he doesn't want to publish this month, we don't publish this month. End of story!'  'That doesn't make it right, and you know it!'  'Don't tell me what I know! Besides, it's not about what's right, it's about what *is*.'"

"I am a Human being, dammit! You can deny me all you want but you cannot deny Ben Sisko. He exists. That future, that space station, all those people, they exist in here, in my mind. ...You can pulp a story, but you cannot destroy an idea!"

"'Tell me please, who am I?'  'Don't you know?'  'Tell me.'  'You are the dreamer... and the dream.'"

Harry Potter:

"'Yes?'  [hesitates and looks at his scarred hand] 'Nothing.'  ''That's right. Because deep down you know that you deserve to be punished. Don't you, Mr. Potter?'"

Some related "The Handmaid's Tale":

"Are they old enough to remember anything of the time before, playing baseball, in jeans and sneakers, riding their bicycles? Reading books, all by themselves? even though some of them are no more than fourteen-Start them soon is the policy, there's not a moment to be lost-still they'll remember. And the ones after them will, for three or four or five years; but after that they won't. They'll always have been in white, in groups of girls; they'll always have been silent."

"Dear God, I think, I will do anything you like. Now that you've let me off, I'll obliterate myself, if that's what you really want; I'll empty myself, truly, become a chalice. I'll give up Nick, I'll forget about the others. I'll stop complaining. I'll accept my lot. I'll sacrifice. I'll repent. I'll abdicate. I'll renounce.
I know this can't be right but I think it anyway. Everything they taught at the Red Center, everything I've resisted, comes flooding in. I don't want pain. I don't want to be a dancer, my feet in the air, my head a faceless oblong of white cloth. I don't want to be a doll hung up on the Wall. I don't want to be a wingless angel. I want to keep on living, in any form. I resign my body freely, to uses of others. They can do what they like with me. I am abject.
I feel, for the first time, their true power."

"I'm nobody's slave!"  I can say that, and doesn't it sound grand.  Drawing the line, making a stand.  But I can do this only because I am so privileged.  I got out, but not everybody does.  I watch and it makes me angry, it burns me up and I want throw myself at it with every bit of willpower I have.  I know their faces and their names, I watched them growing up and it still bothers me.

You know what bothers me the most?  It's like Margaret Atwood said, with how they forget.  Or like in 'The Outsider', when Soren was "treated" (see above).  The angry ones I know will survive.  But it's the ones who give up that scare me.  All of the fight has gone out of them, and they can't do it anymore.  It's a terrible thing to see a broken person.  It's a terrible thing to know someone and know they are simply waiting to die.

*note to readers: Why do I write dark, angsty things that most people might rather not read?  Because when I don't speak up it has been my experience that there are people who would've appreciated it.  I'm not going to waste any time being a coward if there is the off chance I can make someone feel less alone.  I figure, don't read it if it is not your cuppa tea and save me some embarrassment anyway.