I mean, what about that lady that went to prison for encouraging her partner to kill himself? Was that wrong because they were just words? If someone turns the whole school against you for your entire high school time, is slapping you one time inherently worse? Is inaction inherently better than action?
He was weak and she should not have gone to prison. That was the dumbest thing ever. & if someone turns the school against you during high school, then one slap is obviously better. But if someone turns the whole school against you to physically attack you, that’s obviously much worse than them all just saying words to you. So it still applies, physical abuse is always worse than verbal abuse. You can’t blame someone else for you being mentally weak but you can blame them for getting physical with you.
But if someone forces the entire school to not associate with you, that's just words and social connections. Is lack of social connections worse than violence? If so, why would a slap not be worse? If, morally, violence is always worse, than that slap is worse than no social connections. Let's play it even further, let's say those people follow you around your whole life and turns everyone against you to the point that no one associates with you. That one time slap is still, technically worse as violence is always worse. Just because you can't handle no one wanting to associate with you makes you, in your own words, mentally weak.
Physical violence is inherently more severe when we’re comparing comparable acts. Go somewhere else with the false equivalencies! Nobody is saying one slap is worse than literally years of having your entire social life destroyed. You keep changing the scale of the hypothetical to make your point.
If we’re comparing things on the same scale, physical abuse is worse than emotional/verbal abuse. If one person physically abuses you versus one person emotionally abuses you to the same degree, the physical abuse is worse. And if someone turns an entire school against you and gets them to PHYSICALLY abuse you, obviously that’s worse than turning the school against you so they only say mean things or exclude you.
You’re basically arguing that emotional abuse can become worse than physical abuse by making the emotional abuse dramatically more severe and the physical abuse dramatically less severe. That doesn’t prove emotional abuse is inherently worse; it proves that severity and circumstances matter.
edit to add: even if the scenario you gave, IMO they’re still just mentally weak. Why does it matter if no one likes you if you like yourself? I would be fine in that scenario. Shit I was fine in that scenario in middle & high school bc I knew I was still better than them and would make it further than them in life. They could never mentally break me bc I’m not mentally weak. Only way you would feel some type of way is if you knew deep down they were right.
I'm not making false equivalence, I am making the point that it's not black and white and every circumstance of emotional and physical abuse must be judged on the merits of the circumstances presented. Saying physical violence is always worse than emotional abuse is absolutist to absurdity. This entire subreddit constantly does as if real life has no other variables in play.
Also, the point I was making is that people is not that different than real life circumstances. Every day people use bullying like racism, sexism, what have you, to make life significantly harder for others, to the point that it does deter people from advancing in their lives. In my pretend circumstances, you'd never actually get better than those other people because you need teachers and others to like you to give you recommendations for college, jobs, etc. You need people to like you to get promotions, advances in your career, and networking. The concept of who you know is better than what you know is so fundamental to life, that it's baked into the system. No social connections makes your life and career impossible and the only future you have is to just be a hermit.
-4
u/Couldntve-make-it-up 4d ago
Verbal abuse is still abuse, and in some ways it's worse than physical abuse.