Patiently Burning to Death
Content Warning for discussion of sexual assault and fiery death.
In 1977, Floy Heck — age 70 — sat motionless in her seat aboard a smoldering 747 in the Canary Islands. Her plane, awaiting takeoff, had been struck by a landing Dutch KLM jet traveling at 160 miles per hour. Despite the cabin filling with smoke, she didn’t move — didn’t even think to move.
Pop culture frequently references the Psych 101 concept of “Fight or Flight” — when an organism is presented with a perceived threat, it will take one of two courses: attack that threat or run away from it. The idea makes sense on its surface but is ultimately inaccurate — in reality, what studies demonstrate is that one of the most common human stress responses is to freeze up.
Floy’s husband Paul shook her out of it, guided her out of the plane to safety. She followed him, she said, “like a zombie.” On their way out through the mangled fuselage, Floy glanced back at her friend Lorraine, sitting calmly in her seat as if awaiting instructions. Unlike Floy and Paul, Lorraine remained in her stress-frozen fugue and burned to death — neither fight nor flight kicking in to save her.
Americans love to think ourselves the hero. Many — most — of us believe that when confronted with danger we would, without question or hesitation, act like the protagonists in the movies we’ve seen — step up and save the day. All it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun, we’re told time and again, is a good guy with a gun. Fight or Flight would engage and we would rise to the challenge.
This, paired with our odd propensity toward Just World Fallacy, has led us to expect those around us to be action heroes as well. Frequently, especially online, the question is often “why didn’t the victim fight back?” There is always, it seems, intense focus on what the victim didn’t do, how they failed to be a hero, how their apparent dereliction to either fight or flee makes them complicit in their own violation. Instead of analyzing and critiquing the more important issue of the actions of the perpetrator — for instance, sexual assault — we intricately comb through the actions of the victim. What they didn’t do somehow becomes more important than what the accused did do.
This perspective is severely defective for quite a number of reasons, but one of its core failures — stretching back to its very inception — stems from its misguided understanding of human psychology. “Fight or Flight” is so ingrained in our culture, but it’s a premise we seem to have just accepted without any critical examination. We’ve allowed its narrative to override our reality, convinced ourselves that we would have perfect clarity of mind and would act deliberately and with conviction when presented with a similar situation — when the truth is that we would just as likely freeze up in exactly the same way when confronted with many stressors. It’s not a pleasant thing to admit; Floy’s friend Lorraine would probably never have described herself as the kind of person who would sit calmly aboard an air crash patiently burning to death.
Recently a young woman known only by the pseudonym “Grace” (though I’m sure the Internet Detective Squad will soon needlessly ascertain her real identity so that the flood gates of harassment can burst wide open into her life) described a date with Aziz Ansari in September of 2017 that culminated in sexual assault. Regardless one’s comfortability applying that serious categorization to what transpired, his actions were disgusting and invasive, and it’s clear that he relentlessly ignored “Grace”’s many clear expressions of discomfort.
Predictably, sadly, many people online rushed to Aziz’s defense, responding to the article with a number of bad takes like:
- “She didn’t say ‘no’.” (As if consent is simply an absence of “no”, and everything else means “yes”.)
- “If she gave him oral sex, then clearly she consented.” (As if it’s impossible to engage in non-consensual oral sex.)
- “She was naked, so it couldn’t have been sexual assault.” (???)
And my favorite:
- ”[V]oluntarily engaging in activities even if you don’t feel like it is not ‘nonconsensual’.” (Because if consent is anything, it’s definitely doing something only because you’ve been pressured to and not because you actually want to.)
Most notably and most prevalent, though, were the droves blaming “Grace” — a 22 year old who had consumed a nonzero quantity of alcohol over the course of the night — for not fighting back, not running away.
Paul Heck was afraid to fly so he would prepare before every flight, studying the instructions inserted into the backs of the seats, running through Worst-Case Scenarios in his mind. When the Dutch KLM jet tore through theirs, he had spent many hours throughout his 65-year lifetime preparing for that moment, so instead of freezing up he knew exactly what to do. We extensively train soldiers so that they won’t default to freezing up in combat scenarios or when confronted with unexpected threats.
It’s unlikely “Grace” anticipated that Aziz — a 34-year-old celebrity who has championed feminist causes and portrayed himself as conscientious, an ally, someone who genuinely cares about women as people — would behave the way he did. She likely trusted that he would act respectfully, especially when he seemed initially responsive to her multiple requests for him to back off a little, slow things down.
When frozen — like Floy and Lorraine and almost certainly “Grace” — people become especially pliant to instructions and direction. As Floy noted, she followed Paul “like a zombie” out of the plane. Confronted with an unexpected stressor, she numbly followed instructions from someone who seemed like they knew what to do.
This state of shock can easily be exploited. People become compliant when undergoing this kind of stress response, and persistent violation of attempted boundaries only recursively intensifies the effect. It’s well documented that a number of rape victims don’t flee, don’t fight, but simply lie there and freeze up and comply with orders in the hope it will end soon. In hostage situations, captives will identify with and even aid their captors.
At best, Aziz was forceful and relentless with someone who expressed consistent discomfort — someone 12 years his junior who had consumed alcohol. It wasn’t up to her to slap him, or tell him off, or storm out, or bite his genitals — it was up to him to not push through the boundaries she kept trying to establish, to listen to her repeated attempts to get him to back off. It was up to him to not willfully mistake shocked, numb compliance for enthusiasm.
If he were anything like the “woke” sensitive persona he attempts to convey, it shouldn’t have been that hard to do.
