Seems like I’m avoiding posting because
1) Nothing seems interesting enough to share
2) I just want to rant.
So, Instead of choosing (1), I choose (2).
What’s lately annoying moi?
I’m tired of people taking offense at what others say. Oh, he used a racist word, Oh! She has a stupid opinin! Oh, Look at that article isn’t he horrible! Oh, I’m offended! Oh! Oh! Oh!
Be the dude. Recite after me: “That’s just … like … your opinion … man.”
If you dislike the position of an opinion of another (usually post, article, etc) fine – argue against it. But the vilification or “action” based on statements of others is such a colossal waste of time and effort. Actions should be censored, not opinions or statements. Fight ideas with ideas, not censorship.
I’m taking porch monkey back, too. And I don’t care that anyone knows I think you can love little mambo and be anti-racist at the same time. Stop chasing windmills and start making change.
rant over.
So to hit (1), let’s see –
1.a. Had 3 tonnes of fun in Seattle visiting
1.b. Was sad to disappoint K and N (our bestest friends) by bailing and flaking on SoaP and other things — they do deserve better than that and it sucks sometimes to be the fun-killer. We’ll obviously need to make it up.
1.c. Thinking about PROJECTS to do house-wise. I think built-in bookshelves will be the next order of business, at the same time the monkey hut gets a 3.1 do-over. Our fore mentions fabulous we-don’t-deserve them friends K and N gave us this rad light-up puffer fish, so need to re-do lighting, re-stock booze, clean.
That’s all folks. Happy Thursday.
P.S. if any gracious soul wants to gift me with a year’s LJ subscription, I promise I’ll post more. 🙂 – I suppose I can afford it, but that money always seems to be better suited elsewhere, you know?
P.P.S. smoochies
YEAH!!!!!!!!!
I rarely get offended. When I do, I like to bitch about it. But my bitching never includes a suggestion of censorship, though it might include a suggestion of USING ONE’S BRAIN. sigh.
Why can’t people just leave each other alone? Except for parties at my house (or your house, then we can all come together for funness!
And I got to see you guys two weekends in a row and soon I will have withdrawals! Agghh! 😉
smoochies back atcha!
absolutely shared! it’s like ya’d been our friends and neighbors for years.
come back up again soon please.
I know! People still seem to be stuck in the “I am the sum of my opinions” nonsense. It’s a rubbish tenet.
Or we’ll come down there! Or both! You two are the rulingest, as the kids say.
Looks like I am your suggar daddy ^_^
I’m tired of people taking offense at what others say. Oh, he used a racist word, Oh! She has a stupid opinin! Oh, Look at that article isn’t he horrible! Oh, I’m offended! Oh! Oh! Oh!
If someone consistently expresses racist ideas, I’m not sure how I can just sit back and say, “That’s just your opinion.” If someone consistently expresses racist ideas, they are racist and deserving of censure. Words shape reality and have the power to cause injury.
stop, take a step back and re-look at exactly what he is saying.
^_^
Trust me, I’ve read it about a dozen times and I’m apparently dense, because I’m still not getting it. Maybe you can enlighten me?
You are not dense at all. If I am correct in my assumption of what he wrote, it is more to do with the superfluous over kill of the quick attack. Naturally if someone is broadcasting a rather vicious or hurtful type of slander or emotional based comment, I am sure most kind and compassionate folks will stand up and say, he you can feel it, but just watch how you express it.
Everyone has feelings and these feelings are personal. The idea is to end the “attack” mode that a lot of folks tend to do when they do not understand or not agree with something. It is ok to disagree and to voice your personal feelings, but when that turns into a “I am right and you are wrong” then it benefits no one.
Naturally there are going to be certain elements or times when this kind of reserve is not possible, or is breached, but the over all consensus is that for the most part, people now a day tend to react in a strong and even harmful way to something that goes against your personal view point.
To me the statement is calling for people to start self monitoring how they react or interact to a person or situation and to err on the side of caution and politeness. There is just no need to launch into a battle, if there is no war going on. People will agree or disagree on things, it is how they communicate these feelings and thoughts that is, what I think, is being talked about. ^_^
Obviously, I disagree. 🙂
1. I think you have it backwards. Reality shapes words.
2. Censure only hides and marginalizes opinion/speech. “More Speech” fights it.
3. “TJLYOD” ™ does not imply sitting back. It is a positive recognition to one’s self that another’s statement is unto themselves and has no power. Realizing this (in a zen state) is empowering.
4. Words causing injury? I find that a preposterous and ineffective position.
Hope I’m not upsetting you too much, since I understand that these ideas of mine could be seen as offensive and injurous. (no condescension meant!)
Ok, I gotcha. Like (to use one I encountered recently) if someone slips up and refers to a transgendered person by the wrong pronoun (calling a male-to-female transsexual “he,” for example), a first reaction of, “OMG YOU ARE TRANSPHOBIC!!!111eleventyones!1” is unnecessary.
Yeah, pretty much. I do enjoy writing in short shrift (even though I could be misunderstood). This is due to my belief in the actual simplicity of all things (though we humans like to complicate them).
Another way of putting this would be:
“You don’t have to be afraid of opinions.”
Yep, that’s (part of) it.
And it looks like you called my bluff! 😉
lol more to the point, you SHOULD NOT HAVE to feel afraid of some one’s opinion ^_^.
I feel that a lot of this kind of thing we see today has a lot to do in how we are treated by our own governments. Gratned this is not saying it is THE reason, I feel it is a factor though. ^_^
If folks truly understood that we are ALL connected and that what happens to one happens to all in reality, then you would not have a 10th of 1% of the crap we have now.
/sigh it is all a learning experiance. ^_^
But the language that people use shapes the way that people think and react to a given situation. Look at the difference in intent between the terms “the Civil War” and “the War of Northern Aggression.” Both are talking about the same thing, but both are calculated to make the listening react in a different way. Or, people who refer to transsexuals as “frankenstein monsters” — that’s specifically meant to dehumanize and to make it easier for the rights of transsexual individuals to be denied. If you don’t think of someone as human, you don’t have to treat them as such.
You will notice that I said “censure,” not “censorship.” To me, “censure” is saying, “You’re wrong, and I don’t think you should say that.” Censorship is actively preventing someone from voicing their opinions. If someone wants to express bullshit opinions about gays being pedophiles, fine, but I’m going to tell them they’re wrong and I’m eventually going to shut them out if they don’t stop propagating ideas that are wrongheaded. I can’t stop them talking, but I’m not going to give them a soapbox to stand on.
By injury, I don’t mean physical injury, I mean the mental anguish they can cause. If someone intends to hurt me by calling me a name that I find offensive and painful, I don’t believe the onus should be on me for “allowing myself” to be hurt by it. That lets the perpetrator off the hook, when their intention was to hurt. A person can mitigate that hurt by telling themself that these words don’t define them, but if someone gets told that they’re a stupid cunt enough times, I don’t think they should be blamed if they start to believe it.
Hone for you, there is a LOT I would like to call
You SEXY man you ^_^
I just like reading your posts ^_^
I guess my thing is, I’m not really afraid of opinions, it’s more that opinions don’t happen in a vacuum and I’m afraid of the actions that all to frequently come along with them. 😛
1) RE: words shaping reality – Nope, not buying it. Calling it “the war of northern agression” didn’t shape the southerner’s view of the war – it is why they called it thus. Still seing it the other way around. If you find a trans* person a frankenstein monster, calling them a trans-gender won’t change that. If people view them as such, “trans-gender” the word will *change* to mean ‘frankenstein’ monster. I do think there is a bit of merit to your idea – I don’t mean to dismiss it out-of-hand, as I think it has some validity. I just think that validity is an illusion (as well as an allusion). Counter-productive.
2) The “I don’t think you should say that” is peer-pressure censorship and does nothing in my opinion. Stopping a racist from saying “kike” doesn’t make anti-semitism go away. Tilting at windmills.
3) I don’t want the onus have to be on me to repsonsible for being hurt, but (in my opinion) at the end of the day: Too bad. It is. It is a difficult road to get into the practice of being unoffensibile. It is espec
3.a. That doesn’t mean that someone who is intentionally hurtful is off-the-hook by any means. And besides, it is the actions of the perpetrator which are announced by the words that cause the injury. The words come out of the abuse, they do not cause the abuse.
I can certainly agree with that.
i was gonna swing back in with a little somethin’-somethin about yaay for thoughtful, friendly discourse having a much better effect than a quickie opinion attack… but i see it’s already happening.
3 got cut off: … It is especially difficult to practice this with those whom you care about, their words carry more weight. Which is why I try to make it a practice to choose my words as to have the best reception. It is etiquitte — not because you have to or “should,” but because it is how I try to display my respect for other people. (Even though they are in charge of their own filters, no matter how unaware of the mere idea of it.)
Hang-up the knee-jerk defensiveness, go in for the happy friendship subversion way for the win!
alternatively titled:
Try a different way to call people on their shit?
I know I certainly need it now and again, perhaps try to fool me into not noticing it is happening? 😀
Everybody* deserves to be treated with dignitiy and respect is what I say.
—
*yes that means EVERYbody.
Calling it “the war of northern agression” didn’t shape the southerner’s view of the war – it is why they called it thus.
But don’t you think that if someone hadn’t heard of the Civil War before, calling it “the War of Northern Aggression” would shape how they thought about the two sides’ involvement in the war? If you didn’t know very much about transgender issues, and someone kept referring to them as “frankensteins,” don’t you think that would color how you thought about transgendered people?
I do see what you’re saying about the meaning behind words. It’s the same reason that someone I love can playfully say, “Oh, you’re SUCH a girl!” and make me laugh, and someone else can say, “You’re SUCH a girl!” contemptuously and anger me. “Girl” is neither a positive nor negative term, it’s the intention behind it that provokes a position or negative response.
I’m still undecided on the issues surrounding terms like “kike” or other slurs. On the one hand, I almost prefer that a spade be called a spade — if someone thinks that all queers should burn in hell, I’d rather have them say, “All queers should burn in hell” than “I don’t believe homosexuality is a valid life choice.” But I hate listening to language of that sort and it provokes a very visceral sense of outrage. Maybe I should think about it as being the auditory equivalent of a poison dart frog’s bright coloring — it does serve as a warning to stay the fuck away from that person. But it still doesn’t sit right for me to let that kind of thing go unchallenged.
This is very, very true, and actually goes along with something I was about to say. Basically, I think a very basic part of interacting with others and respecting them is calling them by the names and labels they choose for themselves. This is a huge thing in trans circles, especially, because as someone is re-shaping the way they are viewed by the world, it’s really important to interact with them and use language that doesn’t undermine that. If I kept calling my friend Patrick “Esther” and using female pronouns to refer to him, it would confuse the people around us and they would probably be more likely to “read” him as a masculine woman rather than as a man. It would also, after a while, probably start to really screw with Patrick’s perception of himself, because it would repeatedly invalidate his feeling that he’s a guy.
This is why I spend so much time thinking about language, because it’s so important to the people around me, and in a lot of ways it really DOES shape their lived reality, because it can so completely influence the way others view them, you know? In some contexts, it can actually affect their physical safety to a certain extent.
I used to think that, but I’ve changed my mind.
As you said, words don’t happen in a vacuum – for instance – calling it “the war of northern agression” and then going on to teach it as it has been taught to me in grammar school (the northern civil war version) would likely have me think “why are they calling it that, then?”
it is the content, the actions of expression, the ‘meat’ — not the words they hang on.
It is the teaching of the history, not the rainment of words.
And forcing people to call it “The Civil War” isn’t going to change the southern version of the story.
Back to the topic more in general, the attack-method of outrage and censure only produce defensiveness and devisiveness — look at how “rednecks” have taken back “redneck,” and “faggots” have taken back “faggot,” for instance.
Now I’m a believer in “the well-behaved woman rarely makes history” sort of thing, and I’m not suggesting passivity. I’m suggesting Action rather than reaction. It’s the method of how you challenge.
and were I Esther’s friend I would gladly do the same for her.
However, not everyone who will call him Patrick be an asshole, necessarily. Some may need that avenue to express their unease and fear with the situation. If you’d like that person to change for the better, (though it would cause discomfort likely until esther grows a thicker skin), would be to gently remind and accept the “Patrick” as the foibles of others.
It’s basic animal behavior – the perpertator is uneasy and afraid and using the words as a way to express it. Accept that and still welcome it, the perpertrator will come at ease and once understanding it will no longer do it. Push the perp away and it is one more reason for the perp to hate the trans.
This is of course if the perp is a periferal friend/family member, etc. Not if the perp is a stranger or a group of perps.
Am I explaining my position any?
I don’t think esther “should” accept assholes calling her Patrick. I think learning the skill of accepting that people express their fear by attacking and to practice having self-confidence to have the opinions of others not mean anything will help Esther live a rewarding life in the long run.
And what does that take? Friends like you who help her form a strong self-image.
Side note (I hope she doesn’t take offense): Our friend Caoilin changed her name to Caoilin quite a few years after we knew her with her old name. Immediately I made an effort to refer to her exclusively as Caoilin. Now, secretly, I found the whole idea of name-changing silly. But to Caoilin it was NOT. Because I love her, I respected her wishes even though I didn’t “understand” it. My opnion is meaningless. Get that? MY OPINION IS MEANINGLESS. Why do I choose to voice it? I know that she would be hurt (I hope she isn’t now!) So I chose not to. In a perfect world, I could have voiced that opnion at the same time of expressly changing my behaviour, but many people can’t do that because they think their opnion matters.
If you make that jump for them, realize their opnion is meaningless you can break the cycle of conclusion-jumping, defensiveness, offense and hurt.
Now I’m rambling, but Hopefully that had some effect of explaining me better.
Love ya, Caoilin! Smooch. (and I don’t think *you* are silly for having done it! I’m glad you did.)
As you said, words don’t happen in a vacuum – for instance – calling it “the war of northern agression” and then going on to teach it as it has been taught to me in grammar school (the northern civil war version) would likely have me think “why are they calling it that, then?”
But… They are using other words to describe the war and its battles that would cause you to have that impression, aren’t they? People use words to draw meaning from events, and the words they use to describe an occurrence shape the “truth” of that occurence. Someone describing the exact same action could say, “Bob tossed her the ball and it hit her in the head” or “Bob threw the ball at her head,” and it would change the way the event was perceived. One conveys an accidental injury, the other implies that Bob’s intention was to cause injury. The listener would walk away either thinking that Bob should be more careful, or that Bob should get his ass kicked.
How come you have a sugar daddy and I don’t!? You’re supposed to be MY sugar daddy. Hmpf.
That’s the meaining of sentences, not the meaning of words.
a semantic dodge, yes.
I’m not arguing you don’t have a point, I’m arguing that it is a symptom, not a cause of itself. Change the words around and if the teller has a feeling to express they will do it with different words.
I’m saying it is fighting the wrong end of the battle. You don’t force the person to use your forced words, you try to befriend them and get them to see that bob was blameless.
Domain Name registraion + hosting isn’t enough? 😉
Well lookie there what your sugar daddy did.
(Actually, Patrick used to be Esther, not the other way around, but that doesn’t really change anything in your comment)
This is of course if the perp is a periferal friend/family member, etc. Not if the perp is a stranger or a group of perps.
Am I explaining my position any?
I think so. It’s a funny sort of thing, because Patrick knew going into it that it was the people closest to him who’d known him the longest — his parents, his siblings, his close friends — who were probably going to slip up the most and fall into old habits of calling him “her” and “Esther.” He also knew that his parents, especially, were going to be resistant to the change and that it would take them some time to come around to it, and getting angry at them for slipping up wasn’t going to help with their adjustment. But of course, since these people WERE the people closest to him, their mistakes were more loaded than the casual screw-ups of strangers on the street.
I’m curious, though, what you mean about this being different if the person is a stranger or a group of strangers? I would assume that the same idea holds — that until you know that the person’s using the wrong language specifically to hurt, gentle correction is a better course than knee-jerk anger.
I think I finally understand what you mean about your opinion (or the opinions of others) being meaningless. My opinion of whether Patrick is or isn’t actually a guy has absolutely nothing to do with his lived reality. If I say, “You are Esther and you’ll always be Esther,” it would hurt his feelings and possibly wreck our friendship, but it wouldn’t suddenly make him not trans. It seems very obvious now that I think about it, but I guess because I do tend to let other peoples’ opinions influence me a lot (or at least shake me up) it’s sort of hard to work around.
Bingo! 🙂
When those opinions are the voice of political power, there’s where it gets messy.
And the “stranger or group of stranger” is that the gentle approach ain’t gonna save you from a gay bashing. In that case, either run away or kick the ass right back.
And I seem to have gotten Esther and Patrick backwards there. Sorry, Patrick!
Thanks sugar daddy!
I gotcha. I think we might even agree. 🙂
I think part of the issue, too, (and I think this is especially the case on the internet) is that when person A uses language that person B finds offensive, person B doesn’t have enough incentive to try to talk person A around — it’s harder and less amusing to try to unpack person A’s opinions and prejudices than it is to flame them for using offensive language.
Oh yeah, I gotta say, this was an extremely enlightening and entertaining conversation, and actually applies really well to a lot of what I’ve been experiencing lately, so thank you for taking the time to have it with me! It also gave me something to do instead of work.
Reactivity is very seductive.
Superb! I hope you felt that you were being heard. I certainly was listening. Like I said, your argument is still quite valid.
Does Hansel need some sugar in his bowl?
Oh, yeah!
sing it brother ^_^
I act confused, that takes the wind right out of it.
I’m tired of people taking offense at what others say. Oh, he used a racist word, Oh! She has a stupid opinin! Oh, Look at that article isn’t he horrible! Oh, I’m offended! Oh! Oh! Oh!
I agree with you to some extent. I’m thoroughly sick of people being hugely offended over minor things. I’m especially sick of people being offended where it is obvious that no offense was meant. Words should be taken in the spirit they’re meant. If someone is unknowingly using a term that you think is offensive, pointing out that some people find it offensive makes more sense to me than jumping up and down screaming about how offended you are. There seems to be a lot of the virtual version of the latter going on over the internet.
I think that the words chosen do shape other people’s perception of reality though. It may be true that they don’t alter reality directly, but if they alter people’s perceptions of reality, and those people then take different actions because of those perceptions, that can definitely cause changes in what happens in the future.
Is someone writes an article that expresses opinions you find offensive, I don’t see anything wrong with calmly and rationally discussing saying so. “Calmy” and “rationally” are the operative words there though. It should be a discussion, not a tantrum.