People Seem Just a Bit too Sensitive

Thick skin, again, is not some evolved version of the ignore-them "tactic" that got you pelted with spit balls in grade school. Thick skin facilitates action against the objectionable, if anything; authoritative is a more effective voice than shrill is.

@Karalora - In light of that information, I think you handled the situation ly.

I say this as someone who used to crack rape jokes. I have NEVER raped anyone in my life, nor thought to, nor thought that it's actual instances were funny. It was the sort of gallows humor that a couple of...bros...would get.

One day I cracked a joke in this bar and this very nice middle aged lady walked over....and in a total calm tone of voice, without either edge or anger, in fact, almost smiling....she told me her daughter had been date raped only two years earlier, and that while she was sure from my bearing that I wasn't "that type" she told me I might want to lay off those jokes. To say that I was physically ill and horrified at what happened that night would be an understatement.

Since that day, I very very very VERY rarely joke about any kind of sexual assault and only then in the privacy of my own home.

I try to be tactful until I get to know people and they me. Then I gradually loosen up. I'll stay within the boundaries of certain people if I feel they are reasonable and right. Sex is never a topic of discussion with one friend of mine for example due to her not being comfortable with the subject.

Rape jokes I still make despite my girlfriend having been assaulted twice. I make them with her in fact. As well as many highly racist and sexist jokes. It's because we're so close however that I do this. It's part of how we express our friendship and camaraderie. Horrible humor.

Starship: As mentioned in the blog post, the guy in the story was not a newcomer to racism; in fact, he'd handled much worse than what he recounted there. The issue was that aforementioned hipster idiot caught him with his shields down. (I believe leaving the shields unpowered is standard Federation protocol when on diplomatic missions in friendly space, to expand the metaphor.)

I raised that story because I wanted to ask the question "is it possible to not care about what people say all the time?". Even if you do operate on the default that what people say doesn't matter, sooner or later someone you liked/respect deeply might say something that's out of line, and you'll likely get that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you reevaluate that person. It's exhausting to keep the armor up at all times. I'd like to think that there's a group of white friends (and for Kara, a group of male friends) around whom you feel comfortable enough to drop all defenses.

See, I completely understand if you are offended by something your friend says about you. That makes perfect sense. You should care about what they say and think, or you shouldn't be friends with them. I just disagree entirely with this idea that you should grant that same power over you to everyone else.

But that's not a shields up/down issues, it's more of only respecting the opinions of those that have given you a reason to respect them. Random people off the street haven't. Most co-workers probably haven't. Your friends have. So if I'm sitting around just my friends, listening to their opinions and respecting their views, and if some asshole appears out of nowhere, and I don't know they're there, and they say, "Hey, it's a terrorist," I'm still not going to care, because I don't have "shields" that go up or down. I just have no reason to care about the opinions of people who haven't earned it.

I actually posted some responses on that blog post, and the blog author, Crommunist, actually responded. His response makes me rethink what he, Kara, Ira, and others have said.

I asked him how a guy with a shitton of degrees, a successful music career, and a hit blog could allow himself to be so disturbed by some hipster punk. He told me, exactly as Karalora stated, that it wasn't the hipster punk so much as the realization that no matter what a mixed black man him accomplishes, there'll always be one dickhead who sees him as just a ghetto thug.

In his words, he allowed himself to think the world was better than it was, for one brief moment. And he paid for it. And I see now what Kara was saying, that blog author wasn't guilty of being weak, he was guilty of expecting to be treated like a human being.

I see now. Just because Vericrat, Barkey, and I among others have found coping mechanisms to dealing with a fucked up world, sometimes I guess we forget it's not so much that we're strong, but simply that like all living things, we seek to survive. As I told Crommunist, I regret the fact that my acceptance of blanket racism is so ingrained that I don't have to lower or raise my shields.

To go with Taoist's (rather clever) analogy, I feel like I've been captaining a ship that's spent 15 years patrolling the Klingon neutral zone and has always been at yellow alert with phasers standing by. And I realize that althought I've done my job as the captain, I've forgotten what it was to command a ship at peace. I've forgotten what it's like not answer every blip on the sensors with a "Red Alert! Shields and deflectors up! Torpedoes on stand by!" I've forgotten what it's like to look at the stars and see beauty, not a threat.

I have never regretted that, until now. Not regret for finding a way to survive. But regret for realizing what survival has cost.

edited 28th Apr '12 5:54:41 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

It doesn't need to be framed that way. It's less about survival and more about not letting the trolls control the conversation. And right now, the trolls are racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted people. We don't remove their ability to talk because that would hurt us in the ways we've discussed to death. We hear them, devalue our opinions of them accordingly, and start ignoring them. Trolls/idiots/whatever you want to call them are just background static. Not letting them control how you see yourself is something I think adults need to have learned.

It's two things, comfort and satisfaction.

My life is more comfortable when I'm not busy being butthurt and offended, and I take satisfaction from challenging assholes.

So I deal with it because the alternative is letting it bug me and get in my head, and I take the fight to the aggressor because I enjoy fighting for the sake of fighting.

I agree with that, but I won't agree that everyone who isn't a friend, family or a person I respect is by a default a troll/idiot/whatever. There's a whole sliding scale of importance when it comes to people outside the said categories, starting from a stranger on the street and a dudebro in the Internet and ending with a housemate and a spouse's mother. More higher a person is in this hierarchy, more difficult it becomes to just ignore them.

The odd thing that the OP and many of the following posts, and generally an idea very pervasive on the internet, is the idea that 'the freedom of speech' suddenly makes people /offended/ by what that speech may be, to be 'wrong', to quote the thread title, "people seem just a bit too sensitive". Its almost like saying "They have the right to free speech so you don't have the right to criticise them."

edited 3rd May '12 12:46:39 PM by Mysterics

I'm all for criticism, but disagree with responses that suggest censoring the offenders. You can call the offensive person anything you want; it's only when stuff like "These people shouldn't be alowed to say these things" comes up that I get concerned.

edited 3rd May '12 2:21:28 PM by RTaco

@Sveni: Yeah, I mean it doesn't have to be an insulting classification like idiot/troll or whatever. It's just that respect for one's opinions should be earned. Random people off the street who have done nothing to earn my respect don't have the ability to bother me. Not because they're necessarily idiots, just that I don't think letting someone random control how I see myself is a good idea. And as soon as they say something racist or bigoted or whatever that would set off someone's "oh no, I'm offended" alarm, I just reclassify them as idiots.

@Mysterics: Who here has said that somebody doesn't have the right to criticize just because of free speech? I'm using my free speech to criticize people who get worked up over little things. They're perfectly welcome to come up and say, "Hey, I think that we should all take offense whenever someone so much as sneezes the wrong way." I just don't get where you think anybody has said, "The sensitives (for lack of a better term) shouldn't be allowed to voice their complaints or views." Instead I've been saying, "They shouldn't be so sensitive."

It's not freedom of speech that makes them (in my opinion) wrong, either. It's their attitude toward what other people say. It hurts them, and I'm advocating learning to not be hurt by what people say, especially because we live in a society where free speech is celebrated. Because people are able to say what they want, you will always hear something you'd rather you hadn't - the solution would be to stop being so sensitive.

I get that. I don't know about you, but if a friend of a friend spends the whole evening hitting my Berserk Button even after I've told them to stop, I will experience an emotional reaction. They don't have to earn my respect to earn that reaction. Thus I can't tell other people what kind of emotional reactions they should have around people who haven't earned their respect. There are cases when people overreact and pointing-out that is fine, but just because someone feels offended isn't enough of an indicator to prove that this is the case.

My bad R Taco, I agree with you there, I think I jumped the gun a bit there.

edited 4th May '12 1:23:35 PM by Mysterics

Not sure I agree. Learning to move past your Berserk Button is part of what I'm discussing, or at least making something productive of it. If you think rape jokes are completely insensitive, it doesn't do much good to go off on people who tell them - instead find a way of calmly discussing your point of view. And if they still keep telling them, then you know they're insensitive jerkoffs. Not worth the emotion.

In your situation, I'd probably be more annoyed with my friend for bringing them, because he's the one whose opinion I would have trusted and respected in the first place.

Yeah ok, maybe we somewhat agree. I advocate managing your Berserk Button . Keeping your cool in a sense is a key factor when telling someone how you want to treated, but that doesn't mean you can't be aggressive. Depending on the situation aggression might even work better than reasoning. And aggression needs emotions. But when menacing turns hysterical, you've lost. Of course when dealing with reasonable people you should not use threatening tone.

I find jerkoffs annoying, not our mutual friends.

I recently noticed how often people use "I'm offended" as an argument in OTC. Even when I don't want anyone to feel guilt about those feeling, they just can't function as an argument. So in this context, I agree with you.

EDIT: What I'm arguing against is oversimplifying social situations to "you shouldn't care what people outside categories X say" and "you shouldn't experience feeling Y".

edited 5th May '12 7:04:53 AM by sveni