In the last post, I talked about feeling like compassion, empathy, and undrestanding only went one way. I have a knee-jerk reaction to being told to look at the other person’s point of view because, well, I do that on the regular. It’s nearly automatic for me. When I read letters in advice columns, I can come up with half a dozen reasons why people act the way they do. As a minority in many ways, I have to know more about other people’s ways of thinking than they do about me. It’s always the case. People in the minority need to know how people in the majority think, but not vice-versa.
So, miss me with telling me I need to think about other people. It’s somewhat faulty reasoning on my part because I sill have my biases, of course. But it’s not unreasonable of me to be tired of people demanding I pay attiontion to their issues without giving one whit of a shit about mine.
I know a trans man who turns every conversation into a mandate about him. If someone is talking about a bad date and describes how the woman did not interact with him at all, dropping her end of the conversation, the minute we empathized with the commenter, the trans man would write a long screed about how he was that woman–and why being trans, autisitic, and ADHD (and also an alcoholic, but he won’t admit that) was so hard when it came to dating.
I’m not doubting what he said. I know it has to be hard for him to date. But we weren’t talking about him, and somehow, he made it all about him again. And several people spent several minutes reassuring him that it was different for him and that he would find love one day.
I took a different route because he was displaying incel behavior, which made me uneasy. He had imbibed enough of toxic masculinity to believe that if he was nice to someone, he deserved a boyfriend in return. While I believe that everyone deserves love on an individual level, no one is owed it from any given person.
I tried to be diplomatic, but I said (wrote) from my own experience. I have been rejected for a long list of reasons, and there are many people who don’t date Asians. That’s just one of them. I said while in theory, yes, it’s racism and people should not NOT date someone simply because of their race, I did not want to date someone who wasn’t enthusiastic about dating me.
In other words, people are allowed not to date you for any given reason. You are not owed a date from anybody. Demanding it is messy and, quite frankly, creepy. This is all without minimizing how difficult dating is, especially when you start adding differences to the pot. But this guy was so unrelentingly woe-is-me and wresting attention no matter what, I could understand why he was having a hard time finding dates–apart from the very obvious isms he faced.
I think we need to be allowed to say out loud that just because someone is in a minority or three, they are not a saint or above reproach. I’ve said it a time or ten. Being a minority and being an asshole are not mutually exclusive. You should not attack someone’s identity, obviously, but that doesn’t mean you can’t disagree with anythinng they say.
I will say, if it’s not your lane (such as racism for black people and you’re not black), then you should hang back and listen more than you talk. That’s the thing that I find gobsmacking. People who have no experience in an area speaking confidently about that issue. There was a letter to AAM about a trans issue. So many people confidently commented on it without being trans. So confidnetly. This happens every time there’s a post about queer people–especially trans.
Another time, there was a case of a coworker finding out ‘John’ was transgender and seemed to be fine with it. But then ‘Lizzy’ (the coworker) went digging and found out that John used to be ‘Sally’ (wrote professional papers under that name. Lizzy started calling John Sally out of ‘respect for his mother’.
It was a wild letter. However, the thing that struck me was how many non-trans people said that Lizzy probably found out by accident. And when trans people said, “Nope. This happens all the time to trans people”, they doubled down on it being an accident. They could not conceieve that someone would go actively looking, so they dismissed the possibility.
I understand the impulse. You don’t want to think that people can be that low. Who would do a deep dive on someone to see what you can dig up on them just so you can be a jerk to them? You don’t want to think you’re working with an asshole like that. But there are so many people who just don’t like trans people. This is for real. Look at what Florida is doing right now. It’s a disgrace.
Side note. I hate Disney. A lot. I don’t think a corporation should be allowed to be their own fiefdom. I just don’t. There is too much room for abuse there. There have been many lawyerly articles written about this and I have nothing legalistically relevant to say beacuse I am not a lawyer. But in a case between Disney and DeSantis, I am reluctantly rooting for Disney. Every fucking time. Because DeSantis is a piece of shit and deserves to have his face rubbed in it at every opportunity. I’ve long since said that people who truly believe the shit they say are one (bad) thing (in the case of transphobes and such), but those who spout that shit without actually believing it are evil. That would be DeSantis. He’s going to run for president, so he has to appeal to the rightwingers that will elect him. I want him to be politically stomped into the ground.
That does not mean I like Disney. I do not. I think they are just the lesser of two evils, and it’s not even close. I would like to choose no evil, but this is the real world. It’s all evil. Just which flavor is the least disgusting.
Anyway, I hate being told to think of the other person’s point of view. It’s usually the person who is already at a disadvantage who is asked to do that. In addtition, said person oftentimes has already lived the dominant point of view. I feel that way a lof the time, even when I’m not the one in the minority (meaning equal minorities, not me being in the majority. I am rarely in the majority). Do I have a chip on my shoulder? You bet I do. I feel like I’m being asked to make accomodations all the time, but I never get any. Even something as simple as allergies become a thing. Nobody cares about scent allergies. Even the very progressive readers at Ask A Manager glide right by it. “Have a sage ceremony” at work to cleanse the bad spirits. How about no? I’m allergic to sage and just about everything else on earth. Plus, i’m not religious so any kind of religious ceremony would make me uncomfortable. But, that apparently doesn’t matter.
I don’t work in an office. This is one reason. Add to that the fact that I can’t eat most things offered as rewards in an office, and it’s pretty isolating. And, yeah, I know if I worked in an office, I could ask for accomodations and would, but that’s pretty othering as well. Especially when people don’t take it seriously or think you’re being a diva.
I did a performance piece a few decades ago about having compassion fatigue. It still stands. I try to be empathetic most of the time. I try to understand where people are coming from, but I have a line that is getting crossed way too much these days. I need a break.