Tag: compassion fatigue | A Banana Peeled

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Posted on May 3, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

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.

Compassion and reciprocity

Posted on May 2, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

For most of my life, I have been resigned to being ignored. I live in the in-between because I am not one of the two dominant groups in any category. I am Asian–not black or white. I am bi–not gay or straight. More recently, I am areligious–not a believer or an atheist. And, sigh, finally, I am agender, not man nor woman. Oh, and also not cis or trans. By the way, I have never related to cis–even when I reluctantly accepted the label ‘woman’.

I am resigned to the fact that I don’t fit anywhere. I will also say that while I’m a creative person, I don’t live that lifestyle. I don’t drink or do drugs, and Idon’t want to be around people who do. There are times, though, that I just snap (internally) at a situation in which I normally would try to be compassionate. Why? Because I feel as if I’m always asked to be the one with empathy and I don’t get the same courtesy in response. Nobody gives a shit about Asian people, for example. It never comes up when racism is talked about. It’s currently Asian-Pacific Islander month, and no one gives a shit about that.

As a result, I have a slight chip on my shoulder when I hear calls for empathy. Where is my empathy, I ask? I have eaten a lot of shit on identity issues because I don’t want to make waves/others have it worse/I don’t care THAT much. But, the cumulative effect is wearying.

I try to be respectful of other people, and it bothers me when I don’t get that respect in return. Like when gender/pronoun issues are brought up. The current way of thinking is to offer pronouns and encourage others to do the same. Which I’m fine with. It crosses the line for me when it’s required. Some people are questioning and others of us don’t want pronouns. I don’t like any of them. My Taiji teacher asked if I wanted to use a neopronoun. Nope. Don’t like those, either. I don’t want any, which makes things much more difficult. I acknowledge that. The way we speak English is predicated on pronouns. I accept that and am resigned to the fact that people will use some really awkward sentences for me if they need to avoid pronouns. Someone on the Ask A Manager website explained that those of us who identified as agender and did not want to use pronouns knew that people were going to make awkward statements. That was a tradeoff we were willing to take. Which I agree is true.

But, here’s the thing for me. I try to be empathetic most of the time. I think about others and how they might be feeling. I don’t feel I get the same respect in return, so I’m not happy about being asked to do even more. I recognize that’s a me-thing, but at some point, there has to be reciprocity. If someone is asking me to be thoughtful of their identity, then they need to be respcetful of mine as well.

I’m tired of feeling it’s a one-way street. That I have to be endlessly understanding whereas I don’t deserve it in response. I know that’s partly my upbringing and partly my training as an emotional support person, but I do have a breaking point.

I have said for quite some time that you can be both a minority and an asshole. They are not mutually exclusive. And while I respect people’s identities, that does not mean that they are good people. I think there needs to be a line drawn somewhere. I’m not sure where or how, but we have to have a discussion about respecting people’s identities but acknowledging that they can still be assholes.

For example. Caitlin Jenner. I respect that she is a woman. However, she is a shitty woman who wants to deny other women their rights. That’s shitty.

Compassion fatigue is setting in

Posted on August 25, 2021 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Many years ago, I did a performance piece about my bowl of compassion being empty and I feel the same way now. I was watching a news clip about a family in–I want to say Alabama, but it could have been Tennessee. Or Arkansas–somewhere south. They had a family get-together of something like ten people. None of them vaxxed. All got Covid. The pregnant 19-year-old daughter ended up in the hospital (the rest recovered). CNN interviewed the mother and she said, “We let down our guard. Like everyone in the world, we thought this pandemic wasn’t that big a deal. It hadn’t touched our family yet.” I’m paraphrasing, but that was pretty much what she said as her daughter was on a ventilator. They managed to induce the baby (who I assume is fine, but maybe not?) and the doc teared up as he was talking to CNN.

First of all, who’s “everyone”, lady? Most people know that this is a big deal, especially with the Delta variant. You didn’t let down your guard; you were being fucking idiots. There was a Dear Prudence letter early in the pandemic by someone who was upset with their brother’s family for being pro-Covid is a hoax, not taking any steps to social distance, jeering at them for being cautious–and, of course, got Covid. The letter writer was infuriated that they set up a Go Fund Me and did not want to contribute. Danny (Prudence) said that no one deserved Covid, especially given how confusing the government response was to it.

Now. I will say that sixteen months ago, yes, we were in a state of confusion. But, after the first month, most of us realized that what was happening wasn’t normal or going away any time soon. More to the point, it’s a matter of degrees. At that time, anyone who had qualms and was struggling to understand things, I can sympathize with that. It’s the declaring everyone else sheeples and loudly announcing their idiotic behavior that is annoying as fuck. Did they deserve Covid? That’s not the right way to look at it. The right mindset is that Covid is the natural consequence to their behavior.

Fast-forward to this family. I felt bad for the young woman as I would for anybody in that situation, but my immediate thought was impatience. Like, what the fuck did you expect to happen and you’re damn lucky it was only one of the people who had to be hospitalized. It wasn’t that you let down your guard–it was that you have a faulty belief in the first place. I hope the young woman pulls through, but this is the natural consequence of their actions. I don’t expect people to know the ins and outs of the coronavirus, but for the love of god! We’ve been at this for sixteen months. If you don’t know the basics by now–it’s highly contagious, especially the Delta variant–then I can’t help you.

My empathy bowl is empty

Posted on November 25, 2020 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Was reading my stories (AAM being the main) and there was a question about what to do when your boss was wearing his mask wrong (under the nose). I ran into this when I went to the gas station. An employee was wearing her mask under her nose. I just stayed away and got out as quickly as possible. I know I could have told her to pull it up, but it’s a young woman working a low-paying job. I had my mask on and I was only in there for five minutes. I wasn’t going to add to her already shitty day. However.

If I were in an office where I didn’t need to be and my boss did this? Yeah, no. That would be all kinds of no. There were stories in the comments about people knowing Covid deniers (some of them coworkers) who then got Covid and they (the commenter) having a hard time having any compassion for the person. It reminded me of a question to Dear Prudence from someone whose relatives, want to say brother and sister-in-law, who were avid Covid deniers, spread misinformation, and wouldn’t social distance or wear masks. The LW (letter writer) was pissed because her brother had set up a GoFundMe when he, his wife, and all their children got Covid. He wanted LW to donate and send it around. She was furious and unloaded some righteous anger in her letter to Danny. LW said not only did she not want to give her brother money or send around his request, she had no compassion for him for getting Covid. I don’t even remember her question–probably something about should she do it, anyway? That doesn’t matter because it’s the response I want to focus on.

Danny, rightly so, took the LW to task for being vindictive in her response. He said that it wasn’t the fault of the population that the government has fucked this up so badly and people were confused. This was a few months ago, I hasten to clarify, when information about what to do wasn’t quite as obvious as it is now. Danny also said that wanting someone to pay with their life was cruel no matter the person’s behavior beforehand. He said no one deserved to get Covid for their beliefs/behaviors.

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