Talking about what someone would have wanted only makes sense if that person is dead.
If the person you’re talking about is still alive, talk about what they do want.
And assume that they want to live. Almost everyone does.
Even if they’re brain damaged, even if they’re in pain, even if they have dementia, even if they no longer recognize people.
They’re still a person. They’re still there. And they still want things.
So don’t ask what they would have wanted. Ask what they do want.
Some people apologize all the time, for everything. This can be very annoying.
Here’s a conversation:
Telling someone off for that kind of thing doesn’t help. People who do this do it for a reason; they’ve often been taught that they always have to want what other people want. They’ve been taught that it’s rude to ever express a desire. This is not something you can fix by getting annoyed.
In fact, you can’t fix it at all, because you can’t actually fix other people in any case. But getting annoyed makes the problem worse. So does telling someone off for apologizing. Some people need to apologize and adopt a deferential tone in order to feel ok about expressing preferences and boundaries. If you put pressure on people not to apologize, it makes it harder for them to tell you what they want. Don’t take it personally, and don’t take it out on them. It’s not your fault, and it’s not their fault either.
There are things that you can say that sometimes help other people to feel more comfortable expressing desires, if you can say them in a non-annoyed tone of voice:
This post I think is not quite right. It’s something I know a bit about, but there are parts I don’t understand too. Anyway, here are some things I think I know about dirty jokes.
Jokes about the following subjects are usually considered dirty (some of these jokes are relatively innocuous):
Rude jokes that are dirty because they deal with impolite subject matter can be ok to tell in some circumstances, but not others:
There are three basic situations in which these jokes are usually ok:
It’s almost always a bad idea to tell rude jokes to people you have power over:
There’s also another kind of dirty joke: the hate joke. Hate jokes are about hurting people. Hate jokes say bad things about other groups, or express violent desires, then make somewhat more socially acceptable by phrasing it as a joke:
Basically, the bottom line is that it still matters what you’re saying if you’re making a joke while you’re saying it.
This kind of conversation is a major red flag:
Another version:
It’s especially bad when:
In a mutually respectful relationship:
If someone close to you claims that you’re accusing them of being abusive every time you have a conflict with them, they probably are, in fact, being abusive.
If you have a lot of privilege, you’ve learned to take up all or most of the space when you’re around people below you in the hierarchy.
It’s important to learn to stop doing that. It’s important to learn how to be in a space without dominating it. It means learning to listen to people you’ve been systemically taught that it’s ok to talk over.
This can be hard to learn. When you stop dominating spaces, you have to live with less control, space, and attention than you’ve become accustomed to. You’re going to feel constrained, and like the other people are taking up all the space – even if you’re still taking up most of it.
And, once it becomes clear that you’re trying, people will express anger at you a lot more than then used to. This might feel really unfair, since you’re acting better than you ever have before, yet you’re attracting a lot more anger and criticism.
The reason it works this way is because people used to put up with you treating them badly because they didn’t see any point in objecting. Most people who have privilege and power over others don’t especially care about how it hurts people. Further, a lot of them get really angry and retaliate when it’s pointed out. You’ve shown that you’re someone who might actually listen. That means you’re the one who gets yelled at.
It’s not fair, but the people who are yelling at you aren’t the ones responsible for the unfairness. Don’t get angry at them for it – get angry at the people like you who aren’t getting yelled at because they don’t give a damn. And maybe start calling them on it and make their indifference cost them something. You’re probably in a much better position to do this than the people below you in the hierarchy.
And keep in mind that the situation faced by the people who are yelling at you is a hell of a lot more unfair than the situation you’re in.
That said, don’t beat yourself up for feeling frustrated, either. This is hard, and it’s ok to find it difficult. You’re going to make mistakes, and some of this is really going to suck. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or that you can’t learn how to act right. (Also, sometimes people will tell you that you’re oppressing them when you’re not. You can’t automatically assume that everyone is right when they tell you off – but if you’re in a highly privileged group and you think *everyone* who is telling you off is wrong, you’re probably the one who is wrong.)
Just keep trying, and don’t make the people below you responsible for making you feel better.
In the US, certain things are ritual greetings that follow a standard script. Deviating from it is considered a bit weird (but it’s also common, and possible to get away with. I deviate from it often).
“How are you?” is not usually intended as a real question. The expected answer is along the lines of “Fine, and you?”
The default answer to “what’s up?” is something like “nothing”, or “Not too much; yourself?”. It’s considered slightly less weird to answer
Sometimes, words are misleading. Sometimes, if you only pay attention to words, it can make communication difficult.
Words are approximations, and they don’t mean the same thing to the everyone. Patterns of words can have very, very different connotations for different people. The same words, even the same phrases, can mean radically different things said by different people.
(Even slur words, sometimes. But I’m mostly not talking about those here.)
So you can’t rely on just the words. That’s misleading. A lot of other things matter too.
Part of it is paying attention to what you know about the person. Do their words match what you’d expect them to say? Is there another way of reading those words that matches that person better?
If someone seems to be saying something dramatically out of character, it’s entirely possible that they don’t mean what you expect those words to mean. It can be good to ask. Like, to say that those words seem to say x, did they really mean that, or something else?
In person, paying attention to tone can be helpful. And body language. And what sort of mood they seem to be in. And pauses. Not everyone can use all of these cues, and that’s ok, you don’t have to.
But there’s always more going on than exact literal meanings of words.
Facebook is an environment with confusing boundaries. It’s easy to inadvertently cross lines on Facebook. Almost everyone ends up inadvertently violating boundaries on Facebook that they would never violate in person.
But not all boundary violation on Facebook are like that. Facebook can also be used for stalking. Serious stalking. Not semi-cute awkwardness like commenting on too many things.
Facebook can be used to harass people. It can be used to try to force contact. It can be used to track someone’s movements. It can be used to find out who the victim associates with, and then to try to use those people to get to them.
If you are Facebook friends with both an abuser and their victim, this can hurt the victim. It can, and often does, result in you accidentally giving information to the abuser that it is dangerous to the victim to have. This is the case even if the victim has blocked the abuser.
(For instance, photos of the victim that you post or comment on can show up in the abuser’s news feed.)
If you’re close to someone who is extracting themself from an abusive relationship, and they ask you to unfriend their abuser, it’s important to take that request seriously.
Three year old children in preschool are some of the least socially powerful people in our culture. But, they are routinely given a lot of choices about what they do and how they do it.
They’re not usually required to do painful and boring things over and over with no regard to their feelings or their experiences. And, from time to time, they can say no to something an adult had planned for them and have it stick.
Preschool teachers know that their work depends in large part on getting the willing cooperation of most of their students. That doing things to them over their miserable protests over and over is probably going to end poorly.
All too often, therapy for people with disabilities is less respectful, consensual, and individualized than the average preschool class.
If you’re exercising more control over a ten year old kid with a disability than you’d feel comfortable exercising over a nondisabled three year old child, you’re doing it wrong. All the more so if you’re doing it to an older child or an adult.
There are a lot of slurs that are so ingrained into English-speaking culture that people who say them don’t always realize that they are slurs.
And…
I’m a bit uneasy about saying those words, so I’m not going to include any examples. (I’m not sure that’s the right decision, but that’s what I’m doing for this post). But if people these words are used against want to reblog with comments or send asks, that would be very welcome.