Poll #936630 Standards, or overbearing righteousness?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

After reading the post...

I had an epiphany, one that I should have had AGES ago, and I think maybe I started to have once in a while in the past, but never really thought it through. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I am sure that people have conflicting opinions on whether it's good or bad (more on that later.)

A lot of things happened today, beginning at work, then on this message board, then while I was watching the news, and this is all what led up to this epiphany. The news had a story about this cute little black kid whose parents were suing his school for five million dollars because the school didn't intervene when the kid was getting bullied about his race. Other kids were writing racial slurs on his locker and other such really nasty things. I found myself bitterly thinking, "Jeez, try getting stabbed repeatedly by the crappy white kids because you look too indian, okay?" and also, "God, if I knew that back then I'd already have been a multi-millionaire." That was not my epiphany. Let's go back a step to this morning, at work.

This morning I took Sano in to get that lump on his mouth looked at (probably a little infection and I think I know where it's from--in short, no big deal, no worries about Sano, he's okay. {*knock on wood*}) Two folks there started teasing me--as usual--about being too paranoid about my pets. Actually just one of them did, and the other one just kind of visuall high-fived the other in a way that said, "Yeah, I'm with you, Big Dog, that was a pretty good one, let's make fun of people who bring their dogs to the vet!" I've seen that kind of behavior before from this person and it just about makes me sick. It was kind of the "Me, too!"ishness of it that got me peeved more than anything. I can't stand people who pretty much live up someone else's colon. A few other people see it, too, but I guess that most people ignore it.

I felt kind of this same way at the Kung Fu party when, late in the night, some guy at the bar started talking about how terrible the war was because Americans were getting killed, but the Iraqis, though, they could go die, civilian or not. There were a lot of nodding heads around him and I wondered how many people thought he was wrong and just didn't feel like walking out of the conversation for fear of causing a scene. I wondered how everyone else could sit there listening to him, unless, of course, they all agreed. But I knew of a few of them, and I knew that a few of them didn't. I was the only one who walked out.

Cut back a few days to said forum, you know the one, with all the alpha males there who think that the height of wit is rape and racist jokes, and all the bimbo females who giggle along with them in the name of being "one of the cool chicks"? That board. For a while I'd been talking to this one gal there who seemed to really have her head on straight. We got along, in that internet-way that people have, and had loads of fun talking. Up until some of the guys started with the "OMGz U shud be raped!!!" and "LOL n*ggers" crap and I called them on it. All of a sudden our conversations changed, with her telling me that I was taking it way too seriously, I should just let them have their fun. My perspective was different: that's not fun, it's harmful. She felt that nothing should ever be censored. (To the point where, when she started her own forum, she put up a section for real person fiction, which she claimed to hate. Just so's not to "censor" anyone. O_o ) I told her I just didn't think it was funny and I didn't think it should be encouraged, tacitly or via women giggling along mindlessly. (By the way, things all switched around when I mentioned in a thread that I didn't take movies altogether too seriously and she wigged out on me, saying that movies were her very life and to not take them seriously was offensive to her. Oh, but I still took rape and racism way too seriously, she maintained. Ah, and then she went on to say that threads disparaging the band we both like should be deleted. But, uhh, those rape and n*gger threads, those could stay. To avoid censorship.) Yeah, suffice it to say, I don't chat with this person anymore.

That news story and all of today got me thinking about how it was when I was in high school, and how there were always people who were right there with those abusive, racist (I'm not sure if this counts as being racist towards me; I'm only part Native American. But to the kids in school and in the neighborhood, I might as well have been Poca-freakin-hontas because of the way I looked, and still look. That was a big part of their problem with me. Does that count? I don't know.), homophobic, mysoginist losers, either ignoring them so as not to be targeted, or laughing along with them in order to be one of the group. I now work with one girl who was friends with the kid who did the stabbing. She's the nicest gal and I love her to death, but when she told me that she'd been friends with him (she and I never met in high school) and that he'd always treated her well, my first reaction was to recoil. I mean, didn't she see how horrible he was to people he didn't accept? You couldn't NOT see it, since this guy made it a point to let everyone know just how full of hate he was. I thought, Was she one of those girls giggling with him when he picked on other people? A few years ago she apologized to me for his behavior, even though I had said nothing to her on the matter. It surprised me and I didn't feel as if she had to apologize, but it gratified me in a weird way, too. Right or wrong, I felt like, You should be sorry if you ever approved of his behavior. If you ever even knew of it and didn't run screaming. Which, I think it was wrong of me to judge her like that. High school was rough, most people took what acceptance they could get, right?

Well, that's where I had my epiphany. I never accepted the acceptance of anyone I found to be horrible or stupid. If I was friends with someone and then I found out that they were this kind of cruel and petty person, I cut them out. If someone who had been cruel to me decided that they would magnanimously let me alone, and hey, maybe I wasn't so bad and we could hang out, I told them to go to hell. I think that some of my biggest conflicts have been because I've never been willing to laugh at cruelty, or even at stupidity or Drunken Retarded Fratboys, in the name of being One Of The Cool Chicks. And I've never, ever been The Cool Chick, the girl that guys seem to think are total babes because they laugh at all their dumb "Why do women blah blah..." jokes and giggle when they fart. I've been The Funny Chick ("Your friend is hilarious!" You know the scenario.) I've been The Edgy Chick ("She's intense, dude, I couldn't hang out with her.") The Scary Chick, The Tough Chick, The Mouthy Feminist, The Uppity Upstart, etc. Maybe I do take some things too seriously, but to me that's always been called "having standards." For all that was said and done to me, never once did I feel like I had to kowtow to anyone. I've never been that tittering ninny that the boy puts his arm around after he's done tripping some poor kid in the hallway. Is that a bad thing? I'm not sure. It took me this long to figure out that many of my conflicts came from the fact that I was Not That Girl. I've always been the one standing up and telling people that they were awful, stupid, cruel, etc. I mean, I could see where that could be overbearing and self righteous. But on the other hand, isn't that what you're supposed to do? Aren't you supposed to tell people you think they're wrong with they're being cruel to other people? I'm really not sure.

Anyway, that's my one deep thought for today, and it's actually not that deep after all. The rest is all fluff.