Part of being Privileged is not having to think about being Privileged

[Wherenextcolumbus]

I have tried to suppress feeling offended over sexist comments, but that only allows it to manifest and hit me a couple of days later, so instead of accepting how I feel, suppressing it just further punishes me.

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

Yeah you are right I don't get, sounds like a white, cis, straight, male proverb.

OMG this.

I really, really hate the advice to "choose" not to be offended by hateful speech. It's like "choosing" not to be burned when someone forcibly holds your hand in a fire. Yeah it'd be great to pretend that all is well, but the fact is--it hurts.

In short, telling people to not get offended, and then criticizing them when they do, is victim-blaming.

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

I'm not talking about groups. I'm talking about individuals. As an individual, regardless of one's gender, race, nationality, sexuality, or personal history, it's up to each of us to decide how we will react to things and how much power we will give other people to affect us. People, as individuals, almost always do what works for them. You can have two people with similar backgrounds and in similar situations - one may always become irate and offended while the other person puts it in it's context and doesn't give the idiot insulting them the power to offend them. The person who always chooses to be offended does so because being offended works for them.

To dismiss one's gender, race, nationality, sexuality, and other such factors is to partially dismiss who a person is.

It's kinda hard to give proper advice to someone when you don't even know who they are.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I think we have the potential to exercise much greater control than we normally do over our feelings. It seems to me that, at 56, I'm much more in control of my feelings than I was at, say, 36. So perhaps some learning how to control my feelings has gone on there.

Absolutely. There is not only a matter of learned experience, but also of inherent personality and one's overall worldview.

So does that mean we can control to any significant extent whether someone or something offends us? Ideally, I suppose it does. But I would argue greatly against any notion that our ability to control whether something offends us shifts the blame from the perpetrator to the victim. That's just asinine, since it would imply that blame is determined, not by who perpetrates an act, but by how people feel about the act.

I always find it interesting how many conversations lead to the idea of blame in one way or another. Many people seem to have an overriding drive to look for and assign blame as opposed to approaching problems and situations from a pragmatic perspective. In my experience this is a primary determining factor between individuals which separates those who tend towards a victim mentality, and those who tend towards a productive mentality. Perhaps, this is one of those situations characterized by "never the twain shall meet."

 

[Sunstone]

I suspect that suppressing one's feelings is not the best way to control them. When you suppress a feeling -- whether it's a feeling of offense, or is any other feeling -- the feeling is still there, festering. By suppressing it, you have done little or no more than shift your awareness away from it while trying to behave as if it gone. But so far as I know, that doesn't end the matter. The suppressed feeling often enough will out. And it will sometimes out in destructive ways.

So, I think there are better ways to control one's feelings than to suppress them.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I have tried to suppress feeling offended over sexist comments, but that only allows it to manifest and hit me a couple of days later, so instead of accepting how I feel, suppressing it just further punishes me.

Suppressing feelings means that you still have them though, and suppressing feelings doesn't make them go away. You'd have to learn how to recontextual such remarks in order that they don't affect you the same way. Ask yourself this: if someone makes a sexist remark to you, why do you care so much about what they think?

 

[Alceste]

I have tried to suppress feeling offended over sexist comments, but that only allows it to manifest and hit me a couple of days later, so instead of accepting how I feel, suppressing it just further punishes me.

Exactly. Suppression is not the answer. Suppression is doing the ******** a favour. That's what they want - to do and say incredibly oppressive things to women without ever facing any consequences for it. Not even a verbal retort. My dad wanted me to sue the union and I didn't. I thought if I kept my head down, cooperated, stayed friendly and played nice I might be "allowed" to work again. Nope. In retrospect, I should have sued them and made an incredibly big stink about it. Called the newspapers. Since I have not been allowed to work since then anyway, who cares, right? Maybe I could have gotten a payoff. As it was, I broke even. My brief career paid off the education I bought to get my foot in the door, and that's it. I considered going back to school, but the risk seemed too great. I couldn't think of a job I wanted that wasn't a "man's" job (electrician, engineer, carpenter, programmer, etc), so I spent the next decade doing nice, womanly admin work for next to nothing. That's what suppression gets you.

 

[Sunstone]

I always find it interesting how many conversations lead to the idea of blame in one way or another. Many people seem to have an overriding drive to look for and assign blame as opposed to approaching problems and situations from a pragmatic perspective. In my experience this is a primary determining factor between individuals which separates those who tend towards a victim mentality, and those who tend towards a productive mentality. Perhaps, this is one of those situations characterized by "never the twain shall meet."

I don't often talk about things in terms of blame because I find the concept on the one hand relatively useless, and on the other hand rather inflammatory because of all the baggage it carries.

Having said all that, I don't know if contrasting a victim mentality with a productive mentality is fitting. Seems to me some folks who are aware of themselves as victims are pretty productive. But I think I know what you're trying to get at.

 

[Alceste]

Suppressing feelings means that you still have them though, and suppressing feelings doesn't make them go away. You'd have to learn how to recontextual such remarks in order that they don't affect you the same way. Ask yourself this: if someone makes a sexist remark to you, why do you care so much about what they think?

Gosh, I don't know Kilgore, why do you think sexist remarks **** me off? Could it be because sexism and male privilege has cost me, personally, over $50K a year for the past 15 years? Oh no, couldn't be that, I must be a drama queen who gets off on playing the victim.

 

[Wherenextcolumbus]

Suppressing feelings means that you still have them though, and suppressing feelings doesn't make them go away. You'd have to learn how to recontextual such remarks in order that they don't affect you the same way. Ask yourself this: if someone makes a sexist remark to you, why do you care so much about what they think?

Because as a women what someone thinks is apart of everyday sexism against my sex. Like Mystic said most of the time what someone says and thinks about a particular group does not exist in a vacuum.
I have been told I am boring, I am weird, I am naive, none of those things offend me.

 

[Sunstone]

Like Mystic said most of the time what someone says and thinks about a particular group does not exist in a vacuum.

Heather makes an excellent point there. Regardless of whether or not one is compelled by others to feel offense, there seems to be a significant difference between my saying to someone that I don't like their shirt and my saying to them that I don't like their gender. The one is supported only by me. The other has a whole infrastructure behind it.

 

[Magic Man]

I find it interesting that you often confuse "attempts at convincing" with "immature and incessant hissy fits."

I find it interesting that you've convinced yourself that this true in an effort to easily dismiss arguments you don't like.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Gosh, I don't know Kilgore, why do you think sexist remarks **** me off? Could it be because sexism and male privilege has cost me, personally, over $50K a year for the past 15 years? Oh no, couldn't be that, I must be a drama queen who gets off on playing the victim.

No comment.

But seriously, do you think the last 15 years of your lack of income comes down to just sexism? You don't feel there's any other paths or decisions you could have made over the last decade and a half to make more money if you wanted to? I've known dozens of women who make a hell of a lot more money than I do, and I'm pretty sure most of them have probably experienced sexism at one time or another.

 

[Magic Man]

I think we have the potential to exercise much greater control than we normally do over our feelings. It seems to me that, at 56, I'm much more in control of my feelings than I was at, say, 36. So perhaps some learning how to control my feelings has gone on there.

I'd argue that has more to do with the mellowing of temperament that age supplies than learning to control emotions. I'd say it also has a lot to do with the resignation that sets in with age that the world isn't going to change.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I find it interesting that you've convinced yourself that this true in an effort to easily dismiss arguments you don't like.

I'm not dismissing your arguments, as you haven't made any. I'm dismissing you, as I have had enough experience with you to know that it's a fruitless endeavor to attempt to engage in meaningful discussion with you. I do always enjoy your unintentional irony though.

 

[Sunstone]

I'd argue that has more to do with the mellowing of temperament that age supplies than learning to control emotions. I'd say it also has a lot to do with the resignation that sets in with age that the world isn't going to change.

Nice guesswork! I think those things play a role, but that they are only part of the story. I know I've learned a lot about how to how to control my emotions, in addition to both mellowing and resignation.

 

[Magic Man]

I'm not dismissing your arguments, as you haven't made any. I'm dismissing you, as I have had enough experience with you to know that it's a fruitless endeavor to attempt to engage in meaningful discussion with you. I do always enjoy your unintentional irony though.

It's interesting to me that you've convinced yourself that I haven't made any real arguments. I do realize, as I said before, that our attempts here to talk sense to you are in vain, and that you'll continue to condescendingly and arrogantly dismiss any arguments you don't like, though. Reality on this topic is not likely to get through your considerable defenses, but it's always nice to keep bringing it up.

As I'm sure you've already noted, I can easily have conversations with many others that don't devolve into this. For instance, you can look at my back-and-forth with Sunstone right here. But that's because I'm not dealing with condescending, dismissive posts that ignore everything I say in those cases. Funny how that works, isn't it?

 

[Magic Man]

Nice guesswork! I think those things play a role, but that they are only part of the story. I know I've learned a lot about how to how to control my emotions, in addition to both mellowing and resignation.

Interesting. How would you say you've learned to control your emotions?

 

[Kilgore Trout]

As I'm sure you've already noted, I can easily have conversations with many others that don't devolve into this. For instance, you can look at my back-and-forth with Sunstone right here. But that's because I'm not dealing with condescending, dismissive posts that ignore everything I say in those cases. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Good for you! Good luck with everything.

 

[Sunstone]

Interesting. How would you say you've learned to control your emotions?

Some years ago, one of my brothers advised me to "consider the source" of any insults I received. To some great extent, I then took his advice and that lead me to the recognition that, not all, but most insults have more to do with who wields them than they have to do with their target.

However, that lesson by itself was not enough for me. I still found myself routinely offended by people -- even people I knew to be idiots.

What has helped me control my emotions even more than that has been the knowledge of what it does to me to take offense at something. I discovered what it does to me through meditation. So, nowadays, when I take offense, I am quick to see what it does to me. And once I see that, the feelings of offense are very likely to evaporate. The technique or approach is not perfect, but I'd guess it's around 80% or 90% effective in my case. But that's just what works for me. I don't know if it will work for others.