The Me Generation

[Reyn]

I'm not sure what this has to do with the "me generation," which has a connotation of a selfish, spoiled, narcissistic group which is always about "me first," "me, me, me." I guess I've gotten used to it and even somewhat numb to attitudes like that. I don't know if that's comparable to any kind of pronoun fixation, although my view is that, out of common courtesy, I'll call someone or refer to them in the way they wish to be referred to. It doesn't take away from anyone else, which is a key component implied in the phrase "me generation."

It is true that there is a certain narcissistic, self-centered bent within the overall culture, though I see it as across the board, not just isolated to one particular group. It's the idea that "I'm special, I'm worth it, I deserve to be at the front of the line because...well, it's me, and I'm the most important person in the universe." I can agree that people like that can come off as rather irritating. I don't really hang out with those types very much.

I once used everyone’s pronouns out of respect but I don’t anymore and I won’t. It’s not because I hate them either. It’s because I’m done supporting an agenda, bent of destroying what I value.

 

[Reyn]

So instead of telling others to get their **** together. Become a motivator for other to be stronger, show them the way to a better life.

I’m an example of someone who overcame gender dysphoria and a host of other things. I’ve done the motivation thing. People don’t listen, they just make excuses.

 

[Orbit]

I don't care what you want to call yourself but I also have the right to call you crazy if what you call yourself is absurd. Expect me to call you something I'm not comfortable calling you? We have an issue. Make laws to force me to call you something I feel wrong about calling you? You have given me reason to declare war on you and everyone like you.

That sounds a bit extreme. Have a cup of tea.

 

[Orbit]

I don't ask trans people to stop being trans, nor do I ask eccentric people to stop being eccentric. I might question things but it's their life, so they live it. However, I'm not seeing a live and let live mentality in the world around me. I'm seeing a totalitarian mindset. Abnormal people are expecting the world to change for them. I am seeing laws being made and enforced, forcing validation. I don't care if Jimmy wears a dress around town. I care that Jimmy forces people to acknowledge him as a woman by law. The same goes for the autistic people. I don't care, unless they start making me care and if I start being made to care, I'm going to defend my own interests. Fun fact? Those interests don't include people who can't handle life and how it's not like school.

"Abnormal people"? So everyone is supposed to be the same, e.g. like you?

 

[Reyn]

I respect the person who doesn’t allow disability to define them. The short person who doesn’t ask me to get somet

"Abnormal people"? So everyone is supposed to be the same, e.g. like you?

I’m not normal at all, so no. Diversity is great… until normal becomes absurd. I like that some people are crazy. It makes life interesting. I like that people do weird things. I like that there are different cultures and races. I like that women and men exist, different from one another. I don’t like turning everything into everything, since nothing has value then. I like differences.

 

[sun rise]

Do NOT compare honorific titles and labels to pronouns. "I'm a proud doctor" isn't the same thing as demanding other people use specific pronouns for you. A doctor has earned the title doctor. Johnny who thinks he's Susy hasn't earned anything other than my contempt, yet still feels fit to demand laws be changed so I am forced to call him a she. Furthermore, "Captain" is an earned rank.

My father in law basically insisted people call him "Doc" because he had a PhD. Whether it be an honorific or a pronoun, it's the same thing - people want to be called what they want to be called. Trying to divide those who I agree with wanting to be called something and disagree with because they have a different group of "want to be called" is bigotry/discrimination pure and simple

 

[sun rise]

I don't care what you want to call yourself but I also have the right to call you crazy if what you call yourself is absurd. Expect me to call you something I'm not comfortable calling you? We have an issue. Make laws to force me to call you something I feel wrong about calling you? You have given me reason to declare war on you and everyone like you.

Personally insisting that you refuse to call someone what they want to be called (no laws involved) is reason for those people to "declare war on you and everyone like you"

 

[RestlessSoul]

Why is it that people who describe others as the 'me generation' are often so frequently unable to and unwilling to see anything out of their myopic, tunneled personal experience?

I think it's a generation thing.

 

[sun rise]

, I'm not seeing a live and let live mentality in the world around me. I'm seeing a totalitarian mindset.

On the part of those refusing to call people what fits for them and even passing laws against it.

 

[sun rise]

I think it's a generation thing.

And it's been going on for a while. For my generation, calling a woman a 'girl" was offensive unless it was in the context of "girls and boys" and not as a sexist statement.

We also have words of bigotry which were in common use until people insisted they not be called by those words. And that battle is still going on.

 

[dybmh]

To add a perspective...

... I work at a university. The whole pronoun thing has really started taking off in the university culture over the past couple of years.

It's awkward.

But why does it feel awkward to me? Is it simply because it is new and unfamiliar? Because it's not how things were done before? Is it because you're uncomfortable with the outing of aspects of human diversity you might have not acknowledged the existence of before? Is it because you have some of your own unresolved identity issues that things brings to the surface? Something else entirely?

That's a good way to approach this - monitor your reaction then ask yourself where that reaction is coming from. You might learn something about yourself and others in the process.

( good to see you back here, Quintessence. I've missed your input. )

 

[JustGeorge]

It seems this "I don't want to acknowledge anybody else's identity in the way they see themselves if it doesn't fit the way I see them" seems to stem from exactly the same attitude that you're complaining about.

A person wants to have a certain pronoun used, or a certain aspect of themselves acknowledged.

You want to have it acknowledged that you don't approve of this, and prefer would folks use your view of the world.

If you didn't want your own 'special' views recognized, I suspect you wouldn't mention them so often.

I have a feeling you're not so different from the folks you're going on about.

We should move to Scottish/Australian pronouns for all. Just the 'C' word for every situation. Radical pronoun equality.

Yes! Problem solved.

 

[Secret Chief]

Well er, yes, I imagine that's the idea.

I'm not sure what you object to. Being by nature a rather impatient person, as you seem also to be, I have given a hard time to a few people on different forums I subscribe to, only to find out later they were on the autistic spectrum. Once I knew that, I was able to make some allowance for how they expressed themselves and we all got on a lot better. We have several here, in fact, not to mention a very patient and resilient mother of at least one autistic child.

Everyone brings personal "baggage" of some kind to a discussion and, on the internet, where everyone is a stranger and we can't see one another, a lot of the usual clues are unavailable. So it can save a bit of grief and misunderstanding to give people some idea about us, or at least those things that might lead to problems.

Is that really something you disapprove of?

My new job involves working with school children with various issues such as ADHD. I'm patient to the point of horizontal but I'm definitely learning how much more slack I have to cut.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

I think it's a generation thing.

I don't really. Every generation has called the next generation the 'me' generation. Boomers were called 'me' by Silent generation, Boomers called Gen X 'me,' generation x to Millenials and so on.

I think it has more to do with people perceiving their own struggles as more relevent and equally achievable and projecting other people not having that experience as failure on their part.
'I overcame x, why can't you?' It's a flattening of experience, so much so that it gets bootstrap logic.
'Pick yourself up by your bootstraps' originally meant trying to do something impossible, and is now used unironically to tell people to 'just do' something they can't.

 

[exchemist]

They tell me because they want special understanding from me and special treatment. Isn't that true?

What has that to do with rules?

 

[JustGeorge]

My new job involves working with school children with various issues such as ADHD. I'm patient to the point of horizontal but I'm definitely learning how much more slack I have to cut.

When my oldest son(who is on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum) was in first grade, his very kind and exceedingly patient teacher was having trouble with his physical behaviors during class. At this phase, he couldn't always control himself, and sometimes wouldn't even realize he was moving. "What do you do when he's jumping up and down and flapping his hands." Reluctantly, I told her "I just jump up and down and flap my hands with him."

At some point, it becomes more fruitful to change the method when you can't change the kid.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

I respect the person who doesn’t allow disability to define them. The short person who doesn’t ask me to get somet

I’m not normal at all, so no. Diversity is great… until normal becomes absurd. I like that some people are crazy. It makes life interesting. I like that people do weird things. I like that there are different cultures and races. I like that women and men exist, different from one another. I don’t like turning everything into everything, since nothing has value then. I like differences.

Would you really be offended if a short person asked you to grab something off a shelf they couldn't? It takes the literal barest minimum of effort for you but a lot more effort for them, and there's no 'scaling the grocery shelf' achievement they need to get to be a healthy adult.

Seems like a lot of fuss to kick up to be deliberately unhelpful.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Nothing irritates me more than people who are so self absorbed and oblivious to the outside world, they expect others to use special words to other people about them. I'm talking about pronoun fixation, by the way. The second thing which irritates me is how people have their various disorders listed, as if to showcase them. First, I don't know why they think people care if they are autistic, ADHD, or whatever else, including their status as indigenous or black. Someone please explain all this to me? Am I missing something here because when I was growing up, this wasn't a thing. What was a thing was people introducing themselves as a gay man or a lesbian. I found that irritating as well, since I didn't see reason to know the sexual preferences of strangers and co-workers.

Explain it to you? Yeah. People have needs that they are only recently able to express or fulfill. Some people are happy to try to accommodate them if they can, and other people are rigidly intolerant of them.

It's interesting that you frame this as others being self-centered. Isn't this thread all about YOU and what YOU don't like?

A cardinal feature of modern American society is the lack of empathy of about half of its population. Empathy is the psychological glue that turns me and thee into we. It's what's missing in these people that don't connect with others around them. They didn't care how running around without a mask terrified others, and are defiantly proud of that, calling others sheep. They don't care how terrified school children or their parents are - they want their guns and they'll parade around Wal-Mart with an assault rifle because they know it makes others uncomfortable and that there is nothing they can do about it. They're the Karens dressing down employees and anybody they don't want to see in their neighborhoods and calling the manager and the police. Their mantra in 2016 was "F*** your feelings, snowflake." They're the racists and homophobes. They're the ones who care more about "owning the libs" than the welfare of their neighbors.

And I am intolerant of them. Why shouldn't I be? They are not in my "we," or my inner circle of empathy. They are the "they," the problem for the tolerant and community minded. My worldview includes tolerance of the tolerant and intolerance of the intolerant as well as the cruel and criminal.

Okay, so you're proud of being autistic. That's weird to me but hey, you float your boat.

Pride in this context basically means refusing to be ashamed or consider oneself second-class. That's the difference between the spirit of gay pride and that of white pride. One is about achieving social parity, the other about preventing it.

I mean, I asked nicely.

You expressed your intolerance first. Nothing you say after that can be nice.

Do NOT compare honorific titles and labels to pronouns. "I'm a proud doctor" isn't the same thing as demanding other people use specific pronouns for you.

I think it is. I'm a retired physician, and cut out and framed a cartoon several decades ago that had a man with a tambourine for a head in a suit at a party nursing a cocktail who had just graduated medical school explaining to others at the party that, "It's Dr. Tambourine Man now."

charity needs to start supporting the needy, not government dollars.

When is charity planning to get around to it? In the last few years, we've seen an economic downturn because of a pandemic. Where were the charities with their support for vaccines, masks, and tests? It was the government that provided the assistance. The government has recently helped with drug prices and student loans. Where were the private charities? The government will support the clean-up and rebuilding of Ian's victims. Where are the private charities?

If men want to roam about in dresses, wear makeup, and think that makes them a woman, that's fine. However, they need to stop expecting me to validate their misinformed view of themselves and appropriation of womanhood. I'll validate their appropriation as appropriation. How about that?

I think they get the message. You're indifferent to their needs - hostile, perhaps. I personally don't care if boys want to be girls and girls want to be boys if I'm not sleeping with them. It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world 'cept for Lola, so go for it if that's your pleasure. I get pleasure when people feel better about themselves, and a dysphoric feeling seeing good people harmed. But that's the empathy thing again, without which I might be annoyed, too.

 

[syo]

Nothing irritates me more than people who are so self absorbed and oblivious to the outside world, they expect others to use special words to other people about them. I'm talking about pronoun fixation, by the way. The second thing which irritates me is how people have their various disorders listed, as if to showcase them. First, I don't know why they think people care if they are autistic, ADHD, or whatever else, including their status as indigenous or black.

Someone please explain all this to me? Am I missing something here because when I was growing up, this wasn't a thing. What was a thing was people introducing themselves as a gay man or a lesbian. I found that irritating as well, since I didn't see reason to know the sexual preferences of strangers and co-workers.

Let them. Big deal...

 

[Harel13]

Here in Israel there's a joke about food (well, we are Jews...) as a reflection of the generational gap:
Roughly:

"In the past, everything was about sharing, and that's why the foods were called kneidalach, rugalach, etc...
​

(kneidalach = matzo balls, with the 'lach' being a Yiddish plural suffix; rugalach are a kind of croissant-like product, and again, the 'lach' is a Yiddish plural suffix. However, word 'lach' (לך) in Hebrew means 'for you').

Nowadays everyone is self-centered and so all you find is bisli and kefli..."
​

(bisli is an Israeli snack that literally means 'a bite for me' in Hebrew and kefli is another snack that means 'fun for me/I'm having fun').