Things That Piss Me Off

Because those around me are getting bored of hearing me bitch 🙂 In no particular order…

Victim-Shaming

I don’t know if I’m just noticing this more recently, or if this is a growing trend, but I am so sick of people victim-shaming others. Firstly, if you’ve never been in a particular situation yourself, NEVER start a conversation with “If I was in that situation I’d…” because you’re talking out of your arse. Nobody knows how they’d deal with something until it actually happens to them, so judging others based on some fanciful perception of (a) there being a right way to deal with trauma (because clue: there isn’t), and (b) you assuming you’d do things differently, just makes you look like a dick. Stop it.

Blaming the Wrong Person

Partly linked to victim-shaming (because nobody ‘asks for it’, no matter what they did, how they dressed, how much they drank or where they were), but also a phenomena in its own right, particularly when we think about cheating. I’m thinking here about the girl whose boyfriend cheats on her and she gets mad at the other woman, for example. Understand who the parties are and who owes what to whom. It’s the cheating boyfriend who’s at wrong, not the girl who, for all anyone knows, he told he was single. Place blame where blame is due, however difficult that might be to deal with.

‘Boys Don’t Cry’ Mentality

If I see one more time somebody moaning about a guy because he’s too sensitive, too emotional, too girly, I’ll scream. Firstly, understand the misogyny inherent in believing that (a) crying is a female trait, and (b) crying is weak. Secondly, understand that whole generations of men are being fucked the righteous fuck up by this kind of thinking. We are training men to repress their emotions, stunting their self-expression, and then wondering why young guys are at the highest risk of suicide, and have the worst demographics for violence, aggression, and general emotional-retardedness. Men should be as free to express all their feelings (because you can bet your ass they have them), as and when they feel them, without stigma or shame.

…Lack of Empathy in General

Just because something is outside of someone’s realm of experience, doesn’t make it invalid. Expecting all people to behave in the same way all the time is to negate the very individuality that is fundamental to being human. I, for one, don’t want to be a robot. I don’t want to live among them or read about them, either. When confronted with something new, or some reaction which seems foreign, instead of making a snap judgement that it’s wrong, why not take a step back and see if there’s something you can learn from it instead?

Abusing Systems of Protection

A big one on Facebook at the moment, with the flurry of LGBT-themed images (predominantly of men) being removed and users being blocked or banned. The report function is there for a reason, and that reason is not because you’re offended by the sight of a man-nip or an almost kiss. Remember those kids who raped that girl and posted the images online? Yeah, that’s the sort of material the report button is for. For everything else, unfollow, unlike, move on.

Drama for Drama’s Sake

The flip side of the Facebook debacle. Just because Facebook is removing LGBT-themed images, doesn’t mean Facebook itself is homophobic. One of its two founders is gay, for god’s sake. There are not (for the most part) actual people removing those images and blocking that content, there’s a bot somewhere designed to automatically pull anything that gets an excessive amount of reports.

Another example is Coke. Their handling of their Sochi sponsorship is atrocious and they need to step the hell up where it comes to LGBT rights (no, I don’t count one ad at the Superbowl as doing enough — although it’s a good start) but I hope whichever smartarse discovered and publicised the fact that their new ‘print your own name on a Coke can’ function blocks the word ‘gay’ but not a multitude of LGBT slurs is real proud of themselves. Again, it doesn’t make the whole company homophobic, it just means you thought of a slur that they didn’t when they were creating the programme, and they’ve blocked the use of the word ‘gay’ (itself a legitimate first name) precisely to prevent it from being used as a slur. Give them a break and don’t go looking for trouble when we have enough of it in the world already.

Misunderstanding Triggers

Death is a trigger. Rape. Extreme violence. These things especially in genres where they don’t necessarily belong (e.g. romance). The point of a ‘trigger’ is to prevent psychological harm for people suffering from depression, PTSD, and the like. They are not there to stop you from getting butthurt. That means that anything else — cheating, name-calling, a general lack of everybody being happy-smiley and getting along with everybody else all the live-long day — is not a trigger. It’s a plot point you might not like, but don’t liken your dislike to a rape victim suffering a flashback.

People Getting Butthurt in General

“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.”

— Stephen Fry

That about sums this point up. Don’t like something, don’t look at it, don’t read it, don’t speak its name, but don’t expect the rest of the world to have to pander to you in order to make your own life peachy. Life is hard and there is a fuckton of crap happening in the world. Getting butthurt over it and saying you don’t want to see it is, quite frankly, taking a head in the sand attitude to life’s problems. Why not plug your ears, close your eyes, and sing loudly until all the bad things go away? Or, why not open your eyes and try confronting some of the bad stuff to make it actually go away instead?

~~~

So, yes, I’ve ranted. I’m not sorry. I’m bored of seeing people trying to tailor the world to fit their own idea of what it should be like by cutting out all the bad bits. Newsflash: bad things happen because good people do nothing. More than nothing, I seem to see more and more evidence that people are going out of their way to eradicate hearing about the bad things. They don’t want to deal with them, they want to pretend they don’t exist. This is exactly the environment under which they flourish. And I, for one, am sick of it.

But now I’ve got it out of my system (and had a chance to moan about what pisses me off, for a change), I’m done. Normal service will now be resumed 🙂