Some days I feel like a Who, as in "Horton hears a..." I seem to spend an inordinate amount of my time reminding people that I'm here - I and others like me.
The most recent thing to spur a reaction was someone who wrote a sentence beginning with "All Jewish women..." and ending with something that I not only wouldn't do but couldn't. ("All Jewish women take on their husbands' minhag" (family ritual customs) - a bit impractical for a woman who has married a man who's not Jewish.) It's not only religion, though - far from it. There have been people who unthinkingly assumed that because I seemed like a nice, reasonably normal person I must be Christian, but there have also been people who designed rock climbing walls that only worked for tall people, or who designed engineering processes that failed to consider software engineers, who only considered male points of view, or who commented that Americans (implying "all Americans") are fat and lazy, despite actually living in the US and seeing plenty of people who were neither on a daily basis. (This was someone who came from a country - Zaire - where fat people were rare enough when he lived there that it could be assumed almost anyone who carried extra weight was rich and didn't do physical labor.)
In each of these cases I feel like I'm jumping up and down yelling, "I am here, I am here, I am here, I am here!" I'm short, Jewish, female, nonobservant, a software engineer (or I was), and an American who reads, doesn't watch much TV, and whose besetting sin isn't gluttony (much). And I'm not the only one. I'm beginning to dislike words like all and every and to have a kneejerk assumption that tolerance is alway good. Of course it's not ("Oh, the Nazis have overrun Poland? Oh, well, it's just their little way, and they're not bothering us any"), because kneejerk reactors run exactly the risk of doing what I'm complaining about and assuming every situation is the same.
What I really need, I think, is a little guy riding on my shoulder yelling, "Yop!" at intervals.
Posted by dichroic at April 12, 2005 01:16 PMAh, the cosmic consciousness is flowing in and around things prejudicial and limiting I see.// About the storyline the other day? It was an impulse. I was just telling you what I saw with your story suggestion. I don't know doodly about linguistics and all stroke knowledge is anecdotal. But there it was, a late 50-ish woman named Mary Martin. I/She was looking out through blurry eyes at a hospital room, holding up her left hand with her right. The hands were thin and bony. The right shook and the left was curled into a claw. Blam! I was there, but that's all I saw. I certainly didn't want to intrude on your story and knew I couldn't tell it without months of research first. Sorry. ~LA
Posted by: LA at April 12, 2005 02:31 PMI have gone through my whole life never being quite what people expected. I couldn't always say so, of course; women who wanted careers were considered slightly icky when I was in high school. It seems the only course I have left is to try to get the message through to those people whose brains haven't atrophied: *Look* at people. *Listen* to them. God gave you a brain so that you can use it.
Posted by: l-empress at April 12, 2005 03:15 PMI wasn't sure how to respond to what you wrote so I took my usual route and mulled it over. I looked at some past entries like you said. The only thing I learned is that my entry titles are stupid and don't really reveal what's written. I take seriously what Dland people write because there have been times in the past when I've blown off comments only to discover later that they were dead-on. But in this case, there is no pattern of emotional abuse. Someone sent me these links: http://www.mcadsv.com/index.php?name=NH-DV-Warning-Signs and http://abuse101.com/emotionalabuse.html and I don't fit any of this, and I'm being honest with you. I mean, I appreciate your concern. But it's like...I think the reactions I've gotten have been really off. In the context of our relationship this was unprecedented, and I don't think it warrants a great amount of worry or action until a pattern has emerged. If someone gets drunk once, do they go to AA? I do kind of regret writing that entry now because I'm having to explain this. And also, I've written stories for the paper on domestic violence and abusive relationships, plus that was also the topic of a research paper in college. I'm not ignorant when it comes to this, just so you know. I do appreciate the fact that you care and I'm not taking this lightly. I just don't see a pattern, and I live with him. I don't know what else to say.
Posted by: Jen at April 12, 2005 10:08 PMhmmm, i actually remember when homer made that comment...
Posted by: lcubed at April 14, 2005 11:35 AM