Yikes

[cjsmith]

I have recently faced the idea that there may be people I have met and liked who honestly believe that attacking the innocent and the powerless, especially girls or young women, is a good way to get things done.

I do not know if I am misunderstanding the person in question. It seems likely. I could be taking things too literally, a common failing of mine.* I could be misunderstanding in some other way. But even supposing this one is a misunderstanding, I've now faced the idea, and it's not at all pleasant.

Maybe I was in the Army too long. (I honestly believe the vast majority of US soldiers hold this value as strongly as I do.) You don't DO shit like that. You don't even THINK about THREATENING to do shit like that.

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* If I'm starting to get ticked off, it could be nothing more serious than my belief that what you say is what you mean. A useful tactic might be to remind both of us of this pattern. Humans are neither robots nor computers, and I forget that too often.

Comments

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

Learing uncomfortable things about people you genuinely like is always disturbing. I think possibly because it makes you examine your values and principles and how far you are willing to let them slide to accomodate someone who, in most other aspects, may be a fairly good person.

I think we are given challenges like this not only to grow ourselves, but to see if we can gently persuade that person to examine something they never even think about. Not necessarily to change them but to make them more aware of how something they perceive as a non-issue or non-problem is perceived by others.

Good luck in sorting this out.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm usually surprisingly live-and-let-live. I may choose not to wait around for person A because he's never less than an hour late, and I may choose not to trust person B with my money or person C with my cat; those are choices I can make so as to avoid points of disagreement becoming problems.

But I find I have a real hard time feeling live-and-let-live about this one. I guess I have some pretty strongly held values.