(no subject)

I've learned something interesting, something I'm quite surprised hasn't been blatantly obvious to me before now - Sir is a very patient man, much more patient than I. He's involved in some discussion on language and race in an LJ community (I'm not going to dignify it with a link) in which he asks some sensible questions about using emotionally charged words to describe whites. He is merely told 'he just doesn't get it', because obviously those words have no power. Now, that's not a conversation I really feel like having, because as soon as you say a word has no power, you've lost me. As soon as you decide you're going to use that word even though you know I find it hurtful, you're *really* lost me - that's not dialog, you're asking me to let you act violently towards me. Umm, no - you're just not my type, sweetheart.

You see? He manages to stick around, and is willing to sift through all that chaff to find the people who are willing to engage in dialog. I just don't do that, which surprises me, now that I'm really looking at it, I hadn't realized I was that strict, nor that I was more strict than he, but especially when it comes to dialog around emotionally charged issues I have some ground rules for what I will engage with, and they are only broken once - then I'm out the door. It might come from college, where dialog was what our education was based on, and you were dealing with some delicate topics, and even more delicate egos (myself included!), so a large system of ground rules and expectations was slowly internalized...Of course, I would simply boil down all those rules and expectations to a simple phrase; "Don't be an asshole."

In other news, still sick. Truly, truly tired of that.