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Another set of saved comments from my journal, for later reference and, if you want, discussion here:
In an ongoing discussion in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rozk's journal about transphobic statements by a lesbian British journalist, Julie Bindel. This comment in response to something pigeonhed wrote:
I would like not to be defined entirely by one facet of my complex existence, too. But often the best I can do is to try for some control of which facet, and how it's read. For example, people looking at my life will know that I'm bisexual: the question is, then, whether that is taken as a perfectly normal thing to be, part of the range of human sexuality, or whether it's read as "indecisive," a "phase," or as the willingness/desire to have sex with "anything that moves."
I also note that this post is about an article by someone who is more than happy to be defined by her sexuality.
serenejournal asked for ways to avoid overcommitment, given that there are lots of things she wants to do, but she has only so much time and energy and needs time alone to rest and recharge. Basically, ways to say no to things that sound tempting:
Mine is a combination of having ruthlessly pruned my social life, and that the people I still spend significant time with know and agree that I need downtime, and will in fact help me avoid overcommitting, not just supporting me when I say I need a rest day, but sometimes pointing out that I should take one.
I don't like having needed to prune my social life, but I do like the way I've done it: I see some people I am close to on a regular basis; keep up with a bunch of you via the net; and see some other people less often or semi-randomly. The selection criteria for the latter range from who my partners want to hang out with, to who I happen to run into in a bookstore. It's easier (for me) to just hang out with someone for half an hour if that half hour was serendipitous rather than pre-arranged, and such half hours don't involve extra travel or preparation.
In response to a locked post consisting of a poll "$name understands people" with only a "no" button:
There are no right answers to the wrong questions.
You don't "understand people," and I don't, and President-elect Obama doesn't. We all understand some people, and we understand them some of the time. Obama may understand more people than I do, and you and I probably understand different people.
One of my beloveds pointed out in email recently that people don't generalize. What you know about one person may not be true about another, and understanding my motivations doesn't tell you someone else's. People do overlap, and motivations are not entirely opaque, but it's not as simple as understanding "people" as a class (in the way that you can understand all quadratic equations using the same approach).
In response to a friends-locked post, which in turn was prompted by this xkcd cartoon:
It seems to me that someone who is deciding, deliberately, to become friends and hope that it will turn into dating is doing something rather different from the way that the "friends first" model does work for some people. (That's even aside from the "I'm better than all those jerks she's dating" attitude in the cartoon.)
I don't meet someone, think "hey, you're interesting," and put my feelings aside. If I realize I'm interested in someone, and it doesn't seem like an obvious bad idea to be involved with them, I'll tell them. Sometimes the realization happens hours after we meet, and sometimes it takes years. I shorthand that as "I mostly fall in love with my friends," but that is rather different from "I befriend people I fall for, and then wait (im)patiently for them to say something."
the_siobhan notes:
"Sometimes when you are mad at people, it's not necessarily because you're the one with a problem.
"Sometimes it's because people really are being assholes."
I wrote:
Connected to which: if you are mad at everybody, or everybody in a place or situation, it's a good time to step back. That much anger might mean that you do, in fact, need to calm down, go lift weights or eat protein or sleep or such; it might also mean that those people are part of, or the cause of, a bad situation and you need to get out.
Back away first, then figure out whether the problem is with you, the situation, or both. Either way, the backing away will help.
[Context elided for good and sufficient reason.]
I don't test people.
I think, a few times, I've tested hypotheses about people/relationships in ways that could look similar. That is, if I get to the point of suspecting that someone is never going to call me if I don't call them first, I may decide to stop calling them for a while. Whether I'm thinking that they're lazy, or that I'm imposing on them, I want to know whether I'm right about them not calling, or if it's that I tend to think of calling them once a week, and they'll think of calling me if we haven't talked in two weeks, so they never reach the slightly later point of "I haven't talked toredbird lately, I should give her a call."
[Transcribing this, I'm not sure I've ever actually done what I describe in that paragraph, but it feels like a different-shaped thing than a test in which certain results could be defined as the other person "failing." Not primarily because of the desire to make sure I'm not imposing on the other person's time and energy, but because this test includes the hypothesis that my "call them" switch is triggered slightly faster than their "call me" switch, but we have similar switches, rather than a simple yes/no on whether they want to hear from me.]
In an ongoing discussion in
rozk's journal about transphobic statements by a lesbian British journalist, Julie Bindel. This comment in response to something pigeonhed wrote:I would like not to be defined entirely by one facet of my complex existence, too. But often the best I can do is to try for some control of which facet, and how it's read. For example, people looking at my life will know that I'm bisexual: the question is, then, whether that is taken as a perfectly normal thing to be, part of the range of human sexuality, or whether it's read as "indecisive," a "phase," or as the willingness/desire to have sex with "anything that moves."
I also note that this post is about an article by someone who is more than happy to be defined by her sexuality.
serenejournal asked for ways to avoid overcommitment, given that there are lots of things she wants to do, but she has only so much time and energy and needs time alone to rest and recharge. Basically, ways to say no to things that sound tempting:Mine is a combination of having ruthlessly pruned my social life, and that the people I still spend significant time with know and agree that I need downtime, and will in fact help me avoid overcommitting, not just supporting me when I say I need a rest day, but sometimes pointing out that I should take one.
I don't like having needed to prune my social life, but I do like the way I've done it: I see some people I am close to on a regular basis; keep up with a bunch of you via the net; and see some other people less often or semi-randomly. The selection criteria for the latter range from who my partners want to hang out with, to who I happen to run into in a bookstore. It's easier (for me) to just hang out with someone for half an hour if that half hour was serendipitous rather than pre-arranged, and such half hours don't involve extra travel or preparation.
In response to a locked post consisting of a poll "$name understands people" with only a "no" button:
There are no right answers to the wrong questions.
You don't "understand people," and I don't, and President-elect Obama doesn't. We all understand some people, and we understand them some of the time. Obama may understand more people than I do, and you and I probably understand different people.
One of my beloveds pointed out in email recently that people don't generalize. What you know about one person may not be true about another, and understanding my motivations doesn't tell you someone else's. People do overlap, and motivations are not entirely opaque, but it's not as simple as understanding "people" as a class (in the way that you can understand all quadratic equations using the same approach).
In response to a friends-locked post, which in turn was prompted by this xkcd cartoon:
It seems to me that someone who is deciding, deliberately, to become friends and hope that it will turn into dating is doing something rather different from the way that the "friends first" model does work for some people. (That's even aside from the "I'm better than all those jerks she's dating" attitude in the cartoon.)
I don't meet someone, think "hey, you're interesting," and put my feelings aside. If I realize I'm interested in someone, and it doesn't seem like an obvious bad idea to be involved with them, I'll tell them. Sometimes the realization happens hours after we meet, and sometimes it takes years. I shorthand that as "I mostly fall in love with my friends," but that is rather different from "I befriend people I fall for, and then wait (im)patiently for them to say something."
the_siobhan notes:"Sometimes when you are mad at people, it's not necessarily because you're the one with a problem.
"Sometimes it's because people really are being assholes."
I wrote:
Connected to which: if you are mad at everybody, or everybody in a place or situation, it's a good time to step back. That much anger might mean that you do, in fact, need to calm down, go lift weights or eat protein or sleep or such; it might also mean that those people are part of, or the cause of, a bad situation and you need to get out.
Back away first, then figure out whether the problem is with you, the situation, or both. Either way, the backing away will help.
[Context elided for good and sufficient reason.]
I don't test people.
I think, a few times, I've tested hypotheses about people/relationships in ways that could look similar. That is, if I get to the point of suspecting that someone is never going to call me if I don't call them first, I may decide to stop calling them for a while. Whether I'm thinking that they're lazy, or that I'm imposing on them, I want to know whether I'm right about them not calling, or if it's that I tend to think of calling them once a week, and they'll think of calling me if we haven't talked in two weeks, so they never reach the slightly later point of "I haven't talked to
redbird lately, I should give her a call."[Transcribing this, I'm not sure I've ever actually done what I describe in that paragraph, but it feels like a different-shaped thing than a test in which certain results could be defined as the other person "failing." Not primarily because of the desire to make sure I'm not imposing on the other person's time and energy, but because this test includes the hypothesis that my "call them" switch is triggered slightly faster than their "call me" switch, but we have similar switches, rather than a simple yes/no on whether they want to hear from me.]
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