respect and breadcrumbs
Aug. 12th, 2010 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmThe ex and I used to fight about the idea of respect. Or rather, my desire for respect from him that I felt I wasn't getting.
The central topic of the argument was the way he behaved towards my engagement with activities that had no moral value one way or the other, but that he didn't care for my participation in when he was absent from the relationship (I was too scared to alienate him to engage in them when he was present): mainly, my going to nightclubs, and, more secretly back then, my participating in fandom (reading ST:V and X-Files, to give you a sense of when this was).
"But I don't have respect for these things or you when you do them. I don't admire them. I don't see them as good, so why should I respect them?"
"Admiration and respect are two different things. Respect doesn't mean looking up to me and my choices. It means acknowledging I'm a full-fledged human being with the right to make choices that no matter how little sense they make to you are reasonably considered according to the standards I'm perfectly allowed to set for myself. I deserve respect, because like you, I'm a person."
"Well, sure, if you say respect means that, sure, you have that sort of respect from me."
No, I didn't, not really, but that's not the point of this story, nor particularly worth rehashing.
My point is that people should have your respect as fellow people until they un-earn it, and that your criteria for that sort of business should not be light.
I was, more or less, a person in that relationship, but I was a lesser one, and, in that matter, it was a think I consented to and colluded with because I thought my life could only be lived on the basis of what was enough.
While an entirely different issue, the Prop 8 situation has -- for weeks now, for years -- made me think of that conversation and those years over and over again. Because I am, it so happens, a person, but a lesser person, in the eyes of the law. Although a little bit less so today than yesterday. And one day, maybe even one day soon, maybe this mess will all be but a memory too.
But the point is I'll never be -- and you shouldn't be either -- satisfied with breadcrumbs.
Never ever.
It's a terrible business.
The central topic of the argument was the way he behaved towards my engagement with activities that had no moral value one way or the other, but that he didn't care for my participation in when he was absent from the relationship (I was too scared to alienate him to engage in them when he was present): mainly, my going to nightclubs, and, more secretly back then, my participating in fandom (reading ST:V and X-Files, to give you a sense of when this was).
"But I don't have respect for these things or you when you do them. I don't admire them. I don't see them as good, so why should I respect them?"
"Admiration and respect are two different things. Respect doesn't mean looking up to me and my choices. It means acknowledging I'm a full-fledged human being with the right to make choices that no matter how little sense they make to you are reasonably considered according to the standards I'm perfectly allowed to set for myself. I deserve respect, because like you, I'm a person."
"Well, sure, if you say respect means that, sure, you have that sort of respect from me."
No, I didn't, not really, but that's not the point of this story, nor particularly worth rehashing.
My point is that people should have your respect as fellow people until they un-earn it, and that your criteria for that sort of business should not be light.
I was, more or less, a person in that relationship, but I was a lesser one, and, in that matter, it was a think I consented to and colluded with because I thought my life could only be lived on the basis of what was enough.
While an entirely different issue, the Prop 8 situation has -- for weeks now, for years -- made me think of that conversation and those years over and over again. Because I am, it so happens, a person, but a lesser person, in the eyes of the law. Although a little bit less so today than yesterday. And one day, maybe even one day soon, maybe this mess will all be but a memory too.
But the point is I'll never be -- and you shouldn't be either -- satisfied with breadcrumbs.
Never ever.
It's a terrible business.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 03:27 am (UTC)If my life isn't wonderful and beautiful then I'm doing something wrong.
But sometimes I want to know what makes people satisfied with less than that...you know?
no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 04:58 am (UTC)Being abused makes people abjectly grateful for whatever they get, or at least so despondent by habit that they don't strive for more than breadcrumbs. This is why oppression hurts society as a whole, rather than just the individuals oppressed - who knows what we've lost?
no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 09:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 09:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 11:22 am (UTC)As someone who's been abused and who broke out of it, and mostly (-mostly-) recovered I think that might be something I picked up...
No breadcrumbs for me, the best or I keep trying.
What do you mean by protected category?
no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 05:42 pm (UTC)I would add to this that it makes people abjectly grateful for whatever they get--even if they don't want it, even if they detest it, even if getting it is actively bad for them. And when people are told and believe that they should be grateful for getting things that are bad for them over and over again, they generally end up not being able to articulate what it is that would actually be good for them, because they have never had the opportunity to have something that was good for them, whether they got it for themselves or had other people give it to them.
Further thoughts in my lj.