It's not your job
Jun. 1st, 2009 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenLet's start with a simple premise: it is not okay, regardless of one's particular skill/knowledge set, to humiliate a non-beligerant stranger in public. If someone is not doing anything that hurts you or incites others to hurt you, you cannot, morally or legally, start harrassing that person so that they should be made to feel ashamed for whatever behavior they are doing that might otherwise bother you.
For example, I hate smokers. I am free to make snide comments about them to my friends, to cough dramatically when they get their cancer smoke in my face (in fact, I often can't control that reflex--I am very sensitive to the smoke), and to generally shoot them death glares. I am not allowed to pull up a soap box and a megaphone and start informing the entire block about how awful this person is for enjoying their addiction in my general vicinity and implying that they are awful people who cannot control themselves and are weak and stupid because they don't know how bad cigarettes are for them. That is generally considered rude.
With that in mind, it is doubly not okay to take someone to task for their non-harmful activity in an environment where they are an established inferior but not a direct professional subordinate. It is okay for a boss to set rules about how an employee dresses. It is not okay for a goddamned flight attendent to deliver a lecture on the evils of soda to a passenger.
To put it bluntly: it's not your job, lady. You are not a doctor. You are not a nutritionist. You aren't even a representative from Pepsi (or Chewlies Gum) with a deceitful agenda. You're just an asshole who felt personally obligated to inform a complete stranger, in front of a captive audience of strangers to both you and your victim, that you do not approve of her beverage of choice.
It's extremely obnoxious that this obvious breach of ettiquette (i.e. "save being an asshole for those who truly deserve it") devolves into a "Well, she was probably a fatty" in the comments on that article. As if one's physical appearance justifies this humiliation. Fuck that noise.
For example, I hate smokers. I am free to make snide comments about them to my friends, to cough dramatically when they get their cancer smoke in my face (in fact, I often can't control that reflex--I am very sensitive to the smoke), and to generally shoot them death glares. I am not allowed to pull up a soap box and a megaphone and start informing the entire block about how awful this person is for enjoying their addiction in my general vicinity and implying that they are awful people who cannot control themselves and are weak and stupid because they don't know how bad cigarettes are for them. That is generally considered rude.
With that in mind, it is doubly not okay to take someone to task for their non-harmful activity in an environment where they are an established inferior but not a direct professional subordinate. It is okay for a boss to set rules about how an employee dresses. It is not okay for a goddamned flight attendent to deliver a lecture on the evils of soda to a passenger.
To put it bluntly: it's not your job, lady. You are not a doctor. You are not a nutritionist. You aren't even a representative from Pepsi (or Chewlies Gum) with a deceitful agenda. You're just an asshole who felt personally obligated to inform a complete stranger, in front of a captive audience of strangers to both you and your victim, that you do not approve of her beverage of choice.
It's extremely obnoxious that this obvious breach of ettiquette (i.e. "save being an asshole for those who truly deserve it") devolves into a "Well, she was probably a fatty" in the comments on that article. As if one's physical appearance justifies this humiliation. Fuck that noise.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 08:16 pm (UTC)