It's going to take me a little while to mull some of this over to give you anything remotely like a coherent response, but for now, I wanted to comment on this bit:
Last couple of weeks, I've realzied that a lot of social justice theory is a way for people to justify themselves. It's regretful and dangerous that our society requires one to express emotion only if one has an intricate theoretical mobile to back it up.
That was actually bothering me today. One of my coworkers took me aside and told me that I had come across as sexist because I made a joke about her bringing a couple of fashion magazines back from her lunch break...basically I said "Oh gasp, the estrogen!" or something along that line, and I have made other comments like this before - nothing specifically negative or degrading about women/female traits, but separating myself from them. She decided to take me aside and tell me that I should watch out on "defining other people's gender cues" for them because it's sexist. I was pretty confused for a while, trying to work out how much of the problem was me being in the wrong, and how much of it was her trying to justify the fact that it offended her (none of my other coworkers were offended - the coworker I joke with the most about it will start the jokes by saying "You're gonna hate me, Erin, I was so girly today" before a story about shopping or something else stereotypically feminine).
It really is a shame, I think, that people do things like this. I value clarity a LOT, and because of what she said, I'm very confused about how much I'm in the wrong and how much of what I say I need to change, whether I'm wrong, or if she's just being overly-PC.
I've completely lost track of what I was trying to say now. XD
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Last couple of weeks, I've realzied that a lot of social justice theory is a way for people to justify themselves. It's regretful and dangerous that our society requires one to express emotion only if one has an intricate theoretical mobile to back it up.
That was actually bothering me today. One of my coworkers took me aside and told me that I had come across as sexist because I made a joke about her bringing a couple of fashion magazines back from her lunch break...basically I said "Oh gasp, the estrogen!" or something along that line, and I have made other comments like this before - nothing specifically negative or degrading about women/female traits, but separating myself from them. She decided to take me aside and tell me that I should watch out on "defining other people's gender cues" for them because it's sexist. I was pretty confused for a while, trying to work out how much of the problem was me being in the wrong, and how much of it was her trying to justify the fact that it offended her (none of my other coworkers were offended - the coworker I joke with the most about it will start the jokes by saying "You're gonna hate me, Erin, I was so girly today" before a story about shopping or something else stereotypically feminine).
It really is a shame, I think, that people do things like this. I value clarity a LOT, and because of what she said, I'm very confused about how much I'm in the wrong and how much of what I say I need to change, whether I'm wrong, or if she's just being overly-PC.
I've completely lost track of what I was trying to say now. XD