Bruce A. Metcalf wrote:
If you believe you have answers for everything
When I was younger, I had answers for everything. I've come to believe, though, that questions are far more important than answers, especially if you want to have a discussion rather than giving a lecture.
This and your claim of high intelligence informed me that a chip was indeed upon your shoulder, and you really should have expected this group to try to knock it off.
I realized earlier this week that there are times I carry a sizable chip on my own shoulder. I'm trying to figure out what leads to chip-carrying and what I would like to do instead.
I tend to adopt a chip when I am not sure of my status in a group and I am a demographic outlier. I am particularly inclined to adopt a chip in areas where I have experienced discrimination in the past, as well as in groups that either overtly or subtly discriminate against people like me.
The shoulder chip is a defense, and it can be an effective one if it is carried lightly enough. It can be a humorous deflection that both calls out the discrimination and doesn't really challenge it. It gives parties who might be engaging in discrimination a chance to think about what they're doing and choose to do something different in the future.
When the shoulder chip is too big, too heavy-handed, or too serious, it's neither attractive nor useful.
That's as far as I've gotten. I'm thinking about other strategies to get people to take me seriously in those situations, but it's tough! They tend to discount me before I even open my mouth. Firing a warning shot across their bows is sometimes necessary.
How have other silkers handled situations where you feared discrimination? Have you found strategies that help you get through the stereotyping?
That wasn't "bad language" in my book. "Stirring the shit" was selected very carefully from my vocabulary of words and phrases as being the most evocative of how I viewed your postings here.
And now the shit has hit the fan and we have a regular shitstorm.
If one "shit", used in context, puts me on your blocked list, then it suggests that you are only willing to use a sub-set of English (large though that set may be), and I suspect your intellectual world will be slightly impoverished thereby. Block me if you fear such words, as I may well "shit" again!
Threatening to block people is so very 1986. Block people, put them in your killfile, filter them to the trash if you like, but don't make a song about it and broadcast it to the whole list.
We don't have to love one another on silk-list, but Udhay does like us to remain civil. Threatening the old kill-file is liable to hurt someone's feelings. It also makes you look bad.
As a fellow shoulder-chip-wearer, James, I'm happy to let bygones be bygones if you want to rewind this and start over.
I'm also curious about your first name. Was it your given name at birth? --hmm
