EmpathyFail 101

[bellatrys]

"She lied! She lied to us!"
--Grand Moff Tarkin, Star Wars, (1977)This is something that I've been kicking around for a very long time, and which I suppose doesn't really need a good "hook" to tie it to, as the problem never seems to go away. We talk a lot about "empathy," defined in Webster's as "the action of understanding, being aware of, being

Comments

It's even better when they combine it with "and I'm an artist"

[bellatrys]

This is always infuriating to me, and my instinctive response is, "Maybe you're an idiotic fluffhead, my dear, but I am not."

There were times as a teenager/college student in art classes filled entirely with older women when I wanted to stab my eardrums out with my 4H pencils, because I could only take so much gabble about fat fat fat fat obnoxious children fat fat stupid husbands fat kids these days fat fat fat shoes fat sale at Jordan's fat before hitting my limit - and THEN to top it all off by saying "tee hee, of course I can't find my car keys/use a map/assemble a DIY bookcase/figure out politics or economics, I'm an artist and I think with the RIGHT side of my brain!"

asdfjhlkl;now *which* paint is the most toxic? OMNOMNOM -- Honestly, it made finding feminism all that much harder, because between them and the parish council women it was damn hard to argue against the idea that only exceptional women cared about anything beyond the narrow confines of domesticity or had any interest in abstract thought or a wider world of any sort - and "their minds are shriveled by lack of opportunity" was difficult to feel at the time given that all of them boasted of having *chosen* to give up careers for the superior state of being Wives (to husbands they had only contempt for) and Mothers (to children they resented and scorned...)

Oh, and they all *KNEW* that I secretly just wanted to get married & have kids too and be Just Like Them, no matter what I claimed otherwise - speaking of domination and appropriation!

Re: It's even better when they combine it with "and I'm an artist"

[greyladybast]

I'm an artist and I think with the RIGHT side of my brain!"

Gawdawmitey, I hate that shit! It always makes me want to sneer, "Well, I'm a person and I think with BOTH sides of my brain!"

Re: It's even better when they combine it with "and I'm an artist"

[bellatrys]

I've always hated the expressions, "Women turn into their mothers" and "The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree" for exactly this reason: It isn't always true.

What these women don't get is that there are TWO ways of being a rolemodel: 1) Being a person that a child wants to emulate, and 2) Being somebody they don't want to emulate. By constantly complaining about their lives in front of you, they clued you in to the fact that they weren't happy with said lives. Naturally, you decided to not copy their sorry examples.

What they also don't get is that some things are usually within a person's control, like whether or not they will marry and/or have children. Circumstances may force you to live in a given area or work in a certain field, but you still have some say over your life.

Besides, why shouldn't you try to be "exceptional"?

--Architeuthis