I’ve had it up to here with the politically correct bullshit.
A person of undetermined sex, weight, height, race, creed,
sexual orientation, and health status forced me to do something that negatively
impacted a part of my being while I was doing something.
Does that sound at all interesting? No.
Two morbidly obese women forced me to walk through a cloud of
their cigarette smoke on my way into the gym.
Does that sound interesting? Kinda.
But I can’t say that because I might offend people with a
higher BMI than me. Or smokers. Or women. Or people that don’t go the gym. Eff
this shit.
Oh waaaaiiiit a minute. I shouldn’t have said I “might”
offend. I should have said I will offend. There’s no doubt about it, because I
said something much less inflammatory and I was flamed for it on Facebook. I
was so well bar-b-qued that I’ve reverted to not posting anything of any real
interest in my status updates. I’m now sticking with Pinterest and funny things
my kid says.
I want to be clear on one point though. I’m not taming my
Facebook posts because I don’t have anything to say. I’m not doing it because I don’t
want to be controversial. I ‘m not doing it because I feel censored in any way.
I’m not even doing it because I don’t like to argue (because oh, I DO!!). I’m
going back to the soft pitches because, to me, Facebook is a place for family
and friends to keep in touch with each other. It’s not a place to start arguments
and offend people. I was under the impression that as long as I avoided the
religion and politics I could get by without offending people too badly. But, I
was wrong.
Anything I say about someone bigger than me is automatically
an insult because I’m small.
Anything I say about someone religious is automatically an
insult because I’m simply spiritual.
Anything I say about men is insulting because I’m a woman.
Anything I say about a lesbian is an insult because I’m
hetero.
Anything I say about a person of another color is an insult
because I’m white.
Anything I say about someone with a disability is an insult
because I’m fully possessed of all my mental and physical faculties. (Okay,
sometimes I have dumb moments. Shush.)
I can keep going, but I think you’re getting the point.
FUCK THIS SHIT.
I don’t give a damn what you are. I really, really don’t. I
couldn’t care less if you’re a different anything from me. You know why?
Because my parents and grandparents raised me right. I had three parents and
five grandparents that always told me that people were people. It would have
been six if my paternal grandpa hadn’t passed before I was old enough to remember anything
concrete about him.
Okay, make that seven grandparents. I’m unofficially
boosting Robert A. Heinlein into the mighty and exalted position of being my
grandparent. May as well, he might have done more to my moral character than
the other nine combined. Grandpa Heinlein may be the single most unbigoted
author I’ve ever read; he let you get to know and love characters
without bringing up the subject of race. You could get clues from hair color
and surname, maybe even a reference to skin tone but that’s not the same.
But I
digress; the moral here is that I was raised to note and then disregard the
superficial stuff.
What I do care about is how you treat yourself and the
people around you. That’s it. If you force me to walk through a cloud of smoke,
you’re a loser. I don’t care about the fact that you’re morbidly obese. I don’t
care about the fact that you smoke. Those are choices you make for yourself. I
will never respect your choices because I think you’re abusing your body, but
they’re yours so it’s not my place to judge. What makes me call you a loser is
the fact that you forced me to walk through a cloud of smoke. I don’t think I
can say that part enough.
When you affect the people around you, you need to expect the
judgment that will follow. It’s a part of life. If you fart in public, expect
people to wrinkle their noses in disgust. If you quietly take your screaming
kid out of the restaurant, expect other patrons to thank you when you come back
inside with a happy and tear-free kid. Judgment does go both ways. If you do
bad things, you’ll be judged negatively. If you do good things you’ll be judged
positively. This is the way our society works. If you’re old enough to read
this, then you’re old enough to have figured this out by now.
The reaction I got to my earlier Facebook post took me by
surprise. I think part of the reason for that is I underestimated people. I
thought people knew me better. I thought people could separate themselves from
a statement I made about someone else. But I was wrong. I said something
insulting about an anonymous someone that had been rude to me and bunch of
people took it personally.
And all because I described the person. And not even in a
rude way. I could have said some lazy fat cow was killing herself with a cancer
stick and forced me to walk through the carcinogens. But I didn’t. All I did
was call her a morbidly obese woman. Which is true; she was at least four
hundred pounds. I’m not a medical professional, but I’m pretty sure that “morbidly
obese” is a clinical term. I would have thought the person was just as much of
a loser if it’d been a short Asian. Or a big muscle head. Because, like I said
before, I don’t give a damn about any of that superficial crap. I only
mentioned her weight as a descriptor.
Well, that’s not completely true. I also mentioned it to
highlight the fact that she was taking the fast lane speeding toward a heart
attack. But, I wasn’t judging. She was at the gym. Yay for trying. But she wasn’t
trying hard enough to make a difference or she would have already quit smoking.
Couldn’t she at least been doing it in her car?
Somehow I’ve managed to ramble on to the tune of a three
page document. My apologies for being long winded. And I seem to have wandered
and strayed away from my original rant about how much I hate trying to be all
PC and perfect.
All I really want to be able to do is speak my mind and not
have someone start pointing their finger at me and calling me names because
they’ve taken offense. If you’re going to be that easily offended, go away,
build up your self-esteem, and then come back. Maybe when you feel better about
yourself you won’t be seeing insults behind every word that’s spoken. Get
comfortable with your weight, or lose it, whatever. And then maybe you won’t
take it personally when I say some random fat lady was being a loser. Because it’s
not an insult to overweight people in general. It’s not an insult to you. It’s
as insult to the one and only person (in this specific case two) that made me walk
through a friggin cloud of cigarette smoke. That’s it. No one else, so get over
yourself.
