June 4, 2011
--Why it's petty but not small and a joke but not funny
The worst part of something like what happened with the carrots at the Price Chopper is that I'm not the one who's being petty; it's the people who harass me and do a thousand things a day to try make me feel bad who are petty, but those things add up and they get in my way and unnecessarily disrupt my life. Then I end up talking about petty things while I'm trying to describe what's happening.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the Price Chopper just hadn't gotten a new supply of the carrots I was used to buying, that they hadn't gotten their order yet from that company for several days. At this point, after more than a year of being relentlessly persecuted, how would I be able to distinguish between what's not another petty attempt to be awful to me and what is?
All discrimination starts with a stupid idea. Here are some stupid ideas that have had a big impact on people's lives even though the ideas themselves don't have any validity and ought always to have been obvious as stupid:
"You can tell anything at all about someone by the color of his or her skin."
"You can tell anything at all about someone by knowing what his or her religion is."
"People who aren't white are born being not as good as people who are white."
"People who aren't white will never be as good as people who are white."
"Women with blonde hair are always less intelligent than women with any other color of hair."
"Women are born being not as good as men."
"Women will never be as good as men."
"It's ok to abuse women."
"It's good to abuse women who refuse to be told what to do by men or by women who are willing to be told what to do by men."
"A good way to treat women is to talk about their vaginas all the time in an effort to dehumanize them."
Yesterday, I let my guard down exactly once in a conversation with someone I didn't know, and she took the opportunity to make a comment when I didn't expect it. It was another cashier, at the supermarket at the next town over. She seemed friendly enough, while she made a mistake with my order and had to have me run my card through the machine again. I didn't get mad; I've been a cashier before and I know it's easy to make mistakes. I thought we were just talking in a friendly way throughout the transaction; she told me that it's hard to hear in the store, I said I understood that and that I'd have trouble hearing in such a noisy environment, too, and then she said that she had a hearing infection and that she'd been "putting oil in her ear for it."
I'd never met that woman in my life. She was smiling the entire time that we were talking, including when she worked her comment into the conversation after I been absolutely nothing but nice to her.
I got back to the shelter last night to find that the person with whom I share the bureau again had her large backpack on the floor and wedged up against the bottom two drawers of the bureau that are mine. She also put another bag of "cheese" flavored chips on top of the bureau. I don't know why she had a bad day yesterday, but she doesn't have the right to take out her bad day on me; unfortunately, a lot of people have now been told that they have the right to take out their problems on me. That's what bullying is.
I went for a job interview at the Department of Motor Vehicles a few days ago. I walked into the building and saw the wet floor signs and a poster of a man paddling in a boat on the water that said "Change will come." There were also posters in the elevator that said "Ride the Dragon for Charity." Here's the blurb from the front page of the website, which is also much like what was written on the posters:
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Ride the Dragon for Charity The Lake Champlain Dragon Boat Festival is a day long celebration of community, camaraderie, and competition.
Ninety teams -- that's about 2000 paddlers -- race 41 foot long dragon boats for fun, fitness, and fundraising.
Join the races. Anyone can do it. Hop aboard.
Dragonheart is excited about taking on a new project called our Survivorship NOW Initiative. Our goal is to provide more opportunities for support, fitness, education, and empowerment for cancer survivors in our community. Your festival donations will help to implement this quality of life program.
Please get involved today!
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I was already angry by the time I'd been in the building for a few minutes. When the person who was to do my interview walked up to me, I asked her if I was there for a real interview or not.
When the interview was over, I took the elevator back up the one flight; a young guy walked into the elevator as I was leaving it. His eyes lit up when he saw me, and just before the elevator doors closed on him, he gave a loud cough.
I've never met him before, either.
I was approached at the Department of Labor with information about applying to the job, which is a temporary job but still a job. I didn't seek out the government for a job. Once I'd applied for it, I thought about it, and it seemed as if maybe it would at least be a situation in which the employer wouldn't be in danger of being persecuted by the government and other harassers and put out of business for having hired me. The woman who got my application and with whom I spoke over the phone about the job and set up the interview had seemed nice enough on the phone.
Whether or not it was a real interview, and whether or not the woman who conducted it had good intentions toward me, I have this feeling about the big harassers in general:
Anyone who looks at what's happened and says "Look at what we can do with all of our power. Look at what happened and is still happening and may happen for the rest of her life to Lena Kochman because of us; isn't that great? Shouldn't that be a lesson to anyone who says anything to us that we don't like" is displaying exactly the kind of attitude that provoked my objections in the first place, before anyone was calling me vagina names at all.
Copyright L. Kochman June 4, 2011 @ 4:19 a.m.
--Why it's petty but not small and a joke but not funny
The worst part of something like what happened with the carrots at the Price Chopper is that I'm not the one who's being petty; it's the people who harass me and do a thousand things a day to try make me feel bad who are petty, but those things add up and they get in my way and unnecessarily disrupt my life. Then I end up talking about petty things while I'm trying to describe what's happening.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the Price Chopper just hadn't gotten a new supply of the carrots I was used to buying, that they hadn't gotten their order yet from that company for several days. At this point, after more than a year of being relentlessly persecuted, how would I be able to distinguish between what's not another petty attempt to be awful to me and what is?
All discrimination starts with a stupid idea. Here are some stupid ideas that have had a big impact on people's lives even though the ideas themselves don't have any validity and ought always to have been obvious as stupid:
"You can tell anything at all about someone by the color of his or her skin."
"You can tell anything at all about someone by knowing what his or her religion is."
"People who aren't white are born being not as good as people who are white."
"People who aren't white will never be as good as people who are white."
"Women with blonde hair are always less intelligent than women with any other color of hair."
"Women are born being not as good as men."
"Women will never be as good as men."
"It's ok to abuse women."
"It's good to abuse women who refuse to be told what to do by men or by women who are willing to be told what to do by men."
"A good way to treat women is to talk about their vaginas all the time in an effort to dehumanize them."
Yesterday, I let my guard down exactly once in a conversation with someone I didn't know, and she took the opportunity to make a comment when I didn't expect it. It was another cashier, at the supermarket at the next town over. She seemed friendly enough, while she made a mistake with my order and had to have me run my card through the machine again. I didn't get mad; I've been a cashier before and I know it's easy to make mistakes. I thought we were just talking in a friendly way throughout the transaction; she told me that it's hard to hear in the store, I said I understood that and that I'd have trouble hearing in such a noisy environment, too, and then she said that she had a hearing infection and that she'd been "putting oil in her ear for it."
I'd never met that woman in my life. She was smiling the entire time that we were talking, including when she worked her comment into the conversation after I been absolutely nothing but nice to her.
I got back to the shelter last night to find that the person with whom I share the bureau again had her large backpack on the floor and wedged up against the bottom two drawers of the bureau that are mine. She also put another bag of "cheese" flavored chips on top of the bureau. I don't know why she had a bad day yesterday, but she doesn't have the right to take out her bad day on me; unfortunately, a lot of people have now been told that they have the right to take out their problems on me. That's what bullying is.
I went for a job interview at the Department of Motor Vehicles a few days ago. I walked into the building and saw the wet floor signs and a poster of a man paddling in a boat on the water that said "Change will come." There were also posters in the elevator that said "Ride the Dragon for Charity." Here's the blurb from the front page of the website, which is also much like what was written on the posters:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ride the Dragon for Charity The Lake Champlain Dragon Boat Festival is a day long celebration of community, camaraderie, and competition.
Ninety teams -- that's about 2000 paddlers -- race 41 foot long dragon boats for fun, fitness, and fundraising.
Join the races. Anyone can do it. Hop aboard.
Dragonheart is excited about taking on a new project called our Survivorship NOW Initiative. Our goal is to provide more opportunities for support, fitness, education, and empowerment for cancer survivors in our community. Your festival donations will help to implement this quality of life program.
Please get involved today!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was already angry by the time I'd been in the building for a few minutes. When the person who was to do my interview walked up to me, I asked her if I was there for a real interview or not.
When the interview was over, I took the elevator back up the one flight; a young guy walked into the elevator as I was leaving it. His eyes lit up when he saw me, and just before the elevator doors closed on him, he gave a loud cough.
I've never met him before, either.
I was approached at the Department of Labor with information about applying to the job, which is a temporary job but still a job. I didn't seek out the government for a job. Once I'd applied for it, I thought about it, and it seemed as if maybe it would at least be a situation in which the employer wouldn't be in danger of being persecuted by the government and other harassers and put out of business for having hired me. The woman who got my application and with whom I spoke over the phone about the job and set up the interview had seemed nice enough on the phone.
Whether or not it was a real interview, and whether or not the woman who conducted it had good intentions toward me, I have this feeling about the big harassers in general:
Anyone who looks at what's happened and says "Look at what we can do with all of our power. Look at what happened and is still happening and may happen for the rest of her life to Lena Kochman because of us; isn't that great? Shouldn't that be a lesson to anyone who says anything to us that we don't like" is displaying exactly the kind of attitude that provoked my objections in the first place, before anyone was calling me vagina names at all.
Copyright L. Kochman June 4, 2011 @ 4:19 a.m.