I don't know...

I remarked somewhere else, in the context of someone being exhausted because they were dealing with a particularly entitled-behaving and rude student, that it just seemed to me people were getting meaner and ruder.

And someone else shot back: "Yeah, well, that's 'cos we women have decided we're not going to do the emotional labor of covering up for rude people any more, so it's actually a good thing" and I just boggled.

I didn't want to see a firefight start (this is someone who has expressed similar opinions before so I assume I cannot bring her around to my way of viewing things) so I just let it drop.

But yeah, no. What I was referring to was not women "making nice" over things other people did (or some men "making nice," I know men who can be very gentle and conciliatory and it seems prejudicial to me to assume all men are rude boors who don't care and all women get drafted to smooth over whatever ruffled feelings exist afterwards....)

What I was referring to, by and large, was something I've seen referred to as "punching down." In particular, there was a student being verbally abusive to staff people. Now, staff people on college campuses: they are NOT well-paid, they are the ones who do a lot of the scut work, you want to be nice to staff people because of that.

But I think I have seen more "punching down" in recent years: people being extremely rude to shopclerks (I have on more than one occasion whispered "I'm so sorry" to the checkout person after the person in line ahead of me raged at them over some perceived injustice). Or parents telling their kids, "Oh, it's okay to leave a mess, it's their job to clean it up" or any number of other things that, had I done it as a snotty child or bratty, self-centered teen, I would have gotten a Stern Talking-To from my parents. (And thus: I internalized the idea of "be polite to those who are working for you" before I was old enough to realize that it should be done simply for reasons of tact and humanity).

I've also seen more rude behavior in traffic. Just this morning, I had someone without the right-of-way scoot in front of me - even though they saw me coming - even though I had to almost stop in the middle of an intersection to avoid them hitting me. I've been flipped off more in this past year for "only" driving 10 miles over the speed limit on an interstate.

And, I fail to see how women (If we're going to accept the particulars) accepting additional "emotional labor" would stop any of those things. In all the cases, it didn't seem like the woman with the guy (if there was one) did anything, and in some cases (esp. with shopclerks) the rude party WAS a woman.

(And yes, maybe my whispered "I'm so sorry" or trying to be extra-nice to the clerk after a jerk is "emotional labor" but one thing I've learned in this vale of tears? Sometimes if you put in a little effort to trying to make someone else's day better, it makes YOUR day better too)

But I don't know. Also, part of me despairs a little: isn't it kind of cutting off all our noses to spite our faces to say "Well, SOME PEOPLE are rude so I'm not going to go to any extra effort to be not-rude"?

I dunno. I was taught to see people as people....and if someone around me is a jerk, and maybe I can make the person they were a jerk to feel a little better, I'm going to do it. (The jerks can go pound sand; my SOP for dealing with a jerk is to have as little dealing with them as I possibly can).

The other thing is: I don't think "covering up" for other people - that is, letting them persist in their pathology - is in any way the same as going to someone the person has hurt and commiserating with them. And it does seem unfair to the victims of bad behavior to say "Well, I don't FEEL like going to any extra trouble because that guy is a jerk, so you can just hang out to dry." I know there have been a number of times in my life when I've been hurt in some way by how someone asked, and even just feeling "heard" by another person helps.

(I think of the time back in 2012 when I had the horrible student who was so unpleasant to me, and I finally one day broke down crying in my chair's office, because I couldn't any more. And she told me she understood, and then kind of chuckled and said, "You know, you held out longer about coming to me than ANYONE else who had him in class" which made me feel way tougher than I actually was* and actually made me feel a lot better. It was a simple thing but it made me feel better)

(*I don't think it was that I was so very tough, I think it's that I'm so used to going it alone that I don't think of going to someone for help until I'm at the very end of my rope. Which I was in that moment, I was on the point of telling her "If I have to have this person in class again, I will resign")

But yeah. Everyone is fighting a hard battle, and it seems needlessly cold to me to say "Well, because some people aren't as good as they should be, I am going to withhold succor from those who are hurting, and be less civil when out in public."

You want me to become a hermit? 'Cos that's how you get me to become a hermit....

Edited to add: No, I have more.

This past year, I feel almost like we've come to a hinge point. Perhaps I see this more being on a campus (granted, one that has a more-mature student body with less time to concern itself with the niceties of things like shades of meaning) but it does seem three paths diverge ahead of us: One, where free speech winds up being limited in some way, in the name of either protecting people or silencing the unpopular. (This is a bad path. Because if you silence the unpopular now, perhaps next month, YOU are the unpopular. And I think offering overwhelming evidence to the contrary of "bad opinions" is preferable to silencing them and maybe allowing them to spread underground). Or we go to a path where it's red-in-tooth-and-claw, and people don't care about anyone's sensibilities, and people just spiral down and get ruder and ruder....and I also think this is a bad path, because there are enough people who become violent when sufficiently offended that we wind up with more shootings in the streets. Or, perhaps, we realize "I may not agree with the dude next to me but the dude next to me is at least human so I owe him civility as a bare minimum" and also maybe a recognition that "Not every one of my innermost thoughts requires it be expressed in any and all company." I mean, there's stuff we say when we're shooting the bull late at night with our buddies that we'd never say in class or at work....or at least that used to be the idea. And yeah, I know some people say "self-censorship is bad" but letting it all hang out to the point where you're figuratively rolling in filth and leaving a trail of broken friendships behind you is also not great....I tend to come down on the side, in that case, of a little intelligent self-censorship. (Oh, I censor myself ALL THE TIME. I would not have earned tenure if I did not...)

But I don't know what path we're heading down. I greatly fear the first, I suspect the second is the most likely while a deeply unpleasant one, and I'd hope for the third but it does seem like lots of people are kind of like 18 year olds out from under their parents' thumbs for the first time, so there is likely to be a lot of (figuratively speaking) drinking and ugly graffiti, and ill-advised sexual relationships, and keeping the neighbors up all night with loud music....and I don't like that future either. (By the time I was an 18 year old out from under my parents' thumbs, I was pretty much sufficiently under my own adult-mind's thumb that I avoided most of the "trouble" 18 year olds got up to.)

***

And yet another thought: I once had someone tell me that my extra effort to be a polite and pleasant person (esp. to people like waiters and shopclerks), when many people are rude and unkind, made who I was "shine more brightly." But you know what? I'm tired, and being (what feels like) one of the few out there "shining brightly" is discouraging. (And also, all too often, then, your civility is met with incivility...).

I don't know. My inner fairness-obsessed kid (think: Linus van Pelt but with Louise Belcher's attitude) is screaming that people need to be better....