"I don't understand it" is the new "I don't want to listen"?

Only for the second post :stuck_out_tongue:

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Buzzfeed says the polite British response to needing to cut off a line of inquiry or request is “I can’t be bothered.” That sounds way off-putting to an American ear, so I was curious if it was true.

It is a very abrupt end to a conversation, however it can be conveyed differently depending on tone of voice.

Human nature is to follow the path of least resistance.

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Well, there’s two things going on that I don’t think have been mentioned yet.

One, sometimes people are just fucking stupid. We expect them to be able to understand simple concepts, because we can understand them. We are able to learn new words and new ideas. Some people cannot. There’s no such thing as common sense.

Two, sometimes people don’t understand something (it’s natural, we all live different lives and can’t directly experience each other’s) and are unintentionally assholes about it. They ask clinical questions, based on things they’ve read, as if they were in a classroom. They forget it’s someone’s life they’re talking about - the person they’re talking to.

This is often upsetting, personal stuff to talk about, which is why there aren’t more sources for it - that’s why they had to ask us in the first place. Then they get excited, forget that we’re people and not knowledge dispensers, and don’t realize that educating people is freaking exhausting. In these cases, they probably didn’t mean to wring our brains out like sponges, they had no idea what they were doing wrong by not understanding and asking again and again.

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As a straight man I probably have no place responding here, but having experienced bigotry of different types I’m going to anyway.

I think one big issue is the assumption that just because someone falls into category X they have a responsibility to enlighten the world about it. Just because I have a certain gender identity/skin color/sexual orientation/whatever doesn’t mean I know everything about it or feel the need to share all of my experiences with everyone I meet. My experiences are mine alone and don’t represent anyone but me. And theirs don’t necessarily represent me either.

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Finally! Thank you sir. You’ve basically said what I’ve been trying to come up with for the last four hours… Now I can finally leave. :sweat_smile:

True, even when it’s called “common” :smile:

That’s why I was wondering until which point is fine to overlook their rudeness :relieved: Like, I totally get it, you don’t get something and may have a slip-up, but there’s something called “tact” or simple “respect”.

? No one is banning anyone from giving their opinion :disappointed:

I think I’m a bit lost here; in this case I was talking about when someone asks you what they don’t understand (like, direct questions), so it’s not like you can ignore them, but explaining to them 5 times or so what you know, and they are still being rude, claiming that since they don’t know, they have the right to be thoughtless. I don’t feel like I have to teach anyone anything, but if they ask me something, I’ll totally asnwer (like, if they don’t ask I won’t say anything, but if they do, what I’m supposed to do?).

Of course no one knows everything, but for example, a vegan tryin to explain why they don’t eat meat, and their friend being unpleasant saying “that’s not normal! Humans have to eat meat to survive! You’ll get sick!!!” even when the vegan tells them that they changed their diet for beliefs/health/personal/other reasons.

Right, but sometimes we have to share because we live in society, because if everyone lives in their own shell there will be a point when the tolerance will be 0, and we can’t have that :relaxed:

I have a serious question about this insofar as it pertains to CoG games. I “understand” that people don’t fit into binary genders, but i haven’t exactly researched the “cis-gender” or other ways this is referred to.

I’ve seen in other games that there were multiple ways to reference these genders, such as xhe/xhim or che/chis or in the case of Choice of Robots rhe/rhis. There are even more options. This is all a little confusing, is there a proper way to list these options or provide a solution that will include as many people as possible? Is there already a thread on this?

And good luck dealing with all the jerks out there, there are a lot of them!

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In Xenophobia 2.0 (my backburner project) I have an option for people who have specified their MC as being non-binary to choose which set of pronouns they want to use, or input their own if the ones in the list somehow don’t suffice. That was the best thing I could think of at the time.

There was already a thread on the subject at some point in time, but that might take some digging.

Edit:

Found one:

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I think we’ve a couple of topics on the subject. There’s a few transgender topics on the forum. @Sashira might know better which one to post on, since I know she was working on something herself. I can’t remember which one off hand though.

@Lglasser said to me earlier

if that helps.

@Cecilia_Rosewood @FairyGodfeather thanks. I don’t want to derail the convo, consider the question answered! I think having the player manually enter their pronouns for anything except he/she would be most flexible.

I (think) I understand what SeventhJackel meant. At least, for me, it’s like this.

Because of what we identify as, we’re often expected to educate those who don’t ‘understand’ about it. (Cause if that’s what we are, we must be the expert! and always in the mood of explaining it to everyone!.. nope) The problem with this is that we don’t exist as their teachers, yet we’re expected to be polite and educate them no matter how rude they are being. And if we get angry, our anger is seen as unreasonable. 'Cause we should reach out to them and educate them. 'Cause they’re just ignorant! Like it’s our job to explain our existence. It’s the worst. :confounded:

I agree that sometimes we have to share because we live in society, but in this day and age it’s easier than ever for them to find information! There are more and more people speaking up about these topics on the internet, aiming to educate. Non-binary may sounds like a ‘new’ subject to those who never heard it before, but upon some research they can totally understand what it is by themselves.

So if they don’t understand, they can do their own research. Might feels rude to just ignore them, but unless you want to, you don’t have to explain it to them. When people ask me personal stuff that I don’t want to explain myself, I’d say that I’m not comfortable talking about this topic with them, and they should research it themselves since there are people speaking up about these topics yet most of the time their voice got ignored.

Hope this wasn’t too long! :sweat_smile:

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I myself have some difficulty understanding but I’m aware that it’s a subject that I would ask questions that may be rude but I’m just trying to hard to understand something so that I can see the perspective through picking apart the knowledge (often through illogical and crude means) I tend to sometimes have to know everything about something in order to understand it. However I understand that is my possible reacting in trying to understand so instead merely inform that while I do not understand enough it doesn’t matter that I understand merely that I can be open and accepting regardless. I tend to not understand people well and treat everyone like the are machines I can take apart (I’m sadly not normal and rarely am able to connect with people or understand things that matter sometimes)

@CitizenShawn I know it has been already answered, but there aren’t “absolute” pronouns for nb (non binary) people: it’s a matter of preference. Some may be fine with female (she/her) or male (he/him) pronouns, whereas others want gender neutral ones (they/them or it/its in some cases). Usually, when they are outside the binary spectrum (male/female) they start with the neutral they/them, stick with it because it works for them, or later on find other pronouns that work better for them (xhe/xhim, rhe/rhis, ne/nem, ze/hir, etc.).

You may find some people that are fine with two set of pronouns, like she/her and they/them, or any in particular, whereas other only want their chosen ones. As long as you keep it polite it’s fine to ask! :smile:

This is exactly what happened to me :confounded:

Definitely :slight_smile: After this unpleasant encounter I have learned a lot, like “sure, maybe I’ll give you an introduction, but if you wanna know more there’s the internet”. Sometimes I feel like it’s better to let them to fend off by themselves (to see if they are truly interested in learning) than having to explain it to them, because then they get all lazy and petulant and it’s impossible to deal with them.

Eeeeh… sorry, but I’m not a native speaker and sometimes I have a hard time understanding some wordings, and I don’t quite get what you mean here :disappointed_relieved: Care to explain it?

Well, “normalcy” happens to be relative :grin: Why do you say so? Because you have asperger or some level of autism? :open_mouth: I can’t speak much about that because I don’t have any of them, but I have friends with it; even if you believe that empathy is very hard for you or it truly is, people aren’t machines; we are more like spun glass you have to be careful about, even if you don’t know why. What may bother some might be nothing to others, and vice versa.

Let’s see… I TOTALLY get that being unintentionally insensitive is not the same as being fully aware of your words. Even if I am nb myself, I may be thoughtless towards someone else who’s also nb because I’m not aware that some of my vocabulary is offensive to them (for example; some people don’t like the term “queer”, whereas others are 100% fine with it).

Unintentionally insensitive =/= I am a jerk.

I’ll put an example for what I mean with using the “I don’t understand it” as the new “I don’t want to listen”:

See?

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“I don’t understand it” is a polite way to say that they think you’re crazy, attention-seeking, or both.

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yea rude oaf was indeed ignorant and sedimentary in their ways

as for why im not able to connect with people…not really sure sometimes i can understand motives of things but not why people have those emotions, other times the other way around im bipoloar and a few other things but none of those really should have this kind of lack of understanding of people at the basic level periodically i just considered it as just another part of my mind that is broken (spent some time in a mental institute as a child the understanding of a lot of disorders were a joke when i was a kid) and it doesn’t help that some of my medication make me self deprecate and think less of myself. mental detachment from society was a release. when i cant understand something its easier to accept something and move on because if i don’t there is a possibility if i try to understand i may get latched onto the subject and not think straight for a while unless i understand it all about the subject (usually only subjects that im interested in or trying to hard to connect with that person)
i don’t like not understanding things and wanting to so i often avoid trying for worry of snapping mentally what i can understand is orientation and anxiety in those considering im bi… granted friends say i seem pan
so i assume the stress you feel is big and that you body isn’t yours thats about all i can feel safe with guessing
social stupidity is a trait i have to assume i have and i was tod a lot to stop asking questions and just accept things so figuring out things on my own was my thing that and hating People but not individuals

to me jerks are jerks
“that’s silly, to me there’s no big difference between girls and boys. Dysphoria shouldn’t cause so much drama.” that is something that would cause me to shut off the filter in my head that keeps the angry and rude thoughts semi inside
(i once spoke my inner thoughts in a church face was very sore afterward and now dont like catholic ways)
“whatever pal, you’ll be always a guy/girl to me ^_^” at that point im not sure if i would be arrested or walking away from a unconscious idiot.

i myself am a jerk, just not that kind of jerk
i may have offended (not aware of it if i have) in my spontaneity rant. i feel i might be a minor version of that rude oaf based on my rough and sketchy understanding
Finding out who you are and becoming comfortable with it when you found it is the only important thing that matters
if that isnt how others see you or a willing to well tough for them what matters is you

I get this crap all the time a lot of people don’t understand body modification and they don’t feel comfortable around it so I usually tell them to kick rocks and gtfo

But people are overly sensitive nowadays too lol people don’t need to respect our choices since it’s there opinion

Haven’t read everything here, just the first post but I want to add my 2 cents. I have always thought it was “the right thing to do” to admit you can’t understand something when it’s true. Because you basically have the humility to declare you’re NOT ABLE to do so. Because you know you lack knowledge, tolerance, intelligence or whatever. If it’s true, then it’s true. You just have to take responsibility for this. If someone decides you’re not worth talking with for this, well ok, accept it and try to better yourself or accept it and stop talking with the person.
(For example I can genuinely say that i don’t understand why someone would be offended by any other person’s sexual preference.)

BUT for me the main problem is that there is a difference between “understand something” and “accept something”. There are some things I can’t understand but I can accept. Never try to hide when you’re intolerant. Because you’re hiding from yourself.

@Lycoris “Explain over and over” is not the right way to go (for me). Like in an argument, you can’t convince someone by telling the same thing many times just expecting this person to understand because you want to. Because when you explain over and over, you aren’t trying to understand (lol) how the other thinks and what are the things you could say to convince this person.
And can you understand why the “uncouth oaf” told you this? Or why this person’s brain wasn’t ready to see you as any other thing than a “girl”? Or why they fail to understand why it would bother you that in their mind they see you as a “girl”?

P.S: will read the rest later, I may be out of topic and will edit accordingly. ^^

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