in which people are stupid in various ways

[thanate]

The thing I'm a little surprised I haven't seen yet about the Readercon fiasco (a guest got harassed, and the con committee, a week after the fact, decided that rather than following their written policy of harassment=instant ban for life, the fact that the offender was a long-time member of the community and said he was sorry means he gets a two year suspension, with possibility of a ban if they hear anything else bad enough about him in the mean time. Lots of people are pretty upset about this.) ....Anyway, as I was saying before rudely interrupting my own sentence, I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen anyone pointing out the rather large difference between useful contrition (immediate "sorry I made you uncomfortable," followed by leaving her the hell alone) and perceived contrition under the threat of being banned from the con. Telling someone he can't play unless he's sorry is a great way to get someone to pay lip service to something he's got no intention of following through on.

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Personally, I'm pretty fortunate that the most annoying social failure I have to deal with on a regular basis is things like random people mistaking me for a teenager. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday where the doctor set me back another three years; I think he was trying to be flattering by low-balling my age as seventeen or eighteen, but he also seemed pretty shocked when I said, no, actually I'm thirty-three. Dude, I did the teenager thing already, and it was kind of a long time ago now, and I wouldn't go back if you paid me. You have the ability to pull up my medical records and *look this up* and given the context of the particular appointment, implying I'm a teenager isn't actually very flattering.

Of course, unlike when people start acting creepy in potentially threatening ways, this is the sort of thing where I keep my social inhibitions and don't explain all this. And who knows, maybe the next girl will want people to think she's still seventeen. I'm told some people like this?

Comments

[cheshiretiffy.livejournal.com]

I'm glad all of these people are pushing the case. Mr. Walling sounds like a terrifying person. And I hope the committee inforces their 0-tolerance policy whether out of being decent human beings, or even as a result of community backlash.

Anyone that decides it's ok to touch you whenever he wants is just disgusting.

[ashbet]

That is really disappointing to hear -- I hope they reconsider in light of the fact that their actions are basically saying "If you harass someone at our con, we have a zero-tolerance policy and you'll be banned forever . . . unless we know you and like you, in which case you get treated differently. Because, you know, we think that some people are more believable than others, and we'd hate to ban one of Our People over some woman who might have just been crying wolf."

*vom*

-- A :(

[heuchera.livejournal.com]

Blerg to both of these. The doctor thing would also annoy me since at all my recent doctor appointments or labs they have asked me about 4 times to confirm my birthdate before doing anything. And really, shouldn't the doctor know what patient he is seeing? I probably would have said something, albeit politely and possibly with some humor if it seemed appropriate and I weren't feeling all that hostile about it.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

This was a one-off specialist thing, so not my normal doctor (who presumably knows how old I am) and their system actually just asked me to confirm my name and insurance #. Maybe he didn't look the rest up until after talking to me.

Possibly I should just brainstorm polite ways of making my cranky remarks ahead of time, since I usually run into the line where things that aren't bad enough for me to be scathingly rude about them don't generally get addressed in realtime, so as not to irritate everyone involved. Probably poor form on my part.