I don't understand my reaction

Post Reply New Topic

Today I had a couple of crap experiences, but for some reason, it was the second one that really got to me, to the point where I can't really concentrate.

First I had a bit of a run-in with a very silly neighbor. It had been a long time coming, and I managed to get my point across while staying polite, so I was a bit shaken, but happy with how I dealt with it.

Later I was the butt of a misogynist joke; apparently I'm not sufficiently subservient to my husband. The little s**t who said it must have been about ten years old. Of course, ten year olds say stupid stuff all the time, but what freaked me out about it was that his dad seemed to think it was a great joke, and actually stared at me and laughed in my face when I turned around. They looked Afghan to me, yet the boy spoke in my language and with a heavy accent. What that implies is that it was meant to be heard, and that the father was ok with it.

And I'm just thinking; this is what the world is coming to. Ten years this was unthinkable. Even the worst woman hater would have the wits to teach his kid to shut up about stuff like that. I've never seen kids be rude to adults in the presence of a parent. People only do stuff like that if they think they can get away with it. And they probably can, because although politicians make a huge affair out of shutting the border and preserving national values and s**t, they cannot rule the minds of people who already live here. And my kid will have to go to school with these little s**ts who lie and mistreat girls, and get told she's racist if she doesn't want anything to do with them.

And I hate the feeling that I can't fight back. There is not much to be won from fighting with strangers in the grocery store, but I'll probably run into these people again, and I have no idea how to deal with it. It makes me feel fourteen again, when going to school means being surrounded by people who will interpret anything you do the worst way possible and use any opportunity to ruin your day. The nice thing about growing up is that people don't get to do this to you; but even this is changing.

I think the PC thing will eventually wear off when people really start to see what's going on.

I was told the other day by the manager of my local mental health resource centre, that housing priority was given to Eastern European families, and they were taking up housing stock. Residents in this country with mental health problems were at the bottom of the list. My mother actually took notice, because it was direct from someone who knew what was actually going on.

I think Blair was the start of it all, saying he welcomed people in from other countries, I think just so they would take low wage jobs.

As for the Afghan man and his kid, yeh, I don't trust their culture. I've been starting to think perhaps the angry "racists" in this country is a good thing...people should be getting angry. I don't want misogynism and backwards religious views sending crime up and making this country go backwards.

Perhaps in checkout gossip, warn other people about this man? I'm sure most people will appreciate it, and perhaps someone might teach him a lesson. And yes, he would totally deserve it, how dare he treat you like that?

Yes, I think the PC thing will wear off, and then it'll get really nasty. This is just my personal feeling.....but for what it's worth, I think fascism is never quite far from the surface in Europe. I don't want to live in a fascist state; it's not great for people like me either. But I see the change in attitudes. A friend who looks vaguely Middle Eastern started experiencing discrimination because people think he's Muslim, even some Muslims mistake him for one of them. So I understand that life is not great on the other side of the divide. But the misogyny is unbearable, and makes communication impossible at times.

I spoke to a lady who's a Muslim from West Africa. She said she moved to the countryside, and over a period of four years not one of the neighbors spoke to her. That's rough. During the time I've known her, she's started wearing a hijab and doing the "I am in the Muslim Club" thing. She loves getting a rise out of people. Things are not going well. People are talking about "integration instead of assimilation", but I think the only people who understand what that means are journalists, and they may be deluding themselves.

Yesterday I watched a tv show from 1982, and I almost cried from nostalgia. It was a better time, without the materialism, perfectionism and hysteria of today. I once asked my mother whether what I was feeling was just childhood nostalgia, or that things were really better in the eighties. She said I was probably right. She said they had less worries, less news about all the horrible things happening in the world. She said she couldn't believe all the things she got done at the time. I guess a lot of that had to do with watching less tv.

I totally understand Brexit, the rise of Trump. I just think he is an unstable individual who could start WW3. But he had a forerunner in Sarah Palin. This is a movement, not one single lunatic. The technocracy may be right that the unwashed masses are not good at political analysis, but I don't understand where they get the idea that people haven't noticed that they can't pay rent for the next month, and that there aren't decent jobs to be had for people without education.

The people who are at the coalface of integration are people like you and me; women, low income, disabilities. My disabled gay friend and I were discussing where to live; I mentioned a certain, cheap area, and he said: "No, I don't want to live with Turks." Which is perfectly understandable, there is no way this guy can pass as straight even if he wanted to. And his body might not survive a beating.

About checkout gossip: Ahahahahaa (hysterical giggle). This is Scandinavia, there is no checkout gossip. People in my country are so conflict averse and passive aggressive that talking openly about someone being mean to me would just result in people telling me I was probably imagining it or that I somehow did something to deserve it. This is the crux of the problem; women can't speak openly about that sort of thing. We are supposed to smile and bear it, 'cause that guy probably had a horrible life. I'm sure he had; it still doesn't make it a good idea to move to a new country and start insulting the locals.

If a woman for example writes to the newspapers about this sort of thing, two things happen: She gets attacked by the moralistic wing of the feminist movement, who trot out the old line that the native guys are just as bad, which is simply not true, ask any policeman. I'm a feminist, but I get tired of this s**t. The other thing that happens is that she gets publicly shamed by some Pakistani politician/journalist/activist with a good education, job and network, who makes fun of her education, choice of words, family background, etc. At which point the chattering classes dogpile on her, and make it abundantly clear that she's a lower class of person than themselves. There is no socialist alternative anymore, it's become internationalist.

About the waiting line for housing: yes, that's exactly it. And the fact that these Eastern European families need public housing means that their jobs don't pay enough for families to live on. Here, it's not Eastern Europeans, they generally manage to take care of themselves, because they come to work, and they earn enough to live on. But already flats that were meant for pensioners unable to take care of themselves are being converted into housing for refugee families. I see kids with learning disabilities being ignored in schools and kindergartens because all resources are being focused on the obvious problems of kids with a foreign background. And we're always being told it's just temporary. Meanwhile population is rising like crazy in Africa and the Middle East, and people are dying by the boatload trying to get to Europe. There is nothing temporary about this situation, it's permanent, and it'l only get worse.

It reminds me of what Shirin Ebadi said about the Iranian Revolution. She and a lot of progressives and feminists involved themselves in the uprising against the Shah. They were told there would be improvement of women's rights, but only after other problems were solved. And those problems were never solved.......

End rant. Sorry, but I had to get it out. I'm gloomy. Why can't anybody talk about the way people feel about these things? Why does it all have to be about statistics? Emotion is the elephant in the room.

I've always been interested in Ancient Egypt...and in Coptic Christianity, Smudge.

I don't know enough about either--especially about Coptic Christianity.

You can't embrace racism as the way to shelter a country from the miseries of the rest of the world and then expect others not to be racist against you.

#smudge: I'll just comment on what you said instead of quoting, or else our heads will explode from keeping track of comments

Yes, the horrible thing about all of this is that the people in the middle who get squashed. People at both extremes start generalizing more and more, and people who are a little bit of this and a little bit of that, or just don't share the values of their mother culture, get mistreated by both sides. I know more than I want to know about being ostracized by both sides when you don't fit into either camp, which is why I at times dislike everyone, I've met a bunch of people who were spouting racist nonsense yet stepped up to help when a stranger needed it, and members of the pc police who have nothing to give to anyone. A lot of the time people don't mean the stupid stuff they say. Yet people like that guy in the shop are not isolated idiots; there's millions of them, and they create horrible rifts between people.

About the eighties nostalgia: remove job insecurity, and a lot of the status anxiety evaporates. Status anxiety is in many instances an entirely rational reaction to insecurity; just look at how the British upper classes hire each other to do things. The US is a nation of immigrants - consider the sheer human cost to every family of uprooting themselves from where they used to live. Yes, they built themselves a better economic future, but the cost in loneliness, heartbreak and confusion was high.

About the prospect of WW3. Who knows? As you say, this time the experts are worried. Perhaps I've been spending too much time with people who've seen their once peaceful country destroyed by war. What they have in common is that none of them saw it coming. In this case it seems the only people qualified to comment are history professors.

The thing is.....I'm more extroverted than is good for me. I talk to people. As long as I can keep them talking about what interests them, I do okay. I learn a lot from talking to people. Whenever I've worked, I always asked a lot of questions. When you do that, you start learning a lot about the stress points in society. What bothers people.

What I meant about things being permanent is this: I spend a lot of time in a country with a lot of unemployment and poverty. It's shameful how some old people live. What the old people are telling the young is this "Son, you need to go west. There is nothing for you here. No future, no work." I imagine the same scenario being played out all over the Middle East and Africa, hence the boats. And population in these areas is growing fast, and there is more and more competition for resources. Something's gotta give. I think what they call the "refugee crisis" is nothing compared to what will come.

I think what you were referring to is people getting stuck being supported by social services, and yes, that is the case for a lot of people who have no education and therefore have to compete for menial jobs with huge numbers of people in the same position. The vast majority still have no wish to return to their home countries, so they are stuck in limbo, dependent on others.

On an entirely different note, I'm happy that my comment helped. It wasn't particularly about you, rather about several people in the thread, but I do feel that a lot of people misconstrue what is just autistic thinking, coming from a genuine wish to be of help. I've spent years with someone who reasons just like that. At times I've wanted to clobber said person repeatedly (they will forgive me for this, it's mutual), but when I add it all up, they are honest, decent, reliable, kind (but sometimes clumsy about it) and genuinely well intentioned.

Hihi. It's funny you should apologize for being terrible at replying I did just that to someone else yesterday. We can be stop-and-start together

Btw, I need my beauty sleep. Nighty night - I wouldn't know what to do without you guys