The podcast really made me stop and think about a lot of common practices in the United States. I always thought it was dumb that girls could not wear tank tops in school. I remember growing up, my parents always taught me that I should take pride in and love my body — I was very lucky to grow up in an extremely accepting household. The only caveat was that there were rules to when I could do this. It was not appropriate to wear my summer shorts and tank tops to school or to my grandfather’s house because it was “inappropriate”, even when it was 90 degrees out. I never quite got this because I did not understand why it was okay to wear some clothes to some places but not others, especially as a little girl. Then I grew up and started to hear stories about male teachers and students getting “distracted” by females’ clothing choices. While I guess I can kind of understand the hormone-fueled, puberty mayhem of middle school making it harder for boys to concentrate in general, I still don’t get why some teachers, the people you trust your kids to spend hours a day with, are being protected because they are distracted by a young woman’s shoulders. I think it is frankly disgusting and not something we should accept as a society.
Further, the assumptions we make about other people and their bodies/choices are archaic. I understand that there is a gap in knowledge between every person as we are always dealing with instances of asymmetric information — people will only know what they know if they never try to educate themselves or accept education from others. This being said, we cannot accept people who refuse to try and be better. Just because people grew up with a different understanding of normal does not mean we should allow them to use it to hurt others. We have so much information now and yet, not that much has changed. I know that we are slow to learn and evolve, but I feel like we could speed up the process if we stopped protecting the people who are actively hurting others. I have always had a sharp tongue when it came to people in my life that perpetrated assumptions of racism, misogyny, etc. While that has gotten me into some trouble and some awkward family dinners, I don’t regret what I say to those that are being terrible people. Yes, it probably should have been done with a little more class, but I am sick of excusing people because “that’s just what they know”. I am grateful to know more and grow up in a more accepting time but that also means that things will change yet again and that I will never be able to stop learning or bettering myself. These baseless assumptions once had meaning, right or wrong, but if we know they are wrong, why do we still accept them? We all have work to do to educate and understand our biases but the weight should be on the people who are perpetuating this, from microaggressions to straight-up bigotry, because if we accept the idea that “I personally wouldn’t do that but they grew up in a different time”, we will never get anywhere.
Critical Thinking
I agree with your position to stop excusing people who act in ways that cause harm to others for the flaky reason of “they don’t know any better”! As a society full of humans who desire connection with other human beings, part of our responsibility is to educate others about how to act in ways that respect and affirm others’ human dignity. The other part of that responsibility lies with the individual person doing the necessary work on how they can confront their implicit biases to treat every person they encounter as equal instead of treating them according to some set scale.
I really like your take here! I definitely think we give people an unjustified pass because “that’s how they were raised” or “that is just what it was like when/where they grew up.” That might be true, but it is your responsibility to accommodate new information, especially if this new information is along the lines of this is racist, sexist, homophobic, abilist, etc. so don’t do it. However, some people may have genuinely not understood why something was bad, and are willing to learn. We should offer them grace and provide them with the information/ways to access the information the first few times, but after a certain point, you can’t just keep giving people chances. People sometimes use the “that’s how I was raised” excuse for things that would get them canceled (which is a whole other can of worms). If you are going to use this in a conversation where someone is educating you on something you were incorrect/racist/sexist/etc. about, then it needs to be followed with “but that’s not how I act/understand the world now bc of the new information,” not just used as an excuse.