boundaries dma ever shifting, always seeming to find me outside 021225 ... bespeckled They bend with our states of mind and how much we yearn to be loved and touched. 030415 ... Anna_Began I rarely have any. It's hurts me as much as the other person. Anyone know where I can pick some up? 030415 ... lotuseater shatter them, its the only way to make progress. 030415 ... Cicero bend with my heart 030507 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Why am I hearing lately about so many personal boundaries being disrespected? And then people start forming ranks as defenders or detractors, trying to set things up as men vs. women (true, I'm inclined to think that "man hating feminists" is a more common phenomenon than "man-hating feminists" but it's silly to think that "men" and "feminist" are opposites, especially when both traits can exist in the same person, shockingly enough. As to whether men or women are opposites, that depends on your definition of opposites.) But yes, those either/or things... some of those boundaries could use a bit of trespassing now and then. But, generally, it's not good to go up to people and grab them. There. That wasn't complicated. But I had another point too: I think that it's better to focus on the bad ideas and bad actions rather than on bad people. I know that's not a new idea. It's taught in workplace seminars and such: you say "Excuse me, Mr. Snodgrass, I'm not comfortable with you taking the staples from the library stapler and using them to decorate your styrofoam model of the Acropolis" rather than "Snodgrass, you evil staple-stealer! You deserve to die!!!" Real-life example - people are ganging up on a guy who seems to deserve it: news summary http://globalnews.ca/news/1662001/online-campaign-hopes-to-ban-pick-up-artist-julien-blanc-from-canada/. I saw a video of him a couple of weeks ago where he told a room full of (mostly white) guys how to hit on Japanese women: apparently you grab them by the heads while yelling things like "Pikachu!" That was so strange and wrong it amused me, but the thing was, people were paying hundreds of dollars for seminars to hear him say this. And it's hard for him to claim that it's all just a joke, now that more things like this have been exposed. That's the good thing about the Internet machine: his so-called Real Social Dynamics workshops are getting stopped. There's a petition to keep him out of Canada on change.org - which I signed, but in the little text box I wrote about keeping his "workshops" out of Canada, not about banning the guy himself. I think it's a useful distinction, though maybe at that point it didn't matter. I wouldn't have a problem with him shopping in Canada, singing in Canada, hastily figuring out how to calculate the zeros of quadratic functions because he lost his job and had to resort to tutoring grade 10 math in Canada. But no telling guys to grab women, please. It's not safe advice for the men in question, either. Violence tends to lead to more violence. And it's not about who's "scum" or not. People change. People can suck at one thing and be good at others, ethically, just like with other skills. This whole thing reminded me of someone I worked with a few years ago when I had a summer job at a kids' daycamp. I worked there two years and I forget which year it was: she was either 19 years old and my coworker or 20 and my supervisor. At any rate, several of us staff were inside on a sleepy sunny day, having to draw posters and think up craft ideas. This person, I'll call her Angelica, was talking about a recent time she went out to a party. She found, she said, a guy drunk into semi-consciousness on a couch, and she decided to put her hand under his shirt and grope his nipples. "And then," she said, laughing, "he got hard!" True, she said she'd been drunk then too, but here she was laughing about it. Our token male colleague raised an eyebrow and said, "That wasn't what I expected," but when he asked what else happened she said nothing, and the conversation turned to something else. And I was sitting there wondering why I wasn't laughing, why this bothered me. Being self-centred, I decided, "Oh, I'm just annoyed because she's popular and she gets a free pass to talk about rees-kay things at work, but if I said shit like that, everybody would think I'd gone crazy." I wasn't thinking about her being creepy or violating other people's boundaries, not because of double standards or thinking that penises = brains for those who have the former, but because I was self-centred and I had no worries about Angelica, who was straight, taking advantage of me sexually... so I didn't make the leap of logic that others might have to worry. She's probably become more sober, literally and metaphorically, since then, and when I talked to her at other times, outside of work, she had cool things to say about transforming business practices to be better for the environment. It's funny, though - now that I think about it, I also remember her gawking at my then-16-year-old brother in his bathing suit. (We had time off, we were swimming in the pool, and my brother was there too. She asked me if he was my boyfriend since we'd been talking together, and seemed quite pleased when I told her our true relatedness). Naturally, I disapproved. But in that case there was nothing wrong, except for my resentment and big-sisterly protectiveness (she'd been a bit snippy to me and I didn't want her to have anything to do with him) plus my jealousy of his curly red hair. Yup, I'm human, and sometimes I wish to be more physically attractive and/or distinctive. Though I'm not sure it's worth it if the Julien Blancs of this world should feel the need to come to Canada, put their arms around my neck, and yell, "Hey, you're Canadian! Hockey! Poutine! Beaver also means vagina! Ha ha ha!" or whatever their lines are. (Those lines could be blurred too. Erased, even. But I'm a silly Canada goose and it's time to end this soliloquy.) 141122 ... tender_square she said that what i was enacting was not a boundary, it was avoidance. boundaries, to her, were something that was negotiated together between people, and were in flux and ever-evolving. i haven't faulted her for not being there for me; i know she was doing the best she could, given the circumstances. but even in the past, when she did listen, she'd insist on her scorched-earth approach to conflict, without bothering to ask whether my judicious tack was working for me. 230113 ... Soma I got tired of being angry. Why was I so angry all the time? I started listening to the anger. Because my boundaries kept getting crossed. Why? It clicked. Because of ME. I never advocated for myself. I was the only thing sabotaging my own happiness. I was tired of being so fucking passive. I never once got what I wanted by pretending to be unbothered and avoiding the straightforward expression of my needs. How fucking counterproductive was that? To never say anything and allow my needs go unmet, then to be unhappy they were unmet. Then, after all that, to blame it on him. To avoid confrontation with him, hoping that if I punished him enough he would figure out what he was doing wrong and self-correct his behaviors as a result of my indirect actions. What a fucking joke I am. But I learned such passive aggresion from my mother, who learned from hers. Unlearning was hard, and painful, and time consuming, and I still find myself making mistakes. Defining them is so difficult, knowing the "self" is the true test of life. But despite those mistakes, I must still acknowledge I making progress. 230404 what's it to you? who go blather from