![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I have been congratulated on my patience and asked what posesses me to spend so much of my time helping newbie teen Pagans find their way. I think I have finally figured out what makes me keep going back again and again. Things like this should not happen, and yet they do all the time --->
First of all, young lady, you are backing your argument with a very uneducated approach. If I could guess, I would say that you come from a Christian background, and have never experienced “persecution” to know if it had a complex. [snip] You have obviously never been ostracized, had rocks thrown at you, had slang terms hurled at you and your family or been harassed by Christian secular groups. You have never been told by the police that “there’s nothing we can do about it” when your property is damaged by graffiti such as “Witches burn in hell” or “devil worshippers”. As a teenager, you don’t know what you have to lose, especially when your family and children are involved, and you can’t just show your “ass” on T.V. and blast it all over CNN.
http://messageboards.gurl.com/gl-religions/messages?msg=8287.13
This, of course, is not the first time someone has called their mommy on me. And this isn't the first time that someone has told me that my opinions cannot be valid because I was a teenager. This sort of condiscending ageist crap pissed me off when I was 19 and it pisses me off still at 27.
Experiece colours everyone's perceptions, but your age does not give you an automatic pass to have people listen to your views. It doesn't give you an automatic pass to greater respect than anyone else. As evidenced by this post, even the aged can be misinformed idiots.
I listen to teens when they need me to. I help them when I can. I tell them to worry more about how they do feel than how someone tells them they should feel. I make sure that they get good information and I try to be there to answer questions so we don't end up with the blind leading the visually impared. I give of my time and my experience, and I don't ask for anything in return (except maybe that people refrain from writing to me in chatspeak - I really hate that).
This whole thread was a sort of disingenuous pity party that didn't get the coddling or proper outrage that they were expecting (I am having flashbacks to a certain atheist thread that caused all kinds of drama a while back). I understand now why my own mother used to always meet the question 'What do you think?' with 'Do you want the truth or do you what me to tell you what you want to hear?'
I am not so diplomatic. A word to the wise for those who intend to deal with me in the future: Do not ask for my opinion if you don't actually want to hear it. I am not going to sugar coat it or take it back when you try to pull out your emotional red herring. My opinion isn't based on how well I like you, and I am completely willing and able to tell even my best friends when I think that they are being asshats.
--Phae
First of all, young lady, you are backing your argument with a very uneducated approach. If I could guess, I would say that you come from a Christian background, and have never experienced “persecution” to know if it had a complex. [snip] You have obviously never been ostracized, had rocks thrown at you, had slang terms hurled at you and your family or been harassed by Christian secular groups. You have never been told by the police that “there’s nothing we can do about it” when your property is damaged by graffiti such as “Witches burn in hell” or “devil worshippers”. As a teenager, you don’t know what you have to lose, especially when your family and children are involved, and you can’t just show your “ass” on T.V. and blast it all over CNN.
http://messageboards.gurl.com/gl-religions/messages?msg=8287.13
This, of course, is not the first time someone has called their mommy on me. And this isn't the first time that someone has told me that my opinions cannot be valid because I was a teenager. This sort of condiscending ageist crap pissed me off when I was 19 and it pisses me off still at 27.
Experiece colours everyone's perceptions, but your age does not give you an automatic pass to have people listen to your views. It doesn't give you an automatic pass to greater respect than anyone else. As evidenced by this post, even the aged can be misinformed idiots.
I listen to teens when they need me to. I help them when I can. I tell them to worry more about how they do feel than how someone tells them they should feel. I make sure that they get good information and I try to be there to answer questions so we don't end up with the blind leading the visually impared. I give of my time and my experience, and I don't ask for anything in return (except maybe that people refrain from writing to me in chatspeak - I really hate that).
This whole thread was a sort of disingenuous pity party that didn't get the coddling or proper outrage that they were expecting (I am having flashbacks to a certain atheist thread that caused all kinds of drama a while back). I understand now why my own mother used to always meet the question 'What do you think?' with 'Do you want the truth or do you what me to tell you what you want to hear?'
I am not so diplomatic. A word to the wise for those who intend to deal with me in the future: Do not ask for my opinion if you don't actually want to hear it. I am not going to sugar coat it or take it back when you try to pull out your emotional red herring. My opinion isn't based on how well I like you, and I am completely willing and able to tell even my best friends when I think that they are being asshats.
--Phae
Tags:
