I got home last night and wanted to fire off an angry blog post. I didn't, and I'm glad of it. I went to bed and I woke up feeling pretty damn good. At least a quarter of my grar last night was probably caused by going from not having eaten any real food for 12 hours to eating too much food and feeling pretty physically crappy both ways.
Even though I'm past being pissed of, though, I still wanted to talk something out.
I have no idea how to politely tell people when they've crossed a line and stopped being funny and started being offensive. I tried last night, and obviously I failed because I came home feeling very hurt, offended, and angry. And I know that my friends didn't mean to make me feel that way.
Maybe I'm too thin skinned. Maybe I my sense of humor is lacking. I don't know. What I do know is that I don't appreciate sex jokes about massage. Maybe it's because my friends know me more as a writer and don't know how important massage is to me.
Well, it's important. I've spent more than 1000 hours in class over the past year and a half studying massage. And I think it is a very sacred, very wonderful thing. It's not sexual, and implying it is plays into a horrible stereotype that massage therapists have been working for years to counter. Between masseuse being a synonym for prostitute in the phone book to terms like erotic massage, body shampooing, and happy endings, it's hard to get respect as a massage therapist. In my work I make people's lives better. If you want a list of all of the positive medical benefits of massage, google it.
If you think I'm pretentious for wanting respect for a career that I have worked my ass off for... well, you can fuck off. Last night I tried to stop people from crossing lines, and it didn't work. When the lines were crossed, I backed down. I was too tired to shout or defend myself and I didn't know how to say "You're offending me now," without it sounding pretentious and defensive. Maybe I should have just said it. I might have gotten honest apologies. But then, I might not have, too, and I don't know if I could have dealt with that last night. So maybe I did the right thing after all.
I'm not sure if posting this is the right thing to do, but I do feel better with that off my chest.
2 comments:
If I did or said anything that was part of what you took offense at, please accept my apologies.
However, I would like to know what precisely I said that you objected to so I'll know not to do it again.
I certainly didn't mean to cause you any offense, but that doesn't mean I didn't do it. I'm human and therefore dumb.
-- Pete
i understand how you feel. stumbled upon this post while searching for something on google.
i feel the same way with my friends and especially my family. my grandmother continues to introduce me to her bingo friends as her "little masseuse" i correct her all the time, politely and she politely tells me that it's not really a bad term.
old habits die hard i guess.
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