Did I ask for your fucking pity???

The BBQ Pit
1

I am a college student. Specifically, a junior, majoring in psychology and minoring in music. I have a heavy, rather demanding, schedule this semester. I also have a rather obvious orthopedic condition, the most obvious manifestations of which are very visible scoliosis, and being very short. (No, I don’t get my panties in a wad when I hear midget jokes, unless they’re directed at me.) This hasn’t stopped me from doing anything except ride certain rollercoasters.

So, if I am sitting in the Fine Arts building talking to friends, why the fuck, sir, did you feel the need to come over and bug me? More specifically, you creep, why the fuck did you have to come over to me and say, with two friends right there, “I admire your courage, young lady.”

You minkfelching toadlicking monkey-screwing assknuckle, I am NOT courageous. If I were, I’d have put your head back where it obviously belonged, up your smelly ass. But I am an introverted bookwormish wimp. Still, I had to say something, ANYTHING, to get you to go the fuck away. “I do stuff like everybody else,” I said, while thinking, “You asslicking donkey-dong shit-rolling fuckhead!”

“I’m a retired physician, and I admire your courage.” The fuckwad says it AGAIN. I grit my teeth and say, “Thank you,” while thinking, “GO THE FUCK AWAY! JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY LIFE! LOOK AT MY FRIENDS! THEY ARE JUST AS FUCKING EMBARASSED AS I AM!” Finally, Mr. I-Look-Like-Somebody’s-Grandfather-But-I-Am-A-Total-Dogfucking-Asshole goes away.

A piece of advice. NEVER TELL SOMEBODY WITH A PHYSICAL PROBLEM THAT THEY ARE COURAGEOUS, OR BRAVE, OR SHIT LIKE THAT. JUST FUCKING DON’T. It’s hard enough being a student without being put on a fucking pedestal. I am no angel. I am working my ass off in school, and not because I am extra-fucking-special. No, I WANT A DEGREE. So did YOU! YOU WENT TO FUCKING MEDICAL SCHOOL! If I wanted to do that, I COULD, no thanks to people with attitudes like YOURS!

So, sir, FUCK YOU. If I were inclined to pity people I would pity YOU, and maybe you’d find out how fucking ANNOYING it is.

(My first rant, please believe that if it isn’t that great a rant, it IS heartfelt.)

2

Umm… whiterabbit, I wouldn’t begin to tell you how to feel or suggest I understand what it is like to be you, I don’t.

But I can kinda imagine what it’s like to be the guy who spoke. Granted, his words could easily be perceived as condescension, but it sounds like what he was * trying * to do was be nice. As a physician, perhaps he has known a large number of people with physical challenges who have complained to him of their pain, their difficulties, and who he has seen give up because of it. He looks at you and sees someone who said “Fuck it. Life sucks sometimes, I’m not going to let that stop me.” and felt admiration for what he perceived to be a toughness and grit that not everyone in similar shoes possess.

My dime.

stoid

3

Yes, stoid, I know that. Which is why I was polite to him – besides the fact that I was in shock. But my point was that I am NOT some kind of hero. Nor am I extra courageous, and most of the problems I encounter are with other peoples’ attitudes. Such as this one. Ask an Asian student about what people think about them, and ask if a positive stereotype really helps anybody.

And it would be one thing if he knew me, but he was a total stranger. I’ve never seen him before in my life. It was creepy the way he headed straight for me!

I am convinced this is a generational thing, but it pissed me off nonetheless.

4

I’m scared.

I think I’m now going to go into the nearest secluded room I can find and bar the door. I think I’ll to go rock myself to sleep as I huddle in the fetal position in the corner. I’ll try not to make eye contact with anyone on the way to the room.

5

You know, whiterabbit, it was very courageous of you to post that rant.

[sub]MrVisible ducks and runs, but it’s too late, and he’s caught in a hailstorm of rocks, bottles, shoes, kitchen implements, power tools, and sex toys. What a way to go…**

6

I think this is what justifies your rant (not that it needs justifying).

I did find this funny, though:

If you do stuff like everybody else, and he does stuff like that, does that mean you do stuff like that? :stuck_out_tongue:

7

Ok, I’m not trying to be an ass here, I have a legitimate question. Why does someone feeling pity for you/having empathy for you/thinking you are courageous/etc make you angry? I have never really been in a position to elicit these feelings from anyone so I don’t understand. The closest thing I can think of is when my mom died and everyone felt bad for me. Yes, it did get a little old, hearing the same thing over and over again but I knew that the underlying feeling was genuinely good. It did not make me angry.

Can you help shed a little light for me, rabbit?

8

The problem is that when people feel pity for you, they automatically mentally put you in an inferior or helpless position. Nobody feels pity for a normal person with no problems. They only feel pity for twisted losers. When complete strangers feel pity for you then they have also revealed that they consider you a twisted loser.

9

Considering the OP I do not think the physician had much empathy. No one wants to feel like they are a freak. Well, no one who can ignore their problems.

10

Lemur866 - I think it’s similar to saying something like “Wow, thats pretty good for a girl.” Well, no. It’s pretty good, period.

“Wow, it’s great you’re a student, even though you’re not very tall.” No, It’s great you’re a student.

It emphasizes the least important aspect of a person (ie the disability) rather than the most important (ie, the person).
(Whiterabbit, please correct me if I’m wrong) to

11

Ok, clearly I’m out to lunch - my post was to Sunshine, not lemur.

Sorry. :frowning:

12

Whoa, now, Lemur, I think you may have gone a bit overboard there. You can feel pity for someone without considering them a “twisted loser.” In its good sense, pity means:

It’s true that people can feel excess pity or inappropriate pity, but not all pity is degrading. I agree that for a complete stranger to come up to someone and express pity is generally inappropriate, but let’s not exorcise all pity.

13

Wow, that guy deserves some sort of award for Patronizing Asshole of the Year. I’ll bet he went around all day, patting himself on the back and thinking to himself, “Good thing I was there to perk up that poor miserable wretch I saw in the corridor. I can imagine what a cesspool of misery her every waking moment must be. Thank God I was there for her. What a dark and miserable place this world would be without my magnificent brillance to light the way.”

Well, maybe not in so many words.

Still, what incredible arrogance that you would even care if this guy admires you.

BTW, whiterabbit, I admire the heck out of this rant. Especially when you refer to him as “Mr. I-Look-Like-Somebody’s-Grandfather-But-I-Am-A-Total-Dogfucking-Asshole” But not you. Just want to make it absolutely clear, I don’t admire you in anyway. And I’m not a physician.

14

My father died when I was seventeen, so I know something of what that’s like, but I also think it’s not a very valid comparison. There is a difference between something bad happening – the death of a parent – and having people feel bad for you. After all, who doesn’t feel bad for a friend whose parent dies? That’s a pretty awful time. I appreciated the sympathy and even some of the pity I got after that, for a while.

But to receive what seemed to me to be thinly-veiled pity from a complete stranger about something that is part of me, that I have been living with forever, that is NOT A PROBLEM most of the time, is, to me, completely different. The point is that I did nothing, except exist, and this man though I was somehow special just because I live my life. I still don’t see what’s so courageous about going to school. I have a good brain, why shouldn’t I? The school didn’t let me in specially out of pity, their evaluation was based on my mental abilities, not any physical ones. Hell, for the phys. ed requirement I SWAM. Not a problem.

Plus, it was horribly embarassing to have this happen in front of friends of mine, who don’t give a shit about this thing.

THAT’S why I got mad. I’m not saying I think he was really trying to be an asshole, I’m sure he was trying to be nice and make me feel good. But it had the opposite effect. I felt singled out and embarassed, as if he would have held me to lower standards and was surprised to see me in a university setting because of my obvious deficiencies. (Yeah, right.)

Does this clear it up any? Also, I was mad, and I thought I’d make my first feeble attempt at posting a rant. And yes, that did take some nerve. I almost didn’t do it. But I KNOW for a fact that I’m not the only one irked by this attitude. Perhaps this was, in my own way, an attempt to rid the world of a little bit of ignorance. My dad’s the one who introduced me to the Straight Dope in the first place, and I’m sure he’d approve.

15

When I was in college I knew a guy with Duchenne muscular dystrophy who couldn’t move anything but his tongue. He was 28 (old for someone with his condition) and had spent his life from age 17 to 25 in a legal battle to get out of a nursing home. While I was there he earned a BA in Journalism, with a higher gpa than myself. I honestly, truly admired his courage. But I never told him so. He inspired everyone who knew him.

16

The problem here, it seems to me, is not so much that someone feels pity for a total stranger who seems to have a handicap of some kind. I feel pity myself all the time for frail-looking older people who seem to be having a hard time getting up stairs, or for frazzled-looking pregnant women trying to ride herd on a rambunctious toddler, or yes, for folks with a brace or a wheelchair or another obvious type of physical handicap.

However, I do not approach those total strangers—in public, yet!—and make them a present of my opinions about their apparent difficulties or their apparent courage in dealing with them! As Miss Manners would say, the rude part is presuming to offer an unsolicited comment on another person’s private life, especially that of a total stranger, especially in front of others.

There seems to be some kind of bizarre notion floating around that as long as you’re not actually criticizing or insulting strangers, it’s okay to take impertinent liberties in talking to them. Wrong, wrong, wrong!!! “I admire your courage,” “I think you look hot in that dress,” “What are you looking so sad about?”, “I just wanted to let you know that Jesus loves you”—all of these are INAPPROPRIATE and RUDE remarks to make to a chance-met total stranger, no matter how nicely you mean them or how well-intentioned you really are. whiterabbit is dead on target in complaining about a particularly glaring instance of this arrogant intrusiveness, and in fact I’d expand her thread title to “Did I ask for your fucking opinion???”

17

And by the way, whiterabbit, a perfectly correct response to such arrogant intrusiveness is to look coldly at the intruder, with or without an accompanying freezingly-polite statement like “So kind of you to take an interest,” and then turn right back to your conversation with your friends or whatever else you were doing, without further acknowledgement of the intruder’s presence. Just because an intrusive stranger is being impertinently complimentary instead of impertinently insulting or impertinently threatening does not give him/her any right to a friendly response from you. It was nice of you to be a little more gracious because you were dealing with an old man, but you certainly don’t have to.

18

whiterabbit, an even better response would have been to simply say nothing, but give the prick a long, cold stare. Maybe you should have spit on him. I think I would have spit on him. That really is the best course of action, ya know, spitting on assholes like the good doctor.

Sorry you had to deal with that. What a fucker. Remember that spitting thing for the future.

19

I’m getting moral support in the Pit. I think this might be against the rules.

And yes, there were better responses I could have made. Hindsight is always 20/20. But I was caught seriously off-guard. If there is a next time – and you never know, there might be – I’ll have a better idea what to say and/or do. (I once saw a similar incident, with a similar older man, at a restaurant with a friend of my mother’s who was blind. Apparently he thought her being happy was simply wonderful. Too bad guide dogs don’t know how to attack.)

And I don’t care so much if he THOUGHT I was somehow wonderful, if that’s the way it came across. It was mostly the sheer ballsiness (is that a word?) of TELLING me. I’m not the Thought Police. It’s just that…you don’t DO that!

I am NOT into political correctness. But there is such a thing as tact.

20

Ender peeks out from his fetal position, looks at the rest of the thread, and continues to rock himself slowly. “All people are bad, all people are bad” he mutters to himself.