There’s a difference between calling out, and calling in. Calling out is what you do to someone who’s so powerful, so untouchable, that only a massively public humiliation will even get their attention. Think R. Kelly.
Calling in is what you do with friends, family, people you care about. People that you want to maintain a good relationships, a good rapport with. One way is the indirect offering: “Can I bring something up?” or “Here’s what I just noticed…” both useful if your friend makes racist remarks in a social setting, or maybe a work mate does it and you don’t want to stay silent. It’s more dialogue than judgment, the caller makes fewer assumptions, instead asking questions first before laying down The Law.
Calling out is more like “Yo! Cut that shit out!” and it’s confrontational, judgmental, and direct. Dominant. It’s what you’d do with a little kid who was doing something they shouldn’t be doing, especially something unsafe like lighting the curtains on fire.
What OP’s guest did was an unskilled attempt at calling out. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong setting, wrong grievance. IMO it’s misguided to go off like that about someone’s mustard during a game night. I suppose one could call her in, if you have the patience and the time to be her unpaid therapist. I wouldn’t bother, not unless she had other endearing qualities that were not described in the original post.
To add on: if you come down like a ton of bricks on someone, chances are they’ll double down and it could actually end up reinforcing their original bias. So it’s unwise to attack people like that if you want to change their minds.
It is not some kind of paranoid insanity to be worried and even fearful about how certain public figures are specifically scapegoating LGBTQ+ people, but lashing out at someone in a casual recreational event over casually patronizing a business or a wearing a t-shirt based on novels from someone with objectionable views is not exactly the way to convince people of the righteousness of your cause.
Since I don’t patronize Chick-Fil-A nor have ever read the Harry Potter novels, I guess I have a leg up even though it wasn’t specifically because of the bigotry of the respective principals (although I find that a persuasive reason to continue down my path). I have to admit to having patronized other establishments of questionable provenance and certainly read authors who have expressed extremes of bigotry, and while I would be receptive to a collegial discourse over the merits of ‘supporting’ owners and creators with those views, I would not take kindly to being ‘called out’ in an the aggressive lecturing fashion described by the o.p.
But what level makes it acceptable? What if the OP has a Nazi flag and gets lectured about it? Or a CSA battle flag and you’re a black guest? MAGA poster? North Korean flag?
You need to make a better class of friends than this horrible person. Bossiness and self righteousness are two of the worst qualities a human can embody, and she’s eaten up with both.
I think the underlying issue is whether or not the underlying behavior is something reasonable people can disagree about. To me, there is no reasonable way to disagree about racial slurs or Nazi symbols. But I think you can be a good person and still eat at Chick-fil-a. I can see why someone would be uncomfortable supporting them, and also the argument that economic support of this particular company is a rounding error in the actual issue.
If the topic is something reasonable people can disgree about, it shouldn’t be brought up in an adversarial way in a situation where it is not relevant.
I give you this one for free, since I don’t know if I’ll ever get to use it. If you’re driving, and the low fuel indicator comes on, and your passenger points it out to you, tell them, “No it’s not.” Deny it, and tell them they’re imagining things.
If they snicker, or if they punch you, that’s all the thanks I need.
Generally I expect better from you. A family making a measured decision to move from one state to another supports the rationality of someone who keeps a bug out bag because they feel they may need to hurriedly flee the US?
(WRT the linked video - It is truly unfortunate that some states are so unsupportive of basic human rights and preferences. I understand and respect those people who choose to stay and fight such oppression, or who feel they are economically or otherwise prevented from moving. But personally, I would not live in a state or community that was grossly out-of-step with the values I hold most dear.)
Deliberately displaying symbolism of hateful ideologies, using unambiguous racial slurs, mocking or condemning people for their ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical and neurological disabilities, et cetera all merit open rebuke at a minimum. Expressing opinions that are objectionable or misguided begs is worth a collegial open discussion over why it is not okay to be mildly prejudiced. Patronizing a popular food establishment owned by a bigot or wearing a shirt celebrating an imminently popular book and movie franchise is definitely something that falls under the “Let’s have a private conversation about the principals of that business and what they represent,” at most.
And justified or no, if you walk around getting outraged to the point of lecturing whomever is in sight over every sight of a Chick-Fil-A wrapper or condiment package, or become enraged at every display or mention of Harry Potter, you are going to be in frequent angst on top of the actual outrages like pretty much every word that spews from the mouth of people like Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott. Get some therapy on how to manage your anger and pace your outrage because there are a lot of things to get really upset about and take action against.
I think this is on topic enough - There is a food truck type set up not too far from me. No indoor seating. The owner refuses to serve anyone that is wearing any MAGA merchandise. I applaud his decision. But feel he is taking quite a risk of payback in the form of vandalism. Or worse.
But, AFAIK political parties are not a protected class, so I think he is within his rights to refuse service.
It is not a ‘measured decision’; they’re fleeing due to the quite legitimate fear that their children may be taken away by lawful authority, which is about the most horrific thing imaginable to both a parent and child short of death. Abbott hasn’t yet advocated for rounding up “the queers” and putting them on concentration camps, and DeSantis is still holding back from expanding Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law to include open season on anyone who dresses funny but both of them are very openly making LGBTQ+ people the front-and-center scapegoat in their culture wars strategy to political success, and while they’re focused on children now because of their inherent legal vulnerability they’re clearly looking at what they can do to persecute adults (DeSantis explicitly with his “Don’t Say Gay” bill). Within the US there are certainly places you can go where LGBTQ+ people are openly accepted but there is an entire swath of ‘Red State’ country where is is entirely legitimate to be fearful about being openly gay or transgender.
You and I obviously use language and view that video differently if you equate the family choosing to move, selecting which possessions to bring in the trailer they attached to their vehicle, with a perceived need for a bug out bag. And you choose not to mention that moving from state-to-state is considerably different that fleeing the US.
It is horrible that the family felt the need to take such drastic action. I have nothing good to say about TX governor Abbott and would never live in that state. But you are seriously moving the goalposts from my observation that the lecturer was irrational and (tho I did not say it expressly before) her position extreme.
I don’t know if you haven’t watched the video all the way through or are just downgrading the fears clearly expressed by both the children and parents in it, but as the first mother in the video explained, she felt that she not only had to leave on short notice but that there are few safe havens: “We went through everything and I told the kids to keep what they thought wasn’t replaceable or that they would need in the next two weeks…We did not have a plan until last night…there’s only three states that are safe for trans kids and their families…we need one of the states that actually has policies, laws in place saying that they won’t extradite parents of trans kids.” This isn’t some completely voluntary move to a more friendly neighborhood; this is flight in fear of imminent harm, at no small hardship and sacrifice.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you think this is just an issue that a handful of people are blowing out of proportion because you lack the historical context to understand how the trend of this this issue going from a few conservative blowhards ranting about “child grooming” on talk radio and InfoWars to governors of large states backing and signing laws into statute to overtly persecute gay and trans people follows the rise of National Socialism and its deliberate scapegoating of Jews, Roma, Communists, and yes, gays in 1930s Germany, and how quickly that water went from tepid to scalding hot. It may not be rational today to have a ‘bugout bag’ and a plan to evacuate the country but we are potenially one more MAGA-type presidency from going down the road to full-on authoritarianism, and the culture war crowd laps up the LGBTQ+ hate like cheap cold beer.
Oh man, I meet these sort of people just about everywhere! Or I did until I moved back to the South. Thank goodness people here don’t do that, but they sure did it everywhere else. The more “liberal” the city the worse it was too. Down here, people won’t put up w/ it. It’s like the signs I saw all over businesses in Memphis that said “Be Nice, Or Leave”. I fully support that sort of mentality.
We do occasionally get something similar from The Southern Baptist Taliban members here, but if you just walk away when they start that sort of thing they won’t ever bother you again. Not so the PC zealot, their God given reason to exist on this earth is to tell us all what words we should use, how we should think, etc. It’s impossible to argue with them too, it just makes things worse.
Actually, this is the number one reason why I moved back to the South. I’m a liberal, which seems to be a dying breed now, and those people were /are insufferable. If it wasn’t for The Guardian, NPR or PBS, they probably wouldn’t be able to utter a single sentence.
You folks have a lot of good things to say here. During the first lecture, I was both surprised and mildly peeved, and was at a loss for words because I typically shut my trap for fear of saying something I’ll regret later in those situations. I know some of you have said some negative things about my friend, and, like I said, you’re getting a very narrow view and it’s unfair to judge her character as a whole based on these two incidents, though it’s fair to judge her actions.
If it comes up again, I’ll suggest that maybe we can address the issue privately at another time and then work this through it by treating her with empathy, getting her point of view, and asking what she wants to accomplish by telling me about Chick-Fil-A (or whatever the lecture is about). A lot of times people just want to be heard.
