My husband and I are struggling with infertility at the moment, and about to start IVF. Some of my friends know that we are having problems, generally speaking, and some know about the IVF. I am *very *sensitive about the whole subject at the moment, and have had to stop conversations dead when someone has said something that has been particularly hurtful or clueless.
This has ranged from crass comments about turkey basting (after already having explained what IVF entails) and about how maybe we should just try lots of sex (well, duh, why hadn’t we thought of that?) to more clueless ones like asking us whether we have heard about this thing called ovulation. 12 months ago, I could probably have shrugged a lot of this off, now I just burst into tears. Oh, yeah, and then slipping in something about how you are going to plan your second child around your work commitments is really the icing on the cake when we have been trying unsuccessfully for 2 and a half years to even get pregnant once. Is being thoughtful really that hard?
I’m also on board with the sensitivity about animal cruelty stories. Cannot stand to read or hear about them. Again, tears and anger will follow if I do. I think I should live in a bubble.
Relationships that people do/should have with parents. My relationship with my father is…ah, nonexistent for many reasons, and it really bugs me when people come out with “but they’re your parents, you have to love them”. Um, no, I don’t have to do anything, you twit; if someone is an emotional burden or causes me pain, I will cut them out of my life.
Also, the decision to have or not have children. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I really and truly don’t think I want to have any. And yet whenever I mention this to someone, they bring out the old gems; “oh, you say that now, but it’ll be different when you’re married”; “oh, maybe you don’t like kids, but once you have them, you’ll feel differently”. Uggh, does that condescending crap bug me. It’s a very big decision for anyone to make, and yes, maybe I’ll change my mind in the future; but don’t pat my head and smile and say “aren’t you just adorable with your little opinions?”
Also, animal abuse, racism, sexism, and homophobia. I can’t be around people who make an “innocent” gay joke or a joke about how dumb men/women are. Too many good people have worked too hard to fight prejudice and ignorance; the “jokes” really don’t help matters.
A weird one, but I get really messed up for the day if someone overstates my abilities or some attribute. I can’t correct them because then it’s like telling them their judgment skills are lacking, but I feel like I’m being conceded if I accept the compliment so whenever someone tells me I’m “one of the best friends ever” or something I get really depressed for a while.
Weight comments. It is rude to comment on someone else’s weight, whether you think they are too thin or too fat. Just rude.
“Family planning” comments, especially nosiness. Also rude. Why someone else does or does not have children is nobody else’s business. The statements some people make after a person has lost a pregnancy are beyond belief.
Bad things happening to children or animals. I do not want to read a bookl, see a movie or hear a story about animal or child abuse, it just makes me too sad and angry.
I was raised dirt poor; not a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of, as the saying goes. My mom went from crappy job to crappy job; waiting tables in restaurants, assembly line manufacturing work, you name it. We went from one rented place to another. When mom had a good week, we ate OK; when she had a bad week, it was cowboy beans & rice for days at a stretch. Our cars were always second-hand old beaters that my older bro kept running with duct tape, baling wire and a whole 'lotta luck.
As a boy growing up in central, and north central, Texas, I spent a good deal of time in Mexico. Down there you meet real poverty; kids not wondering if beans & rice are on tonight’s menu, but whether they’ll actually eat at all. Kids wearing clothes that were old and ragged when their older siblings owned them.
I always bristle when I hear someone of financial means pissing and moaning about how poor they are. “We simply can’t afford to get Tiffany the Lexus for her birthday. We’re just toooo poor right now. She’ll have to settle for a Mustang.” Fuck you.
I also get belligerent when I hear Mr. $3,000. Dollar Suit make comments about how ‘the poor are poor because they choose to live that way…’. Fuck you extra strength.
This. I’m very open about being a furry but I hate when people make gross stereotpical generalizations that don’t apply to me in the slightest.
I’m also very sensitive about my appearance. I was on high doses of Prednisone all through Eementary and Midle School and as a result was perpetually overweight. I’m off those demon-pills now and am by no means fat - 6’ tall, ~160 lbs - but that experience left me so self-concious about my appearance that any pimples, nicks/cuts from shaving, or my general lack of muscle definition are enough to make me wish I was invisible.
Adoption. I’m not adopted, but I hope to adopt one day. It infuriates me when people say that adopted children aren’t your “real” kids. In most cases it’s just poor wording, but they have no idea how rude and hurtful it sounds.
The black ghettoes, the poor. The first time I was around a professional setting and saw the way whites and especially blacks talked about the poor black people, I was angry and hurt. Also, I am embarrassingly emotional about hip hop, which I associate with poor, black ghetto culture. I am working on being less sensitive on these topics.
Holocaust jokes. My parents are still-living survivors, so it is hard for me to see the humor. Terms like grammar nazi/soup nazi are really tough. I could never watch Hogan’s Heroes.
I always had trouble with Hogan’s Heroes on general principles (funny Nazis? What the hell were they thinking?) until I found out that at least a couple of the main Nazis (Werner Klemperer/Colonel Klink was one–don’t remember if the other was Sgt. Schultz or Col. Buchwalter) were not only Jewish, but one of them was an actual Holocaust survivor.
Also, add me to the list of those who are sensitive about animal abuse. Don’t know why I didn’t add this in my original reply, but yeah–I can’t stand watching or reading about pets, especially cats, being injured. Deliberate injury is the worst. I pray I never see anyone hurting a cat, because despite the fact that I’m a wimp and not at all prone to physical violence, I’d probably end up in jail.
Anything French. Growing up French-Canadian in a primarily anglophone area, I got bugged about it a lot. I’ve always been proud of my heritage, but regardless of which side of the divide I was interacting with, I was always kind of the outsider. Since I was primarily dealing with anglophones, it’s the Acadian side of me that I’ve grown touchy about.
I also get very paranoid when I speak to someone and don’t get a response or am spoken over, and am very, VERY touchy about having to repeat myself. The first one is probably because in high school I was often…well, ‘ignored’ is kind of the wrong word. More like never paid attention to (by which I mean people would literally not notice me in the room). In both cases I try to be reasonable and not flip out, but it does happen that I do, especially if I’m feeling particularly moody that day. If I have to repeat myself more than once, I will assume that you don’t care enough to listen carefully. (I also hate it when I find myself having to ask someone else to do the same. Unless it’s truly important, I will never ask more than twice. I don’t like being on either side of that exchange.)
Jokes about miscarriage, especially when it’s women making them.
I saw a female stand-up comic recently whose big laff was some gags about girls coming to her shows if they are pregnant and don’t want to be - “I get them laughing so hard they miscarry in the front row.” I just don’t get it. It really smacked of ‘I’m a woman so I will make jokes about women things, taboo women things, and that is what will make me funny’. Nah.
And I’m not that impressed by men talking about it either. Or abortion. I just do not see where the humour lies. I don’t see myself as humourless in general, but for these, yeah, it’s a blank face hiding my rage.
Yeah, this bugs me too. And the term “real women”, because it’s always used in the context of thin women NOT being “real women”.
Overall, I’m sensitive of my weight, though I’m not overweight now, I was most of my life until I was in my early 20’s, so some part of me always feels like the fat kid.
I’m also really sensitive about comments like “you’re so lucky you’re thin”. Because to me, it undermines the work I did, and still do, to get and stay this way. And I dislike the assumption that thin/fit people are that way because of luck.
I’m pretty sensitive to comments about my appearance.
I was a pretty awkward child/teen… kids will tease you badly when you’re an introvert and wear glasses, but it’s 100x worse when you’re on the chubby side and your mother (who buys all your clothes) has zero understanding of fashion. I never got to wear any of the cool trendy clothes like the other kids (despite begging and pleading), my glasses were ginormous enough to cover half my face, and at one point I even ended up with a mullet because my mother was convinced it was the only way to deal with my thick curly hair. Old photos are seriously embarassing.
So now that I’m older and have some control over those things, I’m very very conscious about my appearance. I’ll never pass for a model and I’m only a borderline fashionista, but be damned if I’m going to look like an uber-dork ever again.
But it’s really hard to brush it off if someone makes a snarky comment about my weight or my clothes. Even comments like “Oh, your style is soooo unique” can get under my skin on a bad day.
My particular hobby horse is jokes about roofies or taking advantage of a woman too drunk to defend herself. It’s a horrible thing that’s happened to friends of mine so when I hear people joking about it makes me cringe.
I’m getting rather touchy about all gender jokes, especially that particularly prevalent boy/girl “feud.” I don’t MIND phrases like “you throw like a girl” because I accept them as entirely idiomatic, thought I try to avoid using them myself, but I almost had to leave the room once when my humanities teacher jokingly kept “defining” things like “smart” as “a woman” and such. In fact, I tend to hate “we’re better” jokes a lot, lot more than “the other side sucks” jokes. “Women are smarter than men” hurts a lot more than “Men are stupider than women” for some particularly odd reason I can’t really make sense of (this works both ways, but I couldn’t think of any particularly stereotype Men are better than Women ones I’ve come across too often recently though).
I’m also touchy about relationships now that I think about it, it’s partially sensitivity of people telling me I’m something I’m not though. I’m SHY and a GEEK, remember when kids used those terms? No, now I’m obviously a closeted homosexual and I’m constantly reassured that “there’s nothing wrong with being gay”* and how they “won’t judge me.” Uh… the fact that I don’t yell out of windows at hot chicks, and that my first thought when meeting a girl is whether she’s nice before I’d bang her does NOT translate to I’m gay, it translates to different priorities. I’ll expand on this later, I have to go to calc now but don’t want to scrap this post.
*Don’t take my post as saying there is something wrong with it, I’m certain I’d get just as annoyed if people constantly insisted I was, say, German, as well, i just don’t like people not believing me when I say I’m not what they think i am.