Pontius Pilate as a woman

For example, your friend opens up to you about the time he tried to have a nice dinner out with his partner, but restaurant staff were being racist/xenophobic and refusing to seat them, so he and his partner just left and found somewhere else to eat. Now is not the time to flex "Well if that were ME I wouldn't have just taken it and left, I would have totally put the staff in their place and not tolerated that!"

Or, for example your co-workers tells you about how she went to the grocery store last night and right as she was about to check out someone aggressively cut her in line, now is not the time to shame her / put her down with a response like "What, and you just took that? Oh come on you can't be such a pushover!"

First of all, you don't actually know how you would have responded in these situations. You don't know if you would have actually frozen or fawned in these situations. Many people do, even if they don't think they would. And that's okay. People don't just decide to freeze or fawn, it's an automatic reaction. Stopping behaviors like freezing or fawning can take years of therapy, not just a belittling lecture from a friend or co-worker.

Or even if someone didn't freeze or fawn, they just made the conscious choice to avoid a confrontation. That's also okay, and not your place to shame them. People can have all sorts of reasons for wanting to avoid a confrontation, such as not feeling it's safe, or feeling like it will just make the situation worse.

Second of all, responses like this can come across as belittling and generally insensitive. Even if you don't mean it that way, it can come across as though you're trying to insinuate that you think the other person is lesser than you for not reacting how you think you would have reacted. When someone has already dealt with being mistreated the last thing they need to is be lectured or put down, it's rubbing salt in the wound to respond insensitively when someone opens up to you about dealing with mistreatment.

Instead, show compassion. Tell them they didn't deserve to be treated that way, and what the other person did was wrong. If they're being mistreated by a boss or co-worker, kindly remind them that they have the right to report the behavior. Or if they're being mistreated by a classmate or teacher, kindly remind them that they can speak to someone at the school about it.

I think you're probably onto something there.

This is just me spitballing based on some of my observations, but I feel like a lot of people conflate bravery/heroism with being aggressive/violent/confrontational and aren't able to distinguish between the two.

I also think misogyny could play a part in this, but I fully acknowledge that could be a reach. Being aggressive/violent/confrontational are traits generally stereotypically associated with men, while being passive and non-confrontational are generally stereotypically associated with women. And people often do hate traits and behaviors stereotypically associated with women while idolizing traits and behaviors stereotypically associated with men.

I also think this is pretty likely for a lot of people.

If a friend or co-worker vents about say, someone cutting them in line at the store, and you actually wanted to help them by giving them advice, a genuinely helpful way to do that would be "You know you're allowed to speak up when someone cuts you in line, right? You don't have to tolerate that." That's the type of response I'd expect from someone genuinely trying to be helpful by actually giving advice.

Riding off of the examples above, if your co-worker tells you she went to the grocery store last night and some guy aggressively cut her in line right before she was about to check out, if you want to answer "well have you considered what kind of night that guy was having, or maybe he was just in a hurry, hmm?" re-consider if that's appropriate or necessary, or if the guy having a bad night or being in a hurry actually justifies him cutting others in line without even asking or apologizing.

I keep seeing comments and reblogs around Tumblr along the lines of "wow, all of those words and you didn't even bother to mention x 🙄".

The thing about replies like this that there's a strong insinuation that either x was left out intentionally and maliciously, or that the person writing the post is an idiot for not already knowing about and including x, or both. Either way wording it this way is an insult and a put-down to whoever wrote the post.

Maybe sometimes people didn't mention x for malicious reasons, but 9 times out of 10 that's not the case. Most of the time people either generally didn't know or weren't fully aware. Or maybe just genuinely forgot. Either way, it's not called for to insult and attack people who are total strangers to you on the internet.

And there really needs to be more emphasis on the whole "people on Tumblr are strangers to you", it's rarely called for to attack or insult strangers unprovoked. Say some of your new co-workers or classmates you haven't really gotten to know yet are talking about how your city is going to be getting rid of some of the bike paths, and one of them is talking about how this is bad for the environment. You (hopefully) wouldn't butt in and say "wow, all those words and you didn't even bother to mention how this affects lower class people who can't afford cars 🙄😒" and if you would actually do that, you seriously need to work on your boundaries because it's really inappropriate to just attack and insult people unprovoked like that.

Of course you could say something like "oh it's not just an environmental issue, this is really going to hurt lower class people who can't afford a car!". You can actually just add it in a neutral way like that without attacking or insulting anyone in the process for not already saying it.

I have big and small tests. A small test can look like: setting a 10 minute timer and cleaning as much as I can within that time. Walking around the block and seeing how many times I can tell myself “just one more block.” Forcing myself to read and pay attention to the most boring book I can find in my local library (they don’t usually end up being as boring as they look).

Big tests are like: forcing myself to go to a party where I know my ride is dependent on someone so I can’t leave until they do. Spending an entire day on a boat with no escape. Giving a speech in front of a room full of people.

Sometimes it’s not things I have to do but am too lazy to do but rather it’s about just testing my utmost boundaries to remind myself that I am strong and I can do things that feel hard or impossible. Last week I dunked my whole body in ice water. It was fucking scary. I lived.

some essays i’ve got from school, most of the books and some essays r from beautiful people on the internet

They really think that the blocks of text (no-periods, no-commas) they litter under our posts come off as intimidating. They have no arguments, can't even construct a sentence correctly, really, but they have entitlement and by god, they will let you know about it.