… And on the subject of the last little bit of my previous post…
So, while I was off at the thing I was at last week, one of the vendors is offering massage & accupressure stuff. It’s late, a bunch of us are just hanging out down at this person’s booth after we’d gone off-site for dinner, and we’re chatting, and there’s an offer for a free ten minute session.
Things to know to also help set the scene: person who was doing the massage and accupressure stuff is male, American, and as far as I could tell, white. The event is an SCA event, so people doing medieval reenactment.
I ask if it would be possible to get the knot out from under my shoulder blade for a while, the one that sits on a trigger point.
I get sat in a chair, for some accupressure stuff. I’ve actually forgotten half of the things because the person – hereafter referred to as annoying fucking twit, or AFT for short – said that were pretty rage-inducing, in the tired “goddamnit, quit making humanity look horrible” way.
First strike, completely ignores what I actually said about the knot.
(Don’t downplay or ignore what someone says about how their body works. They live in it, they know what they’re talking about.)
Second strike, AFT notices my red hair, and asks about my temper, and then tries to tell me I need to calm down. I’m not being particularly upset right then, even, just tired and hurting because it’s been a long day, the floor is concrete, and I haven’t been able to keep my feet elevated as much as I should.
(Don’t come from a position of relative privilege and tell someone with less what they should do, nor should you assume something just because of what they look like.)
The rest is under a cut because I don’t talk about magic otherwise.
(Ok, I don’t tend to talk magic in general, but there’s a reason for that, and it has a lot to do with the things I do magic for.)
Third strike, after the session is over, and I’m not actually feeling any damned better than I did at the beginning of it, and I’m talking to other people about things, AFT comes over and asks, in this tone of utter concern, “have you cleansed yourself of that hex?”
At that point I was too tired to do more than stare at him, and go “not my tradition. What the gods do is out of my hands”. Which… well, while technically true, isn’t entirely what I do, and what the fuck are you doing, you raging asshat, to tell me I need to do something that comes out of what’s probably your tradition of magic when I’m practicing mine? Which, by the way, does not call for cleansing after magic intended to disrupt or do harm.
My magic deals primarily with the dead and the dying, not the living, and I don’t do it without center, ground, and shield. And most of the time when I’m actually doing magic, it feels like I’m standing on a thin shell of ice over fire, and wrapped up in mist and blue flame, with no chance for things to cling (not no chance for things to attempt to get in, but either they’re burned to ash or they’re drowned in the doing).
The fuck do I need to do some bullshit cleansing ritual that doesn’t even come with my methods? Cleansing isn’t for after, it’s for before, because that’s how my magic works. Because, the fuck am I supposed to come to the dying and the dead while still wrapped up in all the emotional baggage of living?
Anyway.
(Telling someone how they should do magic/religion/culture when you don’t know their traditions, and aren’t from the same ones, is a very terrible idea. It’s probably not a good idea even when you share the same magical traditions or religion or culture, because these are things that do not have any absolute Right and Wrong ways of doing things.)
AFT also dresses in Japanese (ok, he does it as well as anyone else I’ve seen, and I really don’t have a stake in that), and likes to do imitations of the stereotypical east Asian accent-caricature (I’ve usually seen it used when people are mocking Chinese people, but I won’t assume that’s the only time it’s used) that has been and still is a racist act. I wish I’d felt comfortable enough to go “dude, that comes out of a racist caricature, will you please stop that?”
Except that I felt like I couldn’t without risking being hurt. Despite my friends being there, and likely to back me up.
Because I can’t relax about anything if mom’s in the same area.
Because it might get loud, and this is supposed to be quiet hours for most places at the event.
Because this guy is taller than I am, and more physical able than I am, and could actually hurt me.
Because I am too tired and hurting to be able to deal with an emotional blow on top of all that, and do not want to have a meltdown in public.
And I fucking wish I could have asked him to stop, because it’s uncomfortable, and it’s a racist caricature, and why did he feel it was acceptable?
(Ok, because everyone else there is part of the SCA, because he’s white and male, because everyone else in the group is physically disabled to one degree or another, because it’s late and everyone’s too tired to call him out on his bullshit.)
(And maybe he wasn’t intending to be mocking or condescending. Maybe he has some ancestry that means he’s allowed to reclaim that sort of thing, and I would have been in the wrong to ask him to stop. And if that’s the case, fine. It still made me uncomfortable, both his behavior and my own fear about what would happen if I did ask him to stop.)
There's a Mirror on the Wall 