From the 'Oh Come On' Department

Toddlers who dislike spicy food could be deemed 'racist'

Comments

[KM]

Hiya Newbie, come and join us on Us Time thread, we're writing about Caitlin's adultery. It's much more fun than this.

[Newbie]

Put a sock in it and grow up, the three of you.

[ian]

I don't like curries. Does that make me a racist? Surely not!

[Lucy]

'If Lucy bangs into me one more time, I'm not fighting back. I'm off.'

-- In that case, Sue, consider yourself most emphatically responded to, and go. I am not Sakura, and I didn't attack you. Perhaps you need to look to your own attitude to see why the womens' sites you're familiar with descend into pettiness.

FirstTimer - yep, I'm that twit, cheers. It is worth recognising that there's a gap between original statement and reported statement, and that's what the term 'implied' marks. Good good.

[First timer]

One thing I've noticed on a number of threads is the potential for 'reported comment creep' (perhaps there's a catchier phrase for it!). So, for example, (and definitely without going into the rights and wrongs of it), Sue says to Lucy 'perhaps you live in a nastier world than I do', then Lucy says "you've implied I must be 'nastier'". Sue says 'there may be a lanaguage difficulty here', and Gipsy refers to 'your statement about her English not being up to scratch'. I think it's worth recognising that there is a gap between the original statement and the reported statement, and that this can fan the flames. Not that they needed any fanning!

Oh and can I just add, 'Silence in the courtyard, silence in the street, the biggest twit in England is just about to speak, starting from now, times infinity no returners'. (Please imagine lots of smily emoticons, and do feel free to post without taking umbrage that I have inadvertently called you a 'twit', oh this does get complicated...).

[Libs]

FFS Sue, pipe down!

[Sue]

KM : sometimes you graciously concede - for the sake of the relationship

- Concession is a two way street (ie, if I concede, then Lucy does too.)Otherwise it's surrender. Is this all subjective, this idiocy that's going on here?

Lucy - I attacked BACK. Crucial point. I posted an innocuous original post, and was attacked. Viciously, nastily, who cares? It was an attack. A first strike. At no point did Sakura give me the benefit of the doubt - although I had to her. All she did was lay into me again, even more so.

But, in respect of last words, if the defendent (that' me, by the way!) doesn't get the last word, then the attacker wins. Playground, courtroom, doesn't matter.

Mayb the problem is that Lucy, too, doesn't like 'being beaten in an argument'. Nor do I. If she hadn't attacked me, I wouldn't have attacked back. It's dead simple isn't it.

It's SO stupid, this - but I don't back down and 'shut up' on principle. So, like I have been saying repeatedly, back off me, and I will do likewise. Mutual concession is fine. One-sided (mine!), is not.

Can we not get off this stupidity please. Let's just go silent on it. Is that so hard to do? I will if you will.

In other areas of acute disagreement I've walked away - Bratz dolls, depression. Because I've known I've been provocative myself. Here, in this instance, I haven't. My conscience is genuinely clean on this one. That's why I'm holding my corner.

I have SO much else going on in my life right now - and the nasty, nasty souring that is going on here just sucks.

Like some others here, I come to this site as a kind of mental respite from real life troubles. Humour, lively debate, differing opinions, trenchant observations - all good stuff, and mentally very stimulating.

As I've said, if Sakura WAS a sock puppet to sow dissent - boy, it's worked.

So, please everyone here, - back off me, OK? Unless you genuinely, genuinely think my original posting that got Sakura going was intentionally racist - and if you do, please explain why.

I think I've come to the end of my tether here. If Lucy bangs into me one more time, I'm not fighting back. I'm off. She's won, it's over. And she can go and find someone else to 'tell off'. And then this site will just have degenerated into the 'bitch-fest' that so many other women's sites become.

LM - thank you. All the best to you.

Here's to niceness and good will and good temper!

[Lazy Mummy]

BUSHRA!

(Waves across internet) How are you? How's your transition back to work going? Last time you posted was a while back; hope things are going smoothly for you (hahaha - all WMs know that's not really possible, but you know what I mean).

[Lazy Mummy]

Lucy -

Please don't be insulted by this, but from (I think) an older and slightly more battered-down-by-experience head, I think you should just walk away from this argument now. It's not worth the energy you're putting into it. Let it lie, move onto something more interesting. Maybe you can add the next installment in Caitlin's steamy affair with Jarrad Californian-Croydon VirtualSexGod?

[Lazy Mummy]

KM, as ever you are quite right. Thank you for your sanity.

Sue, please don't attack me. I've kept out of this "discussion" (being polite here) but I'd like to give you some feedback. Politely, respectfully. Not attack you; just a bit of feedback.

Like you, I've been reading/posting on AM for a long time, and I have a sense of people's AM personas. I feel like your persona is sometimes quite confrontational. Not in terms of your opinions so much as your insistence on having to be right, or having to have the last word. This has happened on previous threads too.

The way I see this is that your insistence on having the last word when you feel injured is that it escalates situations. I don't know if this is how you live your real-world life, but it does come across as antagonistic, even to someone who's not directly under fire (like me) and who really doesn't take offence easily (again, like me).

I don't know what you do for a living, or even much about you, but I do think that if you live your personal and professional relationships with this insistence on having the last word, it must be quite tiring, at least. Anyone who's worked in management or leadership or negotiation roles knows that sometimes you graciously concede - for the sake of the relationship. And soldiers & chess players alike know that sometimes you retreat from battle to win the war.

OK, that last was a crap analogy, but I hope you see what I'm saying.

I enjoy many of your posts; I sometimes agree with your opinions but I do feel that this insistence on being right & having the last word in these arguments is unhelpful at least and confrontational at worst.

Thank you for listening to my feedback and responding graciously.

[Lucy]

Sue, you've attacked. KM, I'm sorry, I know it's toddler-ish but Sue is really pushing my buttons. I made two comments which were I believe balanced and quite evidently attempts to communicate honestly and without causing offence.

I observed: 'Actually, Sue, when I read your post earlier today your glib assumption of a 'language difficulty' struck me as offensive too. In the context, it's hard not to read that an implication that Sakura's English is sub-standard!'

And following that: 'Um ... all Sakura had said at that point was that your comments were 'nasty' and that she was offensive. That's not exactly vicious! I don't think you said anything really terrible, and I think Sakura does seem to have built up quite a head of steam - but I did want to point out that I too read that particular phrase as rather offensive, even though I'm fairly sure it wasn't meant to be. It seemed worth saying, if only to demonstrate that Sakura's reading, though extreme and perhaps a little affected by the experiences she's referred to elsewhere, isn't an unique reading.'

YOU then decided to inform me that I lived in a 'nastier' world than you. That was a comment I found really quite hurtful and malicious. Re-iterating the claim that you've been attacked really does not constitute an attempt to end the issue. Apologies to everyone else for taking up time and space on the post, but I feel quite strongly that you, Sue, need to be made aware of just how offensive your bullying posts can feel.

[Gipsy]

that should have been 'hang' not 'hold'. Sorry.

[Gipsy]

TTHHHWACK <----- the sound of KM's comment hitting its mark.

Quite true KM and I hold my head in shame.

[Gipsy]

Ooooh fun. I haven't done this since primary school. So if I do reply then you are obliged to reply back to Get The Last Word. I'm feeling a heady sense of power here. And a bizarre sense of nostalgia for jacks and skipping in the playground and that mouldy orange peel smell that always pervaded the cloakroom.

[KM]

It feels vaguely appropriate that this was a thread that started talking about TODDLER behaviour.

[Sue]

Delilah: if anything we need to concentrate less on race and difference and more on what we have in common.

- Exactly.

[Sue]

Gipsy, Lucy - let's take this one as closed. But also, please understand, I'm having the last word as I was the one originally attacked. That's why I'm continuing in my ripostes to you. (That's also why these ding-dongs on sites are so pernicious - in a real life conversation they would probably never have arisen in the first place and would have been resolved in seconds.)

If neither of you respond to this, then it's closed, OK? If not, you're keeping it open, not me.

[Gipsy]

Sue: only because you mentioned it - I really am done having this conversation.

From your post:

>>spat with the likes of Sakura and Lucy

[Jo]

Hi Delilah - That was what I was trying to say about my post about the police puppy poster. It just causes greater divides between groups.

[Lucy]

'So, don't respond to this and I won't either.' So you said before, then dragged my name into your response to Gipsy. It's upsetting, Sue. I am not Sakura and don't particularly enjoy being tarred with the same brush, or coming in for unprovoked gibes.

[delilah]

Odd that no-one else seems to think that irresponsible articles like this are actually a deliberate attempt to create racist scandals which actually heighten racial tensions rather than reduce them. The suggestion that we need to improve our racial awareness is creepy - nothing is more likely to create discord. if anything we need to concentrate less on race and difference and more on what we have in common. As a child, all other families' houses smelled odd to me and had different food, even those of families whose ethnicity approximated my own (which weren't many). Some were different because the family was poorer or richer than mine, or didn't have as many pets as we did. I wasn't there to improve my racial or social awareness, but to play with a school friend. We have ethnic specialities at home but when my children have visitors I serve something designed to make them want to come back, neutral like chicken nuggets and chips. If they wanted to try something more adventurous I would let them, but only after the child was an establised and comfortable visitor. I would never feel racially insulted if a picky eater turned their nose up at my food - insulted as a cook, perhaps. If the child were mine, I would mention manners, but not racism. I think its our responsibility as parents raising our children in a mixed society to raise then not to use ethnicity as an excuse for anything.

[Sue]

Lucy: I'm not even sure who you think you're arguing with now.

- I was replying to Gypsy. Perhaps you didn't spot that. As I've said, if people keep raising this subject with me, I shall respond to them. As I am doing now. So, don't respond to this and I won't either.

[KM]

Please think about taking it further, L. I have Jewish relatives and experienced some anti-Semitic abuse at school. It is always worth challenging IMHO because if you let it go then others will get the same treatment as you did.
Not for yourself, but for othres.
I'm so sorry.

[j]

L- I have run a harrassment service before and a lot of trouble is caused by people trying to busk it.

I'd have a quiet word with HR to find out the system in use where you work. Doesnt mean you have to press the button and use it. But a very common system is for you to write a letter to her, setting out her behaviour so far, and explaining to her the effect it has on you, that you want her to stop, and that HR have been informed, but that at this stage you would prefer an informal resolution. cc HR.

[Jo]

L that is appaling. I think you should tell HR that kind of behavior can not go unchecked. It sounds like she thinks that is ok to say those kinds of things, I am just surprised no one else stepped in.