{"id":4327,"date":"2023-12-09T09:45:59","date_gmt":"2023-12-09T15:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/?p=4327"},"modified":"2025-06-27T09:12:05","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T14:12:05","slug":"use-your-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/use-your-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Use Your Words, Not Your Label-Maker"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We need better ways of saying, “I’m not against whatever group it is you identify with, I just dislike you<\/strong>, personally.” It’s important to be clear on this point: disliking someone in particular does not make a person racist, sexist, ageist or any other -ist, but our failure to communicate insult when it’s intended<\/em> and our reluctance to specify exactly why and what we dislike about the person in question often makes it seem so.<\/p>\n

We are conditioned to avoid any display of genuine emotion or feelings. We are taught never to say “I hate you,” because “hate is too strong a word.” Acted upon, with violence, it’s a crime. But even just expressing disgust or strong dislike is now treated as a loss of emotional control, a weakness to be judged as harshly as crying or having a temper tantrum in public. Normally polite people, we are made to feel ashamed of thinking, let alone saying out loud, “I don’t like you.” We’re not taught to say, “I don’t like you when you [do this thing],<\/em>” or even just, “I don’t like this thing you do, and when you do it, I don’t want to be around you.” Under a constant barrage of mustn’t-judge-each-other, I think we end up simply disliking and avoiding each other even more.<\/p>\n

We habitually say “nothing personal” or “no offense,” deflecting our anger or disgust at some caricature, some abstraction, some stereotype, when what we have to say is, in fact, very personal. We don’t really mean “no offense intended<\/em>,” we just don’t want our front teeth knocked out and don’t trust the listener to receive criticism or negative opinion like a mature adult.<\/p>\n

By the time we’re ready to voice our criticism, it has been bottled up for so long that it surely feels like an assault. It explodes like a soda can dropped from the roof and gets negativity all over everything and everyone in its purview.<\/p>\n

How ridiculous it is to dislike anyone based on the color of their skin, the texture of their hair, their choice of body art, or the nation in which they were born! How ridiculous it is to dislike someone for whom they love! What business is that of ours? How does it affect the quality of our lives at all? It is lazy shorthand for any rational reason to dislike anyone – and there are plenty of those when we get specific.<\/p>\n

But try these on for size:<\/p>\n