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As someone who took etiquette lessons, politeness is an incredibly effective tool for disarming bigots. You can either force them to reconsider their words/actions by directly and calmly confronting their behavior (by using the rules of society in your favor), or you can dip entirely while they appear to be in the wrong.
Both options are great.
Because the thing is, when bigots pick fights, they are 100% counting on you to get louder than them. Or meaner. They want you to react emotionally and provide fodder for their 'You're Too Emotionally Immature To Understand' cannon.
What they aren't expecting you to do is say one of the following phrases in a polite, concerned tone:
- Are you okay?
- That's not the kind of language I was raised to use with others.
- Do you need a moment to think on why that wasn't acceptable?
- This is no way to engage in intelligent conversation. Please try that again in a kinder tone if you'd like this to continue. (I really like this one because it lets you turn their public-shame rhetoric around)
For those of you who'd are spiteful and/or dealing with Fundamentalists/Evangelicals/generally shitty Christians:
- What's happening in your life to cause you this much anger? I can't imagine hurting so badly that I need to hurt other people.
- Who taught you it was acceptable to treat other people this way? Certainly not the Jesus I remember.
- Whatever happened to 'judge not lest ye be judged'?
- If I talked like that in front of my parents or grandparents I would be ashamed.
- I think there's something you need to pray on before we try and have this conversation.
And my all time favorite:
"It sounds to me like there are some seriously dark and angry forces at work in your heart."
(Nothing stops a Christian bigot in their tracks faster than implying the Devil is causing their bigotry. But you MUST be calm, polite, and gentle with your tone and wording. It is absolutely fair to twist the rules and play them at their own game, but you gotta play hard.)
TLDR: It's much faster to use etiquette, politeness, and rhetoric reversal when eviscerating idiots online and in person, because they aren't expecting you to weaponize their behaviors back in their direction. Don't get angry, get spitefully polite! :)
Random writing thought: the best stories are often the ones that only you could have written — but also the ones that you could only write at this one moment.
I couldn't write All the Birds in the Sky from scratch now if I tried. But the me of 2013 couldn't have written The Prodigal Mother either.
When people ask if I'd change anything about a book I've already written, I want to explain to them that I'm not the person who wrote that book any longer, and even if I tried right now I'd write a different one. Everything you make as a writer* is a combination of what you want to say and who you are at the time you are telling that story.
*possibly also as an artist or as a human being
One time I ate probably way too many mushrooms and I could feel my trip going bad. So, I turned to my roommate and I said something along the lines of,
"I feel amazing but I feel like this sensation has a price and I'm about to pay it."
To which he responded, "What are you, catholic?" And that knocked me so firmly out of my mental state that the rest of the trip was hands down the best time I ever did mushrooms.
Yeah that's fair, those tags should part of the main post
Aztec Gods Incorrect Quotes 10
Tezcatlipoca: Alright, time for Plan B.
Quetzalcoatl: Plan B? I wasn't even made aware that Plan A failed.
Huitzilopochtli: You will be soon.
*distant explosion*
Disney ✨Age ups✨
(Pinocchio, Alice, John, Michael, Arthur, Mowgli, Shanti, Penny, Christopher Robin, Taran, Eilonwy and Jenny)